It's been a hot second, but it's good to be back. So much has happened in the past few months, and I'm still reeling from it all, honestly. I won't be able to promise a schedule right now, but I will try and get back into posting semi-regularly if I can. Just please be patient. My health is on the rougher side right now and I'm fairly inconsistent in all aspects of my life.

That being said, I am happy I'm back to share a little more of this story, with a slightly changed plan. Sorry to everyone that read the last rendition of this chapter that I posted.

Miasma

Here the power is ruthless and the truth is deaf. Here the air is filled with the miasma of sin
- Jean Racine

Good hot baths were heaven.

After sleeping off the majority of the hangover, and inhaling my body weight in the breakfast that had been procured for us, I had slipped away from my new husband for a solo bath. He had been reluctant to let me have that time alone so soon, and even offered company, but I found the gentle words to convince him I needed a moment to myself. It was something I desperately needed.

The oils that had made my hair sleek and glossy yesterday just felt gross this morning. Really gross. A bath was a necessity but, no matter how many times I scrubbed at my scalp, I felt the oil.

Gross.

While I was under the water, trying desperately to clean the oils out of my hair, and to try and avoid the overthinking I knew was buzzing in the back of my mind ready to find its way to the forefront, I heard the weirdly disjointed splash of someone else entering the water. I bobbed to the surface, ready to scold whichever poor person had encroached on my much-needed solo time, more than willing to double those efforts if I saw Kagewaki before me after just being able to slip away from him.

"Oh, Naraku, it's you." Much more relaxed, I settled down against the edge of the bath so I could sit and relax in the hot water. Naraku, for all the antagonistic moments we shared, was a person that brought with him a bigger sense of familiarity and comfort than anyone else I knew in this time, even if the roiling emotions and overthinking began to rear its head in little whispers in my mind. "You're being rather bold, aren't you?"

"Congratulations are in order, Lady Masanori Hitomi." His mocking tone cut my patience pretty quickly, though.

"Don't fucking start, Naraku." So much for being able to tolerate his presence. I splashed water at him, which he took without comment or complaint as he waded towards me through the steamy perfumed water. "You weren't at the wedding. Not to your taste?"

I wasn't going to admit that it hurt not to see Naraku's familiar pelts amongst the faces celebrating with us. We'd grown close enough that I thought he'd at least show up to my wedding. I'd earned that much respect from him, hadn't I?

But what was respect amongst cheaters? Would I have even truly wanted to see Naraku there? Seeing him while I was celebrating with my husband would have been a strange experience. How much guilt would I have felt? Would it have caused me to let slip something I didn't want to my fresh husband in a drunken confession?

Despite all the negatives my mind could conjure, there was one thing that still rang true.

I still wanted to see him yesterday.

The demon huffed, lips curled up at the corners in amusement. "Perhaps it is in poor taste for an adulterer to join in the festivities."

"It's not technically adultery yet." I hadn't been married yet when Naraku and I had started playing together as we had. It wasn't exactly the most socially acceptable situation in the world, not by a long shot, but it hadn't been adultery, though that fact was riding on a technicality at this point.

He was here, sharing a bath with me in this very moment.

His lips twitched higher. "Yet?" That amused drawl was almost too much. "Did you not pledge to be a loyal and loving wife to your husband naught but a few hours ago?" As he spoke, he got closer and closer, until he was right above me, leaning down those few inches until I could feel his warm breath against my lips, just as hot and moist as the steam rising from the water we were soaking in. "Are you not bound to uphold those values?"

"Stop speaking." My fingers tangled in the curls draped over his chest, pulling him down into a kiss.

He bowed his head willingly enough to me.

In fact, he was more than willing, if the hands sliding over my hips under the water were anything to go by.

I sighed into his mouth, fingers sliding over his neck and up into his thick hair. My legs wrapped around his waist, and he pressed me back against the warm rock wall of the bath.

Thoughts and anxieties began to melt away as firm touches began to light up my skin with sensation.

