"Irreversibly bound."
I repeated the words slowly, staring at the new pine-and-fire crest glowing faintly on my chest. I quickly pulled the collar of my burnt silk robe closed, clutching the fabric tightly against my collarbone.
My brain felt like a bowl of overcooked noodles.
"Like... forever?" I squeaked, my dark purple eyes wide. "No taking it back? No magical annulments through the Bureau?"
Akira was still seated close enough for me to feel the heat lingering from his skin. The alarming flush left by the holy fire was gone now, leaving him merely tired, slightly battered, and offensively handsome.
A slow, devastatingly gentle smile touched his mouth. He looked far too pleased for a man who had nearly been roasted alive by divine energy.
"Forever," he said, his deep voice soft as distant thunder. "The spirits have acknowledged your sacrifice. You saved my life, Kitsune. The bond is no longer an accident. It is absolute."
I swallowed hard. I was a practical girl. I had spent my life counting copper coins for stale rice and dodging bamboo swords. Sudden, soul-deep romance with the most dangerous man in the empire had not been included anywhere in my guide to survival.
The air between us turned thick. Heavy. The sort of tension that made the heart strike hard against the ribs and left the palms damp. Akira was looking at me as if he wanted to gather me right back into his lap and keep me there forever.
I panicked. I needed a different subject before my face burst into flames.
"Wait," I blurted, throwing up a hand like a physical barrier between us.
Akira blinked and stopped his slight lean toward me. "Is something wrong? Does the mark pain you?"
"No, no, the mark is fine," I rambled, scooting back an inch across the tatami. "But I just remembered something. Back in the courtyard, the night I broke in... you said something insane."
His dark brows drew together slightly. "I said many things that night, wife. Most of them prompted by the overwhelming relief of finding you."
"Yes, about that," I said, pointing a soot-stained finger at him. "You said, and I quote, 'I have waited twenty years for you.' Which leads to a very important question I have been too terrified to ask until now."
I narrowed my eyes at his flawless, aristocratic face.
"Exactly how old are you?"
Akira stared at me. Out of everything he might have expected after a literal divine soul-binding, this was clearly not among them.
Yuki, who had been sitting quietly by my knee, let out a short, sharp mrrow that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
"I am twenty-seven," Akira replied slowly, looking deeply confused.
I did the sum in my head. My jaw dropped.
"Twenty-seven?" I gaped at him. "You're twenty-seven, and you waited twenty years? Akira, you have been waiting for a wife since you were seven years old? That is intense, even for a warlord!"
Akira gave a sudden rough laugh. It was real, pure amusement, and it swept the last shadows from the room. He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head.
"I was not waiting for a wife at seven years old, Kitsune," he said with a quiet chuckle, his amber eyes creasing at the corners. "I was waiting for a lifeline."
His smile softened and faded, giving way to a quiet, reflective sadness. He drew the sides of his indigo inner robe together, covering his broad, scarred chest with absent ease.
"When I was seven," Akira said, his voice lowering to a calm murmur, "my yokai blood awakened. My hair turned pink in a single night. The Emperor, my uncle, was terrified. He declared me a monster and sent me into exile in the freezing Northern Marches the very next day."
My chest tightened painfully. Seven years old. Younger than Rin when they cast him into the snow.
"The north is unforgiving," he continued, studying his large, calloused hands. "The magic there is wild. I was a child carrying a demon's core, utterly unable to control the blue fire. It was tearing me apart from within. The northern shamans told me I would not live to see adulthood."
"But you did," I whispered.
He looked up and met my eyes. "Because the Head Shaman received a vision. She told me that one day a girl would appear beneath the Tsukimi moon. A girl with a spirit so pure, or in your case so wonderfully empty, that she could ground my demonic fire. The shaman told me I would know her because the sacred nekomata would choose her first."
He gestured toward the fluffy white traitor currently chewing a loose thread from the edge of the tatami.
"For twenty years, I survived on that prophecy," Akira said softly. "I built my army, I honed my blade, and I waited for the girl who would finally make me feel human. So yes, I waited twenty years for you."
