Masaru snorted. “What are you worried about? You’re a shadow. We’re the ones he can metabolize.”
She scowled at him over her shoulder. “I’m feeling pretty fleshy for a shadow.”
Ryuichi ignored them as they continued to chatter and fight. Something wasn’t right.
He sensed it in his gut.
“Stop!”
Everything and everyone froze instantly. Even the dragon. For the first time, Ryuichi actually felt his shadow. Like the way one felt a toe or tingle in the arm. There and yet not.
A phantom limb.
It whispered dark thoughts. Temptation.
He finally recognized what it was, and the source of the shadow’s powers.
Closing his eyes, he turned inward so that he could face that dark side of himself.
“Yorukaze... you are not in control of me.”
Perhaps I should be. I’m stronger than you.
“Cruelty isn’t strength. Besides, Masaru said you whined.”
His shadow scoffed. Keiko called you a brat.
Ryuichi smiled at his darker half. “Then we need each other, don’t we?”
Never!
“Yes, we do. Yin and yang. The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour. Without each other, we become dishonorable. Both of us.”
And the reputation of one is worn by all.
Ryuichi nodded at the truth of that statement. As his father’s son, he would carry his father’s dishonor, if they let it continue. “We have to stop our father.”
Cocking his head, Yorukaze listened to the ether around them. That wave of the nether realm that stood between all worlds.The dragon lied.
It didn’t surprise Ryuichi. “You know where our father is?”
Then he felt it too.
Like a warm rush of adrenaline. His entire body reacted to receiving the knowledge he needed.
“Ryuichi...”
He started to not respond to his father’s summons.
But this was why he’d come. He wanted to meet his father. To know the man-demon who’d fathered him. “I’m here.”
The earth below shifted again, shaking all of them.
“Open the gates!”
His heart pounded. It was his father. The one he’d thought was dead.
A father he never thought he’d meet...
