Even Sesshoumaru’s vast powers had their limits. Even Kagome’s stubborn will couldn’t change the course of time. Whatever cosmic magic controlled the Bone-Eater’s Well didn’t bend to the whims of human hearts, or the might of demons, however strong.

The past might not be fixed, but theirs was. Kagome knew that as well as he did.

Her lashes lowered partway. “There’s no going back for us.”

“No,” Sesshoumaru said.

When he leaned forward and kissed her, her eyes didn’t shut. Through the veil of her lashes, her vision blurred. For a moment she was transported all the same. She saw him like a shimmer in the darkness. The taste of him was like summer rain.

Kagome drew back from him, bowing her head. Where he’d kissed her, her skin seemed to burn.

“I can’t tell anyone this except for you,” she said tremulously, “but I feel I’m dying, and I don’t think it’s all in my head. I feel like I’m losing myself. I’m in mourning over it already. It makes me feel selfish and wretched all the time, but I don’t want to be a footnote in my own life. I don’t want to be just somebody’s wife. Just somebody’s mother. I want to stay Higurashi Kagome. I want to keep myself, but I’m afraid that I can’t. Each day, a little more of me seems to fade away.”

“You haven’t faded in my eyes,” Sesshoumaru said, tilting up her downcast face. “Look into them when you are in doubt, and you will see. If you cannot keep yourself, then I will keep you, always.”

Kagome’s features crumpled. She’d caught a glimpse of herself in his golden gaze, and the pain in her heart redoubled. She glanced away, blinking back the tears that threatened to fall.

“Are you thirsty?” Sesshoumaru asked her, after a moment.

Kagome looked to him miserably. “…Yeah.”

Sesshoumaru turned. The elegant doors to the balcony opened before him. Whether they were framed in stone or silvery wood, Kagome couldn’t tell. Terraced into the side of the mountain, the whole amethyst-capped tower seemed an extension of the natural landscape. As she stepped inside after him, she saw that the lofty room was composed of several levels, with a sparkling fall cascading down to a moon-shaped pool far below. Trees grew up through the glimmering weave of the flooring, branched right through the lustrous walls and mist-draped ceiling. The space was bright, but softly so, as though moonlight were illuminating it from the many stone and silver braziers studded throughout, flickering with their pale ghostly flames.

Slipping off her sandals, Kagome sank down to sit on a stretch of moss-covered rock. Sesshoumaru sat down beside her. She rubbed her aching lower back as he dipped a saucer-shaped leaf into the stream behind them. When he offered it to her, she drank gratefully, though the water was unlike any she’d ever tasted. It seemed cool and warm to her at the same time. Sweet, too, in a way she couldn’t place. She handed the leaf back to him, and he drank from it as well. His red-shaded lids descended as he did.

From a strange shrub beside them, Sesshoumaru plucked a fruit shaped like a small pear. He took a bite from its blood-red flesh and offered it to her. Nibbling at it, Kagome scrunched up her face, appalled. It was all she could do not to spit the bite back out.

“It—it actually does taste like blood!”

“You don’t like it?” Sesshoumaru asked. He sounded slightly affronted, and Kagome wondered if this was some sort of rare delicacy among his kind.

“No,” she said, nibbling reluctantly at the fruit again. “But the baby does.”

Sesshoumaru seemed appeased by this.

Nestled in a corner opposite them was a bed of lush furs, canopied by wisteria. Kagome could almost feel how luxurious it would be, to lie naked there in that fragrant softness. She could almost picture Sesshoumaru curving into her from behind, fitting into her. The crescents of their bodies joined together, around the fullness of her belly. She saw it as if in a vision too good to be true. She saw it like a mirage in the wasteland of her mind.

Turning to him, she asked him huskily, “Would you take me somewhere?”

“Anywhere,” he replied.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi

Revised 5/24/23