More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Any warrior will tell you that even the strong can’t afford complacency,”
“Nii-san up!” Nagasa giggled. The three-year-old had clambered on top of his big brother and was alternately tugging his hair and slapping his face. “Wake up!” “Kaa-chan,” Mamoru grumbled, his eyes blinking open. “I’m being attacked by a demon.”
“Mamoru died fighting, with multiple injuries, including missing teeth and a gut wound so deep it should have disabled him instantly. He stayed on his feet and fought.”
Having set his sword aside, Takeru rested his palms on the snow-covered ground… and bowed. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “I admit to all of the accusations the challenger has leveled against me. So…” He scooped his hair to the side, exposing the back of his neck. “I forfeit,” he bowed lower, offering his bare neck to the blade, “and offer my life in atonement.” Misaki felt like the world had come to a halt.
When it is too much to be a man, I am the mountain.
The enemy that loomed before her now was not Matsuda Takeru himself, but the bitterness of silence that had built up between them over fifteen years. She would fight it, kill it. And when she was done, she would have a husband. Her children would have a father. Takayubi would have a leader. Mamoru could rest.
“What are you?” Takeru whispered. Something bigger than myself, she realized. “I’m Matsuda Misaki,” she said with pride and honesty she never attached to those words before. “I’m your wife.” And she attacked him.
unencumbered by the tight kimono or the childish cowardice that had bound her for years, she had become a new creature, more fluid and boundless than a girl but more solid than a shadow—a woman of lightning sinew and roaring blood.
Flayed and boneless, he faced the creature he had awakened, this woman of gods’ blood and fury. Her face was flushed, strands of hair flying free of her bun, as she swept her glass sword through what remained of the dragon. Then she came at him, black eyes gleaming as bright and sharp as the obsidian. So many years, he had avoided touching this porcelain doll he had been given for fear of breaking her. He hadn’t wanted to see this beautiful, strange woman crumble the way his mother had. Somehow, he had broken her anyway, but she hadn’t broken quietly like porcelain. She had broken like black
...more
Takeru had demanded that Mamoru stand and fight for his truth. Now that his wife was asking him to stand, all he could do was shatter, and shatter, and shatter.
As the tiny woman matched his steps, Takeru was forced to realize that he had spent fifteen years sleeping obliviously next to a combatant very nearly his equal in skill.
There was pain in her fighting, coursing alongside the strength, pitching and rising like storm waves with each stroke of her sword. She was in agony, and it was his fault. He had never meant to do this to her, but with each defensive step back, he only seemed to make it worse—and he couldn’t bear it. In her growl, he heard his father’s bitterness, his mother’s tears. Mamoru boiled from her eyes.
In that moment of awe, Takeru realized how much he owed this woman, who had borne his children, who had fought, and fought, and fought for a family she had never asked for. She had given him her life and demanded nothing in return. Mamoru hadn’t inherited his strength from his father. It had come from her.
His fist tightened, and the snow rushed up to him. In an agonizing surge, it seemed to give back everything he had sent out into it over forty years: his brother’s bruises, his mother’s screams of impotent anger, his nineteen-year-old bride holding her face in her hands as she fought to stifle her sobs, his father holding a bamboo rod and cracking it down on him.
Misaki was rushing toward him now, the final, most important part of his life bearing down on him. And he saw them both for what they were: a woman who needed her husband, and a man who needed his wife. That clarity sharpened to an edge. The Whispering Blade met Misaki’s obsidian sheath and sheared through it. Her eyes went wide, and she smiled—Gods in the Deep, she smiled—a raw, open smile, and it was the most beautiful thing in all the Duna.
And Misaki somehow understood why he had given her that last opening. If she truly wanted to kill him, then he was alone. He was willing to stand and fight, but he would rather die than do it alone. It wasn’t just the challenge of responsibility he was accepting as his hand touched hers; he was accepting her. Cool fingers ran over Misaki’s sword hand, over her sleeve to brush the hair back from her face. In the falling snow, Takeru stared at the woman he had married and saw her for the first time. “I accept.”
To Misaki’s memory, Takeru had never held one of his children. Nagasa himself looked disoriented at suddenly finding himself so far from the ground.
“Great Nagi, Misaki,” Setsuko whispered in Misaki’s ear, her eyes wide. “What did you do to that man?” “It’s hard to explain,” Misaki said with a smile.
Perhaps your subconscious blood manipulation purged your dangerous offspring before the pregnancy could kill you both.” “You think I killed your children,” Misaki said, “like your father always said.” “I think you saved my wife,” Takeru said. “Your Tsusano blood helped you survive where my mother could not. In that way, I suppose, our fathers made us a good match.”
In her husband’s embrace, wrapped in the sound of his steady breathing, she slept soundly for the first time in a month.
They had been married fifteen years. It was the first time they had ever held hands.
Without thinking, she bent at the waist and kissed him on the head—right on the crease between his brows. “What?” He looked up in confusion— And she kissed him on the mouth. He didn’t pull away, so she slid her fingers into his hair, gripped the back of his neck, and pressed him closer.
“No, ‘watch your head,’” Robin said. “Kisee bhee cheez par apana sir mat maaro. Don’t hit your head on anything.”
She knew in that moment that this was one more thing that would never go away. She would always love Robin, the same way she would always miss Mamoru. For everything that had changed, this hadn’t. It hurt. Gods in the Deep, it hurt, but it didn’t consume her. After so long, she had learned to carry it like a woman.
