And…I was suddenly realizing what a terrible idea that had been—to keep something so monumentally terrible bottled up inside.
My pulse steadily began to increase, and my breathing felt shallow and forced as I remembered my decision to pick a fight with an angel. I recalled my encounter with Legion, and I felt a twinge of panic creep into my shoulders, wondering if Ryuu had found the wedding invitation or legal contract. I’d wanted to ask Samael about Legion, but now I was having second thoughts. He had just proposed and had a wedding to plan.
Also, I was beginning to realize how damning it might be to tell anyone that a demon wanted to marry me. As quickly as that, I began to feel overwhelmed. What would Ryuu and my friends say about that? With no one to watch me and judge me, I began to crumble under the weight of everything. Lying to Ryuu about last night, needing to deal with the rebels, stressing about the wedding, my precarious relationship with Nate, the Sanguine Council, and visions of Kansas City on fire if I made a wrong move.
Dead Freaks were one thing, but helpless Regulars…burning…
Once I thought of it, I couldn’t get it out of my head.
My knees almost gave out before I caught myself against the wall. I began to shake as the hot water scalded my skin. I slid down to the ground and hugged my knees to my chest, chastising myself for acting like a coward. But the anger only increased my frustration and I pounded my fist into the floor, crying harder.
Ryuu poked his head into the bathroom, drawn by the sound of me punching the floor. When I didn’t reassure him fast enough, he clicked the door shut, locked it, and then walked into the bathroom with his sword drawn. Through the foggy glass, he saw me seated on the shower floor, silently crying as I hugged my knees, leaning my shoulder and the side of my head against the glass. My anger and stress turned to embarrassment and I froze.
Rather than fleeing for his life before I erupted on him for invading my privacy, he quietly sat down on the other side of the glass, pressing his back against it. He rested his black katana across his knees and sat there in silence, willing to risk my anger to let me know that I was not alone.
Surprisingly, I didn’t hide my emotions like I’d instinctively wanted upon seeing him enter. I didn’t shout at him or command him to leave. I also didn’t hide the raw pain tearing me up inside. I let it all continue to come out, and Ryuu never said a word.
He just sat there, a boulder in the pond. Steadfast, concerned, and dedicated. At the peak of my meltdown, I pressed myself closer to the glass, taking a deep, calming breath.
His presence seemed to anchor me in a strange way. His silence was a lifeline slowly pulling me back. He didn’t demand to know what was wrong—even though I knew he wanted to. And that simple act of trust helped settle me. Simply knowing he was there was exactly what I needed to clear my thoughts.
“Thank you, Ryuu,” I whispered. “I think I’m okay, now.”
He nodded, and then spoke in a low, gentle tone. “Turn the water hotter and practice your breathing for a few more minutes. Xuanwu says that it is best to take a few additional minutes of thoughtful meditation once an emotional storm breaks or an existential crisis passes. He is usually right.”
My lip trembled and I nodded. More than anything else, I found it unbelievably touching that he chose this moment to use third party credibility to help me get through my breakdown. Ryuu typically told me what I needed to do—when it was an area of expertise he knew he had mastered. Like this exact moment.
Yet he’d chosen a passive tone. Which meant he was very concerned and didn’t want to risk challenging me for fear I might crack. This tiny sliver of compassion meant he was more concerned for me than he wanted to admit. Had he seen the wedding invitation?
Was that why he thought I was crying?
The thought of marrying a demon had started my tears, but only because it was one of many things on my mind. Sometimes, a woman just needed to cry. To embrace the pain rather than avoid it like men often did.
I realized that I was staring at the back of his head—inches apart, but a transparent wall away. Through a smear in the steamy glass, I saw that he was no longer holding his black katana, but the melted, warped trophy blade Nate had broken for him. “I’m sorry for letting my emotions get the best of me, Ryuu,” I whispered, staring at it.
His shoulders stiffened. “You should not apologize for something like this…Callie,” he said, testing out the word as if it was a foreign language. He was obviously uncomfortable because he usually called me White Rose. “Apologizing for something you cannot control is foolish.”
