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)
"That weight will eat you."
"Then it eats me."
"And when Hiro finds out on his own—"
"He won't."
"He will." Reo tilted his head to the side. "Men like your brother always find out."
Tension gathered in my shoulders. “Tonight, we win the war. Tomorrow, we figure that part out.”
Reo nodded.
My stomach twisted. “By the way. . .Akiro and my father are heading here.”
Reo leaned his head to the side. “Is that your guess?”
“No. We did a new ritual and it worked.”
Reo blinked. “A. . .new. . .ritual?”
“Yes. I’ve got control of my dragon-shadow.”
Reo widened his eyes. The best thing about my Roar was that he never questioned any of the mystical sides of my life. He simply addressed it like realistic facts and continued on.
He gestured to my hands. “Is that why you have those black lines on your palms?”
I widened my eyes. “When did you notice them?”
“As soon as you came over.”
And I’d thought his full focus has been on the table.
Reo studied me. “Your dragon-shadow—”
“Goryū.”
“He has a name?”
“He does. That’s what it is.”
“It’s an interesting name.” Reo considered it for a minute. “Goryū. The mountain in the Hida range is called that. Five Dragon Peak. Two thousand eight hundred meters.”
“Why do you know that?”
“It’s one of the hundred famous mountains of Japan."
I looked in Goryū’s direction, and the shadowy beast studied Reo.
My Roar continued, "Goryū also means honored spirit. I think there’s something about a noble of that name who died wrongly and came back as a spirit with enough rage to bring plagues to the world."
“Why do you know that too?”
“I’ve heard the name a lot for some reason. Many times.” Reo rubbed the side of his head again. “And I’ve been a bit obsessed with it through the years.”
I’ve whispered my name in his dreams too.
Don’t whisper in my Roar’s dreams.
Our Roar.
You’re worse than my brother.
Our brother.
Frowning, I leaned over the table. From above, it looked manageable. Pieces on a board, arranged in patterns, moving through a logic that could be read and redirected.
From below, in the dirt, the dark, and the smoke, it was six hundred armed men and fifteen aircraft and the sound of my island tearing itself apart.
“We’re not doing bad at all.” I straightened.
Once, I would have looked at that table and felt something close to worship.
The pieces.
The positions.
The architecture of power rendered small enough to hold in both hands.
There was a time when this—all of this—was the only thing I understood as a life worth living.
The empire.
The name.
The throne that cost more to keep than I could calculate in a single accounting.
I had been given the throne out of tragedy and. . .I had learned to want it. Completely. With the kind of wanting that didn't leave room for anything else—not rest, not softness, not the warmth of a woman who looked at me not as the Dragon but as the man standing just behind the beast, ordinary, exhausted, and still trying.
But something had shifted in me on that forest floor, and it had not been gradual the way they said change was supposed to be.
It had been a single point of rupture.
Her blood in a bowl.
Her mouth on my palm.
Her body in my arms after.
Her soul now. . .inside of me.
I had felt her rage burning through my chest all the way to this table, and what I felt alongside it—beneath the pride, beneath the war-hunger—was a grief so quiet it had no language yet. Only the shape of it. The outline of something I had already lost and not yet been permitted to mourn.
I thought about children I had not yet held.
I thought about mornings that had no war in them.
I thought about Nyomi's laugh—the one that arrived when she was not performing anything for anyone, when she forgot I was watching—and I thought that I would give all of this away just to spend the rest of my days with her in my arms.
I’d give my entire empire away.
The pieces on the board.
The throne.
Somewhere far below what I was willing to say aloud, a decision was being made in my soul.
After this war, things will change. . .
I looked out through the trees toward the fight.
Finally, I caught the Claws and Fangs in their detailed masks, holding positions at the edge of the tree line with their bodies low. They were demonic creatures crouching in the dark.
I looked for Hiro among them and couldn’t find him.
Reo grabbed my attention. “How is Nyomi?"
“She is safe.”
“Off the island?”
“In the Bamboo Garden.”
Reo frowned for the first time. “What?”
“Akiro’s men came before she could leave.”
“The Claws will not like this.”
“I don’t even like it. Which means we need to end this war fast.”
Reo checked behind me. “And Hiro? Did you decide to have him stay with her?”
“No.” I blinked. “He’s supposed to be with you.”
Reo shook his head. “We haven’t seen Hiro since you two left us.”