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”Take it back.”
At the end of her travels, Kouka safe in her dominion, the red dragon burned in the dawn and squared her small shoulders and called out to heaven itself. Her only chance. The tiniest window, and she took it, fingernails digging into her palms, apologizing to Kija and Jaeha and Shin-ah over and over in her heart, but—but she owed Zeno, and she’d promised.
“I am safe. The dragons have played their part. I’ll be all right, I promise—so please, take it back.”
They roiled and hissed around her. White and green ribbons of light thrashed and fussed, one wailing, one laughing. The blue beast loomed, tremendous and fanged, a low growl of challenge, but she hadn’t been frightened of that spectre since the first time in Saika.
Gold scales shimmered, blinding as the sun, uncoiled and reached out, and a tiny crimson jewel dropped into her palm, and she knew the moment she touched it what it was for, and screwed her eyes tight against tears.
The vision passed, so sudden and fierce that it felt like a rockslide, and she started awake in dim reality with both hands clutched against her breast, holding one precious drop of blood.
She found them in the castle courtyard. All four. Kija wide-eyed, clutching his thin human wrist and calling her name, but she barely even heard him, because Zeno was a tiny golden puddle on the paving stones, and didn’t rear up before her at all.
She rushed to him, crouched beside him, panting. He was white with pain, teeth gritted, curled into a ball with his hands clawing at his chest. Jaeha rubbed his back, brushed hair out of his face that flickered between warm gold and so brittle a white that it threatened to break in his hands. Zeno whined, wretched animal noises of pain and two thousand years of age and rotting and living death, and she’d never heard the like out of him even impaled by ten spears, and it made her gut churn.
She cupped his cheek and opened her hand. “Drink, Zeno—drink, please!”
He howled, and thrashed, and Jaeha’s face was shuttered and unreadable, corners of his mouth pulling down as he tried to steady Zeno’s small body. Kija was hovering somewhere behind her, and she barely registered what he said, because Zeno curled up, and bit out, somehow, “Miss—Yona—please—let me go—”
“It’s just enough to give you a normal lifespan. So you can grow old and die. I promise! Ouryuu wanted to give you that, so you could have a chance to say goodbye to all of us.” Her vision was swimming. “Please, Zeno! You won’t be trapped anymore. Just like I promised.”
His face crumpled.
“Yona…”
Jaeha stroked his hair, and he turned so slowly that it seemed to take forever, caught Yona’s wrist in one shaking hand, and licked the cooling drop of blood off her palm like a cat. The faintest flash of golden light. Yona bundled him up and clutched him close and rocked him as his shudders faded, as gold ran clean through his hair, and looked up and Jaeha and felt her heart sink at the look on his face.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed.
Jaeha blinked, and the hollow, vicious chill vanished from his face in a second as he cracked a smile. “Oh, don’t worry.” He splayed a hand over his heart, smiled mischievously, and sketched a faint bow where he knelt. “Now I have my answer, after all. Whether my feelings for you come from my heart or my blood.”
Yona sputtered, and Kija, hovering behind her, sputtered harder. “Now is hardly the time for such things, Ryoku—”
Kija’s voice stopped in his throat, as suddenly as it had come.
Footsteps and the tap of a spear-butt closed in from somewhere, and Hak’s faraway mutter of “what the hell is wrong with the beasts now?” shook Yona to her toes. She buried her face in Zeno’s hair as he started to breathe evenly, and then suddenly gasped and looked up.
“Where’s Shin-ah?”
“Ah…” Kija said awkwardly. He was kneeling beside her, both hands fists jammed into his knees. “He…hasn’t spoken…?”
“Shin-ah?” A chill went down her spine, and she surged to her feet, taking Zeno with her. He found his own footing, shaky, ran a hand through his hair and buried his face behind it, and finally looked up at her with some very, very old face that she couldn’t even understand.
“Probably,” he murmured, more to himself than to her, and Yona remembered the blue beast growling huge enough to swallow the sky, and scanned the courtyard desperately until she saw him. Sitting. Just sitting. Very still, one hand over the worn bone of his mask.
“Shin-ah!” She rushed. They went with her. “Shin-ah! Are you all right?”
