Chapter 788: Eating Shiina (1) *
In the middle of the night, Nathan opened his eyes.
Sleep had never fully taken him. The pain in his neck had made sure of that. Even after resting for most of the day, Yorimasa’s bite still burned beneath his skin with a slow, maddening pulse that refused to let him sink into proper sleep.
Carefully, he lifted Yukihime’s arm from over him and sat up.
She did not stir. In the dim light, she looked peaceful in a way the waking world rarely allowed her, her silver hair spread softly over the bedding, her breathing slow and even. Nathan watched her for a brief moment, then rose without making a sound. He had no wish to wake her.
He needed air.
And perhaps silence.
Meditation had helped him before, more than once. When pain became too loud or his thoughts too crowded, stillness at least let him contain them. So he left the room, descended quietly through the inn, and stepped out into the night.
The streets of Death God Valley no longer looked like the same place they had entered.
The bodies of Mitsuhide’s soldiers had all been cleared away. The blood had been washed from the worst parts of the road. Lanterns burned here and there with a softer glow than before, and though the town was asleep, the air no longer felt suffocated by dread. It was still a wounded place, but not a strangled one.
Nathan walked in silence for a while.
Then, once he had gone far enough from the inn, he simply took flight.
The night wind met him at once, cold against his face, sharp and clean. He rose above the rooftops, above the narrow roads and dark slopes of the valley, and turned toward the mountain shrine. If there was anywhere he could think clearly, it would be there. Or at the very least, nowhere else in the valley was likely to be quieter.
A few minutes later, he landed softly among the ruins.
The shrine looked even worse at night.
Most of the pillars had collapsed, and the ceiling had fallen in on itself. Broken beams lay scattered over cracked stone, and the place that had once held ritual light and blood now stood open to moonlight and drifting mist. Yet in the middle of it all, one part still remained.
The lower section of the altar.
A rectangular block of old stone, still standing almost untouched while destruction lay all around it.
Nathan’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“What are you doing here?”
The voice came from behind him.
He turned and found Shiina standing a short distance away, as if she had simply appeared out of the dark. The moonlight caught the edge of her face and the faint smile playing on her lips.
“That is my question,” Nathan replied.
Shiina walked past him with easy steps and headed straight toward the broken shrine. “I came to see if there was anything interesting left under all this.”
She nudged aside a piece of shattered wood with her foot and crouched near the rubble. “Something Mitsuhide used. Something worth knowing.”
Nathan watched her for a moment. “Trying to find something that would please Norihiro?”
Shiina glanced up at him, amused. “Not really.”
Then she looked back toward the ruins.
“Mitsuhide became far stronger than he should have been. He pulled that power from somewhere, and whatever this altar was connected to, it was enough to turn him into something dangerous. So yes, I am curious.”
Nathan stepped closer, his gaze settling on the remaining altar. “It was a cursed altar. A false one. A structure built for a Kijin. Nothing more.”
“Perhaps,” Shiina said. “But does that not make you curious too?”
She brushed dust from a broken piece of carved stone and turned it in her hands.
“What was the source? Why this place? What made this shrine special enough for Mitsuhide to build everything around it?”
Nathan said nothing at first.
The question had already taken hold of him before she spoke it aloud.
Mitsuhide’s last words returned to him with unpleasant clarity. Norihiro had a shrine of his own. A worse one. A more dangerous one. And he was counting on its power to help him seize Kastoria itself.
So yes, Nathan was curious.
More than that, he knew he should be.
If he could understand even part of what Mitsuhide had been using here, then perhaps he could better understand what awaited him in Norihiro’s domain. But that thought came with another one, colder and more cautious. Dangerous power was not dangerous only because of what it did to enemies. It consumed those who touched it without understanding.
Nathan looked across the wreckage and saw again the bodies of the servants Mitsuhide had sacrificed. Even now, though much of the blood had dried or been lost beneath the rubble, the memory of what had happened here still clung to the place.
“It requires sacrifices,” Nathan said quietly. “Mitsuhide had been feeding it for some time. Was all of that really only for the form he took?”
Shiina straightened slowly and brushed dust from her hands.
“No,” she said after a moment. “I do not think that was the end of it.”
Nathan looked at her.
She tilted her head, thoughtful now rather than playful. “The way the ritual was built, the way the altar reacted, the attendants, the blood channels, the preparation of the shrine itself. It all felt too large for only that transformation. I think we interrupted him before he reached the final stage.”
Nathan’s expression hardened.
“Then he was preparing for something worse.”
“Yes,” Shiina murmured. “Much worse.”
For once, even she did not sound amused.
A faint wind moved through the broken shrine, carrying with it the smell of old ash and damp wood.
Shiina looked toward the surviving altar and lowered her voice a little. “Now I understand why Norihiro sama was wary of him.”
Nathan turned his eyes toward her at once. “What about Norihiro’s shrine?”
That made her stop.
Then she turned back toward him with a smile that was small and knowing.
“Trying to steal information from me now?”
Nathan held her gaze and said nothing.
