Forbidden Fruit
I came first over on iyfic_contest for their oneshot prompt 'Heirloom'. I adore writing a feisty Izayoi and my affection for Inu no Taisho has always been apparent. Thanks go to forthrightly for the banner!
Title: Forbidden Fruit
Author: aimee_blue
Prompt: Heirloom
Rating: T
Words: 5,300
Summary: Izayoi discovers that being devoured isn't necessarily always a bad thing.
Scowling irritably at the table in front of her, the fifteen year old princess ignored the idle chatter of the nakodo and her parents, preferring to imagine she was somewhere else entirely. Someone else entirely.
“He sounds like a fine young gentleman,” her mother gushed animatedly, seemingly ignoring her daughters scowl in favour of hanging on the matchmaker’s every word.
Curling her fingers around her teacup, Izayoi lifted the steaming beverage to red-painted lips and sipped daintily. Her mother was wrong on both counts, Lord Kamenosuke had probably been young forty years ago and fine suggested a certain level of grace and decorum. Izayoi knew better; she had seen him eat. Repressing a shudder at the unpleasant flashback, she set her teacup back onto the table soundlessly and trained her eyes on the table listlessly.
“His family is very influential,” her father blathered, underlining a name on the nakodo’s list with a score of his chubby forefinger.
Instantly Izayoi could determine who her father was speaking of; Lord Denjiro. Son of a noble his estate was perhaps more grand than her family’s own and his opulent furnishings, extravagant knickknacks and expensive tastes were widely known. But so was the fact that he already had three wives. Mayhap he was collecting dowries.
“You have given us a lot to think on,” her mother smiled passively at the busybody who was trying to stare a hole through Izayoi’s head; most probably because the young princess was ignoring her. “Thank you ever so much for coming, surely we will contact you with a choice soon.”
“Hmph...” the nakodo tucked her rolled up scroll under one arm imperiously, “it had better be soon. The good ones get snapped up very quickly.”
“Thank you for your time,” Izayoi spoke, voice carefully neutral as she bowed to the nakodo.
As soon as the door slid shut on the old hag, Izayoi’s perfect seiza sagged just a little and a petulant pout settled on her painted lips.
“Ghastly old woman,” she muttered under her breath.
“Izayoi!” her mother whimpered querulously, at a loss as to how to deal with her only daughter’s obstinate ways.
Her father, as he always did when Izayoi became difficult, began to palm his opium pipe almost absentmindedly. “It will be a surprise if you are ever to be married with a sting like that, daughter mine. One must hope that you can keep the poison from spilling over your lips until after you are wed.”
Izayoi’s eyes narrowed dangerously at her father’s harsh words. “Perhaps that way my poison might release me from my marital bonds. For I should rather marry solitude than a boar such as those candidates!” she gestured wildly with one hand to the scroll the nakodo had left behind.
Her father sighed, slumping a little as if resigning himself to a life of great hardships. “And have us nurse you here forever? I would shudder to think on it!”
Izayoi’s eyes stung at such a harsh rejection from her father, noting that though her mother twittered in the background, she made no move to disagree with her father.
“I am not a child, I have little need of your nursery,” she turned her face from her father and tilted her chin up stubbornly, cheeks red in anger under her white face paint.
“We will set up a meeting with Lords Kamenosuke and Denjiro,” her father decided, frowning at her stubborn posture.
Izayoi’s head whipped around to stare at her father once again, her hairpins jingling slightly at the jerky movement. “As I have no need of your nursery, your assistance isn’t required either; I will find myself a husband, Chichi-ue-sama.”
Her father scoffed disdainfully. “You will? Then do so by the end of this week.”
“Chichi-ue-sama!” Izayoi slammed her hands onto the table in a gesture of defiance, “That is impossible!”
“Then suffer through the matchmaking,” he sniffed, laying out his ultimatum harshly as he strode angrily from the room, leaving her alone with her mother.
Eyes shining with angry tears, Izayoi glowered down at the table and her lukewarm tea.
Timid as always, her mother laid a placid hand on her daughter’s shoulder for a moment and whispered, “You should not have angered him so, daughter mine,” before ghosting from the room silently.
Clenching her fists on her knees, Izayoi cursed everyone with the vilest and bitter curses that she’d ever heard the guard use from time to time and stood, her back drawing into a straight and proud line. Striding from the room, she walked along the hallway in her thick tabi, ignoring any servants she came across.
Her stride did not slow until she reached the door and, without even caring that she wasn’t wearing her geta, she strode confidently along the path that led to the peach tree at the far end of her family’s land. The peach tree had been her late grandfather’s favourite spot in the entire compound and thusly, it was hers. He’d been the only person in her house that she had thought of fondly and the person that had put into her head the idea of marrying out of love rather than money.
Her mother and her father had married due to a whole host of ridiculous reasons about their clans prospering, but in the end, they were two people who lived together and hated each other.
A lone plum clung to the topmost branch of the gnarled tree, dangling above the world in its solitary beauty. She smiled.
“Konbanwa, Momo-chan,” she greeted softly, “Are you lonely? Or free?”
“Which are you?”
The deep baritone of an unknown male startled her enough that she nearly tripped over her long sleeves as she whipped around to gaze at the intruder.
A demon stood a little ways away from her, in the partial shade of a crooked tree that bent over at the waist as if bowing. The only demon Izayoi had seen before had been a ghastly beast-like creature of darkness.
This male radiated an inner light that made him more stunning than anyone she had ever seen. Izayoi was momentarily struck dumb. Golden eyes glowed ethereally in his pale, regal face. Jagged blue facial stripes simply made his expression haughty and the silver topknot reminded her of the deadly grace of the samurai. Dressed in pristine white, he had upon his person two swords and a fearsome looking armour and shoulder guards.
“What?” she demanded, pulling herself up to her full height petulantly.
“Pardon,” he corrected, as if he was her elocution sensei, “and I asked if you were free or lonely.”
“I am... angry,” she decided with a sharp nod of her head, hairpins clinking musically.
This produced a fanged smirk upon the demon’s face. “Angry? One of such beauty should not be angry.”
Swallowing her blush at a compliment from such a beautiful yet powerful looking male, she responded sharply. “You speak of my beauty, demon, when yours is so superior? Cease your flattery.”
The demon’s smirk widened, a fang peeking out over his bottom lip as he straightened and pushed away from the tree he had been leaning against. “If I was flattering, Hime-chan, you would be truly angry. A statement of fact however, is sublime enough on its own to make roses bloom on your cheeks.”
“Do not think that it was you that put them there,” she retorted smartly, eyes flashing, “it is merely a humid night.”
“Then perhaps it would please the lady to divest herself of a few layers?”
