We're back! And pretty damn soon, too. Things are going okay right now.

I've been rewatching The Holy Pearl lately, and damn I forgot how much I enjoyed Shi You Ming as a character. Has anyone else watched THP? I need someone to fan with me over it.

Before we go on, as always, if you want to read another InuYasha fic, I have a handful for you to pick from. I have an InuYasha fic, Catch The Rain; a Bankotsu fic, Perfidious; and a Koga fic, In The Jaws Of The Wolf. I update them all when I can.

Now, onwards!

Miasma

Here the power is ruthless and the truth is deaf. Here the air is filled with the miasma of sin. Sinning with him is a pleasure I hadn't known I needed
-Jean Racine

"Naraku," I breathed.

The man above me stilled. "Naraku?" he mirrored, deep voice hollow.

I wanted to feel bad about calling out another man's name in bed, but I was far too focused on what was in front of me. I slapped at Kagewaki's shoulder vigorously, pushing him back, and reached to cover myself with the closest thing at hand, shifting around until I was sat up, facing the sight that had me freaking out.

Kagewaki had caught sight of it himself the moment I had pushed him back, and the two of us sat on Kagewaki's futon, naked, and just barely covered by the kosode I had dragged up.

"What is this?" my husband murmured, confusion lining his voice.

A deep chuckle came from Naraku, who had been stood watching us.

"What are you doing here?" Was he mad? Naraku had always struck me as a smart and calculating man. He didn't do things without thinking them through. I couldn't follow the logic that had brought him here, though, stood before us while we were fucking, without his baboon cloak.

Kagewaki must have felt like he was seeing an apparition, a clone of himself watching him at his most intimate.

I felt like the world was about to cave in around me.

There was no more Nagasaki. He didn't have constant death threads hanging over my head anymore, but that didn't mean that I was safe from that. If Naraku said the wrong thing in this situation, then all would be revealed, and I had a feeling that Kagewaki wouldn't be the most forgiving person, either, if he had found out I had been sleeping with his adviser, who so happened to be a near-perfect clone of him.

Would I end up dead or just disowned?

"Such a way to greet a friend," Naraku crooned, with all his usual mocking pleasantness. I usually found his mocking amusing. Funny, even, sometimes. Now it grated me. There was too much to lose to fall to his teasing.

"What is this?!" Kagewaki repeated, voice sharper as frustration began to bloom.

"It is I, My Lord." The demon among us dropped to one knee in a bow that had become very familiar to both Kagewaki and I over the time I had been here to witness their interactions, and longer than that still for Kagewaki. "Naraku, faithful servant."

His voice was a pleasant croon, but it was so lined with mocking that it felt cloying in the air, choking me with its strength.

"Naraku," Kagewaki repeated. "And what are you, now, Naraku? A brother of mine, long lost? An apparition taking my form? Do you wish to take what is mine?"

That mocking smirk widened. "In a manner of speaking," he replied.

My eyes narrowed on him. What was he doing? I couldn't understand it. Did he want Kagewaki's power, his position? Why had he waited so long to do so? The power of this castle would have been easy enough to take from Nagasaki. He was weak, possessed by a demon, and sick. Surely Naraku would have been able to take that power from Nagasaki. Why wait for Kagewaki?

Was it because he had Kagewaki's visage?

But what did that have to do with waiting? It would be easy for Naraku to have any and all control he wanted here, whether Kagewaki was alive or not. He had confided in me already that he was part Fox. He could shapeshift, become anything he wanted.

It didn't make sense to me.

"You have outlived your usefulness to me, my Lord." That mocking smirk widened. "I am quite done with you."

Unbidden, a memory of whispered threats came to mind.

Should something befall your Lord Husband, it wouldn't be such a difficult feat to convince the castle workers he was alive and well.

I knew that had been a threat on my Lord Husband's life, from the moment those words had been uttered. I never thought that Naraku himself would be the threat that would befall him, though. Naraku always seemed too sly of a man to do his own dirty work.

But here he was, knelt before us, smirking and speaking of my husband's death.

"What does that mean?" Kagewaki sounded like he wasn't sure if he should scoff or quiver, and was doing an interesting mix of the two beside me.