I stared at him. The sheer weight of his devotion was staggering. He was not merely obsessed with a prophecy. He was a lonely little boy who had clung to the hope that someone, one day, would look at him and not see a monster.
And I had arrived armed with sewing scissors.
"Akira," I began, my voice thickening with feeling. I reached out and placed my hand gently on his knee.
He covered it at once with his own, his thumb brushing slowly across my knuckles.
"But," I said, forcing myself to remain the rational one, "I am nineteen."
He paused. "I am aware."
"I am nineteen, I am a former basement rat, and we met exactly forty-eight hours ago," I said, holding his gaze. "And while our souls may now be tied together forever by ancient magic, my brain is still trying to catch up. Too much has happened. I was kidnapped by a cat, my sister nearly died, and I just walked through a holy oven."
Akira's grip on my hand loosened slightly, his expression shifting at once to one of deep concern. "I am pressing you. Forgive me."
"No, you are not pressing!" I said quickly. "I just... I want to do this properly. If we are going to be married, truly, actually, forever married... then I want to know you. Not only the Demon Prince. Not only the man from the prophecy. I want to know the one who likes cats and drinks bitter tea."
I squeezed his hand. "I need us to move slowly. Very slowly."
Akira did not look offended. He did not look wounded. If anything, the respect in his amber eyes deepened into something even more breathtaking.
He lifted my hand and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to the inside of my wrist, right over the pulse.
"I waited two decades in darkness," the warlord murmured against my skin, sending a violent shiver down my spine. "I can wait for you to be ready to walk in the light beside me. We will move as slowly as you wish, Kitsune."
Gods above, I thought, my heart breaking into a frantic little dance against my ribs. Slow burn is going to kill me.
Before I could say anything else capable of humiliating me further, the heavy sliding doors to the inner chamber rattled loudly.
"My Lord!" the Captain's voice boomed through the paper screens, shattering the romantic, tension-soaked bubble. "Forgive the interruption!"
Akira sighed and gently released my hand. The deadly, authoritative Lord of the North slid back over him like an old familiar mask.
"Enter, Captain," Akira said, rising to his feet and tying his robes securely.
The doors slid open. The Captain bowed low, holding a scroll sealed in the Emperor's golden wax. The sight of it turned my stomach.
"An Imperial Messenger has arrived at the gates, My Lord," the Captain reported, his scarred face tight with anger. "The Emperor has formally acknowledged Lady Kitsune's survival of the trial."
"How generous of him," Akira said with a cold sneer. "And what does the rat want now?"
"He has ordered you to depart from the capital," the Captain said, holding out the scroll. "Immediately. The decree states that since the wedding rites have been recognized by the gods, it is improper for the Lord of the Northern Marches to remain in the temporary estate. You are ordered to return to your fortress in the North with your new bride. By nightfall."
"Nightfall?" I blurted, scrambling to my feet. "That is only a few hours away! We cannot travel! Rin is still recovering, and you were just cooked by holy fire!"
Akira took the scroll without even glancing at the seal. He crushed it casually in his fist, and blue spirit-fire reduced the Emperor's decree to a scatter of ash.
"He is afraid," Akira said smoothly, brushing the ash from his hand. "He saw you survive what should not be survived, and he saw me walk through his divine fire. He knows he cannot kill us quietly in the capital now. So he sends us back to the ice."
"Can we fight it?" I asked, looking between him and the Captain.
"We could," Akira said, turning his gaze to me. "But the North is my domain. The Emperor's spies have no reach there. My fortress cannot be breached. Rin will have the finest healers, the best food, and a warm hearth. It is safe."
He crossed to me, looking down with a fierce, protective light in his eyes.
"Are you ready to see your true home, wife?"
I thought of the freezing, poisoned basement I had scrubbed for nine years. I thought of Uncle Kenji's bamboo sword. There was nothing left for me in this glittering, venomous capital.
Then I looked at the pink-haired warlord who had quite literally burned for me.
"Pack the cat," I told him, a real grin spreading across my face. "We're going on a road trip."