This time, there was no escaping the fact that it was his words that made her blush so red that not even her painted-face could hide her embarrassment.
“Beast!”
He chuckled, a low and wicked sound that made her heart skip a beat. “You humans really are too modest.”
“Demons really are too blunt with their manner of speaking,” she huffed piously.
“You are my first,” he commented offhandedly, taking a slow small step towards her, noting happily that she did not shy away from him.
“Your first? Your first what?” Puzzlement furrowed her brows and drew up a tiny crease between them eliciting within him the bizarre urge to smooth away with the pad of his thumb.
“Human.”
She blinked a bit bamboozled at the fact that he’d never met a human before.
“Or rather,” he backtracked, “you are the first whose entrails I haven’t been wiping off my sword.”
Wrinkling her nose, she narrowed her eyes at him. “Vile.”
“Indeed, they are.”
“You are.”
“Entrails aren’t?”
“Those too,” she sighed in a highly unladylike manner, “stop being so childish.”
A silvery brow was quirked incredulously. “I am three hundred years old.”
“Well, I’m fifteen!”
Golden eyes narrowed and she fought to stop herself squirming uncomfortably as his gaze traced every inch of her silk-clad form critically.
“A babe,” he murmured thoughtfully as he took a step closer; Izayoi was shocked to find not a metre between them as he performed a slow circle around her. As if she was the cornered prey and he her predator. Maybe that was the case.
When he settled back in front of her, she tilted her chin. She hated to feel inferior and he was a great deal taller than her small frame.
“Why are you angry, Hime-chan?” he asked, leaning in as his golden eyes smouldered devastatingly; making it impossible to look away.
Blinking, her brain rapidly scrambled for an answer; where on earth had the collected Izayoi gone to? “My father wishes me to wed. I would rather wait to fall in love.”
This seemed to amuse him. “You believe in love, little one?”
“You do not?” she returned sharply.
He peered into her eyes for a long moment, seemingly completely intent on something, before he pulled back and looked away, offering a half-hearted shrug. “Perhaps...”
The distant calling of her name alerted Izayoi to the fact that she was still in a place where people could see her. The demon hadn’t spirited her away. Though she wasn’t sure how she’d feel about that anymore...
“Wait,” she turned to pin the demon with a gimlet stare, “these lands are owned by my father. You aren’t permitted entrance.”
Shaking his head slowly, he responded, “And that, little one, is the problem with humans; they think that land can be owned. I am the demon lord of the west, but I merely look after these lands for the gods.”
“You are a lord?”
He smirked rakishly. “Do you find it hard to believe?”
“Hm... you are rather handsome for a lord.” she murmured, pursing her lips, “Every lord I have met has at least one fault.”
“I am by no means perfection,” he hummed, golden eyes sparking.
“Then what is your fault?” she queried, tilting her head expectantly.
Golden eyes darkened wickedly and he stepped forward dangerously, close enough that their breath mingled.
“Stubborn to the last,” he uttered plainly, “what I want I will have.”
“Then we are alike,” she decided.
The shouting of her name became more and more frantic, and the demon turned to look at her home, tickling strands of silver hair teasing her face.
“They worry.”
“Should they?” she demanded glibly, thrilled at his slight grin.
“Perhaps,” he uttered, reaching up a hand to press his thumb against her bottom lip and cup her chin. A breathless moment passed in absolute stillness. And then he brought his thumb down, disturbing the crimson paint and smearing it across her cheek. “Are you worried?”
“No,” she declared surely.
“You should be.”
“Or you might devour my soul?” she asked insolently.
He chuckled again, the sound just as rich and sinful as before. “No, because you have to explain to your parents why your paint is smudged, Izayoi-chan.”
A whirl of silk and he was vanished. Izayoi scowled into the middle distance.
“Cheater.”
Drawing herself up composedly, ignoring how cold her feet were, she strode back to the house and ignored the servants as they questioned her whereabouts, marching past them to where dinner was being served.
As predicted, her mother gasped at the state of her and started to whimper about promiscuity and the like and her father clenched his opium pipe so hard she was sure he would break it.
“Izayoi!” he thundered, sending the servants scurrying from the room as she folded herself in seiza at her seat at the table.
“Yes, Chichi-ue-sama?” she asked, tone indifferent.
“You look disgraceful!”
Glancing at her outraged father, whose impotent fury was turning him a decidedly puce colour, she smiled slightly. “I met a Lord.”
This proclamation was met with much spluttering from her father and a squeaking, choking kind of noise from her mother.
“A Lord did this to you?”
“Indeed.”
“Preposterous!”
“Think what you like.”
Dinner was a tense affair after this, with her father trying to wring information about this Lord from his unusually taciturn daughter and her mother sitting silently, pursing her lips and shunning her meal altogether.
Sometime later, in the privacy of her own chambers, as one of her servants carefully unpinned each section of her elaborately pinned back hair and let it cascade over her shoulders, the door slid open to reveal her mother kneeling in the doorway as the last piece of hair tumbled over her shoulder.
“Haha-ue-sama?” Izayoi murmured, glancing at the servant, “You can go.”
As her mother sat next to Izayoi’s pallet, Izayoi smoothed down her sleeping yukata; relieved to be out of her face-paint and formal clothes.
“I would give you this,” her mother eventually murmured, looking only at the wall scroll behind Izayoi. Izayoi blinked mutely as her mother reached into the folds of her plum-coloured kimono and pulled out a tantō in a lacquered purple scabbard decorated with a plum blossom tree. “Your grandfather would want you to have it.”
Izayoi took the tantō from her mother with shaking hands and clutched the precious heirloom to her chest tightly.
“Why are you giving this to me now?” Izayoi asked quietly, hair tumbling down from her shoulders to hide the nostalgic expression on her face.
“I saw you earlier, by the plum tree,” her mother admitted in a mumble, “I will not tell your father, but I would have some insurance of your safety now that you are consorting with demons.”
Izayoi glanced up sharply, looking intently at the blank side of her mother’s face. This was the first time in what felt like a long time in which her mother had displayed this kind of affection for her. Her eyes stung and she bit her lip.
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Haha-ue-sama.”
0-0-0
Striding from her parent’s house after breakfast, the young Hime remembered to don her geta this time before taking to the grassy land outside the boundaries of her smothering home and continuing towards the peach tree and its lone peach.
But, just before she made her final step out of the suffocating abode of her father, her arm was jerked back and she ground to a halt.
Twirling indignantly, Izayoi glowered at the person who had dared to lay a hand on her and was drawn up short at the sight of the demon from the day before, holding the perfectly ripe peach in the palm of his hand.
“You took the peach?” she asked, somehow saddened that he had wrested the fruit from the tree and shortened its life.
