The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(98)

“Ren,” he said, one hand reaching out to caress my cheek, “you don’t have to worry about them interfering anymore. As you said, they’ll never understand.”

I shook my head. No matter how angry I was, I would never want Neven hurt. He let out a plaintive sound before the shadows locked tighter around him, knocking his glasses halfway off his face.

“I don’t... I don’t want him chained in a cold dungeon somewhere,” I said, “or tortured by your shadow guards.”

Hiro nodded, tucking my hair behind my ear. “Anything you want, Ren. And the Yokai?”

I frowned down at the feral fox trying to bite into the formless guard. Neven thrashed against the shadows, and I remembered why I’d kept her around in the first place.

“Her, too,” I said. “Can you just...keep them at a distance so we can have our wedding in peace?”

Hiro nodded, lifting my hand and pressing a warm kiss to my fingers. “Of course.”

“And don’t let your guards hurt them,” I said.

Hiro squeezed my hand and nodded, turning to the guards. “Do as she says.”

Neven wrenched away from the guard’s hand. “Ren!” he said, reaching out for me.

But the tearing of the darkness swallowed his cry, and the guards pulled him and the girl onto another plane, leaving only the ruins of the throne room and the echo of his voice where he’d once stood.

Something in my chest stung as Neven vanished, but Hiro erased the thought with his warm lips against mine and his hand on the small of my back, leading me out of the throne room. I wouldn’t let Neven hold me back from being who I was meant to be. I would tell Hiro to bring him back in a few days, after we’d both calmed down, and Hiro would do it, because he’d do anything for me.

Hiro led me to a royal chamber, where he tore my clothes off with knives that scored my skin, then bit and scratched at every inch of me. I let him hold me hard enough to leave bruises on my bones, and he let me grip his throat and crush down and down until his eyes rolled back in his head, because this was what it meant to be the most powerful people in all of Japan—to ruin and destroy.

I didn’t realize, until much later that night, that I had never gathered Neven’s clock from the floor of the throne room.



Chapter Twenty-Two


I woke up to darkness, unable to tell if it was day or night. Hiro was already awake behind me, his arms caged around my ribs, a thin futon beneath us. I couldn’t make out shapes in the darkness while half awake, but I remembered Hiro taking my hand and leading me down hallways painted with dragons and spiraling rivers, white lightning and red daybreak over fields of rice. He’d opened a door by the murals of the fire god’s birth and sealed us in a windowless bedroom where our shadows cast monstrous shapes on the white paper doors.

Now I felt like I was waking into a strange alternate reality, one where I had never known London and had always woken up with Hiro’s warm skin against mine. He pressed a kiss to my neck and pulled me even closer, like he feared I’d run away from him.

“Good morning,” he whispered into my skin.

“Is it morning?” I said. “I can hardly tell down here.”

“We’re gods,” Hiro said. “It can be whatever time we want it to be.”

Technically, I wasn’t a god yet, but I didn’t bother correcting him.

“How does it feel?” I said, turning over to face him and combing my fingers through his hair. “Being a god, I mean.”

Hiro thought for a moment, tracing shapes into my spine. “Like I’m reading a thousand different books at once, but somehow all of them make sense,” he said. “I hear the names of the dead in my sleep, and when I close my eyes, I see their faces. Every time one of them dies, it’s like a shot of opium straight into my heart. All of my bones tremble, and my blood rushes ten times faster through my body.”

He shuddered against me, as if imagining it. “I can understand why Izanami wanted more,” he said.

My hands stilled in his hair. “But you’re not going to take more, are you?” I said.

Hiro chuckled, pressing his face into my collarbone. “I’m not going to eradicate the Yokai, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said, mumbling against my skin. “There is only one more thing that I truly desire, and it has nothing to do with the Yokai.”

Then he lifted his head and kissed me again. He pulled away just as I began to claw at his shoulder blades.

“Speaking of which,” he said, sitting up, “I know you are not Shintoist, but I would like our wedding ceremony to be traditional, if that’s all right.”

My face warmed at the mention of our wedding, but I nodded. Hiro smiled and kissed my forehead.

“I have a present for you,” he said. “Wait here a moment.”

He stood up and left the room, the door sliding shut behind him. I wasn’t even sure if he’d stopped to put clothes on, but I supposed a god could do whatever he wanted.

Lying in the dark, beneath the elaborately painted ceiling, the depth of the darkness overwhelmed me. For the first time, I was alone in Yomi. Without another soul to ground me, the endless darkness threatened to erase every memory and replace it with nothingness, scrubbing away the features of my face and stripping me of my name, letter by letter. Perhaps Tamamo No Mae had proven useful after all, for at least I didn’t have to worry about Neven spiraling into despair from loneliness.