The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(101)

The priest turned to set the bough down, and in the changing light I could see his round glasses, like two bright full moons. I began to feel sick.

The priest poured a clear liquid that smelled like sake into a shallow metal cup and passed it to Hiro, who then passed it to me with both hands.

“You must drink,” he said. “It has been blessed.”

I stared at my pale reflection in the sake, unable to move my arms, even as all of Yomi watched and waited.

Those who ate or drank the food of Yomi could never return to Earth. Hiro had said as much when I’d first met him, and I’d already read it in the legend of Izanami. It was the reason she hadn’t been able to return to Earth with her husband after her death, the reason her rage and sorrow had first brought Death upon the humans.

Once I drank the wine of Yomi, I could never leave Hiro. I would never be able to escape his domain.

“Ren?” Hiro said.

My hands had locked around the cup, unable to move. The priest and shrine maidens watched me in silence.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, “I’m just a bit... I feel—”

“Are you scared?” Hiro said.

I didn’t answer, looking across the sea of expectant faces, the eyes of the dead a bright white in the near-darkness.

“Don’t worry about them,” Hiro said, turning my face back toward him. “It’s all right, Ren. I know this all happened rather quickly. I know it’s overwhelming.”

I glanced at the priest and the small shrine girl behind him, both watching me, eyes white and expectant.

Hiro moved in front of them, blocking them from my view.

“Don’t worry about anyone else,” he said. “Just look at me. Tell me your fears, and I’ll take care of them. I can give you anything in the world.”

I shook my head. “I...”

My frigid blood boiled under the weight of my kimono. I could see nothing but the white eyes of the dead, and the soft edges of the priest’s glasses lit up by the candlelight, the small girl behind him, and the cup trembling in my hands. I wanted the darkness to open its jaws and devour me.

“Ren, you have to breathe,” Hiro said, his hands like burning coal on my face. I was supposed to be corpse-cold, not melting under my clothing. I felt like Yuki Onna as her bones liquefied.

“Ren!” Hiro said, nails biting into my cheeks.

“I want Neven,” I said at last. The moment the words left my mouth, the feeling of imminent doom faded away, the night air of Yomi soothing the sweat on my brow.

Hiro’s hands fell away from my face.

“I shouldn’t have sent him away,” I said.

Hiro withdrew, his face shrouded by shadows and indecipherable in the half darkness.

“You mean that you regret agreeing to marry me?” he said, so quiet and fragile.

“No!” I said. I took his hand, but it hung limp in mine. “I want to marry you. But please, let my brother and the Yokai out first. They should be here, too.”

Hiro frowned. “Let them out of what, Ren?”

A wave of coldness crashed over me, chasing away the panicked heat under my skin.

“Have you not locked them up somewhere in the palace?” I said.

Hiro shook his head, then took my free hand and gave it a squeeze that was probably meant to reassure me. “As I said, you don’t have to worry about them anymore.”

“What do you mean?” I said, sliding my hand out of Hiro’s. “Where are they?”

Hiro gestured at the night beyond the shrine. “Away,” he said. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Of course it matters!” I said, casting the cup of sake to the ground. The priest and priestess drew back. The dead gasped behind me, but no one dared to interfere. “You told me your guards wouldn’t hurt them, so why can’t they be here?”

“My guards haven’t laid a hand on them, Ren,” Hiro said, staring at me with moon-bright and unblinking eyes. “They only took them to the deep darkness.”

I had been certain, up until that point, that the defining moment of my life was when I lost control of my light and struck down the High Reapers in the street. That day marked a definitive end to the life I had known, the death of Wren Scarborough and the birth of Ren of Yakushima. After it happened, my home might as well have turned to ruins behind me, because I could never go back and nothing would ever be the same.

But, as all the blood drained from my body and my throat clamped shut, I knew that the true defining moment of my life was when I realized that I had killed my brother.

I couldn’t move, my joints locked as if they’d turned to stone, trapping me in a prison of bones while inside I was falling from an infinite height, unable to scream. I sucked in a weak breath and thought back to the one and only thing Neven had ever asked of me.

You won’t leave me alone outside in the dark? he’d said. And I’d promised him that I wouldn’t.

I imagined Neven stumbling through the darkness, crawling through the slick soil just to keep himself tethered to something real in all the endless night. The Yokai would cling to his back and wet his neck with tears, trusting even when she felt his bones rattling against each other from fear. The monsters would smell their tears and come crawling, shadows licking at their heels with forked tongues. I prayed they’d swallow them whole and crush every bone with a single bite of their gigantic maws, killing them instantly. But Hiro said they loved breaking humans into pieces, so maybe they would suck the flesh off their bones limb by limb, popping out each individual joint to build their nests, fueled by the song of their screams.