“On the contrary,” he uttered, a fang peeking out over his lower lip as he smirked down at the little Hime, “it simply fell into my hands.”
“It fell?”
“Maybe it tired of being so alone,” the demon mused as he tucked it into the folds of his kimono, “and wished for someone to hold it.”
Izayoi snorted in a rather unladylike manner, earning an amused quirk of an eyebrow from her demonic companion. “More likely you will devour it.”
At her words, a darkly sensuous smirk formed on those luscious yet slightly cruel lips of his and he leant down to her, securing her in place by pinching one of her delicate hairpins between his claws. Defiant hazel eyes met with smouldering golden ones as he uttered, ever so quietly, “Being devoured can be quite a pleasant experience, Izayoi-chan.”
Perhaps it was a sinful combination of his words and the way his voice wrapped around her name like a caress, but Izayoi’s knees trembled slightly, even when he pulled away and put a respectable distance between them.
She blinked in mute astonishment as the ethereal male swept a bow, before straightening and, with a faintly mocking smile, asked, “Would you do me the kind favour of accompanying me this day, my lady?”
She crooked a brow at him incredulously. “Do I have a choice?”
“Hnn...” he tilted his head to one side in a considering manner, “not about the accompaniment,” he considered, “but this will be the only thing I force, my lady,” his smile turned mischievous, “the rest you will give willingly.”
Izayoi folded her hands into her sleeves and turned her nose up at him. “Really?” she queried mock-doubtfully.
He threw back his head, topknot casting his hair about his shoulders, and barked out a laugh. “Keh, wench,” he remonstrated.
“Demon,” she threw back haughtily and suddenly found herself swept up in a swirl of silk and a flurry of silver hair.The world felt like it was upside down, and she was moving too fast to see anything, but she was also tucked tightly into the side of a powerful body securely, fists knotted in silk.
The short sharp stop nearly had her falling over, but she held her balance tentatively and her dignity firmly and merely braced herself steadily against the demon for a moment.
After she was certain that she wouldn’t fall over, she twirled away from the demon and prodded him sharply in his silk-clad chest.
Eyes flashing, she hissed, “If you ever do that to me again, I will not forgive you!”
Smirking, his golden eyes followed the rise and fall of her heaving chest with interest. “I apologise, I thought you could handle it.”
The smirk only widened as she faintly simmered with impotent rage at his insinuation of her weakness. Fascinating... the curiosity reminded him of when he had captured crickets as a child; to inspect how different they were from demons, he was drawn to her in the same way, but this lure was deeper, more intoxicating, one false move would mean falling into the abyss... if he hadn’t already fallen.
Drawing herself up, Izayoi made a visible attempt at pulling her composure back from the brink and merely scowled haughtily at him. “Handling it is very different from liking it,” she sniffed.
The chuckle murmured through the air again, melting the rigidity that had set into her shoulders somewhat as it poured across her like a silken caress.
“Indeed,” he commented, taking her shoulder and casually turning her to face their new location, away from her home, “Do you like it?”
Izayoi had seen beauty before, but, in the confines of her suffocating home, most beauty was materialistic or manufactured. This beauty was raw and wild; analogous to the demon stood beside her.
He had whisked her away to a dell surrounded on three sides by a jagged mountainside terrain, and occupied by a small waterfall that whispered secrets into the quiet of the secluded basin.
“It is acceptable,” she answered composedly, not catching the faint smirk from the Yokai at her downplayed awe.
Watching suspiciously as he sketched a bow before her and extended a hand, Izayoi waited for him to speak. “Won’t you come and sit with me, my lady?”
Izayoi’s eyes twinkled. “If I may be so bold as to ask the name of my companion?” she played along, enjoying the bemused blink as he realised the truth behind her words; he’d neglected to share his name entirely, “For he has forgotten himself and failed to impart it to me.”
“My name is Touga, Great Dog General and Lord of the West,” he declared imperiously.
“Then, yes, Touga-sama, I will sit with you for a time,” she decided primly, a twinkle fixed firmly in her eyes as she placed her slim hand into his own clawed one.
Touga lead her deeper into the dell - close enough to the waterfall that Izayoi could distinguish rainbows in the spray it created, but far enough away that they did not get wet - and sat her on the stump of a felled tree, claiming a patch of grass for his own seat.
Rather, he didn’t sit, instead he lounged, laying out on one side and propping his head in his hand to inspect her closely; apparently completely at ease with the situation and completely unconcerned that he had put himself beneath her. Izayoi frowned at the breathless feeling that accompanied the thought that he was honouring her by sitting lower than her. It was merely coincidence.
“You have told me your name,” she murmured, “but nothing else. Are you always so secretive?”
Touga tossed the end of his topknot back behind his shoulder. “I am not secretive. It is simply that I have yet to tell you every nuance of my life,” he smiled crookedly, “I wonder why you are so eager to know, Izayoi-chan.”
Harrumphing with as much dignity as was possible, the tip of Izayoi’s nose turned a little red as she retorted, “I am not eager, merely curious.”
“Hnn...” he uttered lazily, eyes drifting to a lazy half-mast as his long lashes cast shadows on his cheeks, “I have a son and I was mated once.”
Izayoi blinked; whatever she had been expecting, it most certainly had not been that. If he had a wife - she assumed mating was like marriage from what little she had heard of demon practises - what was he doing here with her?
It appeared her thoughts were plainly expressed on her face as Touga snorted. “I was mated, past tense. Nami and I... we were not the best match in the world. We mated for the same reasons your father wishes to marry you off; for political and financial reasons. My son is as tall as me, as cold as his mother and will be as powerful as us both combined,” here he let out a disparaging snort, “that is, if he can stop being his mother’s son long enough to achieve greatness.”
“So... your wife is dead?”
Touga shook his head apathetically. “No, but she denounced me as her mate - which is possible in Yokai circles as long as a life-bond is not created.”
“A... life-bond?” she asked, voice unsure.
“When souls are bound together during the mating,” he expounded with a grand sweep of his arm, “the partners then share a lifespan, it is truly unbreakable.”
“Oh,” she murmured thoughtfully, silently pondering over the suddenly intense gaze Touga had pinned her with; it made her want to squirm in her seat.
Seemingly noticing her discomfort, Touga reached out a long hand to cup her painted cheek, causing her to freeze where she sat in trepidation. The same curious intensity still lingered in his gaze as he trailed his fingertips up to her elaborately styled hair.
“Would you take it down?”
Izayoi blinked at the strange request. “You want me to unpin it?”
“Hnn...” he pulled an opulent pin from her hair, “yes, please.”
