Chapter 17: Chapter 17: The Ice Demon, The Sassy Pre-Teen, and The Ruined Aesthetic

The Yuki-Oni was enormous, dreadful, and utterly outclassed.

The ice demon lunged through the shattered balcony, its hollow white eyes fixed on my chest. Its jagged frozen claws stretched toward the remnant of holy energy lodged in my core.

It did not even cross the threshold.

Akira did not merely swing his katana. He ignited.

A blinding surge of concentrated blue yokai fire burst from his blade, so fiercely hot that it did not simply melt the demon. It erased it at once.

The Yuki-Oni gave a choking shriek as the blue flames engulfed its entire body. In less than three breaths, the huge and terrifying thing had become nothing more than a puddle of dirty, lukewarm slush spread across the tatami.

Akira stood at the center of the room, his katana angled in a perfect downward line. The blue fire receded from the steel. He was breathing hard, his pink hair lashing in the freezing wind pouring through the ruined balcony. He looked like some untouchable god of war dragged from a shrine mural.

Then he turned his head toward me, and the wrath vanished from his amber eyes, replaced in an instant by deep and frantic concern.

"Are you hurt, Kitsune?" he asked, his voice low and protective enough to make my heart flutter wildly. He sheathed his sword with a sharp metallic click. "Did the ice touch you?"

"No," I breathed, still clutching Rin tightly beneath the furs. "You were amazing. You stopped it before it even..."

SPLOOSH.

I stopped.

Akira blinked and lowered his gaze to the floor.

When the Yuki-Oni had been vaporized, it had burst apart into a wide spray of filthy demon-water. And standing directly in the center of that splash, currently dripping with lukewarm, foul-smelling gray sludge, was one very familiar white cat.

Yuki stood utterly still. His pure white fur was plastered flat to his small frame. The little red bow at his neck hung in a limp and tragic droop. He looked like a drowned alley rat.

The silence in the room thickened.

"Ah," Akira said, wincing very slightly, the terrible warlord suddenly looking like a man who knew he was about to be shouted at. "My apologies, Yuki. The blast radius was... broader than I intended."

Yuki did not meow. He did not hiss.

The cat closed his turquoise eyes with slow and profound offense. Then a thick cloud of shimmering white smoke burst from his tiny soaked body, swallowing him completely from sight.

"What is happening?!" I gasped, dragging Rin farther back on the futon. "Is it another demon?!"

"No," Akira sighed, dragging a heavy hand across his face. He looked exhausted in a way that felt almost spiritual. "It is only a tantrum."

The white smoke cleared.

Sitting on the tatami exactly where the cat had been was a boy.

He looked perhaps twelve years old. His hair was shaggy and pure white, sticking out in every direction, and he wore a ridiculously oversized white kimono of elegant cut that nearly swallowed his narrow frame. Around his waist was tied the same bright red sash that matched the cat’s bow.

Two fluffy white cat ears rose from his hair, and twin tails swished sharply behind him.

But it was his face that truly stunned me. He had the same glowing turquoise eyes, and they were presently fixed on the Demon Prince with the fury of a thousand summer suns.

"A broader blast radius?!" the boy shrieked.

His voice was high and unmistakably pre-teen, but his cadence carried all the wounded dignity of an offended court elder.

"You absolute brute! You hot-blooded, uncultured northern barbarian!" The boy scrambled to his feet, wringing dirty water from his absurdly long sleeves. "Do you have any notion how long it takes to groom a nekomata coat?! Three hours! Three full hours of meticulous licking, Kurogane, and you ruin it merely to show off before your new wife!"

My jaw all but detached. I stared at the boy. Then at Akira. Then back at the boy.

"The cat," I whispered, my thoughts collapsing in on themselves. "The cat is a child. I abducted a child."

"I am not a child!" the boy snapped, stabbing a small accusing finger toward me. "I am a nine-hundred-year-old spirit of immense magical consequence! And you!"

He swung his finger back toward Akira, who was currently rubbing his temples as if trying to ward off an oncoming headache.

"You used the Crescent Wave form indoors!" Yuki scolded, planting both hands on his hips. "You singed my left whisker! Your romantic pining is making you sloppy, boy!"

"Do not call me ’boy.’ I am twenty-seven years old," Akira muttered, losing what remained of his intimidating aura. He looked less like a demon prince and more like a very tired older brother. "And I was saving our lives. Transform back, Yuki. You are ruining the atmosphere."

"Ruining the atmosphere?!" Yuki scoffed, throwing his wet white hair over one shoulder with dramatic disdain. "I created this atmosphere! If I had not forced the Consort Mark onto her, you would still be brooding in your courtyard and composing dreadful, moon-struck poetry about your loneliness!"