Now he was the adulterer he claimed to be.

I was almost back to my husband's rooms when a frantic servant appeared at the end of the hallway. She paused when she saw me, expression lighting up in a relief that immediately had me on edge. The only time people besides Naraku and Kagewaki here were relieved to see me was if they had orders to find me, and there was only one person that could cause that amount of relief at finding me wandering the halls.

My father-in-law wanted to see me.

"Lady Hitomi. The Lord wishes to see you."

Joy of all joys. What a time to be right. "Where's he summoned me to?" It was better to rip off the bandaid, so to speak, and just deal with my father-in-law sooner rather than later. Putting off his summons would only result in him getting snippy and making my life even more uncomfortable - something he had already succeeded spectacularly with yesterday's fine celebrations.

"The day room, my Lady."

The day room. I shouldn't have been too surprised. It was our usual meeting place. I rarely saw the man outside of that room. I was want to believe that he spent all day every day lounging in that room wiling away his life. I knew that was likely not quite the case. There was a certain level of work that came with being a Lord that I knew Nagasaki did hold up to, but an abundance of free time to put me into uncomfortable situations was exactly why I was here right now, and I wasn't so quick to give him graces from the cruel and sadistic creature he had built himself up as in my mind.

Another thing quickly became apparent as I strode towards the girl. If he was summoning me to the day room that meant that I'd likely end up being chewed out for something or another in front of a crowd. Oh how I lived for that humiliation.

"All right, then. Thank you," I dismissed, about as enthused as I could be in the moment - which I assure you didn't amount to much. "I'll head over there now."

She bowed and disappeared back to whatever work she had on her plate, leaving me alone with the knowledge that I now had to go make nice with my father-in-law. Why me? Usually it was the mother-in-law that brides had issues with, wasn't it? Why did I crap out with this? I found some form of strange companionship with Kagewaki's mother. Though at this point it was pure projection. I just felt comfortable talking to her portrait. Nagasaki was a much more real presence, and I had many more issues with him. A mother-in-law I could deal with. The demon that was my father-in-law? I didn't want to face him for as long as I possibly could.

Steeling myself, I about-faced and stalked forwards with purpose. Might as well get this damned meeting out of the way as quickly as possible. Stalling was only going to make him angrier and more uncomfortable to deal with.

The walk to the day room was equally too long and too short, and in a moment of anxious hesitation, I paused at the door, hand hovering over the worn wood for far too long before I steeled myself to knock and enter. I was a big girl. I could face this dickhead with fake pleasantries and hopefully keep things from getting too much more unpleasant than they already were.

Pleasantries were predictably not what I was greeted with.

"This wasn't supposed to happen, you little bitch."

My mouth compressed into a tight line. I couldn't say I was surprised by the insult. I was certain my father-in-law had been thinking and whispering it to others from the moment I got here. Still, this was the most direct slur I'd had thrown at me so far. If I wasn't so miffed at it, I think I'd be impressed that he finally gathered up the courage to insult me to my face so readily. I'd been expecting it to come to a head since our first meeting. It surprised me that it had taken him quite this long to break.

Nagasaki snarled, his yellowed teeth gnashing in his rage. "You weren't supposed to marry him."

"Then why order the wedding?" I countered immediately. A stupid counter, really. He'd been totally transparent about why. Still, I was angry about the entire fucking situation and Nagasaki stood as the founding father of all the rage I currently housed. If he hadn't interfered and decided to teach his son a valuable life lesson at everyone's expense, I wouldn't be standing here as this man's daughter-in-law right now. In fact, I'd likely be happily keeping the samurai company during training.

But I didn't have that luxury. I'd been twisted into this bullshit situation by a cynical misogynist desperate to show his sweet sweet son that all women were filthy dangerous liars.

I was more frustrated still that I was perpetuating that awful viewpoint without even trying.

"You need to prove to him that you're untrustworthy."