Izayoi thought it was the ‘please’ that made her begin to unpin her long hair from its elegantly designed style. Apparently he was helping too as her fingers would sporadically encounter his own as they both worked on pulling her hair free from its bindings.
Eventually, when her long hair tumbled around her shoulders in an ebony waterfall, Touga made an approving sound in the back of his throat.
“I much prefer you like that,” he murmured idly, running clawed fingers from her scalp down the length until his hand was resting on her hip, “your beauty is decadent without it.”
Izayoi frowned as roses bloomed on her cheeks. “I know,” she told him, tilting her chin arrogantly.
The dog demon snorted at her playful arrogance. “So self-assured?”
“Of course.”
“Then...” his eyes flashed mischievously, “you would wash off the face paint so that I might see you properly?”
This produced a hiss of outraged from the Hime, and she glowered haughtily at him. “I do not have to do what you say.”
“So you are afraid?”
Knowing you shouldn’t rise to the bait wasn’t enough to stop you, apparently, as Izayoi scowled and made her way to kneel next to the pool that the waterfall was emptying itself out into.
Mindful of her silken furisode, Izayoi cupped the icy water and meticulously washed her face of the paints she was used to wearing every day. Touga’s words had reminded her of an almost forgotten memory of her grandfather. It had been the first time the servants had painted her face and he’d frowned, telling her that he much preferred her usual beauty to this artifice.
Smiling nostalgically, she sat back and patted her face dry with her handkerchief, before turning to glare at the demon shadowing her.
“Happy now?” she asked, her cheeks more visibly red in her pale face after the removal of the paint.
Touga smiled crookedly. “I am happier now that your beauty is not cloaked,” he admitted, reaching out a clawed finger to tip her chin up so he could inspect her face.
Glowering still, she yanked her chin from his grasp and replied tartly, “Is it not due to your own vanity that you wish to strip me of my beauty? You cannot think me beautiful in comparison to yourself.”
Touga blinked, bemused at her sudden ire. “You think me beautiful?” he mused aloud, wondering whether it was a compliment or not.
“You wish me to say it again?” she snapped, “How egotistical of you.” She sniffed snootily.
At this, he threw his head back and laughed properly at her stinging comment. Izayoi refrained from stomping her foot, she would remain aloof.
Turning mirth filled golden eyes back onto the little princess, Touga cajoled. “Your waspishness is refreshingly likened to a kitten who thinks it is a neko Yokai. Come, I meant not to offend, rather to flatter. You are beautiful to this one, and your beauty outshines my own, Hime-chan.”
Appearing to have calmed a little; she breezed past him towards the tree stump she had been perching on. “You would bear in mind my sting, if you think me a wasp.”
Inclining his head in acknowledgment, he claimed a space next to her tree stump again, and perused her form with a well trained eye.
“Do you fear me?” he asked softly, eyes narrowed as if he was concentrating on something.
Blinking bemusedly, Izayoi dazedly shook her head; once again dumbfounded at the depth of concern that now occupied his expressive golden eyes.
“Why are you armed?” he asked gently, as if he was coaxing a skittish kitten from under a kotatsu.
For a moment, Izayoi had no idea what he was talking about, and then it dawned on her abruptly. Her grandfather’s tanto seemed to grow heavy from it’s hiding place stashed in the layers of her kimono.
“My mother gave it to me,” she whispered, eyes downcast, “from my grandfather. He was my ally when I was young, he taught me what it was like to love someone unconditionally.”
“The one who taught you it was better to love,” he surmised, “So it is precious to you?”
She nodded mutely, her loose hair flying around her head at the speed of her movement.
“Would you let me see it?”
Maybe it was the soft coaxing way in which he was speaking, or maybe she would give in to any of his whims no matter what they were, Izayoi didn’t know, but she mutely handed the tanto over.
Taking the weapon carefully from the princess, he drew the blade and eyed it critically.
“You thought to use this against a Yokai?” he asked incredulously, stifling a laugh, “this is a decorative blade,” he held it up for her inspection, “the edge has been dulled, see?”
Izayoi blinked, cheeks warming in embarrassment for thinking it would be of any use. “I would not know,” she muttered, as he handed her back the tanto and she stashed it in her kimono once more. “But then, it wasn’t about the weapon,” she admitted, “it was the fact that it was my grandfather’s gift to me, as if he was still protecting me even in death.”
“A poignant sentiment,” he acknowledged.
“And a pointless tanto,” she quipped indulgently.
Chuckling softly, he unsheathed his ominous looking sword, pleased that the tiny woman did not flinch away from him in the slightest, and brought the blade to his hair, severing a lock and catching it.
“What are you doing?” Izayoi asked bemusedly as she watched his deft fingers move in a repetitive pattern over the lock of hair. Smirking lightly, he turned and gathered her wrist, tying the newly braided hair around it and then, leaning down, he kissed the knot and Izayoi watched in wonder as it turned into something resembling white silver.
“There,” he affirmed in a self-satisfied tone of voice.
She made a little noise of admiration in her throat as she turned her wrist this way and that way to inspect his handiwork. “How did you do that?”
“It is a subtle bending of my youki around my hair,” he expounded, “it will grant you protection from any demon, none will dare attack that which is mine.”
Touched at his attempted protection, she clasped that wrist to her chest, but then the rest of his words got through to her and she scowled at him. “Yours? What if I do not wish to be owned?” she shot him a scathing look, “You said everything would be my decision, did you lie?”
Touga tilted his head consideringly. “Yes, this is your decision,” he agreed somberly, “it is your decision as to whether you marry a human man you have never met, or whether you stay with me. do you choose a loveless marriage? Or do you choose me?”
Izayoi blinked, feeling betrayed by the way her heart was racing at the prospect of him wanting her.
Smirking at her expression, he pulled the peach from his sleeve with a magician’s flourish. “Do you choose to be devoured, in the most pleasant way, by me, little one?”
Shifting so that she was knelt at his side, she bent towards the peach and bit into it’s delicate flesh with her dull little human teeth, a trail of the peach's juices running down her chin drew his attention inexorably.
Tilting her head to one side, she murmured demurely, but with a fierce twinkle in her eyes, “And you will be devoured in return.”
0-0-0
Izayoi’s mother left her husband to simmer in his own impotent rage, heading through the hallways of her home to her daughter’s bedchambers. The girl had not returned from meeting the demon that morning and her father was livid as she had missed the meeting with the samurai Takemaru, who would only work for their household under the request of her flighty daughter.
Drawing the door open silently, she peered into the room at the empty futon and gasped, pressing a hand to her lips.
There, on the bed, were her daughter’s hairpins, the hairpins she had gifted her daughter many years ago.
And, sat on her pillow was a single peach pit.
