The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(94)

Izanami’s horrific corpse drew a long katana from a shelf above her throne and lurched toward Hiro, dropping Neven’s clock to the floor. The light glinted along the curved blade as if it had been freshly forged in molten white starlight. She dragged it behind her, scraping through the mats and wood as easily as soft fruit.

Hiro’s eyes widened when he saw what his mother intended to do, the same wild look of hares caught in traps and humans on their deathbeds when they knew there was no way out, a look I knew so horribly well and had never wanted to see on Hiro’s face. My throat dried up and I could no longer draw in breath, but this time I didn’t think it was because of Death crushing me to the floor.

“Mother, please!” Hiro said. He was sobbing, his teeth chattering from the high pressure and blood pooling around his face from where he’d bitten his tongue. It was the same as when the Shinigami had kicked him in the hotel, but this was his mother. My blood was suddenly burning hot, the curse of Death peeling away the skin at my fingertips as I found myself crawling closer to Hiro, even as the screaming winds tried to drag me away from him.

Izanami staggered closer, the katana carving through the floor behind her.

“You knew to never come back here,” she said. “Your brothers are the islands of Japan, the moon and the storms. Your sister is the sun. And what have you become, Hiruko?”

“I—I’m a god of fishermen,” Hiro said, blood trickling down from his eyes.

“Fish,” Izanami said with disdain. As she limped closer, trails of black rot streaked the floor behind her. “You are proud to be the god of fish?”

My fingers scraped at the reed mats, tearing straight through them and sinking into the splintering hardwood beneath. How dare she demean Hiro when he had risked his life just to please her? How dare she speak of pride and prestige after casting away her own child? I thought of Ambrose in his golden chair in the High Council and Izanami hiding away in her opulent palace and my fingers curled with disgust at the gilded cowards we called our parents, splinters stabbing under my fingernails. I dragged myself forward, even as my face scraped along the mats.

“I’m sorry,” Hiro cried, the ever-crushing strength of Death pinning his head to the floor and grinding his teeth into the wood. “Mother, I’m sorry. Please—”

“You are a leech,” Izanami said. “You dare to bring my greatest shame into my palace? When I pushed you out to sea, I hoped that you drowned.”

Her words drained all the warmth from my blood, and they hadn’t even been for me. Surely even the sharpest katana in all of Yomi could not cut Hiro as deep. Hiro sobbed into the floor, hugging his legs to his chest and soaking the reed mats with his tears and blood.

My teeth crunched and cracked as I ground them together, Death wrapping around my arms in ribbons and flaying away my skin, and still none of it hurt as much as looking at Hiro come undone. Boiling hot tears, or maybe blood, dripped down my face, and it didn’t make sense because I never cried for anyone else, never felt sorrier for anyone than I did for myself, but now I felt like I’d swallowed hot coals and my nose was running onto the mats and if I let go of my bloody grip on the floor I would break into a thousand pieces like the human in Yuki Onna’s story.

I clawed my way toward Hiro, even as my eyes kept rolling up to the ceiling, my body threatening to faint under the pressure. With the crushing weight of Death on my back, the few meters between me and Hiro might as well have been halfway across the universe.

The rattling floors shook Neven’s clock closer to me, only a few inches from my hand. I tore my gaze from Hiro and focused on the glimmering silver, even as my vision spun, because this was how I could save Hiro. He had lied to me, but I could never let him die.

I stretched out my fingers and the bones instantly snapped under the onslaught of Death, but I gritted my teeth and forced my hand closer.

Izanami finally reached Hiro, kicking him over so he lay on his back. He croaked out an endless stream of apologies, but the gravity of Death tugged at his lips and tongue, the words coming out as sad, distorted sounds. He thrashed against the floor but couldn’t escape as Izanami pressed the sharp tip of the blade over his heart.

“Welcome home, Hiruko.”

I bit my tongue and wrenched my broken fingers into a closed fist around Neven’s clock.

The pressure released. I gasped at the sudden influx of air, the ringing silence of the room. My bones clicked as they realigned themselves, the stream of blood from my nose and ears quickly tapering off. Now that the chaos had ended and the space around me was a quiet throne room and not a hungry darkness, I realized Hiro was much farther from me than I’d thought, pinned under Izanami’s blade but unharmed.

The whirlwind had torn open the sliding doors to the throne room, revealing Neven’s frozen form sprawled on the floor with the fox clinging to the back of his shirt, his feet just beyond my grasp. I crawled the meter between us and grabbed his ankle, yanking him closer to me and startling him awake.

“Ren!” he cried, jolting up and immediately wincing. I heard his teeth clacking back into place and his jaw realigning itself, but otherwise he seemed unharmed. He gasped at Izanami’s frozen form and gathered up the Yokai into his arms, then pressed her face into his shirt.

“Are you all right?” he said to me, gaze jumping between me and Izanami’s rotten corpse. He swallowed a convulsive gag and pressed his head to my shoulder.