Sure, I'll get right on that. Why wouldn't I do something that would likely end up in me being killed? "You're insane."

I wasn't going to show how untrustworthy I was. As stupid as I was in this situation - very stupid, I know, I know - I didn't have a death wish. Airing the fact that I was the lying adulterer that Nagasaki hoped I was, wasn't in my cards, and I wasn't going to let it come to that. No one would know, least of all the man stood before me, looking like he was about to spit fire.

My eyes narrowed warily when Nagasaki stood and began to approach me.

Maybe insulting him hadn't been a good idea, in hindsight. Nagasaki had a temper, and stoking it wasn't smart. I didn't trust him half as far as I could throw him, so when he stepped far too close, close enough that I could feel his hot breath against my cheek, I tensed, ready for just about anything. My hands flexed into fists then back out a couple times as Nagasaki tried to crowd me.

Would he get violent?

I wasn't so much scared of that possibility as what I'd do if he did get violent. I wasn't a woman that would let a man even attempt to hit me. Even in delicate situations I had never let someone take advantage like that. It had put me in some sticky moments, particuarly when I was younger. I had a tendency to react before thinking when a punch was thrown.

I tried to remind myself that punching my father-in-law was not good etiquette, even in potential self-defense.

"You were supposed to disgrace yourself." His hiss was an accusation, and when I stepped back away from it, he followed. "You were supposed to show him what a whore you really were, and beg me for mercy."

"Beg you?" I repeated. A dry laugh bubbled up. If that was his plan, he was well and truly insane. I wouldn't lower myself to beg him if the world was on fire around me, and the only way I could live was if he pissed on me. I wasn't going to entertain his power trip for all the riches and power in Japan. For all my flaws, I was smart enough to keep anyone from seeing my sins, at least. Nagasaki's obsession with trying to prove something he didn't know, but was actually true, was grating on me.

"I'm going back to my husband." Guilty as I felt in his presence, at least Kagewaki wasn't elbow-deep in some stupid power-play with me.

I turned my back and headed towards the door. I was done letting this rile me up so damn much.

Fuck trying to walk on eggshells around this man.

I felt the pain in my scalp before I realised what was happening. Caught off guard, I cried out in pain as my hair was yanked, dragging me down to the floor. My hands came up to grab at his wrist and the clump of my hair to keep him from yanking any out. I squeezed his wrist firmly, holding my tongue before I threatened to break it.

Maybe I had some self-preservation after all.

"You will do as I say, girl, or I will find any reason I can to take a sword to your throat."

There was the threat that had been looming over me since the moment I stepped foot in this castle. The threat hadn't been all that real when he had given it on our first meeting. I was still so fresh to this place and the brutality of it. It had scared me, but I hadn't been totally overwhelmed by the concept of my own death.

Now, it was so much more real to me. When I heard a death threat in any context, I found it more real. It wasn't a joke here like it might have been in my life before this. I genuinely expected a person to follow up on a death threat they made. It scared me now, just like it had when I first arrived here, but like the world before me, I had changed, too. I wasn't so fresh-faced and new. I knew in some part how this place worked, and I had been hardened.

I had taken a sword to a demon and survived it.

I had taken a demon into my bed and survived it.

I had married a man I hardly knew with a father that wanted me dead, and by my own power, I was going to survive that too.

A firm squeeze of Nagasaki's wrist had the old man grunting in pain and withdrawing from his tight grip on me, cradling his now aching wrist to his chest as I turned on him. "You find that reason, any real reason, and I will kneel at your feet willingly, but until then I am returning to my husband. Good day, Lord Hitomi."

For whatever reason I was beyond thankful for, Nagasaki let me leave the day room without so much as a peep.

When I finally did make it back to my husband's rooms, it wasn't to his solitary figure, or to the familiar sight of his servants bustling around him as they worked - both sights I had grown very used to over the weeks I had spent here at the castle.