Closing her eyes and swallowing her hurt, the lady slid the door shut and resigned herself to a simple fact.
Izayoi had been spirited away.
Title: Forbidden Fruit
Author: aimee_blue
Prompt: Heirloom
Rating: T
Words: 5,300
Summary: Izayoi discovers that being devoured isn't necessarily always a bad thing.
Scowling irritably at the table in front of her, the fifteen year old princess ignored the idle chatter of the nakodo and her parents, preferring to imagine she was somewhere else entirely. Someone else entirely.
“He sounds like a fine young gentleman,” her mother gushed animatedly, seemingly ignoring her daughters scowl in favour of hanging on the matchmaker’s every word.
Curling her fingers around her teacup, Izayoi lifted the steaming beverage to red-painted lips and sipped daintily. Her mother was wrong on both counts, Lord Kamenosuke had probably been young forty years ago and fine suggested a certain level of grace and decorum. Izayoi knew better; she had seen him eat. Repressing a shudder at the unpleasant flashback, she set her teacup back onto the table soundlessly and trained her eyes on the table listlessly.
“His family is very influential,” her father blathered, underlining a name on the nakodo’s list with a score of his chubby forefinger.
Instantly Izayoi could determine who her father was speaking of; Lord Denjiro. Son of a noble his estate was perhaps more grand than her family’s own and his opulent furnishings, extravagant knickknacks and expensive tastes were widely known. But so was the fact that he already had three wives. Mayhap he was collecting dowries.
“You have given us a lot to think on,” her mother smiled passively at the busybody who was trying to stare a hole through Izayoi’s head; most probably because the young princess was ignoring her. “Thank you ever so much for coming, surely we will contact you with a choice soon.”
“Hmph...” the nakodo tucked her rolled up scroll under one arm imperiously, “it had better be soon. The good ones get snapped up very quickly.”
“Thank you for your time,” Izayoi spoke, voice carefully neutral as she bowed to the nakodo.
As soon as the door slid shut on the old hag, Izayoi’s perfect seiza sagged just a little and a petulant pout settled on her painted lips.
“Ghastly old woman,” she muttered under her breath.
“Izayoi!” her mother whimpered querulously, at a loss as to how to deal with her only daughter’s obstinate ways.
Her father, as he always did when Izayoi became difficult, began to palm his opium pipe almost absentmindedly. “It will be a surprise if you are ever to be married with a sting like that, daughter mine. One must hope that you can keep the poison from spilling over your lips until after you are wed.”
Izayoi’s eyes narrowed dangerously at her father’s harsh words. “Perhaps that way my poison might release me from my marital bonds. For I should rather marry solitude than a boar such as those candidates!” she gestured wildly with one hand to the scroll the nakodo had left behind.
Her father sighed, slumping a little as if resigning himself to a life of great hardships. “And have us nurse you here forever? I would shudder to think on it!”
Izayoi’s eyes stung at such a harsh rejection from her father, noting that though her mother twittered in the background, she made no move to disagree with her father.
“I am not a child, I have little need of your nursery,” she turned her face from her father and tilted her chin up stubbornly, cheeks red in anger under her white face paint.
“We will set up a meeting with Lords Kamenosuke and Denjiro,” her father decided, frowning at her stubborn posture.
Izayoi’s head whipped around to stare at her father once again, her hairpins jingling slightly at the jerky movement. “As I have no need of your nursery, your assistance isn’t required either; I will find myself a husband, Chichi-ue-sama.”
Her father scoffed disdainfully. “You will? Then do so by the end of this week.”
“Chichi-ue-sama!” Izayoi slammed her hands onto the table in a gesture of defiance, “That is impossible!”
“Then suffer through the matchmaking,” he sniffed, laying out his ultimatum harshly as he strode angrily from the room, leaving her alone with her mother.
Eyes shining with angry tears, Izayoi glowered down at the table and her lukewarm tea.
Timid as always, her mother laid a placid hand on her daughter’s shoulder for a moment and whispered, “You should not have angered him so, daughter mine,” before ghosting from the room silently.
Clenching her fists on her knees, Izayoi cursed everyone with the vilest and bitter curses that she’d ever heard the guard use from time to time and stood, her back drawing into a straight and proud line. Striding from the room, she walked along the hallway in her thick tabi, ignoring any servants she came across.
Her stride did not slow until she reached the door and, without even caring that she wasn’t wearing her geta, she strode confidently along the path that led to the peach tree at the far end of her family’s land. The peach tree had been her late grandfather’s favourite spot in the entire compound and thusly, it was hers. He’d been the only person in her house that she had thought of fondly and the person that had put into her head the idea of marrying out of love rather than money.
Her mother and her father had married due to a whole host of ridiculous reasons about their clans prospering, but in the end, they were two people who lived together and hated each other.
A lone plum clung to the topmost branch of the gnarled tree, dangling above the world in its solitary beauty. She smiled.
“Konbanwa, Momo-chan,” she greeted softly, “Are you lonely? Or free?”
“Which are you?”
The deep baritone of an unknown male startled her enough that she nearly tripped over her long sleeves as she whipped around to gaze at the intruder.
A demon stood a little ways away from her, in the partial shade of a crooked tree that bent over at the waist as if bowing. The only demon Izayoi had seen before had been a ghastly beast-like creature of darkness.
This male radiated an inner light that made him more stunning than anyone she had ever seen. Izayoi was momentarily struck dumb. Golden eyes glowed ethereally in his pale, regal face. Jagged blue facial stripes simply made his expression haughty and the silver topknot reminded her of the deadly grace of the samurai. Dressed in pristine white, he had upon his person two swords and a fearsome looking armour and shoulder guards.
“What?” she demanded, pulling herself up to her full height petulantly.
“Pardon,” he corrected, as if he was her elocution sensei, “and I asked if you were free or lonely.”
“I am... angry,” she decided with a sharp nod of her head, hairpins clinking musically.
This produced a fanged smirk upon the demon’s face. “Angry? One of such beauty should not be angry.”
Swallowing her blush at a compliment from such a beautiful yet powerful looking male, she responded sharply. “You speak of my beauty, demon, when yours is so superior? Cease your flattery.”
The demon’s smirk widened, a fang peeking out over his bottom lip as he straightened and pushed away from the tree he had been leaning against. “If I was flattering, Hime-chan, you would be truly angry. A statement of fact however, is sublime enough on its own to make roses bloom on your cheeks.”
“Do not think that it was you that put them there,” she retorted smartly, eyes flashing, “it is merely a humid night.”
“Then perhaps it would please the lady to divest herself of a few layers?”
This time, there was no escaping the fact that it was his words that made her blush so red that not even her painted-face could hide her embarrassment.
