Night yawned through the open door. The glint of the stars seemed to mock Kagome as she glared after Ren long after he’d vanished from sight. The first step she’d taken in pursuit of him had been met with a heavy answering one from the guard behind her, and she’d grumbled, “So that’s how it’s

“Well, my dear,” Ren said smugly as he entered the room. Striding straight up to Rin, he slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her to him, his wolfish smile fixing on Kagome instead. “Have you shared the good news with her yet?” Stiff with surprise, Rin looked to Kagome, at a loss. Just

Kagome lost count of how many more days she passed in isolation. In vain. The miko felt herself withering from within. This was a waiting game, she had decided. A battle of attrition. Ren couldn’t keep her locked up like this forever. But just how long could he? It wasn’t that Kagome couldn’t escape. But

Suspended in a strange mixture of lethargy and agitation, Kagome endured her days of ‘solace’ in the locked palace room. Grudgingly, she assumed the mindset she’d been forced to adopt countless times during her adventures to collect the fragments of the Shikon Jewel: namely, the mindset of the kidnappé. It had been a long time,

Kagome’s expression was flat as she watched a coin purse appear from one of the rich, dark folds of her visitor’s haori. Weighing the purse a hefty, clinking moment in his palm, the visitor clapped it to the guard’s shoulder with a smile. “Your shift is ending, is it not?” the monk asked just as

“Ren-heichou,” Kagome greeted lowly, as he drew to a stop near the foot of her bed. “You’ve got some nerve shutting me up like this. Ikiryou, too—you’d better bring him here before I get really pissed-off at you.” The samurai captain’s smile didn’t falter for a second. He was looking sharper and more lordly than