I frowned, realizing he’d thought I was talking about my breakdown. “No. I meant the Nate thing. You’re holding that stupid blade. I shouldn’t have put you in that situation that day.”
He was strangely silent for a few moments. And then he let out a soft chuckle. “Oh. I’d already forgotten about it,” he said, obviously lying.
I sighed. I’d said it, at least. That was what mattered. I calmly reached up to turn the water hotter and settled in to take his advice, closing my eyes.
Ryuu did the same on the other side of the glass, not peppering me with questions or demanding explanations.
I could have kissed him for that.
Otherwise, I might have been forced to lie—I wasn’t sure how involved I wanted him to be when I punched an angel in the nose or turned down a demon suitor. The denizens of Heaven and Hell knew how to harbor a grudge, and they had long memories.
So, for now, I could pretend we were both being honest with each other, and that there were no lies or secrets between us. All that might change when I left the bathroom.
Ryuu cleared his throat. “I am going to tell you a story, Callie Penrose,” he said in a soft, deep tone that I could feel through the glass wall. My forearms pebbled at hearing him use my full name. I was sure he had done it before, but never in such an accidentally intimate setting.
“Okay, Ryuu Ninja-face,” I said, smiling. I didn’t know his last name. Maybe he didn’t have one.
He chuckled, shaking his head as he repeated the last name under his breath. He was silent for a few more moments, and then he cleared his throat before speaking in a soft, lecturing tone, like we were two teens who had snuck out of the house in the middle of the night to tell each other ghost stories and drink soda without our parents knowing.
“Buddha was walking in the mountains one day, far from the nearest village and even the most reclusive of outlying farms. He came upon a flower growing out of a standing puddle of water on a lonely boulder. It was the most beautiful lotus blossom he’d ever seen. He could practically taste the nectar in the air, and it filled his nostrils with such a heady scent that he almost imagined he had taken a bite from it. He stared at the flower, imagining how soft it would feel against his fingertips.”
I stared through the foggy glass at the usually silent ninja, transfixed, even though I could only see the back of his head. My overactive imagination tickled my own senses until I could almost taste the flower petals on my own tongue.
“After a time, he found himself sitting down in the middle of the path, weeping as he stared, unblinking, at the rare beauty growing out from the unusual puddle in the stone. He watched as the sun trailed across the sky—noting how the arc of the sunlight brought the radiant flower to life in various new ways with each passing hour. Then the moon came out, and the flower transformed into something hauntingly mesmerizing and maddeningly stunning. Beautiful, but in entirely different ways.”
The steaming shower placed me in a humid world of fog where his words could more easily come to life, the scene unveiling before me like a movie.
“A traveler came upon him the next morning, saw him crying in the dirt, and rushed over, fearing that Buddha had been injured. Why do you cry, Buddha? the traveler asked. Buddha, so wrought with emotion that he could not speak, merely pointed at the lotus blossom,” Ryuu said.
I realized I was holding my breath and that my lips felt numb.
<
br /> “The traveler looked up, smiled in appreciation, and then turned back to Buddha, his smile slowly shifting to confusion. It is a beautiful flower, Buddha, but why does it make you cry?
“It is too beautiful, Buddha whispered. I can only sit here and marvel at it in wonder—nothing more. I watch it so that I may remember it and know it. So that I may think back on it during dark days and remember what it means to smile.
“The traveler scratched his head, perplexed. Why not just pluck it and take it home with you, Buddha? Plant it in a pond back home?
“At this, Buddha exploded with anger, rising to his feet and threatening the traveler against doing any such thing. The traveler, now frightened for his life, backed away hurriedly, reassuring Buddha that he would not touch the flower—had not intended to touch the flower.
“After a time, Buddha regained control of his emotions and assessed the flower. I could pluck this perfect flower and take it home with me. I could try to seize the beauty and hold it close to my heart. I could love it more than any other thing in the world, but I will never be able to love it as much as that puddle on that boulder that it is impossibly growing out from. The flower thrives in this wild, uncertain, and unlikeliest of terrains. It has strong, resilient roots that were not suffocated by this boulder or the barest amount of water needed to make it grow. The wind cannot defeat it. The rain cannot wash it away. The sun cannot burn it.
