were around his neck and her face pressed into his cheek, and she squeezed him so tightly it made her arms shake.
He blinked, nuzzled close.
He smiled into her mind.
She held him for the longest time, saying nothing at all. And then she let him go, hand drifting to the hessian still bound to his back, shredded and bloodstained. Most of the satchels had been lost somewhere in the chaos of the past few days—in the attack or the crash or the bloody brawl here on broken black glass. Only one remained. He could feel the fear in her, the tremors in her fingers as she reached inside, hoping beyond hope. And then her fingers closed about it, drawing it forth, a miracle in lacquered wood. A shape as familiar to Yukiko as her own face. Her ninth birthday present.
“My tanto,” she breathed.
She had almost lost it. Just as she’d almost lost herself. In the hate. In the rage.
Walking to the island’s edge, she stood there in the wind, him beside her, watching the ocean sway. In her right hand, she held the blade her father had given her when her brother died. A gift from the man who had given everything of himself to keep her safe. A man she hadn’t truly mourned, whose loss had cut her too deep for tears. In her left, she held the sword Daichi had given her, naked and gleaming, the old man’s call to cherish her anger, to fill the empty of her father’s loss with fury. The storm howled about her as she stood as still as stone, and beyond the razored shore, Buruu could feel the sea dragons curling beneath black water, looking at her with glittering eyes, rolling with the breath of the waves.
He could feel it inside her. The weight of it all. The reality of what lay before her, the awareness of what she’d become, what she’d been. The grief she’d never given voice, allowing it to blacken and fester, like the cancer eating Shima’s heart. The hate she’d clung to, thinking it would make her strong. That it would be enough. That it was all she needed.
She lifted the katana, made to hurl it toward the water, rid herself of the anger Daichi had named a gift. Blue-white lightning kissed the skies above, thunder giving her pause, a frozen silhouette with the blade hoisted above her head. She breathed deep for a lifelong moment, filled with the howl of lonely winds, finally lowering her arm and looking again at the blades in her hands. Strapping the scabbard to her obi, she sheathed the sword at her waist, the tanto beside it. Not one or another. Light and dark. Water and fire. Love and hate.
Together.
And then she turned and slipped her arms around his neck and cried until no voice remained of her grief. Until her body shook and her chest burned and there were no tears left inside her. Nothing but an old wound finally beginning to scab, and the memory of a man lifting her into his arms amidst a forest of swaying bamboo. Of lips pressed to her cheek. Of whiskers tickling her chin.
A memory that at last made her smile.
Buruu watched Yukiko and the gaijin fish around the metal dragonfly’s belly until they found a heavy box the color of dying leaves. The man made a triumphant sound, grinned like a fool. Yukiko pried it open, found it brimming with greasy wrenches and spanners and cutting torches; anything and everything required to repair the strange lopsided craft in the event of a crash.
And so Buruu sat and licked his wounds as Yukiko and the gaijin beat his metal wings into shape as best they could, riveting the torn harness back together, bending and pounding the iridescent frame, straightening crumpled feathers and pinning them down with iron bolts. And though there was precious little grace left in Kin’s contraption when they were done, Buruu flapped his wings and felt creaking, squealing lift beneath them, enough perhaps to return them to Shima.
To the war that awaited.
He dove off the promontory and soared out over the waves, the roaring storm beneath his wings, lover- sweet whispers in his ears. Lady Sun was reaching toward a new dawn, and Yukiko stood on the shore and screamed in triumph, hands in the air, a smile on her face that seemed to him as wide and as bright as summer skies.
Yukiko’s howls finally roused the female from her coma, and she clawed her way to her feet, shaking side to side to rid herself of the rain’s weight, wings spread in a broad fan, eyes still half clouded with shock. Snow- white fur ran to scarlet in the breaking light, and she turned toward the pale warmth, wind caressing the feathers at her throat, the fur on her flanks, her stripes like black clouds across a sunset sky.
Just as magnificent as he remembered.
Yukiko reached toward Buruu, hand outstretched, eyes narrowed in concentration as she wrapped both him and the female up in the Kenning, drawing the pair of them into her thoughts. He could feel the wall of self Yukiko had built in her mind, pain crackling along its surface, seeping inside and making her wince. But still, despite the lingering ache, he felt a warmth and peace more comforting than any home he had ever known.
Yukiko spoke to the female, thoughts as gentle as mother’s hands.
The female looked at him across the gulf between then and now, tail switching, eyes narrowed, talons shredding the shale beneath her paws. He could feel her in the space Yukiko had created within the Kenning, a bitter, jagged heat in the corner of a blood-warm room, and as he spoke, she turned toward him, the sound of his thoughts echoing upon the walls.
She blinked, said nothing. Yukiko looked back and forth between them, wind blowing her hair about her face in sodden drifts, amazement in her eyes.
The female snorted.
He could feel Yukiko’s curiosity burning like fire. But brighter still was the need to get back to Shima, to see if there was any chance of stopping Hiro’s wedding, to return to the people she knew were relying on her—the storm waiting for her to call its name.
Yukiko blinked, tilted her head.