I reached out, pressing my hand against Kagewaki's chest without taking my eyes of Naraku, pushing him backwards slightly and leaning so I was between the two men. Cold I do anything to stop Naraku? Was there anything I could do that would actually protect my husband from the threat that had loomed unknowingly over him for some time.

Unknowingly to him...

"Naraku, what are you doing?" I wasn't sure asking him would actually get me the answer I wanted, but I felt, at the very least, I had to try.

"False innocence does not suit you, my dear. You've known for some time that this would happen."

My blood ran cold. So that was how he was going to play it? Talking about it like I was heavily involved to shift the blame around? He really was trying to get me killed then. I was done for if Kagewaki believed Naraku even a little bit.

There were easier ways to kill me. This man shared a bed with me. It wouldn't take much to smother me in my sleep, or when I was distracted by passion - something that happened far more often than sleeping beside him did. He had options that were less traumatic for everyone involved. Why go down this route? What did he get out of tormenting me before I died?

Sadistic pleasure? I felt he worked that out in much less fatal ways, as we played and tormented each other. It was enough to feed my more sadistic urges. Naraku certainly got the upper hand more often than I did in those situations. Wasn't that enough for him?

No, apparently not.

So what was it? Why did he want to do this to me?

A hand gripped at my bare shoulder. "Masanori?"

"Wha-" I snapped back to the moment, squinting at the smirking demon staring right back at me.

I didn't get it.

"Masanori?" Kagewaki hissed in my ear again. "What he is saying cannot be true."

I licked my lips slowly, trying to decide what I was going to say to that. I didn't want to lie to my husband. What Naraku had said was a very twisted version of the truth, but it was the truth. I'd known that Naraku was going to do something to Kagewaki to take him out of the picture. I didn't know when, or how, or where. I didn't know anything except that a threat was there.

My silence was clearly enough of an answer for Kagewaki, though. His grip on me tightened, then loosened. "Masanori."

I couldn't look up at him.

"Touching," Naraku crooned. "The love you have for her still, despite knowing that she aided in your death. Shall we test that love?"

"Naraku." Don't do this, I pled with my eyes. I didn't want to deal with this. I didn't want to deal with anything this man had planned for either Kagewaki or myself.

He didn't listen to me. In fact, quite the opposite happened, as he drew something from within the depths of his kimono. My breath caught in my throat when I recognised the slip of dark pink fabric in his hands.

Many a times since we had met had he teased me with that piece of fabric - the sash he had claimed as a trophy after the first time we had fucked. I'd thought many a times that it would be my downfall, watching him idly play with it as we laid together in the mornings, before either of us would start our day. It would just take one flash of that fabric to someone that recognised it - to Kagewaki, who had gifted it to me - to show that there was something dark between Naraku and I that others should not have been wise to. Others like my husband.

My husband who clearly recognised the fabric himself, if the sharp intake of breath behind me was anything to go by.

"How do you have that?"

I knew he wasn't that naive. Was he still clinging to the idea that Naraku and I weren't conspiring? The sharp stab of pity in my stomach made me feel nauseous.

"I pulled it from your wife's body myself." Naraku's eyes slid from Kagewaki to me, full of malicious mirth, then back again. "As she did my own clothes."

"She wouldn't- You deceived her. You look like me. She wouldn't have- If she had known, then she wouldn't-"

My head bowed in shame as Naraku laughed. "Do you wish to tell him how wrong he is, my dear? Or shall I have the honour?"

"Naraku! That's enough!" I couldn't take any more of this baiting. "Stop. Please."

"Please," he repeated in a soft drawl, in a tone that could have sent shivers down my spine in any other situation. "So sweetly you ask for things you cannot have."

I knew begging him wouldn't get me far. Just a small part of me had hoped that he would have some mercy in him, though.

"It is not enough," he continued on, weaving the sash between his fingers slowly and delicately. "And now you have a choice to make."

A choice to make. I didn't like the sound of that. I couldn't imagine what choice I'd have to make, either. How I chose to die? That was barely a choice. The quickest, least painful option. What else would he give me a choice about?

