“Who? Who is moving against—”
“Amaterasu will aid where she may.” The dragon’s voice is fading now, or perhaps I am being pulled away from it, back toward consciousness, back toward the waking world. “She sees what must be done. But her brother—”
“Which brother?” I try to move closer, but the darkness is dissolving around me. “Susanoo? Tsukuyomi? What are you—”
“Wake.” The dragon’s gold eyes are the last thing to fade. “Restore what was broken before they—”
The void shatters.
I gasped awake like a drowning man breaking the surface, my body jerking upright in the darkness of my chambers. Sweat has soaked through my sleeping robes, and my heart hammered against my ribs like it was trying to escape through bone and flesh.
It was just a dream, I thought.Just another falling dream that got weird because I ate too late or drank too much sake or—
Something warm trickled across my upper lip.
I reached up and wiped at it. My fingers came away wet. In the dim light filtering through the paper screens, I could see the dark stain coating my hand.
Blood.
And not a little blood.
This was flowing, pouring down my face in a steady stream that dripped onto my sleeping robes and stained them black in the moonlight.
“Damn it.” I grabbed for the cloth beside my sleeping mat, pressing it against my face. The fabric soaked through almost immediately. “Gods damn it all—”
“Haru?” Esumi’s voice, thick with sleep but sharpening with concern.
I heard him shift, heard the rustle of blankets being thrown aside.
“I’m fine,” I said, the words muffled by cloth and blood.
“You’re bleeding.” Suddenly he was there, kneeling beside me, his hands reaching for my face. “Let me see.”
“It’s just a nosebleed.”
“That’snotjust a nosebleed.” His fingers were gentle as they tilted my head back and pulled the cloth away to assess the damage. In the darkness, I couldn’t see his expression, but I could hear the worry in his voice. “Gods, Haru. What happened?”
“I . . . I don’t know. It was a dream, a really bad dream.” The blood was slowing now, or perhaps I’d tilted my head back far enough that it was running down my throat instead of out my nose. Either way, I could taste copper and fear. “It’s stopping. See? I’m fine.”
“You’renotfine.” He held the cloth against my nose, applying pressure. “People don’t bleed like this from dreams.”
“Maybe I do. Maybe this is a speed-gift thing.”
“You know your father never woke up bleeding from dreams.” Esumi’s voice was firm. “And don’t try to deflect with jokes. I know you, remember? When you’re scared, you make light of things. So tell me—what really happened?”
For a moment, I considered lying and telling him it was nothing, just stress and exhaustion and the weight of an empire pressing down until something had to give way. He’d believe me, or at least pretend to, and we could go back to sleep and deal with it in the morning.
But Esumi deserved better than lies.
And I needed to tell someone before the memory faded in the way dreams did, slipping away until I couldn’t remember if it had been real or just my mind playing tricks.
“I saw a dragon,” I said quietly. “In my dream. It had black scales and gold eyes. It wasn’t Nawa. It was something . . . older, colder. It spoke to me.”
Esumi went very still. “What did it say?”
“That I need to take the throne and restore the tether. That there are others—and I don’t think he was talking about Eiko—who want Mugen to remain in darkness. It said that Amaterasu will help but her brother . . .” I trailed off, the words sounding insane even to my own ears. “It said they’re moving against me even now.”
“If not Eiko, who? Who is moving against you?”
