Page 8

Chapter 8

Yoshi

M y head pounded like the Emperor’s drums.

I tried opening my eyes, but the nearby lamplight was blinding. Instead, I reached a hand to my face and rubbed my eyeballs, desperate to stop the spikes of pain that shot through them.

“Yoshi- kun !” Mother’s voice was the most beautiful sound in the world.

As long as I heard her speak, everything would be all right. It didn’t even bother me that she’d used the honorific for a small child, so overwhelmed was I to hear her near me.

Several others shuffled to where I lay as my eyes crept open.

“Father?” I looked up to find my Daimyo father with one hand on Mother’s shoulder. Both of them looked like the Emperor had just spared their lives.

“We are here, Yoshi- kun ,” Mother said. “Even Kaneko left the banquet to wait by your side.”

“The banquet?” My head swam as I struggled to recall my last waking memories. “Kaneko? Where am I?”

I tried sitting up, but the room spun, and Mother’s firm hands pressed me back to the cushioned mat.

“We are back in the castle, in your room, Yoshi- kun . You are safe,” she soothed.

My vision began to clear, and I finally met Kaneko’s eyes. He stood a few strides back from where Father hovered over my bedside. The expression he wore was . . . it was the same one I saw when we were sparring and he saved me from falling into the frothing sea. His brow was knitted, and he looked . . . gods . . . he looked worried, as though the world burned and he was powerless to stop it. My heart, a rebellious thing, lurched into my throat.

Then I recognized his expression.

It was relief.

That appeared closer to the mark, but there was more to his gaze, more I couldn’t identify. It felt as though his eyes compelled him forward, willed him to be near me, to see me safe and secure.

Why would Kaneko feel so protective? I mean, he’d always been protective, ever since we’d been small boys. That was simply the way friends were, wasn’t it? Especially when one friend was stronger and more capable of protecting the other.

That was all. It had to be.

We were friends, brothers, really. We always had been.

Still, did friends fret over each other so openly?

And why had Father and Mother allowed him to return with us to the castle?

There were so many breaches in Imperial protocol I could barely keep them all ordered in my head.

“The Emperor—”

“His Imperial Majesty insisted we bring you home,” Mother said. “He is, after all, also a father.”

Father leaned down and kissed Mother’s head, then gently stroked her hair. She reached up and clasped the hand that rested on her shoulder. These were my parents. This was what love looked like, not some storybook version where small animals flew out of asses and soared on tiny poop-free wings, but where two people devoted themselves to the happiness, safety, and welfare of each other.

The sight of their union was more blinding than the light of any sun.

And it was far more beautiful.

“I will bring you some broth. You must be famished,” Mother said. Then, turning to Father, “Dragon heart, let us leave the boys alone for a moment.”

Dragon heart?

I hadn’t heard Mother call Father that in years. It usually preceded . . . oh!

They most definitely needed to leave Kaneko and me alone if that was the order of business for their evening. I didn’t need to see—or hear—the making of a little brother or sister.

After they left, the weight on my pallet shifted as Kaneko settled down beside me. His corded frame cast a long shadow across my prone form, and his hair, no longer perfectly tucked in its topknot, fell down either side of his face.

“Hey,” he said, his voice oddly low, almost husky.

Only then did I notice how red his eyes were.

“Um, hey?”

He smiled, a tight, thin thing that gave nothing of his thoughts away.

“So.” He raised a hand to his forehead to brush back hair that simply fell again once his fingers dropped away. “You go to incredible lengths to get out of a banquet.”

Laughter hurt, so I moaned and covered my face.

“What do you remember? I mean, before you passed out?”

“Everything is fuzzy.” I thought a moment, letting my mind drift. “We were at the banquet, waiting on the Emperor. Then . . . Prince Haru and Esumi- san sat down. I . . . I know we talked, but I can’t remember what was said. Then . . . oh gods, Kaneko—”

“What is it?” He leaned over, his hand gripping my forearm.

