This memory was recent, so the details were crisper. I heard the low moan of the whispery wood under my sandals, the whistle of plum and cherry trees swaying in the summer wind, my sudden yearning to jump into the lake to escape the heat. It was so real I couldn’t stop my heart from aching.
I started after my thread, refusing to fall for the demons’ ploy.
Then Hasho spoke again. “Come, Sister,” he said, gently this time. “You’re already late.”
His face was full, not gaunt and drawn as it was now after months spent as a crane. His dark eyes danced with life, and a dimple touched his left cheek as he laughed at me.
“Is it your betrothed you’re worried about?” he said. “I saw him. He doesn’t have any warts or boils. He’s handsome, like Benkai. He smiles often too, though not as much as Yotan. You’ll like him.”
My brother started to nudge me toward the two grand doors ahead, but I darted away before he could get close. No matter how much he looked like Hasho, I knew he was not.
“Don’t touch me.”
His eyes lit like demonfire, and Kiki shrieked as demon-Hasho tried to capture me. I evaded him neatly and spun, following the thread toward the audience chamber.
I stopped at the entrance. The doors were closed, unlike all the others I had encountered in the mountain.
Through the space between them, I saw the thread carry on, streaming toward a light beyond the mountain’s walls. I knew at once that this radiance came from Raikama’s pearl.
She’s there!Kiki exclaimed.We’re so close.
I slid the doors open, half expecting a thousand more demons to rise from the shadows.
But there was only one.
The Wolf.
He sat on what appeared to be my father’s grandest throne, polished with vermilion lacquer and canopied by a wooden screen of gilded cranes. Unlike the other demons, the Wolf did not hide his true form. He’d become taller, more muscular and lean. He bore the head of a wolf, with pointed ears and fangs that curved out of his jaw, and gray fur swept over his neck and limbs, but he carried himself like a man.
He was draped in an elaborate ensemble of silken robes, his jacket a horrific tapestry of dying gods and bleeding dragons and enchanters destroyed by the blood of stars. A golden headdress sat atop his head, more magnificent than any of my father’s. It would have looked ridiculous, with the strings of pearls and clouds of diamonds—if not for the three ivory cranes hanging from each side of his crown.
Six in total. All bloodied.
I gritted my teeth, taking in the red thread that stretched across his lap. Its end trailed into a jagged fissure in the mountain—Raikama had to be just outside.
A smile spread over the Wolf’s face as he saw the color drain from mine. He opened his claws, the thread running down his palm like a thin stream of blood. “A demon such as I can steal your soul with a touch, did you know? I’d mark you as mine, perhaps even doom you to life as a demon. But you are lucky, Shiori’anma. Your blood is too valuable for such afate.”
He ran the thread along the edge of one razor-sharp nail. “Instead, let us play a game, bloodsake,” he murmured. “You get the thread before I kill you.”
I was already running.
His claw came slashing down at my throat, but everything happened so quickly I didn’t even have time to flinch.
I landed on my stomach, my fingers catching the thread. Paper scraps drifted, wings and beaks. Megari’s birds! They had taken the impact of the Wolf’s blow.
I didn’t wait. I leapt for the fissure in the mountainside. Icy air rushed in, stinging my face. And light! Blinding, effervescent light.
“Kiki!” I cried suddenly, looking for my bird.
I’m here, I’m here.She was clinging to my sash.
Thank the great gods. I was worried that the Wolf had gotten her.
Cold hands grasped mine, pulling. Through the mountain’s cracks, I could see my stepmother. Snakes surrounded her, hissing as she wrenched me from the mountain. Light poured from the pearl inside her heart, and I started to scramble out, my elbows digging into soft earth, then my knees.
I was nearly free when the Wolf seized my ankle. His touch sent a numbing chill rushing through me, and his voice was suddenly in my head.A demon’s touch has great power,he purred.I could take your soul, Shiori’anma, but lucky for you, your blood is more precious.
His nail bit into my heel, rooting itself in deep, and a scream reeled out of my lungs.