“Then Buddha slowly turned to look at the traveler. But my love would destroy it. Plucking that flower would kill it. By the time I made it back home in a few days, it would lose its luster, and I would be left with a new image to replace the one I have right now. I would look upon it and only see the death my overpowering love had wrought. How I had destroyed something so precious by trying to make it anything other than what it was. My love would smother it. So, I shall sit here for a spell, and appreciate it for what it is, not for what I want it to be.”
Ryuu’s words trailed off, echoing softly in the foggy bathroom. My lip trembled and I blinked through misty eyes, staring at the back of the deadly and surprisingly poetic shinobi assassin’s head.
I tried opening my mouth to speak, but it took me several attempts to produce any words. “Why did you tell me that story, Ryuu?” I whispered nervously, fearfully and, admittedly…
Hopefully, although I wasn’t entirely sure why.
“Because the story finally made sense to me,” he murmured. “Almost ten years after I heard it.” Then, he climbed to his feet. “I’ll be waiting for you in the bedroom when you are ready.” Then he left on silent feet.
“What?” I demanded, reeling from the abrupt change in the mood just as much as from his comment.
He just laughed before closing the bathroom door.
I’ll give you three guesses on what occupied my thoughts as I finished my shower.
It wasn’t Buddha, as sexy as his belly was.
8
After my shower, Ryuu was waiting for me in my bedroom alright—with a duffel bag of training essentials over his shoulder, his black katana and his warped katana on opposite hips, and he was pointing at my ninja training outfit that was folded neatly on my dresser. “It’s anger management time,” he said, grinning sadistically. “I’ll wait outside in the hall.” He smiled the whole way to the door.
“Oh, I feel plenty of anger right now,” I muttered before he closed the door. With a resigned sigh, I changed into the training clothes. We’d been doing this every morning for a week, but my eventful wake-up call had pushed it far from my mind. Ryuu had not forgotten. He got a twisted pleasure out of tormenting me in our daily training sessions—which was what we had started out calling them. After seeing how angry I’d been following our first workout, Ryuu had officially changed the name to anger management class.
Once I finished getting dressed, I called Ryuu back in and Shadow Walked us to Xuanwu’s home in Kansas City. I had no idea what to expect for today’s lesson, and that was entirely the point of Ryuu’s training—to expect the unexpected.
I waved at a few of the resident monks and ninjas, receiving warm, familiar smiles in return, and then I turned to Ryuu. “Why do we always train here? We could easily train at Castle Dracula or anywhere else. This is just a garden.” He knew I hadn’t meant any disrespect. There were plenty of specific training tools and weapons here for martial arts enthusiasts. Except we never used any of those tools; we used what Ryuu carried in his duffel bag. Hence my question.
Ryuu nodded thoughtfully, turning his attention towards the house. “It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.” He spotted Xuanwu exiting the home and gestured for me to begin stretching on my own before approaching his master. I stared at him for a few moments, digesting his words. Although it had been clever word play, I wasn’t sure if he’d intended some deeper meaning.
So, I sat down in the grass and stretched out my legs, mentally replaying the various training sessions I’d suffered in the past week and wondering what might be in store for me today.
The first day of training, Ryuu had told me that Xuanwu needed to speak with me about something important. Not wanting to get on Xuanwu’s bad side, I had taken us to the courtyard behind his home via Gateway. Without warning, Ryuu had tossed me a wooden training sword from his duffel bag and attacked me with one of his own. Xuanwu had come out to watch, sipping a mug of tea and settling down into the grass for what might have been the worst four hours of my life. We ended up working on everything from sparring—where he had pulled exactly no punches—to sword forms with our wooden blades. We worked on cardio, endurance, strength, and ended in a brief meditation session before starting the cycle all over again.
