Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
A hooded figure jumped to my branch. “Shh.”
I went forward. . .so. . .damn. . .slow. . .and my fist pushed through the air like it moved through deep water. I swung again, and the arm barely answered.
No. Not now. She needs me. She's right there—
The figure easily dodged it. "Shhh."
No. . .
My balance melted away.
“Shhh.”
I fell back and felt myself going down through the canopy, slow, the way I had come up but backward. Branches passed me one by one.
“Shh.” A few of those figures caught me.
Hand to hand, the Silent Ones lowered me through the dark like they were laying me into the earth.
Gravity drowned my senses.
I could barely move.
“Shh.” They had me.
I tried to break free but nothing worked. “What. . .are. . .you. . .doing to me?”
“Shh.”
Two of the Silent Ones gently grabbed my shoulder and I couldn’t even attack them as my lids fell heavy over my eyes. “Nyomi. . .”
“Shh.”
The last things that reached me, before the world hushed down to nothing, were the smell of her blood and the sound of her screaming.
And my whole body gave out beneath it.
I’m so. . .sorry. . .
And I feared that when I woke up. . .her ghost would be smiling at me.
Noooooo. . .
Chapter eight
The Soul Bond
Kenji
"Hiro?!" Furious, I scanned the darkness.
He had leapt off the cart and vanished into the black after a sound I never heard, and now I had no eyes on my brother and no eyes on my Tiger and a war pressing down on every breath I dragged in. "Hiro!!!"
Yoichi sped the cart down the gravel path. "Hiro is fine."
"How would you know?"
My brother had vaulted off the side a mile back, chasing my Tiger's scream that only he could hear, and now the seat beside me sat empty.
I gripped the silver guard of my guns and dragged my thumbs across them, back and forth. "How long before we are there?"
"Minutes."
“Hurry the fuck up.”
The night blurred past on either side.
The cart’s headlights cut a thin yellow road through the trees, and beyond their reach the island was nothing but shapes—black trunks, blacker gaps, the silver edge of the moon shining over leaves.
Salt and gun oil rode the wind into my face.
Yoichi's voice remained too goddamn calm. "Your brother and Tiger are now with your mother's people. They are safe—"
"And how do you know this?"
"I can feel it in my bones."
"Your fucking bones?" I turned on him. "And what do you know about my mother's people?"
"A lot."
"How and why?"
"I think you would agree that we don't have much time for stories and answers. War is coming—"
"Yet death will come to you and everyone else if Hiro and Nyomi aren't okay."
"They're safe. They're with your mother's people—"
I stared at the side of his calm face, and the past rose up around me like smoke.
When I buried my mother and brother, the very next day Yoichi appeared at my gate. He carried the artifacts of her bloodline in two cloth bundles, one in each hand, and he laid them in my arms like a man returning something stolen.
Then he refused to leave.
Hiro threatened him.
Yoichi remained.
Hiro tried to kill him, more than once, and missed every time.
Reo plotted against Yoichi for weeks, and when the plots failed, Reo sat him in a chair and questioned him for ten straight hours.
Yoichi stared at the wall, outlasted every word of it, and never confirmed anything. He never denied anything either. He simply stayed at my side for years.
After he pulled me out of death twice, I made him a Fang and stopped asking the question I had never gotten an answer to.
Reo had a theory. He always did. He swore Yoichi was one of my mother's people, planted in my life by the bloodline I was never allowed to fully meet.
I had let it go.
Tonight, I would not. "How are you connected to my mother’s people?"
For a long moment, only the engine answered.
Then, Yoichi spoke. “Even you would agree that now is not the time with war on the way—”
“Are you or not?”
“Of course I am connected.”
“Are you my blood?”
“Yes.” And the way he said it, it seemed like that confession caused him a painful unease.
“How are you related to me?”
"Even if I told you, you wouldn't believe me."
"Try me." I sneered.
"You wouldn't know my parents." He took a bend without slowing. The cart leaned hard with the turn, and the tires bit gravel. "But we are directly related."
“How?”
“That’s all I can say.”
“That’s not good enough—”
“Your only concern tonight is to get control of your dragon-shadow.”
I tensed.
He knows. . .
“Once you get control of the dragon-shadow, the war will lean in your favor.” Yoichi pushed the cart faster, and the engine climbed, and the trees rushed by closer now, branches whipping at the edges of the light.