“Beast!”
He chuckled, a low and wicked sound that made her heart skip a beat. “You humans really are too modest.”
“Demons really are too blunt with their manner of speaking,” she huffed piously.
“You are my first,” he commented offhandedly, taking a slow small step towards her, noting happily that she did not shy away from him.
“Your first? Your first what?” Puzzlement furrowed her brows and drew up a tiny crease between them eliciting within him the bizarre urge to smooth away with the pad of his thumb.
“Human.”
She blinked a bit bamboozled at the fact that he’d never met a human before.
“Or rather,” he backtracked, “you are the first whose entrails I haven’t been wiping off my sword.”
Wrinkling her nose, she narrowed her eyes at him. “Vile.”
“Indeed, they are.”
“You are.”
“Entrails aren’t?”
“Those too,” she sighed in a highly unladylike manner, “stop being so childish.”
A silvery brow was quirked incredulously. “I am three hundred years old.”
“Well, I’m fifteen!”
Golden eyes narrowed and she fought to stop herself squirming uncomfortably as his gaze traced every inch of her silk-clad form critically.
“A babe,” he murmured thoughtfully as he took a step closer; Izayoi was shocked to find not a metre between them as he performed a slow circle around her. As if she was the cornered prey and he her predator. Maybe that was the case.
When he settled back in front of her, she tilted her chin. She hated to feel inferior and he was a great deal taller than her small frame.
“Why are you angry, Hime-chan?” he asked, leaning in as his golden eyes smouldered devastatingly; making it impossible to look away.
Blinking, her brain rapidly scrambled for an answer; where on earth had the collected Izayoi gone to? “My father wishes me to wed. I would rather wait to fall in love.”
This seemed to amuse him. “You believe in love, little one?”
“You do not?” she returned sharply.
He peered into her eyes for a long moment, seemingly completely intent on something, before he pulled back and looked away, offering a half-hearted shrug. “Perhaps...”
The distant calling of her name alerted Izayoi to the fact that she was still in a place where people could see her. The demon hadn’t spirited her away. Though she wasn’t sure how she’d feel about that anymore...
“Wait,” she turned to pin the demon with a gimlet stare, “these lands are owned by my father. You aren’t permitted entrance.”
Shaking his head slowly, he responded, “And that, little one, is the problem with humans; they think that land can be owned. I am the demon lord of the west, but I merely look after these lands for the gods.”
“You are a lord?”
He smirked rakishly. “Do you find it hard to believe?”
“Hm... you are rather handsome for a lord.” she murmured, pursing her lips, “Every lord I have met has at least one fault.”
“I am by no means perfection,” he hummed, golden eyes sparking.
“Then what is your fault?” she queried, tilting her head expectantly.
Golden eyes darkened wickedly and he stepped forward dangerously, close enough that their breath mingled.
“Stubborn to the last,” he uttered plainly, “what I want I will have.”
“Then we are alike,” she decided.
The shouting of her name became more and more frantic, and the demon turned to look at her home, tickling strands of silver hair teasing her face.
“They worry.”
“Should they?” she demanded glibly, thrilled at his slight grin.
“Perhaps,” he uttered, reaching up a hand to press his thumb against her bottom lip and cup her chin. A breathless moment passed in absolute stillness. And then he brought his thumb down, disturbing the crimson paint and smearing it across her cheek. “Are you worried?”
“No,” she declared surely.
“You should be.”
“Or you might devour my soul?” she asked insolently.
He chuckled again, the sound just as rich and sinful as before. “No, because you have to explain to your parents why your paint is smudged, Izayoi-chan.”
A whirl of silk and he was vanished. Izayoi scowled into the middle distance.
“Cheater.”
Drawing herself up composedly, ignoring how cold her feet were, she strode back to the house and ignored the servants as they questioned her whereabouts, marching past them to where dinner was being served.
As predicted, her mother gasped at the state of her and started to whimper about promiscuity and the like and her father clenched his opium pipe so hard she was sure he would break it.
“Izayoi!” he thundered, sending the servants scurrying from the room as she folded herself in seiza at her seat at the table.
“Yes, Chichi-ue-sama?” she asked, tone indifferent.
“You look disgraceful!”
Glancing at her outraged father, whose impotent fury was turning him a decidedly puce colour, she smiled slightly. “I met a Lord.”
This proclamation was met with much spluttering from her father and a squeaking, choking kind of noise from her mother.
“A Lord did this to you?”
“Indeed.”
“Preposterous!”
“Think what you like.”
Dinner was a tense affair after this, with her father trying to wring information about this Lord from his unusually taciturn daughter and her mother sitting silently, pursing her lips and shunning her meal altogether.
Sometime later, in the privacy of her own chambers, as one of her servants carefully unpinned each section of her elaborately pinned back hair and let it cascade over her shoulders, the door slid open to reveal her mother kneeling in the doorway as the last piece of hair tumbled over her shoulder.
“Haha-ue-sama?” Izayoi murmured, glancing at the servant, “You can go.”
As her mother sat next to Izayoi’s pallet, Izayoi smoothed down her sleeping yukata; relieved to be out of her face-paint and formal clothes.
“I would give you this,” her mother eventually murmured, looking only at the wall scroll behind Izayoi. Izayoi blinked mutely as her mother reached into the folds of her plum-coloured kimono and pulled out a tantō in a lacquered purple scabbard decorated with a plum blossom tree. “Your grandfather would want you to have it.”
Izayoi took the tantō from her mother with shaking hands and clutched the precious heirloom to her chest tightly.
“Why are you giving this to me now?” Izayoi asked quietly, hair tumbling down from her shoulders to hide the nostalgic expression on her face.
“I saw you earlier, by the plum tree,” her mother admitted in a mumble, “I will not tell your father, but I would have some insurance of your safety now that you are consorting with demons.”
Izayoi glanced up sharply, looking intently at the blank side of her mother’s face. This was the first time in what felt like a long time in which her mother had displayed this kind of affection for her. Her eyes stung and she bit her lip.
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Haha-ue-sama.”
0-0-0
Striding from her parent’s house after breakfast, the young Hime remembered to don her geta this time before taking to the grassy land outside the boundaries of her smothering home and continuing towards the peach tree and its lone peach.
But, just before she made her final step out of the suffocating abode of her father, her arm was jerked back and she ground to a halt.
Twirling indignantly, Izayoi glowered at the person who had dared to lay a hand on her and was drawn up short at the sight of the demon from the day before, holding the perfectly ripe peach in the palm of his hand.
“You took the peach?” she asked, somehow saddened that he had wrested the fruit from the tree and shortened its life.
“On the contrary,” he uttered, a fang peeking out over his lower lip as he smirked down at the little Hime, “it simply fell into my hands.”