He caught a breath, moved, and Yona almost shook with relief. Until he pulled up his mask. Cheeks pale and unmarked, bright blue eyelashes standing out oddly clear without the heavy dark outlines around his eyes—
—and his eyes were blank white. No iris, no pupil. Wiped clean, staring empty over Yona’s shoulder.
“Yona?” he asked, very quietly, voice a little cracked. “What color are my eyes?”
She jammed the heel of her hand over her mouth, felt the tears well up hot and bitter. “Th—they’re…white…they’re just white…heavens, Shin-ah, your eyes, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”
“Just like Ao.” Barely a whisper. His hand came up, searching, six inches from the wrong elbow, and she caught it and buried her face in it.
“Why?! Damn it, why?” Rage churned her belly—rage and shame, this was her doing, how could she not have realized? “Kija still has a hand, Jaeha still has a leg—why can’t you still have eyes? It’s not fair!” The moment the words left her lips, she felt like a colossal idiot, a little girl, and she tipped forward and wrapped her arms around him, and Ao scampered up to both their shoulders to press himself against their cheeks. “I’m sorry.” She hiccuped, dragged air, tried to apologize like the queen she’d become. “I didn’t know. I never wanted it to be like this for you.”
“You had to help Zeno,” Shin-ah said, voice hoarse.
“Seiryuu’s, ah…” That was Zeno’s voice. Kneeling beside them, gently putting a hand on each of their shoulders.
“An asshole?” Jaeha muttered helpfully.
Zeno smiled, lopsided and not happy in the least. “A little harsh sometimes.” His smile faded, and he looked wistfully into the long distance for a moment, fingertips brushing his medallion. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. If it wasn’t for me, the miss would never have had to make this bargain.” He bowed his head. “Selfishly, I’m grateful, from the bottom of my heart. I’m glad to have met all of you. Even if it meant living all those years. But I wouldn’t want to lose you again. If it could have been any other way, without taking the price from your own bodies and powers…”
“Hey. At least we get to grow old.” Jaeha’s smile wasn’t any happier than Zeno’s, and something slid into place, and Yona felt a dead weight in her chest.
“…you would have died,” she murmured into Shin-ah’s fur. “When your successors…you would have died, wouldn’t you?” The silence was all the answer she needed, and she picked up her head just enough to snap, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
None of them met her eyes.
“Ao saw nothing before he died,” Shin-ah said, slow and earnest, into the silence. “I knew it would happen one day.”
Zeno’s hand tightened on his shoulder, and the silence thickened.
“We didn’t want you to worry,” Jaeha said valiantly.
Yona stretched out a foot to kick him. “Ugh.”
The butt of Hak’s spear cracked gently on the pavement nearby, and Yona looked up to see him looming over the circle of dragons puddled on the ground. “So that’s that, then?”
“Yes. The powers of the four dragon warriors returned to heaven.” Yona breathed slowly, closing her eyes. She could feel them all, their warmth around her. Desperately hoped that was what it could be like for Shin-ah, always. “It was my choice alone. I’m a scoundrel, after all.”
“Lady Yona.” The earnesty in Kija’s voice caught her ear, and she opened her eyes to see him resettled on one knee, and the sight of a human hand folded over his heart jarred her. His eyes were damp, his face a little flushed with sheer emotion. “I cannot speak for the others. I’ve certainly learned that by now. But as I told you from the first: the power of Hakuryuu is yours in service. To protect you and your comrades.” Hak snorted. “To forward your goals, to use as you will—and to dispose of as you will. It is, and always has been, a great honor and joy to be your dragon, and that is no lessened by what you have chosen.”
“Oh, Kija…” Yona’s face threatened to crumple, and she held her chin high. “Thank you. I’ve been so glad to travel with you, always. But—but what about you? You aren’t just—Hakuryuu…”
Kija hesitated, and dropped his gaze, and on impulse, Yona unlatched from Shin-ah just enough to reach out and pick his small right hand off his chest to hold.
