With nowhere else to go, Kagome returned to the castle. Damaged though it was, it was the most solid structure still standing in Edo. The courtyards and approach had become a refugee camp of sorts—men hammered and hefted while women scurried about from tent to tent, checking in with one another and tending to the

In the days following the youkai attack on Edo, the sun didn’t quite seem to rise, as if it couldn’t muster the strength to lift the abiding gloom. Ash gray skies brooded over the ruined city. Only the cries of vultures and carrion crows rent the heavy silence, their dark winged shapes peppering the broken,

Kagome frowned, perplexed. Caught off guard, she slackened her hold—on Hirokin and the drawn arrow both. “At last,” he rasped out, slicking a hand through his disheveled hair as he panted and leered, “I am convinced.” Kagome stared hard at him—at the abominable lust that contorted his features, that deranged his demonic aura. Here on

“Tessaiga,” Kagome muttered. “Give me the sword,” Hirokin said, “and I will do as you wish.” The miko advanced a heated step, her reiki searing through the encroaching ice. “Give you Tessaiga—so that you can destroy it? So that you can steal its powers and use them to rebel against Sesshoumaru?” Hirokin’s blue eyes flicked

Youki stirred the air in currents. Above the frothing river, mist coalesced into a shimmering fog that filled the canyon like a fallen cloud. Before Kagome’s perch, the skeins of mist parted like a veil drawn aside, and Hirokin stepped forward, his blue eyes glittering sardonically as ever. “Kagome-sama,” he greeted with a slight, graceful

Beyond the fallen gate was a scene of fiery mayhem. It was one thing to have watched from a distance; quite another to be standing here in the middle of the fray. Amidst the brimstone and bedlam, the death and destruction, Kagome paled, shaken to the quick of her soul. In harried bands, soldiers strove

No, Kagome thought as she curled her hands into fists. No. Her eyes narrowed. Her features steeled in defiance—at the flames, at the drought, at the gods themselves. Over her dead body would she let Edo—her Edo—be razed to the ground. To Rin she said, “Stay here. The castle is upwind of the fire, and

It was a small silver blade, no bigger than a penknife. Kagome recognized it even in her shock for the delicate floral patterns of moonstone that inlaid its gleaming edge. An edge which had never dulled in the years since it had been gifted to Rin by Sesshoumaru, on the day she became a miko’s