The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(105)

As I stormed down the hall, several hundred more deaths absorbed into my bloodstream all at once, spreading a pleasant coolness across my skin. The feeling always calmed me, temporarily sating the mindless hunger for souls that rotted in my stomach. But it never lasted long enough. I could understand, in some terrible way, why Izanami had always wanted more.

At times, I still saw her.

Not in my dreams, or in the hazy half vision of the darkness, but when I sat alone in my room and dared to light a single candle as I brushed my hair by my mirror. While Death no longer ate away the flesh of my hands or feet when I grew angry, she appeared in my reflection, my rotting face of taut gray skin and empty eye sockets. My face still felt smooth beneath my fingertips, so it could have been just a trick of light, but I sensed that it was more than that. It seemed that even in death, gods were never truly gone.

I threw open the doors to the study and locked them behind me. The servants knew better than to bother me in here.

This was the only room facing South, into the deep darkness. I’d had great glass windows built on the far wall, looking out into that impenetrable wall of night. If, one day, someone were to claw their way out of the deep darkness and crawl onto the palace grounds, I would see them.

I sank down against the wall, leaning my head against the glass and spinning my wedding ring around my finger. One day, I would need to take it off. But whenever I went to remove it, I thought about the look on Hiro’s face when he’d watched me put it on, all the brightness before everything had been ruined, and I couldn’t bear to touch it.

I pressed my hand to the window that looked over the disappointing nothingness, my ring clinking against the glass. Perhaps it was undignified for a goddess to sit on the floor in her expensive robes and cry against a window, but I hardly felt like a goddess. I was more like the creatures of the deep darkness, only with a different sort of hunger.

I wondered if the humans would come to learn about me as they had Izanami, if I would become a part of their religious texts, or if I would forever be Yomi’s dark secret. While Izanami’s legend had been cruel and bleak, at least she had created Japan, done something of importance before her purpose was served. What story could be told about me, who had so ruined and destroyed everything?

I imagined, that if they were to tell the Legend of Ren, it would go something like this:

Once, there was a bastard daughter made of time and light.

She asked the universe what she was meant to be, but the stars held no answer.

There was only one person who loved her, and she took him across the sea, into the darkness that he feared.

She became a great queen, with a legion of the dead who bowed at her feet and a king who told her she was more beautiful than all the stars.

So she cast the one who had loved her into the darkness, because she didn’t need him anymore.

But the king was rotten like her, so she killed him, as well. And suddenly, in her palace of gold and one thousand servants, she was alone.

She knew then that the fabric of her soul was neither time nor light, but the pattern of stars over a restless sea, and stories whispered in catacombs, and steamship journeys to faraway lands, and her brother’s hand in hers. The names that she had fought for meant nothing in the loneliness of eternity.

She combed through the darkness in search of the only person who had loved her without condition, but year after year he was nowhere. She remembered the prophecy of the Honengame—that which you seek will never be found—and cried for the fate she had written for herself.

But she would not allow her story to end there.

Every day, she ate thousands of souls, and every day she grew stronger. Her servants brought her the creatures of the deep darkness and she tore apart their stomachs with her bare hands, but still she didn’t find him.

She knelt in the infinite darkness that was now her kingdom, and swore that someday, somehow, she would bring her brother home.

Until that day, Yomi continued to grow darker, until even the brightest lantern could no longer combat the endlessness of the night.

Thank you for reading!


We hope you enjoyed—and survived—your journey


with Ren into the enthralling world of
Reapers and Shinigami.


Don’t miss book two in The Keeper of Night duology!




Acknowledgments


This story would not exist without the love and support of so many people in my life. I once thought that no one would care about a story of an angry biracial girl trying to find out where she belonged, but little by little, the people in my life convinced me that I was wrong. To everyone listed here and so many more, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for making my greatest dream come true.

Thank you to my parents, who always gave me so many books for Christmas, sent me to writing workshops, always supported my dreams no matter how far from home they took me, and never questioned the practicality of me pursuing a degree in creative writing. Your love is my greatest privilege.

Thank you to Natashya Wilson, not only for being a fantastic editor and making this book ten times better, but also for your incredible kindness and support that encouraged me to come to Inkyard in the first place. Thank you, also, to Rebecca Kuss, Bess Braswell, and Claire Stetzer for supporting both me and Ren with so much kindness and enthusiasm. Thank you to the entire Inkyard team for all the fantastic work that you do!

Thank you to my amazing agent, Mary C. Moore, who helped me tremendously with my outline and early drafts, answered all my nervous silly questions with kindness, and believed in both me and Ren even when I didn’t.