Three more times. With what felt like five minutes—cumulative—of rest over the entire block. Upon finishing, I had dropped my sword, my hands throbbing and tingling, and I had desperately gasped for water, ashamed of how out of shape I apparently was.
Ryuu had tossed me a lukewarm bottle of water, zipped up his duffel bag, and then hefted the strap over his shoulder. Xuanwu had left at some point, so we were alone. “Do better tomorrow,” Ryuu had said. “You can’t afford to rely on magic or weapons. You are the weapon. This is our new morning routine. Consider it anger management,” he’d added with an amused smirk, recalling some of the creative curses I’d thrown at him over the four hours.
I had guzzled the water, not even caring that it was warm, and too tired to argue. “You’re Satan.”
He had shrugged unconcernedly. “You are not that lucky.” Then he had turned away, heading back through the house without a word.
That had been the beginning of our new routine. And no day had been the same since. One day, he had made me spar him while maintaining a magical ball of fire over my head. If it weakened or flickered out, I was forced to do fifty push-ups. I did a lot of push-ups that day. A fucking lot.
After about ten minutes, Ryuu finally finished speaking with Xuanwu, bowed, and then jogged over to me. “All warmed up?”
I nodded, climbing to my feet. “Yes.”
“Good,” he said, leaning closer so that he would not be overheard. “You have suffered a defeat of some kind, and it is wearing on you. I can read it in your body language and the tension in your face. And I’m not referring to the shower,” he assured me in a softer tone. “I will help you reclaim your confidence. Center you during this storm.”
I stared at him, stunned. What had he seen in my body language? I’d only woken up a couple hours ago. But…his hypothesis wasn’t wrong. My meeting with Legion had not been a defeat, but it had left me feeling defeated and weary. Realizing Ryuu was waiting for some kind of response, I nodded. “Okay.”
“We will focus first on inner peace. Meditation. Have a seat.”
I narrowed my eyes since he had waited for me to stand before telling me all of this. He arched an eyebrow, daring me to dig a deeper hole. I relented and settled into a cross-legged pose, resting the backs of my wrists on my knees as I closed my
eyes. If he wanted to see flawless meditation, I would show him.
Because I was no stranger to meditation. It was one of my favorite things to do. I quickly fell into the rhythm of steady breathing, feeling the familiar tranquility roll into my muscles and the tension roll out as my mind became blank and silent, free of idle thoughts.
Until I heard a hissing noise beside me. I opened my eyes right as a string of firecrackers exploded next to my hip. I jumped up with a shout of alarm to see Ryuu swinging a fist at my face. My sudden panic from the firecrackers instantly evaporated, and I effortlessly deflected Ryuu’s punch before countering with a punch of my own. Of course, he dodged mine, and we began to dance. Ryuu snuck in a few solid blows, but it was less than any of the days before. I even managed to catch him in the ribs one time, and I knew I had earned it because Ryuu didn’t give anything out for free. He said it cheapened real victories to dilute them with fraudulent ones. False praise would guarantee death on the battlefield because it led a person to believe that they had mastered that particular skill, meaning they would rely on it when they shouldn’t.
We sparred several rounds with thirty second breaks between each. Even though I fought better than I ever had against Ryuu, the shinobi still managed to show no apparent effort in his ability to make a mockery of my past training as a Shepherd of the Vatican. It was truly remarkable because it wasn’t any one thing that he excelled at or relied upon. If you watched Ryuu fight three matches against the same opponent, you would see him fight three different styles. Because it wasn’t winning the fight that Ryuu focused on. That was the foregone conclusion. Ryuu focused on mastering those nitty gritty details that no one ever seemed to think about, and it showed. He was fighting against himself every time he sparred. His opponent just happened to put himself in harm’s way while Ryuu mastered his craft.
When we returned to meditating, I waited for the firecrackers, feeling my shoulders tense as I prepared my body to explode into defensive tactics and get him in an arm-bar or something. If I tried really, really hard. Except the firecrackers never came.
Anghellic: Feathers and Fire Book 8 Page 5