Fire flared at his touch, and breath suddenly refused my call. My eyes flew to where his hand gripped my arm, and I knew I should pull back, but I lay there, frozen in terror and alarm and—

Something welling inside me wanted to giggle and cry out.

Kaneko’s touch inspired my heart to race and a smile to part my lips.

It felt—gods, it felt right.

How could another man’s touch feel right ? Had I hit my head when I fell? What was happening to me?

To . . . us?

Kaneko’s eyes followed mine. As though he’d touched a scorching pan, he jerked his hand back.

“What do you remember?” he asked, avoiding any talk of hands or arms or racing hearts.

A bead of sweat formed on his brow.

So many emotions tore through my chest. My mind could barely lock onto one thought before another batted it out of the way. What was happening with Kaneko? Why did his hand linger? Why did I want it to return?

Then there was the Emperor’s dragon.

I knew as much as any provincial prince might about the Imperial Han , which was to say, not much. It said that the dragons never spoke to anyone except their bonded Divine One. Were those rumors true? Had they been spread by unknowing courtiers who’d been rebuffed by dragons of past courts? Had the emperors’ dragons of the past spoken in the minds of others, as Nawa had done with me?

Or had I imagined the whole thing?

Sure, Nawa had been staring at me when I heard the voice, but I’d had a fair amount of sake. Prince Haru had seen to that. Perhaps I merely dreamed the voice in a half-drunken stupor. That was a far more logical answer than believing a hand of the gods reached down and touched me.

Me.

Of all those worthy of a divine caress, I was last among those assembled. It had to be a sake-induced dream.

It had to be.

“A voice,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “Kaneko, I . . . I’ve never heard that voice before . . . or anything like it. It sounded like, I don’t know, the beating of the deepest drum and the rolling waves and the song of the thickest forest, but all at once. I couldn’t ignore it or turn away. It compelled me to listen. It . . . it called my name.”

Kaneko shifted, placing one hand over the other in his lap.

“I ignored it at first, thinking my mind was playing tricks, but then it called me again.” I sucked in a breath. “When I looked up, the Emperor’s dragon was staring at me.”

Kaneo shot to his feet. “His what?”

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“It sounds insane, I know, but that’s what happened. I think Nawa spoke in my mind, sounding like ancient stones scraping against other, but somehow feminine and masculine, both, maybe a little more feminine.”

“I don’t know how to describe a dragon’s voice, for the love of all the spirits.”

Kaneko stared down at me, his mouth agape and his eyes wide. “The Emperor’s dragon speaks to no one but the Emperor himself. Everyone knows this. The priests teach as much. The dragon is half of the divine circle that blesses our world with life and light. Why would the dragon talk to you?”

He must’ve seen the hurt that crossed my face as he asked why a divine creature would lower itself to speak to a worm like me—at least, that’s how his words sounded in my ears—because he quickly added, “One like us, I mean. He would never dare speak to any of us, Yosh.”

“How should I know? I was just sitting there getting drunker by the minute.” I shook my head, then let my gaze wander to the far end of the room. “She said I should prepare.”

“Prepare? Prepare for what?” he asked, settling beside me once more, this time allowing his hand to find my forearm and remain there. I was careful not to look lest he pull away again.

It took everything in me to ignore his touch and focus on our conversation. In that moment, I needed his support more than I could’ve ever imagined. The heat of his palm on my arm gave me a deep sense of comfort, as though he would protect me from whatever came.

And he would. I knew it.

For the second time since I woke, I inwardly chided my own silliness. Kaneko was my friend, my brother, nothing more. He would have my back because we were family in the way many friends become close. Reading anything deeper into his hand still resting on my arm was ridiculous.

I swallowed and tried to avoid looking at his hand or eyes or jaw or . . . gods damn it.

“She said, ‘The gods call your name,’ and that I should prepare myself. If she said anything after that, I don’t remember it. Everything went black.”

Kaneko whistled.

His eyes roamed the corners of the room as he let the implications of the dragon’s words sink in.

My eyes finally wandered to his hand, and warmth, already present, flowed up my arm and into my chest.