Naked and sated, Saitou emerged from the forest stream. Thin, glinting ribbons of silver threaded down his chest and shoulders. Gathering up his damp hair, he gave it a perfunctory wring as the water continued its meandering descent, slanting along the planes of his muscles and snaking its way around his flushed, half-hard cock.
Strewn upon the bank before him, the two demonesses lay drenched as well. Their sprawled, listless bodies gleamed with the pearlescent shimmer of his seed. Like dew it beaded at the tips of their breasts, glazed their red lips and white throats. With a sheen just as sultry and rich, their bronze eyes followed him as he clad himself once more in silk and armor, took up his sword, and turned to go.
“Please, my lord,” the more outspoken of the pair called huskily after him, “won’t you come play with us again soon?”
Saitou paused, a smirk pulling at his lips. Without bothering to turn, he replied with a cool, “Perhaps,” before continuing on his way.
The pouting sighs of the two spent females trailed in his wake. Saitou’s smirk broadened. The odds of him seeking out any bitch he had bedded were slim to none. Not that the two had displeased him—he simply did not wish to encourage any futile hopes they might have.
There was only one woman he burned for, and he had been pursuing her his entire life.
Deeper into the forest, he at last encountered a suitable prize. Large as a hill, the lumbering beast fixed its cluster of blood-red eyes upon him. Unsheathing Tessaiga, Saitou advanced. His hair, fur, and sleeves whipped back in the gale of the creature’s noxious roar. Yet the young daiyoukai was undeterred. Leaping nimbly into the air, he pivoted to avoid its gigantic snapping fangs, before whipping the glowing edge of his transformed blade around in a deadly arc.
A deafening howl of agony rent the air. As the beast’s severed head rolled like a boulder across the clearing, rank blood gushed forth in a torrent, the rest of the creature’s massive bulk crashing to the earth below.
Lightly, Saitou landed on a dry patch of ground. Flicking Tessaiga’s blade clean, he returned it to its sheath in a single fluid motion before assuming his own true bestial form. Monstrous, he growled to shake the earth again. His claws scored trenches into the ground as he stalked forward and took up the beast’s dripping head in his jaws.
The flight back to the Western Palace passed in a blur. Landing upon a deserted tower, Saitou dropped his prize with a blood-frothed toss of the head and assumed his human likeness once more.
In what seemed a matter of moments, lightning crashed through the sky above him. Saitou steeled his features as the imperious form of the Lord of the Western Lands materialized into view.
“Father,” Saitou greeted with deference, inclining his head toward his trophy. “I hope I have not displeased you.”
“Displeased is too mild a word,” Sesshoumaru said, as Touma’s red-clad figure edged into view from behind him. Cold amber eyes flicked to the beast’s severed head in disdain. “This is the best you could do? Your brother’s catch was scarcely worse.”
As Touma glowered, Saitou remained impassive still. “Forgive me, Father. A poor choice of grounds.”
“Clearly.” Sesshoumaru’s nose wrinkled. “If it’s that fang of yours which is making you lax, perhaps you should give it to Touma. He stands to benefit from the charity.” Turning away from his sons, the demon lord flicked the long train of his fur over his shoulder in distaste. “Stay clear of me the rest of the night. I have had my fill of the both of you.”
A feeling mutually shared. The demon prince glared after his father as he took to sky. His half-demon brother looked on in similar dourness. Glancing mildly at Touma, Saitou approached him.
“What happened?” the hanyou muttered. “Father seemed ready to disown you.”
“Just because he lives like a monk doesn’t mean we must,” Saitou scoffed. “I found a pair of ready bitches, that was all. He could smell it.”
Touma’s lips curved upward. “Ah, that explains it.”
“A shame you weren’t with me,” the demon prince said, smiling darkly back.
“Heh, well.” Touma’s silver ears pricked as he showed a glint of fang. “It might do the old bastard a world of good, you know, to have himself a rut.”
“For all we know he does just that,” the young daiyoukai replied, “though I pity any poor bitch he chooses.”
Despite his brother’s shared grim expression, Saitou doubted as much as Touma must that this was the case. Sesshoumaru had long since preferred the heat of his own animosity to the warmth of another.
“Tell me about these conquests of yours,” Touma said after a moment, his easy grin returning. “…They didn’t happen to be sisters, did they?”