“You’re also my friend,” Yona said firmly. “Always. Same goes for all of you. I can’t ask you to do as I say anymore. You.” Her voice threatened to crack, and she barreled on through. “You can do as you wish. Travel, return to your villages, settle where you like—whatever you want. The kingdom is secure. Hiryuu palace and all roads will forever be open to you, her champions. But this changes nothing, nothing, about who you are to me in my heart, and if you can forgive me for the choice I just made, then I would always welcome your friendship and your aid.”
Kija’s head came up, and his voice cracked halfway through her name, and, impulsively, she hugged him. His robes, even roadworn, were very soft, and he stuttered, and froze, and slowly, slowly, hugged back.
“Give me…time to think?” he ventured, into her hair, and his voice was smaller than she’d ever heard.
“Of course,” Yona breathed. “Anything.”
Kija couldn’t sleep. He felt too warm, and his hand was too light where it usually rested on his chest, and Jaeha was warbling some endless rumination of a melody in the garden beneath his window that was just a little too loud, and he didn’t know who he was.
He really, truly, didn’t.
Two thousand years of Hakuryuus, waiting and yearning and unfulfilled—that he could bear forward. It had never bothered him. But this—what could he do with this?
He slowly pulled on his clothes, and looked down at the embroidered cuffs, and wondered if anyone would still dress like that in twenty years. What his village would even do, even become, without their ancient purpose. Clouds covered the moon and passed before he managed to fasten his robes, numbly, and decamp into the garden.
Jaeha’s late-night fiddling, unsurprisingly, was fueled by a flask of plum wine. Two, perhaps, if the one leaning against a stone lantern was an empty. He kept playing as Kija approached, appearing unruffled, but droopy eyes tracked him behind green bangs, until finally the song scraped dead in the middle of a phrase, listless.
Jaeha set instrument and bow aside, both slowly, refilled his cup, and took a drink. Kija sat, equally slowly, arranged his robes, and had no idea what to say.
“Well,” Jaeha said eventually. “We get to grow old.”
“You don’t sound pleased about it,” Kija muttered.
“Well, I’ve never have to worry about losing my good looks until now.”
“Or any consequences.”
Jaeha winced, sipped. “And what about you? Do you even know who you are anymore?”
Kija wrapped both arms around his chest and bowed his head. It knocked the wind out of him, to hear somebody else say it.
“…fair enough,” he mumbled eventually. “Still. This is harder on you and Shin-ah.”
“Is it?” Jaeha was watching him out of the corner of his eyes, he was sure. And keeping everything close to his chest, as always.
“Of course it is! Poor Shin-ah’s blind, he’ll be helpless for the rest of his life, and you’re—you’re grounded.” Kija buried his face in one hand. “I know—what it means to you, your freedom. I—I cannot resent her for choosing to offer up Hakuryuu’s power! Not for my own sake. My claw—was hers, by my will. But that it took Shin-ah’s eyes and your freedom, which neither of you had offered to her—if it had been anyone else, I’d be…I'd be blind with rage…”
Jaeha sighed. “If it had been for any other reason.” He was silent for a moment, then, “I’ve kept myself up at night, you know, wondering. If the kid really would outlive the end of the world itself.”
Kija shivered. “Now you’ll have me wondering.”
“I am angry, you know,” Jaeha said, quite calmly, into his dish of wine. “Unpseakably angry, and a lot of other things. I knew I’d lose my leg someday, followed quite shortly by my life. I just wanted to make sure I’d die a free man.”
“You will,” Kija said quietly, with an absolute certainty that startled even him. "Even if you cannot fly, you will not be bound again." He clenched his tiny right fist and muttered, "If anybody tries, I'll break those chains with this hand."
Jaeha stared at him for a moment, wide-eyed. And then looked back up at the moon as if he felt nothing, and poured himself another cup. “I used to have these daydreams, you know. Before I realized that I wouldn’t live very long—really realized, all teenagers think they're immortal. About breaking free and having adventures, and finding a beautiful lady who I’d fall in love with, and we’d live happily ever after. Then I realized what that would do to her, and I did my best to kill those dreams. Told myself that I was only good for nights of happiness. Bring a little joy into somebody’s life, leap away come dawn. Easy come, easy go.”
