As she passed back beneath the waterfall with Sesshoumaru, Kagome felt giddy, light as air. She giggled as he scooped her up and leapt with a single bound from the pool to the alcove high above. Not even Inuyasha could jump that far in one go. As Sesshoumaru set her on her feet on the

Kagome’s chest clenched at Sesshoumaru’s choice of words. She didn’t know properly how to take that, or even if she should. Hand-in-hand, she followed him beneath the falls all the same. The iridescent spray pounded down on her head and shoulders, pleasurably warm and crisply fragrant. She heard a silvery sound as she passed, like

Whatever reservations Shin still had about the water, he got over them quickly enough—especially when Sesshoumaru slid into the pool and splashed him. Clutching her son to her, Kagome yelled, splashing him back. Shin thrashed, growling in her hold. When Kagome let him go, he transformed at once into his humanoid youkai form and shot

Kagome couldn’t deny she was itching to check out that heated pool at the center of the castle—’slumbering’ youkai presiding or not. Despite the cold weather, she’d gotten sweaty from the various trials of the day, and she wanted to wash up before dinner. No longer comatose from gorging himself on blood-plums, Shin was raring

When Shin continued to look grumpy, Kagome figured he was just hungry. Bouncing him on her hip, she went over to her yellow backpack. Kneeling down, she rifled through it. She offered Shin some jarred applesauce on a spoon, at which he turned up his snub nose. She offered him some mashed carrots, some mashed

Kagome paced back and forth in the lofty central alcove of the castle, unable to rest while her son was turned to stone. Every other second, her eyes would flick to Shin in the small bed of furs where Sesshoumaru had placed him. The faint thunk he’d made on impact had reminded Kagome disconcertingly of

Shin spent the rest of the afternoon zipping about the demonic countryside, phasing between forms so much that it threatened to give Kagome whiplash. Now and then, Sesshoumaru would share some anecdote of Shin’s with her that Kagome highly suspected had been paraphrased, or at least much had been lost in translation from beast-lingo to

On his youki cloud, Sesshoumaru spirited Kagome and Shin away to the snowy mountain valley far below the castle. The dinosaur-sized snowflakes had stopped falling for the moment. Bundled up with Shin in Sesshoumaru’s dense fur, Kagome barely felt the winter chill. The air here was brisk but still. It smelled faintly of pine and

The inside of the mountain tower was much changed from the last time Kagome had visited. Crossing the enchanted threshold with Shin in arms, she gaped at what she beheld— It was a winter wonderland, and nothing short of magical. There were still the silvery tiered cliffs and the moon-shaped pool. But instead of velvety