Kagewaki was sat up on his futon - the one we had shared just this morning for the first time - as I had come to expect seeing him on his worse days. This morning's running errands for me while I was hiding away in my hungover state must have tired him out enough to retire back to bed when I left for my bath. I made a note to not plan too many drunken nights. Kagewaki didn't need to tire himself out looking after when, when I was supposed to be caring for him.

He wasn't alone, now, though. Knelt at the end of his futon was a familiar white-pelted baboon.

The sight of Naraku and Kagewaki together had my heart stuttering in my chest. That immediate unfiltered reaction irked me.

Naraku was a vassal to my husband, and half of his most trusted council. The two spent an extraordinary amount of time together. More even than I spent with either man. The sight of Naraku at my husband's side was not a new or unfamiliar one. The two strategised together often, and were good at it. What Kagewaki could produce from his learnings under General Watanabe, Naraku could improve with his own knowledge and understandings. They worked well together. I was certain, too, that Kagewaki counted Naraku amongst his few friends. Of course they would spend time together.

The guilt I felt seeing both of my lovers sat together in one room was on me. So, too, was the prickling fear I felt at the thought of them conversing without me there to hear what they were saying.

He had given me little reason to not trust him, but the fear of Naraku sharing our affair with Kagewaki or his father was still all too real. He could get me killed with just a few deadly words. That sort of power was terrifying.

Terrifying... but was it really something to fear?

I had come to enjoy my time with Naraku. What had started as quiet moments as I played music had shifted, into something darker, then something more. Naraku was an excellent conversationalist and a font of information that I was eager to soak up when he began to share. We did more than hide away in my room and fuck. We spoke, conversed idly about our days, random thoughts that came into our heads. He taught me about things I had little knowledge of myself - the workings of demons and the world around me that I had never experienced. Naraku was by no means a sweet or gentle man, but he had a respect for me that I already knew was difficult to find here.

I'd noticed on my very first day here that women were treated as less than any man that graced their presence. Even amongst the fighting men I had proved myself to in battle against the Tsuchigumo, I still noticed the looks and whispers. Women were meant to be subservient and weak here. Any deviance from that was discouraged and judged. Naraku didn't yet seem to hold that same belief.

Was that unusual respect that Naraku showed me enough to make me believe that he wouldn't feed me to the wolves given half a chance?

But what the motivation for that be?

I couldn't see a single real reason for him to do that to me. He got nothing beyond sick enjoyment of tearing someone down if he did reveal my affair to Kagewaki. Was that petty reason enough for Naraku?

I feared that my meeting with my father-in-law had made me paranoid.

"Lady Masanori," Naraku's familiar drawl greeted, tearing me from my paranoia. "A pleasure to be greeted with your presence. Congratulations are in order."

A little noise caught in my throat. Using the same words he had this morning? Of course.

"Nori," the softer tones of my husband's voice spoke before I could reply to the demon. Kagewaki straightened up some, his warm eyes on me, and a smile blooming on his lips. "What kept you?"

Another death threat from your loving father.

While I truly did want to air my frustrations with the head of my new family to the people I held closest to me, I couldn't do so with my current company's connections to him. The man's son wasn't likely to hear my bitching about his father, and paranoid as I thought I may have become, I didn't want to share anything that could be used against me now with the man that held the most power in the situation. So, I kept my frustration to myself as I came forward through the bamboo slats separating the room and settled on the ground between the two men.

"I was caught up in the baths," I dismissed.

I heard the quiet noise of amusement Naraku gave in the wake of my explanation, but thankfully it didn't seem like Kagewaki did. I had indeed been caught up in the baths, by the very man that knelt beside me, hidden away by furs and a snarling dead face, but that had been a while ago now, and I had been the one to leave the baths first.

Naraku must have gone from the baths with me, right to my husband.

That didn't bode well for the ill feeling in my stomach.

"What was it you were talking about?" I questioned, wanting to steer the conversation and my thoughts both away from the baths.

Naraku was the one to answer me. "We were discussing the merits of drastically increasing training within the regiment, before the potential return of the Tsuchigumo."

