Night of the Dragon (Shadow of the Fox #3) - Julie Kagawa Page 0,3
through my insides. Yumeko smiled faintly, though there was a sadness in her eyes as she gazed at me, a glimmer of longing that I didn’t understand, but that caused my heart to give a strange little stutter.
“I trust you,” Yumeko said very quietly. “Even if you’re not the same, I saw your soul that night. I know you won’t betray us.”
“Yumeko,” called a voice before I could suppress my churning emotions long enough to speak. Near the fire, the shrine maiden was watching us with a grave look on her face, her small orange dog giving me a stony glare from its place at her feet. The miko’s dark eyes glittered with mistrust as they shifted to me. “Kage-san. If you would join us—we’re off the mountain and no longer in danger of the tengu’s retribution. We need to decide where to go from here.”
“Hai, Reika-san.” Yumeko rose and padded to the fire, fox tail swishing under the hem of her robes. I stood slowly and followed, noting the dark looks and suspicious glares from the rest of the party. The shrine maiden and her dog watched me with barely restrained hostility and mistrust, as if I could turn into a demon at any moment and leap at them with fangs bared. Taiyo Daisuke of the Sun Clan sat cross-legged by the fire, hands tucked into his sleeves, his expression carefully hidden behind a veneer of decorum. Beside him, the ronin slouched against his pack, looking as unkempt and disheveled as ever, reddish-brown hair coming loose of its ponytail. They were, I noticed, sitting very close for two men of vastly different statuses. I had known samurai who would not deign to be in the same room as a ronin, much less share a fire with them.
Glancing up, the ronin gave me a rueful smirk and a nod as I crouched beside the flames, and his dark gaze flickered up to something on my brow.
“You have a little...something on your face there, Kage-san,” he said, motioning a finger at his own forehead. I set my jaw, ignoring the obvious reference to the small but blatant horns curling above my eyebrows. Everything else—the claws, the fangs, the glowing eyes—had disappeared, at least temporarily, but the horns remained. A permanent reminder that I was a demon now. If any normal human saw me like this, I would likely be killed on sight.
“Baka.” The shrine maiden stalked up behind the ronin and gave a quick swat to the back of his head. The ronin winced. “This is not the time for jokes. Genno has all three pieces of the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers and is a breath away from summoning the Dragon. We have to stop him, and to do that, we need a plan. Kage...san...” She glanced at me, stumbling over my name. “You said you know where the Master of Demons is headed?”
I nodded. “Tsuki territory,” I said. “The islands of the Moon Clan is where the Dragon was first summoned four thousand years ago. The cliffs of Ryugake, on the northern island of Ushima, is where the ritual will take place.”
“When?” Taiyo-san asked. “How much time do we have until the night of the Wish?”
“Less than you think,” I answered grimly. A quote came to me, though I didn’t know from where. Hakaimono’s memory was long; he had seen the rise and fall of many eras. “On the night of the thousandth year,” I murmured, “before the dragon stars fade from the skies and concede the heavens to the red bird of autumn, the Harbinger of Change can be called upon by one whose heart is pure.” I paused a moment, then snorted. “As in the case of most legends, not all of it is true. Kage Hirotaka and Lady Hanshou were not entirely ‘pure of heart’ when it came to summoning the Dragon. That was probably added in the hopes of keeping greedy or evil humans from seeking out the scrolls.”
Beside me, Yumeko frowned. “What does it mean by ‘dragon stars’ and ‘red bird of autumn’?”
“They are constellations, Yumeko-san,” the noble said, turning to the girl. “Each season has one of the four great holy beasts tied to it. The Kirin represents spring and new life. The Dragon represents summer, for it brings the