It was well past dawn when Kagome awoke, her eyes crusted and body aching from the cramped position she’d passed out in last night. Lying partway on her stomach, she dragged her pruny fingers out from the sticky seam of her thighs, a grimace pulling at her lips at the sensation. With a groan, she pushed herself to her feet, her stiff spine cracking as she trudged over to the wash basin and started cleaning herself off.

Wincing, she picked out the thorns that studded her dusty flesh, thin bands of scarlet ringing her calves and ankles from the lashing the scrubby forest floor had given her. One corner of a toenail had been ripped bloodily off, a hiss of pain escaping her as she dabbed gingerly at the afflicted area. Even with most of the grime of the evening finally washed away, she still couldn’t shake the dirtiness that clung to her beneath the skin—the patheticness, the lingering shame.

Donning her miko garb like armor, Kagome bound her messy hair high with a stretch of pure white ribbon and gathered up her things to go.

Despite how late in the morning it was, as she approached their agreed-upon meeting place, Mayuri was nowhere to be found. No doubt she was back in her husband’s bed still sleeping off the night of wild sex she’d had with Sesshoumaru. Striding white-knuckled across the castle courtyard, the miko decided it was for the best that Mayuri hadn’t shown her face. Knowing now what she knew about the woman, Kagome had little desire to spend another second in her company. The fact that the servant had bailed on her was really no surprise—Mayuri was a gossip, a cheater, and a fake friend, and she had only the gods to thank for keeping her far from Kagome’s sight.

Her black mood darkening further, the miko stalked toward the stables, giving the timid young attendant a terse word of thanks as he led Jiro out to her and shakily handed her the reins. The horse’s saddlebags were loaded down with gifts from Lord Tatsumi, and while Kagome had nothing against the daimyo himself, she had more than half a mind to dump the gifts off at the next village she crossed. This whole place had left a bitter taste in her mouth. If she never stepped foot here again it would be too soon.

Swinging up into her saddle, she set Jiro off at a trot. Yet even as the castle faded into the distance, her bitterness remained. Exhausted as she was, Kagome kept her concealment spell firmly in place. Mayuri aside, the last person in the world she wanted to cross paths with right now was Sesshoumaru. She didn’t fully trust that she wouldn’t put an arrow in him out of pure spite.

Though she could still hardly wrap her mind around it, Kagome knew what she’d seen. After all the grief he’d given his brother over his relationship with her—even going so far as to threaten Inuyasha not to marry her, at which point she really had almost put an arrow in him—there Sesshoumaru was having a fling with some random human woman himself. It was beyond infuriating. Even if Kagome hadn’t always liked him, she had at least been able to respect that Sesshoumaru was principled. Now she saw him for the hypocrite he was. Just when she had started to think better of him, just when she had started to think—

Kagome clenched her jaw, forcibly derailing that train of thought. Inuyasha had been right when he’d warned her to keep her distance from Sesshoumaru. Clearly, he wasn’t what he appeared to be.

Huffing angrily, Kagome brushed her tail of sun-soaked, raven hair off her shoulder. As much as she regretted getting caught up in the heat of the moment last night, she was grateful for the reality check it had given her. Better to get a little burned by him now than to get razed to the ground later on. Remembering the slick slide of his tongue over her cheek made her feel presently ill. Narrowly she wondered if he’d just been testing the waters with her that day in the garden—trying to get a feel, perhaps, for whether she’d let him take her out into the woods like Mayuri had…

Kagome shook her head to dispel the disturbing thought. One thing was for certain, though: It would be a cold day in all seven hells before she let Sesshoumaru touch her like that again.

As the miles passed by, Kagome continued to stew. Lost in an imagined scenario in which she gave her dog of a brother-in-law a real piece of her mind, she failed to notice the sound of voices hailing her until their owners were nearly upon her.

“Miko-sama!” a young man panted as he skidded to a stop just before her.

“Miko-sama, please—come quickly!” a girl who appeared to be his sister appealed breathlessly from his side.

Drawing Jiro to a halt, Kagome frowned down at the pair in question. Slipping off the horse, she followed the two teenagers over to where a small group of fisherman stood gathered at the river bank.

“Horrible, just horrible,” one man muttered, shaking his grizzled head.

Another fisherman nodded somberly in agreement. “Poor lass. To suffer such a fate as this…”

The others nodded as well.

“Ye found her in yon rapids, ye said?” a third man gruffly asked the first.

“Aye, wedged between two stones. No telling, I suppose, from whence she came.”

“Jii-san!” the girl leading Kagome called out to the gray-haired man who’d just spoken. “Miko-sama is here.”

“Ah,” the elder fisherman said, bowing to the priestess as he turned. “Miko-sama, a young woman has been found slain near our village. Can ye tell us—is it the work of a demon?”

As the group of onlookers parted to allow Kagome through, her young female guide rushed ahead of her. Crouching down near the water’s edge, the girl took a deep breath as she pulled away the reed mat that covered the dead woman’s naked body, the men looking discreetly away from the sight of the washed-out, savaged corpse.

Stepping forward, Kagome felt her blood run cold in her veins. Her fingers seized around Jiro’s reins, her pulse pounding in her ears as her eyes moved slowly over the shredded hips, the gouged back and shoulders. Disfigured by death and terror, half-hidden behind a ratty clump of hair, the corpse’s features might yet pass for another—but as Kagome circled around in nightmarish dread, as she sank down and pressed her hand to that damp icy flesh, as she rolled the dead woman’s body over and let her trembling gaze fall to the outside of that pallid thigh, the proof roared back at her as if from jaws of the Beast himself…

A birthmark, in the shape of a heart.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Lol didn’t think I’d be able to get a fic update out today, but sometimes the chapters just seem to write themselves…It’s a little rough around the edges, so I’ll probably edit tomorrow – but I hope y’all enjoy and have a wonderful weekend!! 🙂