"You have shown some manner loyalty to your dear Lord Husband in the time you have known him." Not enough loyalty, I would admit. There was a lot I would do differently, given the chance. Keeping away from Naraku at the forefront of that list. "Shall we test how strong that loyalty is?"

He limbered to his feet, and beckoned me to stand with a crook of his finger, curling the rest of his fingers around the sash dangling from his palm.

I hesitated for barely a moment before rising to my feet, still holding the kimono I had grabbed up to my chest. The piece of cloth was for my own peace of mind in this highly uncomfortable situation now. Both men in front of me knew my body almost as well as I knew it myself. Naraku, perhaps, more so. He had spent many hours trying to learn and commit to memory every reaction I had.

He beckoned me again, and with far more trepidation than I had ever felt in this man's presence, I stepped forwards.

When I was close enough for his liking, he threw the sash around my neck, gripping both ends and drawing me flat against his body. Behind us, Kagewaki made a noise of outrage, though it was lost to me the moment Naraku's red eyes caught mine.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked him in a murmur.

"Choose," he crooned back.

"What am I choosing?" I didn't trust him,

"Life and death." He tugged on the sash around the back of my neck, pulling our faces closer. "Choose."

"Life." I would always choose life.

"Not life or death, my dear. Life and death. Who gets life, and who gets death?" I tried to draw back, ut he held me tight, our noses almost brushing together in our enforced proximity. "Choose."

I inhaled a slow breath. I knew this wouldn't be an easy decision to make. I chose life for myself, as I always would, but was that the choice I was making here? The way he was looking down at me told me there was something more to it than that.

If I had to choose my life, then I would have to choose someone else's death. Kagewaki's death.

Was that what I really had to choose between? My life or his? Was he really tesing my loyalties? To see if I would die to keep my husband alive?

But, a darkly logical voice whispered in my mind, that's not the choice at all.

Naraku had already made clear that Kagewaki had no use anymore. That he would end up dead tonight with no other options.

So what was I really choosing?

Loyalty. Was I going to keep giving my loyalty to Kagewaki? Or was I going to give that up and take it up with Naraku? I had been playing both fields without even really considering that was what I was doing. Neither man had my full loyalty yet. I had laid with Naraku in the morning, and walked from him to Kagewaki every day. My loyalty to Kagewaki was questionable in those moments. But likewise, I walked away from Naraku every day with no intentions of leaving my situation to stand at his side. I'd shown no great loyalty to him either.

But now I had to make a choice.

Which man would I stand beside?

Kagewaki? Would I stand at my husband's side? Die by his side, but die knowing I had chosen the honourable path?

Naraku? I would stay alive, but at what cost? How would I cope with knowing that I would stay alive at the expense of another person's death? My own husband's death?

"Choose," he breathed.

My eyes slid closed, but Naraku wouldn't allow a disconnect. His grip tightened, our noses pressed together.

I was in this moment, whether I wanted to be or not.

So, I peeled my eyes open and gazed up at him. I felt weak, scared.

But I had made my choice.

Blood roared in my ears, so loud that I could hear neither man in the room with me. I could barely hear my own breathing through the pounding in my ears. If I had ever thought that something like this would be the defining moment in my life, having to choose between life and death, knowing that one option would kill another person, then I would have probably lived my life very differently.

I took a breath, and a single word escaped into the air.

I had made my choice.

Review Corner

Still no reviews. I know it's not a huge thing to not get any reviews, but I love this story a lot. This one is my passion project, and it's a little disheartening to not receive any comments. I'd love to know how you feel about the plots I come up with

We all knew this was coming. We knew it was going to happen.

I just wanna point out how interesting it was to write that scene, and Nori's reactions to everything. She was so self-centred all the way through it. The whole scene was about Kagewaki, yet Nori's thoughts were constantly about why Naraku was doing this to her. Nori is not a good guy here, and I'm loving seeing her devolve into this interesting potentially bad character.

Who do you think she chose?

Did she choose to be good, or bad? I genuinely think either option is possible here. This story started out as a Naraku only fic with some Kagewaki interference, but it has grown into a full-on triangle, and I'm beyond happy with how it has developed. Now, which love is she going to choose?