Nathan studied the woman before him in silence for a moment.
He had not expected this. Not the beauty, not the stillness, not the way she stood there as though the extinguished blizzard had been a minor inconvenience rather than a display of power that had nearly gotten through his strongest defensive technique. Whatever he had pictured waiting at the center of this path — something ancient, something monstrous, something that matched the groaning dark and the pale Yokai faces — it had not been this. She was the most dangerous thing on the Kiro no Komichi, and she looked like something carved out of winter by a sculptor who had been told to make something beautiful and had gone too far.
"I suppose you're the real reason no one leaves this path," he said.
