He had always been a religious man. Not devout in the traditional sense, yet unquestionably devoted to his own set of guiding principles. Like the Buddha, he rejected asceticism in favor of the Middle Way. How could it be a sin, he had reasoned from an early age, to enjoy the pleasures of this world?

“Sesshoumaru-sama, there is something I must tell you. Something terrible which I must confess. It concerns Kagome-sama.” Silence looms, heavy, expectant.  The rings of the shakujou faintly tremble. “Before Naraku’s defeat, before her marriage to your brother, an incident occurred…” FOUR YEARS EARLIER She was in love. It wasn’t the bubbly lightness, the floating-on-air sensation she’d

Golden eyes close briefly. “I see.” It was the scent that drew him. Foreign, yet familiar. Enough to pique his interest, to stir something in him. It was the scent of blood— Ripe and red and in season. Humans were always coming into season, it seemed. They bred like rabbits because their lives were short

“I have seen such a shadow in her, Sesshoumaru-sama.” It was a scene of slaughter. She remembered it in jagged fragments—the blood and the filth, the skeins of dark tangled hair and pale twisted limbs. It had hit her in a riot of abhorrent disbelief. It had deafened her to the voices that shouted at

“We decided she would be better off not knowing the rest.” Violet eyes stray aside. “The three of us decided together.” It wasn’t her fault. This was what he’d told himself when he’d first barged into that shack and seen Kagome lying there, pale and listless under that ratty blanket. She’d fallen into the river,