He nodded slowly. “I might have hated myself, but I was powerful now. I hunted those men down like they were animals. Fear ripped through Osaka as worries grew of a wild animal on the loose. I had two men left to take care of when the grandmother of one I’d killed found me. She had magic. What we called a miko. A female shaman. They were mostly known for their spirit possession and takusen—they served as mediums to communicate with spirits. But they were so much more than people knew.”
“They were witches.”
“The most gifted of witches. They had psychic gifts. Like the fae.”
“What happened with this witch?”
“She was a vengeful old bitch,” he sneered. “She didn’t care that her grandson had participated in a violent gang rape. All she cared about was her own revenge. She knew what I was, and she had an ability to sense things about people. She sensed my self-loathing and decided to trap me with my werewolf curse for all eternity.”
“She made you immortal.” Niamh’s mind whirled. “But how is that possible?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I didn’t believe her at first. After I’d killed the last two men, I took off and tried to end myself. Many times.” He flicked a look her way. “I even tried to rip out my own heart.”
Niamh gasped at the thought.
He smirked. “Obviously it didn’t work. And miraculously, even though the thought of forever was a torture of its own, I realized that embracing what made me different was the only way I could live as a free man.”
“You’re amazing.”
Kiyo looked at her fully now. “I just told you I killed a bunch of people, and that’s your reaction?”
“You also told me on the plane that revenge didn’t give you what you wanted. But maybe it did give you something. It gave you wisdom. It gave you the ability to pass that on to me and to make me feel less alone about all the bad stuff I’ve done when I’m supposed to be the good guy.”
Though he concentrated on the road now, roads Niamh realized belatedly had changed from city to country, Kiyo spoke to her in a way she knew he wanted her to hear him.
“The Japanese have a saying: Wabisabi. It’s a perspective, really. It’s the accepting of the fact that life is imperfect and therefore we should appreciate the beauty in the imperfect things. There is light and dark in all of us, Niamh. Sometimes life causes us to let in a little more dark than we’re comfortable with. But as long as we remember the light exists to chase away the shadows, we’ll be okay.” He glanced at her meaningfully. “The dark is our imperfect natures, but without it, we’d never realize how beautiful the light is. How beautiful it is as it dances with the shadows. I know you’ll be okay. Astra won’t pull you all the way into the darkness, Niamh. I won’t let her. More importantly, you won’t let her.”
Emotion consumed her as she stared at his profile while he drove them onward.
His belief in her was something she never knew she’d needed.
And while it was wonderful and exhilarating … Niamh was afraid to need anything from him.21The cabin wasn’t exactly what Niamh was expecting. It was definitely more of a lodge on stilts. It only had one floor, accessed by an exterior staircase. The lodge had a triangular roof and a deck overlooking the somewhat misty pond it was perched above. As ever, the cold didn’t bother her, but she was aware of how much the temperature had dropped at this elevation.
Nature was dark with brown and rusty bracken, but hints of green peeked through, suggesting the season was about to turn. Icy patches of snow could be seen here and there on the forest floor as if it had only snowed a few days before and was still in the process of melting. The air felt fresher, crisper, and clearer up in the mountains, away from the pollution of the city.
“Will it snow while we’re here, do you think?” she’d asked as Kiyo wandered around the lodge, checking things over.
“Possibly.” He seemed distracted.
The lodge was minimally furnished and was a mismatch of cultural ideas with tatami mats and shoji screens but a comfortable-looking old leather sofa on either side of a beaten-up coffee table. There was even a log-burning fire in the middle of the room with a flue that went right up and out of the ceiling. One shoji screen opened into the bathroom and the other to the bedroom.
“One bedroom?” she asked.
“I’ll be in wolf form throughout the night while you’re sleeping.” He dumped his bag on the small kitchen’s only countertop. “You can take the bed during the night. I’ll take it through the day, if that’s okay with you?”