She was taking down her hair when he entered the room. Combs and pins lay scattered about her on the table, on the floor. More than one of these he had given her—smoky dark sapphires dripping strands of diamond tears, blue-grey spinels wreathed in silver, to match the shade and luster of her eyes. It

“Well, Saitou-kun,” Kouseki asked, eyeing him nervously, “what do you think?” Saitou glared across the table where the broken instrument had been laid. Seated opposite him, Kouseki paled further. His pearl-white complexion became almost translucent with apprehension. Saitou could see the thrum of his pulse in his slender throat, the bright anxious gleam in his

From across the long hall, Hirokin met Kagome’s baleful eye. In the most perverse turn of events, the frigid stalemate between them had broken. The brief glance they shared was edged as ever, but a simmering heat now underscored it instead of the frost from before. It seemed she could not forget any more than

On the eve of the omiai, Himamori was in hysterics. Not only had she refused to dress for the occasion, she’d refused to leave her silken bed altogether. When the harried servants had tried to cajole her to the purpose, she’d shrilled at them and started hurling things. This was when Hirokin had been forced

From the valley floor, Inukimi gazed up, toward the spot in the sheer rock face where Touga’s severed fang had once speared the usurper Ryuukotsusei through. For centuries, the Inu no Taishou’s power had pinned him there in stalemate. Interred beneath stony scales and petrified flesh, Ryuukotsusei’s malevolence had been sealed safely away. How many

The Lady of Edo knelt before the weathered grave. Her weary joints protested the motion. Her head hung heavy as she bowed it to pray, her hair shot through with more silver than she warranted it should. She wasn’t quite yet forty, but it seemed to her that she had lived twice as long as