Kija followed the general gist of it, and felt himself steaming gently, but bit his tongue. Jaeha—didn’t talk like this often, did he?
“And after all that, here I am. Chained to the ground again, free to love with all my life to give to another. And with a good answer to a question I’ve been wondering for a while. And the lady’s heart beats like a kitten’s for her dark dragon.”
Kija flushed deeper, gnawed his tongue as he considered about five different responses to that and rejected them all as either cruel or naive—and somewhere along the way he had become invested in not seeming hopelessly the second to worldly Jaeha, hadn’t he? Finally he fumbled out, “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” Jaeha shrugged, tipped the entire cup down his throat, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I honestly don’t have a damn clue. Wander again, maybe. Back to Awa. Stay here and petition to be the queen’s consort until Hak hangs me up somewhere with a nice view.” He laughed, reached for the jug. “I don’t know. What about you?”
Kija was silent for a long moment, and almost, for a second or two, seriously eyed the wine. But he had no tolerance. The last thing he needed was to be redder.
“…I need to go back to my village,” he said eventually. “I promised Grandmother. She’d be the first to greet me, she said. I hope she’s still…”
His throat closed up, and he scrubbed a hand over his eyes—his left, by long reflex, only his left—and then he felt a hand on his shoulder. And heard, to his surprise, a familiar squeak from somewhere. Pukyuu. Pukyuu. Pukyuu. Ao’s chirping, from somewhere along the palace wall that framed the garden, was distant, but closing with odd regularity. Shin-ah was following him, one hand on the wall, feet slow and uncertain. A chirp. A step.
“Shin-ah…” Kija felt his stomach clench with worry, surged to his feet and trotted over.
“Kija?”
His head didn’t quite turn in his direction, but it turned, and Kija nodded, then felt foolish, and said, “Yes. I’m talking with Jaeha in the garden—do you want to join us?”
A nod. Shin-ah’s hand lifted hesitantly from his side, and Kija caught it and led him carefully across the garden. It was well tended, at least, no stray branches to trip him up. “There’s…ah, there’s a wall to sit on, if you want?”
Shin-ah shrugged, shuffled his feet in the grass, slowly let go of Kija’s hand to crouch and poke about. He shivered a little at the dew, untied and unfolded his fur, and balled up to plop down in the grass.
“Or…there’s grass…yes…”
The silence settled for a moment, and Kija settled back on the wall, and Shin-ah cocked his head to hear him move, and eventually, hesitantly, asked, “You’re going home?”
“I promised. I…don’t know what I’ll do afterwards, though.” How could he? How would they even take it? He plucked again at his cuffs, wondered what all the traditions and all the devotion of the Hakuryuu village could even mean now, and almost fell into deep thought when Shin-ah spoke again.
“I should. Too. To visit.”
Kija thought of masks in dark tunnels, and shuddered, and blurted, “Why?”
“They won’t…be cursed anymore. They should know.”
“Screw them,” Jaeha said. “They can damn well figure it out. I’m never going back.”
Kija opened his mouth, closed it, didn’t say anything. He hadn’t witnessed whatever corruption Ryokuryuu Village had undergone like he had with Seiryuu, but if even half of what Jaeha had said like it was some jest was true…
“I watched them,” Shin-ah said quietly, and both of them looked down at him, startled. Even rarer than Jaeha, for him to speak of such things. “Through the walls. When I was bored. They were scared. All the time. Every time they had a baby, they would pray for days.” He tucked his face into his fur, a mumble Kija could barely make out. “Their little hearts would…beat so fast.”
Silence.
“Idiots,” Jaeha sighed.
“I promised Ao I’d protect the village. I want to tell them that they’re free.”
“You’re probably a better person than I am,” Jaeha murmured, taking a sip of his wine.
“That’s not hard,” Kija muttered, but there was no heat in it.
“Free, huh. Are we more or less free than we were, I wonder?”
“Probably depends upon who you ask,” Kija said quietly.
“I’m free,” Shin-ah said. And sat in silence by way of explanation, and eventually stole a hand out of his fur to untie his mask and lay it aside. His unmarked face was so strangely calm in the moonlight. Possibly, Kija considered vaguely, because he didn’t know how to make expressions. “I was at peace with Seiryuu. By then. But still.”
“Even though you’re—you’re blind?” Kija blurted.
“Yona said she’d still be my friend, even though I can’t fight anymore. That’s…what I want. I don’t have to see to make friends…right?”
“No,” Jaeha said. “No, you don’t. Hey, here’s an idea—can I come with you? That’s not a trip you’d want to make alone.”
Shin-ah hadn’t learned to make expressions, perhaps, but his face still showed happiness. Subtle, unconscious, but pure, eyewateringly earnest. “Yes.”
“What about me?” Kija asked, feeling his heart lift a little.
“You’re…my big brother. Right?”
“Right.” Kija felt the smile well up, perhaps the first since the scales had peeled off his hand inch by agonizing inch. He reached down to ruffle Shin-ah’s hair, and he leaned into it, and Kija's heart clenched.
“Sure, but you can’t go two places at once,” said Jaeha, sounding a little more content as he sipped his wine.
“You won’t be staying at Seiryuu Village,” Kija said, without making it a question. Shin-ah shook his head firmly, then felt his way and scooted slightly closer to lean it against Kija’s knee. “So we go there first, then to Hakuryuu. I…believe in Grandmother. I've been gone nearly a year already.” He—had to, right? “She’ll be waiting for me, after another few weeks” He paused, worried at his lip. “I might need to stay there for a time, though…I can’t tie either of you to that if you want to leave…”
“Mm,” came a fourth voice. “It’ll be hard for them to adjust.”
Kija nearly jumped out of his skin. Shin-ah twitched against his leg, and then sat up very straight blinking for a long moment.
“First time someone’s snuck up on you, huh,” Jaeha laughed, not unkindly.
“Zeno thinks this sounds like a wonderful idea, though!”
Kija looked around frantically, and finally spotted him, perched in a tree and finishing off the last threads of flesh from a mango pit. He smiled down at them, sucked his fingers clean, somersaulted, and belly-flopped into the grass next to Shin-ah, who twitched again.
“…surprises are strange,” he whispered.
“Good strange or bad strange?” Zeno chirped, leaning against him.
“I don’t know. But it’s you.”
Zeno laughed. “Okay!”
“How long have you been listening?” Jaeha asked pleasantly, with a slightly sharp smile.
Zeno made an entirely noncommittal noise, and reached for the bottle propped against the lantern—which was, in fact, empty. “Aww." He put it back. "It sounds like the best thing you could be doing right now. Zeno’s glad! And Zeno would like to come. A special trip just for the four of us?” He quieted a notch. “If you’d have me.”
“Yes,” said Kija and Jaeha in unison. Shin-ah said nothing, just bundled him up in the fur, and Zeno laughed almost like it was startled out of him, and tucked his head under Shin-ah’s chin with a radiant smile.
“I’m glad,” he said, warm, and utterly serious. “I’d been afraid. That this might have driven a rift between us. I am truly sorry that you’ve been forced to suffer on my account.”
Jaeha set his cup on his knee and looked down at Zeno for a long, long moment. “I’m not upset with you. Or Yona, mostly. It's a good thing you're both cute. I'm livid with the gods, but that’s nothing new.”
“Mm. I know.” Zeno sounded—just as eerily calm in his rage as Jaeha. Moreso, perhaps. Kija opened his mouth in protest, and closed it. Who, who in the world could have greater reason?
“I think Yona is right,” he said instead. “This couldn’t change the ways in which we’re friends. Even if the dragon blood brought us together, it’s not—everything, right? Even…to me.” He ventured a look at Jaeha, and the wry smile in return looked particularly complicated, but not bad. “Besides, my village would be happy to meet you all, I’m sure. If it would not…sting, to be welcome by a dragon’s village.”
“That sounds nice,” Shin-ah murmured.
“I’ll manage,” Jaeha said dryly.
“Yay!” Zeno cheered, and rolled himself and Shin-ah as far into Kija’s lap as he possibly could.
“Ah, well,” Jaeha said, cracking a smile, and put an arm around Kija’s shoulders, and his heart clenched, and for a moment, he almost thought tears would well up. Brothers. Brothers still.