"I do not write poetry!" Akira’s face flushed such a vivid shade of pink it almost matched his hair.

"Oh, please. ’The winter moon is cold, but my heart is colder,’" Yuki recited, performing a shockingly accurate and very nasal imitation of Akira’s deep voice.

"That happened once! Once, when I was fourteen!" Akira barked, stepping forward and pointing a severe finger at the twelve-year-old cat spirit. "Transform back this instant, or I am cutting your premium salmon rations for a month!"

"Tyrant!" Yuki cried, clutching his chest as if he had been mortally struck.

"I am the Lord of the North!" Akira fired back, gesturing wildly to the ruined chamber. "Show at least a shred of dignity!"

I remained on the futon, completely paralyzed by the absurdity unfolding before me.

Five minutes earlier, Akira had been a fearsome god of death defending me from an ice demon. Now he was engaged in a shouting match with a sassy pre-teen about poetry and fish while a blizzard screamed through a hole in the wall.

"Excuse me," Rin’s small voice said from beneath the furs.

The argument died instantly. Both the warlord and the ancient spirit snapped their heads toward my nine-year-old sister.

Rin pushed herself upright and rubbed at her eyes. She looked at Yuki, then at Akira.

"Did we adopt him?" Rin asked, sounding mildly inconvenienced. "Because he’s very loud, and I am trying to sleep."

Yuki’s jaw dropped. "Adopt me?! You insolent little human sprout, I am a sacred..."

Before he could finish, Akira reached out, caught the back of the boy’s oversized kimono collar, and lifted the struggling twelve-year-old into the air with all the effort it took to pick up a misbehaving kitten.

"Put me down, you brute!" Yuki thrashed, his twin tails lashing wildly.

"No, Rin, we did not adopt him," Akira told my sister, his voice settling back into its calm, resonant rumble while he ignored the shrieking immortal dangling from his fist. "He is merely an overgrown nuisance. I apologize for the noise."

Akira crossed to the edge of the room, pulled open a heavy wooden closet, and dropped the protesting cat-boy inside without ceremony. Then he tossed in a dry towel.

"Dry yourself. Transform back. Do not come out until you have fur again," Akira ordered, sliding the closet shut.

"I am going to leave a dead mouse in your boots!" Yuki’s muffled, scandalized voice shouted from within the wood.

Akira let out a heavy sigh and leaned his forehead briefly against the closet door before turning back to us.

The chamber was quiet again, apart from the howl of the wind outside.

Akira looked at me where I sat frozen on the futon. Then he came back slowly, his broad shoulders lowered. The pink of embarrassment still lingered along his cheeks. He looked startlingly human, and even more startlingly vulnerable.

"I... apologize," Akira murmured, refusing to meet my eyes. He stared instead at his boots. "I had intended for you to meet his human form under circumstances of somewhat greater dignity. He is ancient, but his human vessel has very little maturity."

"He talks," I whispered.

"Yes."

"He said you write poetry."

Akira closed his eyes. A pained expression crossed his handsome face. "I was a very lonely teenager, Kitsune."

The sheer ridiculousness of everything finally cracked straight through my shock. A giggle rose in my chest. I slapped a hand over my mouth, but it was already too late. The giggle spilled into a laugh, and then I was doubled over, laughing so hard my ribs hurt.

"Kitsune?" Akira asked, looking both alarmed and utterly confused.

"You..." I gasped, wiping tears from the corners of my eyes. "You two are ridiculous! You’re the Demon Prince, and he is a sacred beast, and you argue like an old married couple!"

Akira blinked once, then slowly a reluctant smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. The last tension in the room finally dissolved.

"He is insufferable," Akira admitted, his deep chuckle joining my laughter.

"He is hilarious," I corrected, shifting on the futon. "And I am never, ever going to let you forget the ’cold winter moon’ poem."

Akira groaned and came over to sit on the edge of the mattress. "I should have let the ice demon devour him."

"Do not say that. He is basically our strange immortal son now," I said with a grin, nudging his knee gently with mine.

Akira lowered his eyes to where my knee touched his. The smile faded and gave way to that soft, quiet devotion that always stole the breath from my lungs all over again.

"We must repair the wall," Akira murmured, lifting his amber gaze to meet mine. "Before the room freezes."

"Right. The wall." I swallowed, the laughter fading into a low and simmering tension.

The ice demon was gone. The cat was in the closet. The blizzard still raged outside. And I was sitting on a bed beside a warlord who looked at me as if I were the only source of warmth left in the world.