“It fell?”
“Maybe it tired of being so alone,” the demon mused as he tucked it into the folds of his kimono, “and wished for someone to hold it.”
Izayoi snorted in a rather unladylike manner, earning an amused quirk of an eyebrow from her demonic companion. “More likely you will devour it.”
At her words, a darkly sensuous smirk formed on those luscious yet slightly cruel lips of his and he leant down to her, securing her in place by pinching one of her delicate hairpins between his claws. Defiant hazel eyes met with smouldering golden ones as he uttered, ever so quietly, “Being devoured can be quite a pleasant experience, Izayoi-chan.”
Perhaps it was a sinful combination of his words and the way his voice wrapped around her name like a caress, but Izayoi’s knees trembled slightly, even when he pulled away and put a respectable distance between them.
She blinked in mute astonishment as the ethereal male swept a bow, before straightening and, with a faintly mocking smile, asked, “Would you do me the kind favour of accompanying me this day, my lady?”
She crooked a brow at him incredulously. “Do I have a choice?”
“Hnn...” he tilted his head to one side in a considering manner, “not about the accompaniment,” he considered, “but this will be the only thing I force, my lady,” his smile turned mischievous, “the rest you will give willingly.”
Izayoi folded her hands into her sleeves and turned her nose up at him. “Really?” she queried mock-doubtfully.
He threw back his head, topknot casting his hair about his shoulders, and barked out a laugh. “Keh, wench,” he remonstrated.
“Demon,” she threw back haughtily and suddenly found herself swept up in a swirl of silk and a flurry of silver hair.The world felt like it was upside down, and she was moving too fast to see anything, but she was also tucked tightly into the side of a powerful body securely, fists knotted in silk.
The short sharp stop nearly had her falling over, but she held her balance tentatively and her dignity firmly and merely braced herself steadily against the demon for a moment.
After she was certain that she wouldn’t fall over, she twirled away from the demon and prodded him sharply in his silk-clad chest.
Eyes flashing, she hissed, “If you ever do that to me again, I will not forgive you!”
Smirking, his golden eyes followed the rise and fall of her heaving chest with interest. “I apologise, I thought you could handle it.”
The smirk only widened as she faintly simmered with impotent rage at his insinuation of her weakness. Fascinating... the curiosity reminded him of when he had captured crickets as a child; to inspect how different they were from demons, he was drawn to her in the same way, but this lure was deeper, more intoxicating, one false move would mean falling into the abyss... if he hadn’t already fallen.
Drawing herself up, Izayoi made a visible attempt at pulling her composure back from the brink and merely scowled haughtily at him. “Handling it is very different from liking it,” she sniffed.
The chuckle murmured through the air again, melting the rigidity that had set into her shoulders somewhat as it poured across her like a silken caress.
“Indeed,” he commented, taking her shoulder and casually turning her to face their new location, away from her home, “Do you like it?”
Izayoi had seen beauty before, but, in the confines of her suffocating home, most beauty was materialistic or manufactured. This beauty was raw and wild; analogous to the demon stood beside her.
He had whisked her away to a dell surrounded on three sides by a jagged mountainside terrain, and occupied by a small waterfall that whispered secrets into the quiet of the secluded basin.
“It is acceptable,” she answered composedly, not catching the faint smirk from the Yokai at her downplayed awe.
Watching suspiciously as he sketched a bow before her and extended a hand, Izayoi waited for him to speak. “Won’t you come and sit with me, my lady?”
Izayoi’s eyes twinkled. “If I may be so bold as to ask the name of my companion?” she played along, enjoying the bemused blink as he realised the truth behind her words; he’d neglected to share his name entirely, “For he has forgotten himself and failed to impart it to me.”
“My name is Touga, Great Dog General and Lord of the West,” he declared imperiously.
“Then, yes, Touga-sama, I will sit with you for a time,” she decided primly, a twinkle fixed firmly in her eyes as she placed her slim hand into his own clawed one.
Touga lead her deeper into the dell - close enough to the waterfall that Izayoi could distinguish rainbows in the spray it created, but far enough away that they did not get wet - and sat her on the stump of a felled tree, claiming a patch of grass for his own seat.
Rather, he didn’t sit, instead he lounged, laying out on one side and propping his head in his hand to inspect her closely; apparently completely at ease with the situation and completely unconcerned that he had put himself beneath her. Izayoi frowned at the breathless feeling that accompanied the thought that he was honouring her by sitting lower than her. It was merely coincidence.
“You have told me your name,” she murmured, “but nothing else. Are you always so secretive?”
Touga tossed the end of his topknot back behind his shoulder. “I am not secretive. It is simply that I have yet to tell you every nuance of my life,” he smiled crookedly, “I wonder why you are so eager to know, Izayoi-chan.”
Harrumphing with as much dignity as was possible, the tip of Izayoi’s nose turned a little red as she retorted, “I am not eager, merely curious.”
“Hnn...” he uttered lazily, eyes drifting to a lazy half-mast as his long lashes cast shadows on his cheeks, “I have a son and I was mated once.”
Izayoi blinked; whatever she had been expecting, it most certainly had not been that. If he had a wife - she assumed mating was like marriage from what little she had heard of demon practises - what was he doing here with her?
It appeared her thoughts were plainly expressed on her face as Touga snorted. “I was mated, past tense. Nami and I... we were not the best match in the world. We mated for the same reasons your father wishes to marry you off; for political and financial reasons. My son is as tall as me, as cold as his mother and will be as powerful as us both combined,” here he let out a disparaging snort, “that is, if he can stop being his mother’s son long enough to achieve greatness.”
“So... your wife is dead?”
Touga shook his head apathetically. “No, but she denounced me as her mate - which is possible in Yokai circles as long as a life-bond is not created.”
“A... life-bond?” she asked, voice unsure.
“When souls are bound together during the mating,” he expounded with a grand sweep of his arm, “the partners then share a lifespan, it is truly unbreakable.”
“Oh,” she murmured thoughtfully, silently pondering over the suddenly intense gaze Touga had pinned her with; it made her want to squirm in her seat.
Seemingly noticing her discomfort, Touga reached out a long hand to cup her painted cheek, causing her to freeze where she sat in trepidation. The same curious intensity still lingered in his gaze as he trailed his fingertips up to her elaborately styled hair.
“Would you take it down?”
Izayoi blinked at the strange request. “You want me to unpin it?”
“Hnn...” he pulled an opulent pin from her hair, “yes, please.”
Izayoi thought it was the ‘please’ that made her begin to unpin her long hair from its elegantly designed style. Apparently he was helping too as her fingers would sporadically encounter his own as they both worked on pulling her hair free from its bindings.