Training for the Tsuchigumo? What use was training for the return of that beast when the Demons Slayers were slated to appear today to take control of the situation and dispatch it tonight before anyone else could be harmed?

...oh. Oh!

Naraku was taking heed of my warning about Kagewaki's health, and occupying the Lord with less stressful potentials and hypotheticals so we could deal with the stress of the real situation ourselves.

Was that giving the demon too much credit?

No... No. I didn't think so. Naraku had proved himself a very deliberate man. He didn't strike me as a man that would play games and lead someone on without a reason behind it. He had proved, too, that he had listened to me in the past. I'd like to think that this was the reason Naraku was conversing with Kagewaki about something that meant very little now, with the Demon Slayer's involvement.

"I see a great merit in it," I pitched in, eyes slipping away from the blank baboon eyes, to Kagewaki's. "We've been overpowered by it more than once now. Any training for our men would be beneficial."

Certainly, more training would help the men that my husband commanded, even if the threat of the demon wasn't so strong. We didn't have Nagasaki's strongest men at hand. These men weren't so well-trained or tactical as those directly under the General. There was never a limit to how much training a man could do in a lifetime, and I would always encourage more.

In my new position as wife to their Lord, there was a chance that I, too, could start training with them. I had power now that I didn't have before. Training more myself was a good idea, as well. This Tsuchigumo wasn't the only demon in the world. I was sure there would always be a new threat around the corner that I could help defeat if I kept myself sharp and strong.

After a moment's deliberation, Kagewaki nodded. "I will discuss with the General when next I see him."

"And so we shall prepare, as well," Naraku responded, gesturing to me with a flick of his hand. You can trust Lady Masanori and myself."

My breath caught in my throat at the sentiment.

Could he trust us?

Laying in my bed with Naraku just yesterday, it was so easy to talk about deceiving Kagewaki and reveling in our affair - teasing each other about being a curse on him. Without him there in the room, it was so easy to brush aside the creeping guilt and enjoy the pleasurable gratification of the moment. But now, seeing him here as we spoke of trust... I could barely contain the lump in my throat.

We were talking about trust while lying so boldly to his face.

Perhaps Naraku wasn't the one I should be worrying about spilling this secret. My own guilt was going to eat me alive if I wasn't careful.

"I shall leave preparations in your capable hands."

Well, Naraku certainly had capable hands.

I stood abruptly, taking in a sharp breath as I stepped over my husband's legs and strode towards the closed sliding doors leading to the veranda, and further yet the garden beyond it.

"Nori?" Kagewaki questioned my back as I walked away.

I waved a hand behind me and reached out to the door. "I need a moment."

Reviews

darkvibeslover - It was a very sweet chapter, and naturally, the sweetness had to end. This chapter, in particular, I think is very bitter. It built up to a lot of fights we knew were coming. A big offset to the happy event last chapter. I agree that Kagewaki didn't get nearly enough time in the anime or manga. To be honest, he wasn't supposed to have nearly as much time in this fic as he has. He was supposed to be a stepping stone, but he truly blossomed and I'm glad I've taken the time to build him up and flesh him out so much. On the otherhand, though, it's going to be rather unpleasant when the poor man faces his end.

Guest - Aye, the wedding finally went ahead! Teeth blackening is a really strange practise. I'm pretty sure it still happens in some places, too. A few people keeping the tradition alive. Well, there's not too much time left for poor Kagewaki for her to break his heart. But we'll see what happens as time passes. He's not long for this world. Naraku has a plan to set in motion. Also thank you for checking in on me. I'm doing as good as I can. Not quite as good as I want to be, but life goes on and we try and fight as best we can.

What a trip writing this chapter has been. I've been pecking away at it over months, and finally, finally, found some time to actually put into it. I hope you all can enjoy this chapter, even if it's been some time since the last. Thank you to anyone that has stuck with it through the unintentional hiatus. I really appreciate you.