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)
Eyes that reminded me of our Tiger.
Eyes that made me want to walk out onto that field of our armed enemies, pick her up, tuck her against my shoulder, and let her safely sleep there.
I wanted to wipe the blood off her cheek with my thumb.
I wanted to ask her whose baby she was, and where her mother and father had gone, and whether anyone had ever told her how beautiful her eyes were.
She blinked at me.
And then she was gone.
I breathed slowly through my nose, and my eyes watered.
There was a seed of truth in my chest that was trying to rise. It was trying to plant deep in my heart and grow. Trying to bloom into the facts of who she was, but I would not allow myself to give it sun and nutrients.
No. . .whoever you are. . .don’t come back again. It hurts to see you. I have to fight tonight.
The lollipop went sweet on my tongue again.
I shifted my eyes back to the field.
A ripple moved through Akiro's men. It started at the left edge of their formation and spread right.
Voices stopped mid-shout. Guns lowered from the air. Men turned their faces upward and squinted at a sky that held only the moon and the clouds.
One man near the front of their formation dropped to a knee and stayed there with his rifle pointed to the sky.
They saw nothing.
But they had felt something just like I did.
Yes. . .I think Kenji really has control of this dragon-shadow.
Whatever moved above our canopy had passed over them now, and hundreds of armed men went quiet in a wave I could watch with my own eyes.
I looked at Kenji. “Your dragon-shadow is over there?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I think I can feel it.”
“Good, but I’m not surprised. You are a man of many powers.”
“Many powers?” I blinked, unsure of how to accept that compliment.
Then, the baby returned.
I tensed.
Now she was on my brother's back with one chubby arm looped loose around his neck and her cheek pressed against the back of his muscular shoulder. She had her thumb tucked between her lips. She was a child sucking herself toward a nap she trusted would come.
And then her scent reached me.
Baby powder.
Soft.
Clean.
Warm.
The kind of powder that lived on a changing table in a peaceful nursery and got patted onto a small body after a bath. And there was the scent of blood. My heart ached to have those smells collide. It almost cracked my chest wide open. Almost made me moan in sadness so loud that everyone could hear it.
And those pretty, peaceful eyes watched me from over Kenji's shoulder.
I frowned. “Powers or not. I’m not okay.”
Kenji did not feel the ghost baby on his back. “You are okay, brother.”
"I see things." My voice came out lower than I wanted. "Wrong things that don't exist."
"I know."
"I don't want to. I don't know how much longer I can live this way."
Kenji went still beside me, and the worst part of it was that I knew he could see the true me more than anyone else. He had seen me my whole life. He had seen me as the screaming five-year-old in the cold mansion with the wrong neck man in the cellar and the wrist-open woman on the landing.
He had seen me as the boy who learned to kill before he learned to write.
He had seen me as the man who slept with a blade because his body could not believe a quiet room was safe.
But he had never paused like this.
The war was here. The plane would be landing in front of us soon. Surely, his dragon-shadow waited above us in the dark.
And my brother had stopped the entire night to look at me. "You carry things I will never have to carry, Hiro."
I swallowed.
"You see what the rest of us refuse to look at. You hear what the rest of us pretend is wind. You feel the weight of every person we lose and you do not put it down. You have never put it down. Not once in all the years of your life."
My eyes burned behind my mask.
"These are the truths kings hold."
My heart boomed in my ears. "Thank God I am not a king."
"You will be one day, Hiro."
I went very still. "No. I will not."
"You will."
"The throne is. . .yours.”
“What throne?”
He just looked at me.
I felt a panic I had no name for. “Brother, what the fuck are you talking about?”
“We’ll talk more later.” He turned forward.
Why would he say that?
The ghost baby kept her peaceful eyes on me.
Who are you? And why are you on my brother?
I had seen a lot of ghosts. The half-faced fisherman. Hiroko. Nura. Sora and his pink lollipop. A pregnant Nao with the knife in her belly. The dead crowded my whole life like an audience at a slow theater. I knew every register of grief, rage, and confusion they brought with them.