The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(38)

Hiro looked back at us, then stepped out into the darkness and disappeared.

I followed him, sensing Neven’s resistance in the heaviness of his steps. A thick blanket of night dropped over us. The city lights over my shoulder grew small and distant as we followed the sound of Hiro’s footsteps.

“Don’t wander far from me,” Hiro said. “You might find yourself sucked into a swamp in the deep darkness, where you can never climb back out.” His tone implied that he might be joking, but Neven’s grip around my arm tightened enough to bruise bone.

“The deep darkness?” Neven said.

“Yes,” Hiro said. “There are monsters out there that no one has ever seen. It is said that they enjoy disassembling humans into all their constituent parts, then hoarding the bones to build their nests. They can smell fear and love the sound of screams.”

“But we’re not going anywhere near them,” I said, squeezing Neven’s wrist until he unlatched from my forearm, letting blood start to circulate again. “Isn’t that right, Hiro?”

Hiro laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I have no desire to walk close enough to the deep darkness to deliver you there. You both will live to see another day.”

If this reassured Neven, he gave no sign of it, plastering himself to my side as we followed Hiro deeper into the night.

As we moved through the dark and the city behind us shrank into a distant star, once again my other senses opened their eyes and I could picture the world in vivid detail without actually seeing it.

The dirt road beneath my feet turned into a stone walkway and a great carved staircase that led up into the dark sky. I raised my foot for the first step, but Neven tripped into it, nearly pulling me down.

“Ah, sorry, mind the stairs,” Hiro said from somewhere in front of us. “You can hear my footsteps, yes?”

“It’s fine,” I said. Neven crushed my hand tighter against his arm and stumbled up the first step.

“I forget that not everyone can navigate the darkness when they first arrive,” Hiro said. “You’ll get used to it, I promise.”

As we climbed upward, the endless staircase opened up to a stone courtyard with a massive archway, three layers of sloped roofs rising like a tremendous crown above it. As we passed under it, our footsteps rang as hollow echoes against the stone walls. Other footsteps joined Hiro’s, and soon a crowd of worshippers swallowed the sound of his steps and breathing.

“What’s happening?” Neven said, pressing closer to me.

“Other people came to pray,” Hiro said. “Let’s not disturb them.”

I sensed him moving through the crowd, but I struggled to follow his path as the murmurs of the worshippers covered the sound of his footsteps. I couldn’t merely scan the crowd and locate him, because everyone had melded into a homogenous People, my senses duller than if I could actually see. I sensed them bowing and taking off their shoes, but I couldn’t comb Hiro from the mass.

I felt a magnetic pull to my left, not unlike the pull of Death, and turned around in instinctive obedience.

Hiro stood by the wooden archway of a nearby garden, watching me. His face was the sharpest image I’d sensed in the dreamy hellscape of the darkness. His eyes were the smooth black of stones washed up on the shore, patient and impartial. His skin glowed brighter than I’d ever seen, like the shimmer of moonlight on the changing waves. Even though the world felt hazy, he was perfectly clear.

But something about his expression was strange. Perhaps my weak night vision couldn’t parse the nuances of his face, but his eyes seemed to watch me too deeply, like they were unwrapping the layers of skin and flesh and trying to determine the color of my soul.

I pulled Neven toward Hiro, and as we drew closer, the strange hollowness in his eyes disappeared. A gentle breeze sighed through the garden behind us and blew the scent of lake and lotus to us as he uncrossed his arms.

“You can see in the dark,” Hiro said.

Neven flinched, clearly not expecting his voice so close.

“Yes,” I said.

“You can?” Neven said, with the clear implication of why didn’t you tell me?

“Shinigami can,” Hiro said, smiling. “How interesting.”

“Were you testing me?” I said, frowning.

Hiro laughed, somehow melting away my anger. “I was only curious what a half Shinigami can do,” he said. Then he turned and walked off through the garden, his footsteps loud on the jagged stone path.

I led Neven through the garden to a large open-air shrine crowded with worshippers. The fevered whispers of their prayers echoed in my ears as I stepped around their bodies. I tugged Neven closer to me so that he wouldn’t step on any of the dead and followed Hiro through the masses. We slid through the crowd and arrived at the biggest building yet—a castle mounted on a gray stone foundation high above the ground.

Like an ink painting, the edges of the monochrome castle bled into the wet darkness. The lines between reality and illusion blurred, not like the dreamy haze of Yomi’s town center but as a nightmarish smear of blackness raked across the sky. The castle towered ten stories high, each story marked with a sloped rooftop that flared up and out, the corners sharp as claws. What an extravagant castle that most people would never see.

“This is her palace,” Hiro said. “I can’t promise that she’ll see you, but you can ask for an audience.”