Kagome’s feet were wooden, dragging. She knew what she had to do, loath though she was to do it.

But a figure on the veranda made her pause in dim surprise.

“Yahiko!” she exclaimed, her heart pounding as she hastened over to him. Ikiryou’s whereabouts were unknown, and the sudden, paranoid fear that he might leap out from the shadows again consumed her. “What are you doing out of bed?”

As she took him by the shoulders, the boy looked up at her, though only slightly. Clothed in his fine sleeping robe, he stood straight and tall, frowning through the last of his drowsiness—a stern little lord roused from his slumber. His mussed dark hair streamed down his back and shoulders like swathes of spilled ink. His brown eyes were dark and cool, as they flicked to the court at her back.

“Natsuko,” he asked, “is she going to die?”

“I don’t know,” Kagome answered honestly. “She’s badly hurt.”

Yahiko’s gaze narrowed slightly. “Good.”

Kagome released him abruptly. “Yahiko! What’s the matter with you?—what a terrible thing to say!”

“I mean it,” he said coldly. “I hate her. I hope she dies.”

At her limit, Kagome snatched him up by the arm and started marching him back along the path to his quarters. Yahiko didn’t resist. Throwing open the door to his room, she pushed him into bed and yanked up the sheets to his chin. As she was tucking him in, his dark eyes remained trained upon her all the while.

“Go to sleep, and stay asleep. And no more wishing ill on other people! I don’t want to hear such hateful talk from you ever again—do you understand me?”

Sullenly, Yahiko nodded. As Kagome rose to leave, his sudden grip on her wrist arrested her—quite literally. It was a surprisingly strong grip, callused and hard from the rigors of daily training. It gave Kagome pause, made her take a fresh look at him. He’d grown much over the past few years, without her fully realizing that he had.

“My father—he’s dying, isn’t he?”

Kagome grimaced away. Gods give her strength…

“Yahiko—”

“I heard you tell my sister so.”

Heavily, Kagome met his unflinching look. “Yes,” she admitted, figuring there was no point in denying it now, “although I still think he has awhile left.”

Yahiko’s grip relaxed, though he held to her still. “I knew he was dying. I know he’s my real father, too; he told me so himself, though I’d guessed it already. It seems everyone else knows it as well.”

Kagome sighed, rubbing at her temples. “I don’t know about everyone. But yes, it’s true—he’s your father. Your ‘real’ father, though that doesn’t discredit the man who raised you.”

“No,” Yahiko said. “But you’re not my mother. Everyone knows that for sure.”

A tendril of discomfort snaked down Kagome’s spine. “No,” she said stiffly, guardedly. “I’m not your mother.”

Yahiko’s gaze slanted aside. “When my father dies, I’ll be lord of the castle, won’t I?”

“When your father dies,” Kagome said, a bit of steel entering her voice, “and when you’re grown, then yes—you’ll be lord of the castle.”

“I’ll be grown soon,” Yahiko said, his fingers tightening around her wrist as he looked to her again. “Then I’ll be lord, and you’ll be my lady.”

Kagome swallowed. “Yahiko, that’s not—”

“I’m not weak like my father. When I’m lord, everyone will have to do as I say. You will too. You’ll have to stay with me—not Natsuko or anyone else. All those things you do with her, you’ll have to do with me instead.”

Kagome tensed, staring down at him in alarm. Desire smoldered darkly in his eyes, edged the features of his boyish face. Yahiko—this so-called son of hers. But he had never seen her as his mother, and she saw now that he never would. In him was all of Koshirou’s shrewdness and Mayuri’s carnality rolled into one. She looked at the boy and saw the shadow of the man. She saw the ripening of his obsession, saw their positions reversed in a vision of horror—herself below, and him above…

Kagome ripped her arm free of his hold and strode from the room, leaving him glaring after her in heated promise.

Inuyasha © Rumiko Takahashi