The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(80)

It was easy, because she looked like a human and I didn’t even like humans that much. It was easy, because I’d time-frozen her and she couldn’t attack or run away. It was easy, because all I had to do was bring my arms down.

My arms shook from the weight of the katana.

I am a selfish person, and her life doesn’t matter to me, I thought. Not compared to what my reward will be.

But if that was true, then why couldn’t I move?

I reached for the pull of Death that I’d felt when I’d slain Iso Onna, needing it to wreck and ravage me, awaken an insatiable craving for blood and suffering. I needed to be that person, wild and strong and selfish. But Death stayed tucked away some place deep and small inside me, and instead my heart filled up with nothingness. Why now, of all times, had Death abandoned me?

I closed my eyes and told myself I would count to three and bring my arms down. But I counted to three and then twenty-three and then sixty-three and I still couldn’t move, my arms frozen, the blade now shaking violently in my hands.

I made the mistake of looking down at the girl, her eyes closed in tranquil sleep, her cheeks still swollen with baby fat, her bangs cut in an uneven line across her forehead. I thought of Gray Westbrook’s face as years of his life were ripped away, and the frozen families in Shirakawa-go shattering to pieces, and the look on Neven’s face that said he would never, ever forgive me for this. I tried to see a monster who had ravaged Japan and would do so again, but I could only see a little girl. Just like me, she would suffer not for what she’d done, but for who she was.

I lowered my arms slowly, setting the blade down in the grass as I knelt beside it. Even without its weight, my arms trembled.

“I can’t,” I whispered.

And with that admission, hot tears burned across my eyes and scorched down my face like acid as I finally realized that I would never be a Shinigami. I’d come all this way, nearly lost my brother, and all of it was for nothing. Without my anger, I was weak and sentimental like a human, and for that I would live and die alone.

Hiro didn’t encourage me to do it. He stood beside me while I cried, the sounds loud and ugly in our small sphere of petrified night. After a moment, he picked up the sword.

“I can,” he said.

My tears dried up instantly. I choked on a startled breath and shook my head.

“No, no, it has to be me,” I said, my hands clenching fistfuls of grass. “Izanami will know, she’ll know I didn’t—”

“She won’t know,” Hiro said, his aura oddly dark and stoic, like a shadow that loomed behind you in a dark alley at night. “She’ll sense the change in energy when a Yokai’s soul leaves Earth, but she won’t know how or why.”

I shook my head again. “It’s my job,” I said, wiping my eyes with dirty sleeves. “You’ve done so much already. If you do this for me, too, then what have I even done to appease Izanami? I haven’t earned the right to be a Shinigami. I’m weak.”

“Ren,” Hiro said, kneeling beside me. He set the katana on his lap and tucked my hair behind my ear. “Do you truly believe that murder is what makes you a Shinigami?”

“If not this, then what?” I said, hiding my face behind trembling hands. “What more could I possibly do?”

“These tests are a formality,” Hiro said. “You don’t earn the right to be a Shinigami, Ren. Izanami doesn’t have the power to make you what you already are.”

But what was I? I had no idea what it meant to be a Shinigami, other than my black hair and eyes and light and everyone in London telling me I was not a Reaper. For all my life, I’d been defined by who I wasn’t. What was left underneath when you scraped away all the things I wasn’t allowed to be?

“I’ll do it for you, if you want me to,” Hiro said.

I swallowed, then looked up at him. In the darkness, with the moonlight glaring off the katana in his hand, he looked like some sort of ghostly warrior.

“Why?” I said. “You shouldn’t want to do this for me.”

“I would do anything for you,” he said, as if it were that simple.

“Don’t say that,” I said, looking away. “You can’t just...” I trailed off as Hiro cupped my face, forcing me to look at him.

“Do you think I’m lying?” he said, his breath brushing across my face.

“I don’t know,” I said. I couldn’t think clearly with him so close, his hand so warm on my face.

Hiro pressed his forehead to mine. “I can show you,” he whispered, his words warm on my lips. “I’ll kill her for you, Ren. I’ll kill anyone for you.”

I shuddered and tried to look away, but Hiro raised his other hand to my face, holding my jaw still and brushing his thumb across my lower lip. His hands burned with fever, his eyes full of blazing coal. He looked like a nightmare, but I didn’t push him away.

“Would you really?” I said. “Anyone?”

“Yes,” he said, his fingers pressing harder into the soft skin of my face. “I would drown all the islands of Japan if you asked me to.”

“That’s horrible,” I said, but still I didn’t push him away. Was this not how humans showed affection? With grandiose declarations of devotion? I didn’t know what it meant to love someone. All I knew was that being around Hiro made me feel dark and infinite, like every star in the universe burned inside the prison of my ribs.