Kinslayer Read Online Free PDF Page A

found amidst storm-torn clouds, and now loved more dearly than anything beneath the sky.
    Buruu …
    YUKIKO.
    Gods, it hurts, brother …
    HOLD ON TO ME.
    She’d clung to his thoughts; a mountain of cool stone amidst a flaming sea. Daichi peeled the steel from her shoulder, bringing ashen layers of tattooed skin with it. The blade that had killed her lover, Hiro. The blade that had been in her hands as she ended Shōgun Yoritomo, as the shot rang out and took her father away. Five days and a thousand years ago. She’d gasped as the agony receded to a dull ebb, and for a second, the urge to turn to Daichi and beg him to stop was almost overpowering. But she set her back against the thunder tiger’s strength, forced it down, far easier to swallow than the thought of that bastard’s mark still inked on her skin.
    Anything was better than that.
    She looked at the saké bottle on the floor beside her. Buruu’s thoughts washed over her like a summer breeze.
    YOU HAVE BEEN STRONG ENOUGH FOR ONE DAY, SISTER.
    Reaching for the bottle with trembling fingers, she gulped a mouthful of liquid fire, cooler than the steel in Daichi’s hand. The liquor rushed down her throat, burning her tongue, promising a return to the oblivion she’d been so eager to escape just moments before. The choice between agony and emptiness. Between living or existing.
    It had been no choice at all on a night that dark.
    “Do you want me to stop?” Daichi had asked.
    She’d swallowed another mouthful, blinking back her tears.
    “Get it off me,” she whispered. “Take all of it away.”
    *   *   *
    Yukiko closed her eyes, bloodshot and throbbing in their sockets.
    The ground was a blur beneath them, falling leaves filling the spaces between each beat of Buruu’s wings. The air had the vaguest hint of chill, autumn’s pallid touch creeping through the Iishi wilds. The towering trees around them were fading; a subtle shift from gowns of dazzling emerald to a brief and brittle lime, their hems beginning to curl and rust.
    They flew above it all. The pale girl swathed in mourning black, long hair flowing in the piercing wind. The boy with his dirty rags and dark, knowing eyes. The majestic beast beneath them, twenty-five feet of clockwork wings, cutting effortlessly through the sky.
    Kin was perched behind her on Buruu’s back, one arm wrapped about her waist, the other hanging bloody at his side. He was obviously exhausted, shoulders slumped, head hung low. Yukiko could feel the heat of him through their clothing, hear the faint catch in his breath. Her mouth dry, stomach curdling with fading adrenaline. It’d been nearly two months since she’d seen him last—this boy who’d saved her life, who’d given up everything he was to see Buruu freed. In the chaos after Yoritomo’s death, the riots, her speeches, the threat of civil war, she’d spent every spare moment searching for him; urging the Kagé city cells to be on the lookout, patrolling the Iishi’s edge for hours on end in the hope of catching a glimpse. They’d owed him that much. That much and more. And now, to find him at last …
    “Are you sure you’re all right, Kin-san?”
    Yukiko spoke over her shoulder, concerned eyes hidden by polarized glass.
    “Well enough,” he breathed. “My arm is bleeding…”
    “We’re still an hour or so from the village. Can you hold on until then?”
    A slow nod. “It took me over a month to get this far. A few more minutes won’t kill me.”
    “Wandering the Iishi alone might have, though,” Yukiko said. “You were traveling the wrong way. Headed right toward Black Temple. You could have run into an oni, or gods know what else. The Kagé village is northeast of here.”
    “I know,” he nodded. “Once I realized the ironclads were on my trail, I tried leading them away from the stronghold. I didn’t want to put anyone else in danger.”
    Yukiko smiled, reached down and squeezed Kin’s hand. She should have known. Just as