Eventually, when her long hair tumbled around her shoulders in an ebony waterfall, Touga made an approving sound in the back of his throat.
“I much prefer you like that,” he murmured idly, running clawed fingers from her scalp down the length until his hand was resting on her hip, “your beauty is decadent without it.”
Izayoi frowned as roses bloomed on her cheeks. “I know,” she told him, tilting her chin arrogantly.
The dog demon snorted at her playful arrogance. “So self-assured?”
“Of course.”
“Then...” his eyes flashed mischievously, “you would wash off the face paint so that I might see you properly?”
This produced a hiss of outraged from the Hime, and she glowered haughtily at him. “I do not have to do what you say.”
“So you are afraid?”
Knowing you shouldn’t rise to the bait wasn’t enough to stop you, apparently, as Izayoi scowled and made her way to kneel next to the pool that the waterfall was emptying itself out into.
Mindful of her silken furisode, Izayoi cupped the icy water and meticulously washed her face of the paints she was used to wearing every day. Touga’s words had reminded her of an almost forgotten memory of her grandfather. It had been the first time the servants had painted her face and he’d frowned, telling her that he much preferred her usual beauty to this artifice.
Smiling nostalgically, she sat back and patted her face dry with her handkerchief, before turning to glare at the demon shadowing her.
“Happy now?” she asked, her cheeks more visibly red in her pale face after the removal of the paint.
Touga smiled crookedly. “I am happier now that your beauty is not cloaked,” he admitted, reaching out a clawed finger to tip her chin up so he could inspect her face.
Glowering still, she yanked her chin from his grasp and replied tartly, “Is it not due to your own vanity that you wish to strip me of my beauty? You cannot think me beautiful in comparison to yourself.”
Touga blinked, bemused at her sudden ire. “You think me beautiful?” he mused aloud, wondering whether it was a compliment or not.
“You wish me to say it again?” she snapped, “How egotistical of you.” She sniffed snootily.
At this, he threw his head back and laughed properly at her stinging comment. Izayoi refrained from stomping her foot, she would remain aloof.
Turning mirth filled golden eyes back onto the little princess, Touga cajoled. “Your waspishness is refreshingly likened to a kitten who thinks it is a neko Yokai. Come, I meant not to offend, rather to flatter. You are beautiful to this one, and your beauty outshines my own, Hime-chan.”
Appearing to have calmed a little; she breezed past him towards the tree stump she had been perching on. “You would bear in mind my sting, if you think me a wasp.”
Inclining his head in acknowledgment, he claimed a space next to her tree stump again, and perused her form with a well trained eye.
“Do you fear me?” he asked softly, eyes narrowed as if he was concentrating on something.
Blinking bemusedly, Izayoi dazedly shook her head; once again dumbfounded at the depth of concern that now occupied his expressive golden eyes.
“Why are you armed?” he asked gently, as if he was coaxing a skittish kitten from under a kotatsu.
For a moment, Izayoi had no idea what he was talking about, and then it dawned on her abruptly. Her grandfather’s tanto seemed to grow heavy from it’s hiding place stashed in the layers of her kimono.
“My mother gave it to me,” she whispered, eyes downcast, “from my grandfather. He was my ally when I was young, he taught me what it was like to love someone unconditionally.”
“The one who taught you it was better to love,” he surmised, “So it is precious to you?”
She nodded mutely, her loose hair flying around her head at the speed of her movement.
“Would you let me see it?”
Maybe it was the soft coaxing way in which he was speaking, or maybe she would give in to any of his whims no matter what they were, Izayoi didn’t know, but she mutely handed the tanto over.
Taking the weapon carefully from the princess, he drew the blade and eyed it critically.
“You thought to use this against a Yokai?” he asked incredulously, stifling a laugh, “this is a decorative blade,” he held it up for her inspection, “the edge has been dulled, see?”
Izayoi blinked, cheeks warming in embarrassment for thinking it would be of any use. “I would not know,” she muttered, as he handed her back the tanto and she stashed it in her kimono once more. “But then, it wasn’t about the weapon,” she admitted, “it was the fact that it was my grandfather’s gift to me, as if he was still protecting me even in death.”
“A poignant sentiment,” he acknowledged.
“And a pointless tanto,” she quipped indulgently.
Chuckling softly, he unsheathed his ominous looking sword, pleased that the tiny woman did not flinch away from him in the slightest, and brought the blade to his hair, severing a lock and catching it.
“What are you doing?” Izayoi asked bemusedly as she watched his deft fingers move in a repetitive pattern over the lock of hair. Smirking lightly, he turned and gathered her wrist, tying the newly braided hair around it and then, leaning down, he kissed the knot and Izayoi watched in wonder as it turned into something resembling white silver.
“There,” he affirmed in a self-satisfied tone of voice.
She made a little noise of admiration in her throat as she turned her wrist this way and that way to inspect his handiwork. “How did you do that?”
“It is a subtle bending of my youki around my hair,” he expounded, “it will grant you protection from any demon, none will dare attack that which is mine.”
Touched at his attempted protection, she clasped that wrist to her chest, but then the rest of his words got through to her and she scowled at him. “Yours? What if I do not wish to be owned?” she shot him a scathing look, “You said everything would be my decision, did you lie?”
Touga tilted his head consideringly. “Yes, this is your decision,” he agreed somberly, “it is your decision as to whether you marry a human man you have never met, or whether you stay with me. do you choose a loveless marriage? Or do you choose me?”
Izayoi blinked, feeling betrayed by the way her heart was racing at the prospect of him wanting her.
Smirking at her expression, he pulled the peach from his sleeve with a magician’s flourish. “Do you choose to be devoured, in the most pleasant way, by me, little one?”
Shifting so that she was knelt at his side, she bent towards the peach and bit into it’s delicate flesh with her dull little human teeth, a trail of the peach's juices running down her chin drew his attention inexorably.
Tilting her head to one side, she murmured demurely, but with a fierce twinkle in her eyes, “And you will be devoured in return.”
0-0-0
Izayoi’s mother left her husband to simmer in his own impotent rage, heading through the hallways of her home to her daughter’s bedchambers. The girl had not returned from meeting the demon that morning and her father was livid as she had missed the meeting with the samurai Takemaru, who would only work for their household under the request of her flighty daughter.
Drawing the door open silently, she peered into the room at the empty futon and gasped, pressing a hand to her lips.
There, on the bed, were her daughter’s hairpins, the hairpins she had gifted her daughter many years ago.
And, sat on her pillow was a single peach pit.
Closing her eyes and swallowing her hurt, the lady slid the door shut and resigned herself to a simple fact.
Izayoi had been spirited away.