The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(69)

Then Neven made a gurgling sound, turning to the side and spitting out foamy brine.

I untangled myself from Hiro, nearly pushing him away as I knelt beside Neven. His head twitched to the side as he drooled out water tinted pink with blood. His eyes flickered open, pale blue.

“Neven!” I said, cupping his face as his eyes tracked the passing clouds and then finally settled on me. He blinked a few times before his eyes started to slide closed again, but I slapped him hard before they could.

“Ow, Ren.” One of his hands reached up to touch the wound on his neck. He winced and examined the blood on his fingers, then looked back at me.

I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed so hard that he let out a pained sound, but it didn’t matter because he was alive, which meant he would heal.

My breath came back to me all at once, wrenching my chest open with a ragged gasp of salty air. Every breath came loud and choked, like I was drowning on land. I clutched at Neven, one hand pressed to his spine and the other in his hair, jamming his face into my neck so I could feel his cool breath on my skin. One of his hands drifted up and rested on my back, light as a falling leaf.

I thought of a thousand things I could have said to him, but I could hardly even breathe when every piece of me was about to come unglued, my bones about to collapse into a human puzzle, my organs about to spill onto the rocks.

“It’s all right,” Neven managed, the words slurred together and whispered into my skin. “Ren, it’s all right.”

But it wasn’t all right, and it wouldn’t be all right until my task was finished and I could find a new place for me and Neven to live in Yomi, with lots of lanterns to chase the darkness away.

I thought about Death tearing through my skin and wondered if Neven truly was safe with me. But I allowed myself one moment just to hold him and forget about that, and all the monsters in this new and foreign world, and the blood soaking our clothes, and the darkness slowly but surely bleeding across the sky.



Chapter Fifteen


Night fell fast over the shore. The ocean turned dark, as if poisoned by all the blood that had been spilled, and the gray clouds melted together into a stone wall that blocked out the moon and stars.

Neven could barely stand. I helped him stumble to a cave that Hiro had found among the rocks, dragging him most of the way. I’d sent Hiro back into the waters to find Neven’s glasses and he’d gone without complaint, his waters bringing them back to the surface in a matter of minutes. Then we’d decided to let Neven rest for a few hours and try to wash the blood out of our clothes so we wouldn’t arouse suspicion when we finally headed back to town.

Hiro went to gather firewood while I laid Neven down on the ground of the cave. He curled up on his side in the wet sand, cheek scraping into the ground and glasses knocked halfway off his face.

“How haven’t you broken these already?” I said, taking off his glasses and tucking them in his pocket. I tugged at his arm, trying to get him to rest on my leg instead of the ground. “Come on, you’ll be eating sand in your sleep. Get up.”

“Don’t care,” Neven said. But he was limp enough that I managed to manhandle him until his head lay in my lap. He mumbled something unintelligible and I ignored it until he spoke again.

“My clock,” he said, fingers feeling at the hole in his pocket where I’d ripped the chain away. “Where... Ren?”

“Are you planning on turning time in your dreams?” I said, pulling his clock from my pocket and pressing it to his grasping hands. Teeth marks marred the surface of the silver and I prayed that he didn’t ask about them later. For the moment Neven didn’t seem to care about the dents, holding the clock to his chest and rolling on his side to curl up around it. I would have to go out looking for my own clock later, but I suspected that I would never see it again. Maybe Neven could make me a new one when he’d recovered, if we found the right materials in Takaoka.

I stroked Neven’s hair, despite its disgusting texture from all the salt water and blood. My fingers traced the slowly scarring mark on his neck.

“Stop,” he said into my leg, his hand twitching like he wanted to swat me away. “Itches.”

I brought my hand back up to his hair and watched him descend into sleep, not wanting to ever let him go again. He’d been my tether to reality in the dreamy haze of Yomi and the Yokai, but I could no longer trust that he wouldn’t evaporate the moment I turned away. I didn’t want to sleep, in case I woke to find that Neven’s rescue had been a dream, or that he’d never existed at all. Our argument seemed so meaningless compared to the thought of Neven dying. I would have had to carry him all the way back to London so that Ankou could collect his soul. The moment I returned, I would have been shackled and executed. But I still would have done it, rather than leave Neven’s soul floating in the ether for eternity.

He shivered in his sleep and curled in on himself, face pressing into my leg.

“He’ll recover, won’t he?” Hiro said, returning to the cave and arranging a small pile of sticks on the ground.

“I think so.”

Hiro pulled a box of matches from his pocket, realized it was sopping wet, then tossed it aside with a scowl. He grabbed one of the flatter pieces of firewood and began the tedious task of starting a friction fire like a human. What a pity that we could use our powers only to ignite sources of light, rather than any flammable material we could find. Sooner than I’d expected, the wood smoked and sparked. Hiro waved his hand over the tiny flame and a fire sprang up, nearly singeing my nose.