Saitou smirked.
As he recounted his exploits to his younger brother, a curious sight nearby diverted their attention—a flame in one of the tower’s many sconces, shifting from amber-hued to blue. Touma’s brows knit as Saitou approached the mysterious flame.
In the center of this strange fire was a folded note. Saitou extracted it with the tips of his claws, though he needn’t have minded. The blaze was cool to the touch.
The contents of the note were brief and vague, bearing only the phrase, One who loves you worries from afar, and an initial in Latin, the letter M.
Pricking his thumb with the point of his claw, Saitou wrote back in blood, Worry not, and after signing it with an S, dropped it into the waiting blue flames.
As the firelight yellowed once more, Touma asked lowly, “What was that?”
“A message from our sister,” Saitou replied just as lowly. “Mother is concerned at our delay.”
Touma’s shoulders slumped. “Damn our father. He keeps us here only so he can make us as miserable as he is.”
Saitou could hardly argue with this assessment, yet there was nothing for it. Even Touma, impetuous as he was, understood that for now they must continue to toe the line. The stakes were simply too high to risk arousing their father’s suspicions.
“It was risky of Mayu to contact us like that,” the hanyou said gruffly. “I know she’s skilled, but even still…”
Saitou nodded. More than anything, he feared what would happen should Sesshoumaru discover her.
“She has a mate to protect her,” Saitou said, as if to reassure himself. “But Mother is alone. No doubt our little sister worries for her as much as we do.”
Touma’s ears flattened. “I hate this—all of it.” Bringing his elbows down upon the tower’s stony ledge, he glared out into the night. “How did it come to this, Brother? It’s all so fucked up.”
Frowning, Saitou joined him at the ledge. “I wish I could say.”
There was so much tragedy between them all that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began—if in fact there was a true beginning at all. Even Kagome seemed unwilling to pin the blame entirely on Sesshoumaru.
“Do you think that things can ever be made right?” Touma asked, catching Saitou’s eye.
Forgiveness, Mayu had said to him, beneath the swaying branches of a willow tree in that land beyond the sea. That’s the only way.
Gazing toward their mother, who had been giggling along with the village children at Shippou and Touma’s demonic antics, Saitou had replied, It is much to ask of her, after all that has happened.
His sister’s piercing dark eyes had sharpened upon him. I’m not asking Mom, Saitou—I’m asking you.
Mirthlessly, the young daiyoukai smiled. “Anything is possible, I suppose.”
Though the night was warm, a frail icy flake drifted down from the sky to melt against his cheek. Rubbing at the spot, which faintly stung, Saitou raised his eyes to find a flurry of fine, glittering crystals swirling against the brooding dark.
“Salty and sad,” Touma remarked, catching one on his tongue. His ears swiveled as he squinted off toward a certain cloud. “Kouseki must have gotten his heart broken again.”
Knowing now where to look, Saitou could see him well enough through a break in the mist—the slender, platinum-haired figure of Touma’s hapless young friend, who appeared to be penning verses while the cloud beneath him showered icy tears. Saitou’s features twisted. He was hard-pressed to say what he found less to his taste: the squalling or the poetry.
“Heartbreak is inevitable,” the demon prince coolly observed, “when the only women one pursues are those whose hearts have already been taken.”
“A hopeless romantic.” Touma grinned. “He claims the most exquisite love is the unattainable.”
A hopeless fool, Saitou thought scathingly, as his upward gaze turned withering. “Whatever he claims, he can take himself off somewhere else with that obnoxious pining.”
The growl in his voice carried skyward, propelled by a lash of youki. In the distance, Kouseki and his cloud both visibly tensed, the teary snowfall abruptly ceasing as he swirled off, abashed, into the night.
Touma chuckled, shaking the thin layer of snowdrift from his hair and ears. “Poor Kouseki…he really is hopeless.”
As his brother rested his drowsy head against his forearms, Saitou settled down beside him on the weathered bench, though he felt more restless than he’d ever been. Even lowering his lids, he saw the image of that enchanted flame as though it had been scorched behind his eyes—blue and bright as the color of her own.
Glancing now toward the flame that was as golden as his, Saitou scoffed to himself.
Hopeless fools, indeed.
Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi