Page 86 of Dragon 7

Hiro was a king.

And not in the way I was a king—inherited, forged out of grief and necessity, built from the outside in until the architecture of it became the only self I knew how to inhabit.

That was my throne.

Constructed.

Intentional.

A thing I had learned to carry.

What I saw in Hiro's face, eyes, and even the line of his jaw was the cold economy of great power.

I thought about what it would look like. Hiro in control of Tokyo. Hiro’s hands on the table Reo had built for war. The pieces moving under my brother’s instruction. The war running cleaner because the man reading it had been born to read it, not taught. I thought about what the Claws would become under him—not just loyal, but freed into something the loyalty had always been reaching toward.

I thought about Nyomi too and our lives without this mafia empire.

Her laugh in a room with no war in it.

Our children I had not yet held.

Mornings of peace.

The throne had cost me everything I had not yet admitted I wanted. And I had paid without complaint because I had believed there was no other life—that the Dragon and the empire were the same thing.

That to release one was to destroy the other.

But Hiro put his mask on and rose from the ground in one motion, and I understood that I had been wrong.

The Dragon did not need to sit on the throne anymore.

The Dragon just needed to choose who did.

All the Fangs arrived—except Yoichi—and stood among the Claws.

Hiro brushed his clothes off. “Something bad happened in that forest.”

“I’ve got control of my dragon-shadow.”

“But at what cost?”

I looked at him. “I don’t know.”

“You should always know.” Then, Hiro put his gaze back down on the ground and this sadness filled his eyes. His bottom lip quivered again. “A bloody baby is the worst sort of ghost to see. It’s not okay.”

Reo went very still behind me. He said nothing. But I felt my Roar file that information away. Only my Roar could decipher and solve the puzzles of Hiro’s mind.

My brother continued to look down at the ground and a sad sigh left him.

"Hiro?” I touched his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“No.” Hiro pulled the gold lollipop back out, unwrapped it, and slid the candy into his mouth behind the edge of the mask. He looked at his hands for one breath. Then he closed them into fists, and whatever had just moved across his face went somewhere deep and private within him. Then he straightened. "I’m not okay at all."

Goryū’s voice entered my head. Our father and Akiro are here. They are coming our way.

My hands found my guns before my mind caught up with them.

Every emotion that I could possibly feel crashed within me—fear and rage, hope and sadness, the craving for blood and the yearning for peace.