Shiina let the silence stretch for a heartbeat, then gave a soft laugh.
“Well, unfortunately for you, I only know that it exists. I do not know much more than that.”
Nathan studied her face, trying to judge whether she was lying.
Shiina met his eyes without flinching.
“I know there is a shrine in his domain,” she said more plainly. “I know he guards what concerns it closely. And I know that if Mitsuhide’s shrine was this dangerous, then Norihiro’s is likely far worse.”
“You don’t seem to care whether it’s dangerous or not, however, as long as Norihiro is fine,” Nathan said, a dry edge of sarcasm coloring his voice.
Shiina only shrugged, stepping past the broken stone toward the altar, brushing loose rubble from its surface with an idle sweep of her hand. Nathan followed, his gaze drawn to the strange symbols carved into the ancient rock. The moment his fingers grazed the stone, he knew this was no ordinary shrine — something old and watchful seemed to hum faintly beneath the surface.
“So… are we now enemies again?” Shiina asked, not looking at him.
“Once we reach Minami Kyoto, yes,” Nathan confirmed.
“If I asked you to abandon that crazy mission of yours, would you?”
“No.” His answer came fast, cold, without hesitation.
Shiina sighed, the sound heavier than she probably intended. “I really don’t wish to fight. After everything we went through together, I feel a strange kind of radeship. It was fun.”
Nathan said nothing.
“You don’t seem to mind, though,” she pressed, catching his silence for what it was.
“As long as you stand between me and Norihiro, you will be an enemy,” he said simply.
“Hm. I suppose it’s inevitable, then.” She hopped up onto the altar’s edge, settling there, looking up at him with an expression unreadable in the dim light.
Then, without warning, her hands drifted to the strap of her kimono and slid it from her shoulders, baring her collarbone, her chest wrapped only in a strip of plain bandage.
“What are you doing?” Nathan asked, brow lifting.
She kicked off her sandals in answer.
“I don’t know if I’ll be alive in the days to e,” she said, voice steady despite the vulnerability of the moment. “So before that, I want to feel like a woman.”
“You want me to do that?”
“Yes. I want you to make me feel like a woman. I want you to fuck me.”
Nathan studied her for a long moment. Every instinct told him to refuse — he might be the one to end her life someday, if fate placed her between him and Norihiro again. That thought alone should have been reason enough to walk away.
“There’s nothing wrong with it, is there?” Shiina asked, smiling faintly, testing him.
He remained silent.
“Or am I not attractive enough for you?” she added, a teasing lilt returning to her tone. “You do have that beautiful silver-haired woman by your side, after all.”
“If that’s your wish,” Nathan said finally, giving in.
Shiina’s smile widened, satisfied.
“It’s my first time,” she admitted, quieter now, “so I’ll leave the rest to you.”
“Yeah,” he said, closing the distance between them. His hands found the waist of her hakama and pulled the wide fabric down her legs in one smooth motion. Shiina lifted her hips to help, and he drew the garment fully away, baring her legs, her thighs, and the soft dark thatch of hair guarding her sex.
“This is more embarrassing than I thought,” she laughed nervously, instinctively drawing her knees together.
Nathan moved closer, catching her ankles before she could close them, prying her thighs apart with a firm, unhurried grip as he lowered himself to his knees between her legs.
He held her ankles firm when she tried to draw her knees together again, his grip gentle but immovable, and looked up at her over the pale expanse of her stomach.
“Too late to be shy now,” he said.
“I’m allowed to be shy and want it at the same time,” Shiina shot back, though the laugh in her voice had thinned into something more breathless.
He didn’t answer. He pulled her hips forward, closer to the edge of the altar, until she had to brace her palms flat against the ancient stone to keep from sliding, the carved symbols pressing cool against her skin in contrast to the heat already gathering low in her belly.
Nathan lowered his head.
He started slow — not out of any obligation, but because something in her admission, first time, demanded a certain care whether he wanted to give it or not. He pressed his mouth to her inner thigh, just above the knee, and dragged a slow, open kiss upward.
Shiina’s breath caught.
“You’re gentler than I expected from an enemy,” she said, voice unsteady.
“Don’t get used to it.”
He continued upward, his lips grazing skin no one had likely touched this way before, feeling the faint tremor running through her legs. When his mouth finally found her, he didn’t rush — he licked her slow and broad, and her whole body jolted at the first full contact, fingers scraping against the stone beneath her.
“Haahn—!”
The sound cracked through whatever posure she’d held onto. Nathan felt the shudder of it against his tongue as he worked her with unhurried strokes, learning her, adjusting to what drew the sharpest gasps.
“Nngh— this is—” She swallowed hard. “Strange. Good. But strange.”
“It gets better,” Nathan murmured against her, and returned to his task, circling his tongue slow around her clit, settling into a steady rhythm as her thighs tensed and her breath stuttered. Her hand found his hair, not pulling, just holding on — an anchor against something entirely new.
“Ahh— Nathan— I don’t know what to do with my—”
“You don’t have to do anything,” he said, lifting his head just enough to speak. “Just feel it.”
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