As a man without sons, Shouka wondered why he had been chosen to rescue and raise the exiled Prince Seien. As the son of a sad excuse for a father himself, Shouka hardly had a role model on which to pattern parenting skills. Surely, he thought, the kingdom possessed men more suited in character and experience to guiding the broken prince in his new life outside the court's walls. Certainly, there were better footsteps to follow than the bloody ones left by the Black Wolf.

Shouka watched his young charge from the open kitchen door that led out to the backyard. In the few weeks that the gaunt and silent boy, more bone than flesh, had lived with the Kou family, he had developed an obsession with chopping wood. When his other chores were done, when everyone else enjoyed some pleasurable activity, the rhythmic thunk-and-crack of the ax could be heard in the yard.

Even now, before the sun had fully risen over the horizon, the boy dripped sweat and dragged the heavy ax over his shoulder to split another chunk of wood. Sometimes, he would even split the pieces he'd already chopped. Shouka gritted his teeth each time he heard the boy grunt with satisfaction as his ax sunk into the wood. So far, it was the only sound they'd heard from him, and the depth of pleasure it expressed made the older man's skin crawl. As the Black Wolf, Shouka recognized the gleefully vicious expression on the boy's feverish face. Murder boiled in this child's blood.

A muscle clenched in Shouka's jaw when he considered that the emperor himself had done this to his own son, as surely as if he'd torn the boy's mind apart with his own two hands and cast him aside as refuse. It dawned on him at that moment that the banished prince hadn't been left in his care for the prince's benefit. Instead, the old bastard, Shou-taishi, and the bloodthirsty emperor he guided as a twisted father would lead a crooked son, had summoned the Black Wolf to capture and imprison the broken boy for the emperor's protection. Shouka assumed some political reason prevented the emperor from executing his second son, or he wouldn't have exiled him in the first place. Considering the unknown but obvious hell the boy had endured, death might have been the kinder choice.

"Shouka," his wife, Shoukan, recalled him from his dark and distant thoughts, wrapping her arms around his waist from behind him. "That old tree root in the garden choked a whole patch of radishes again. Can't you get rid of it?" she pleaded. "Perhaps our young woodsman can lend you his ax?"

Shouka chuckled and hugged the arms that encircled him. His wife's arms around him had their usual effect and replaced the hollow chill inside him with more warmth and happiness than he'd ever thought possible for him.

"Has he spoken to you at all?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder at the pretty eyes that twinkled at him with some private mirth.

"Not a word, though Shuurei and he seem to communicate just fine without words," Shoukan replied. "Time and love are the greatest healers. You know better than anyone, don't you?" Her words were punctuated with a soft kiss brushed below Shouka's ear. He turned and gathered her in his arms, savoring her mouth with a lingering kiss.

"Kish me, too, Papa! Me too!" called their young daughter, Shuurei, tugging on Shouka's leg. The couple leaned apart to look down at the little round face, pink with fever, smiling eagerly up at them.

"Shuurei! Why are you out of bed?" lectured her mother gently, whisking her up from the floor.

"Kish-kish-kish! Papa-kish!" Shuurei chanted, reaching for her father from her mother's arms. Shouka caught the squirming bundle against his chest and laughed and pressed a noisy kiss against the little girl's hot cheek. "Now, Seiraa-kish, Seiraa-kish! Kish-kish-kish!" Shuurei sang as she stretched her arms toward the boy out in the backyard.

"Seiran's working, Shuurei, and you get no more kisses unless you stay in bed until you're better," Shoukan bribed the little girl as she lifted her from her father's arms.

At the mention of his adopted name, the ghost-like boy looked up at the group standing in the doorway. His cheeks reddened and the color stood out starkly against his pale skin. He quickly dropped the ax and turned away to stack the ridiculous amount of wood he'd chopped.

"I'll take care of this little whirlwind," Shoukan told her husband, hauling up the wriggling, bright-eyed mass of energy that was their daughter. "You take care of that one," she added with a nod toward the boy outside, who would not look in their direction.

Shouka watched dumbfounded as his wife marched off with Shuurei toward the little girl's room.

Easy for her to say, he grumbled to himself, turning back to the boy who absently reached for the ax handle as he stacked the wood, ready to wield his weapon at the slightest provocation. Shouka did not share his wife's ease with people and had much more practice at killing them than kissing them. Yet, Shoukan expected her husband to somehow "take care" of the soulless child who spent hour after hour hacking at imaginary enemies made of wood. He didn't have a clue as to how a son-less father could connect with this fatherless son.

Though the castaway prince had not uttered a single word since they'd found him unconscious in the snow in Sa Province, Shoukan, and even little Shuurei, had managed to push through the boy's stony defenses and get him to respond, even if only with a nod of his head or a shrug of his shoulder. Shouka, however, had been nearly as speechless with the boy as the child had been to him. He couldn't recall even once looking squarely in the young prince's eyes. Shouka was a man who confronted life in the shadows, after all, not face to face in the light of day. Dead men had no need of conversation, so it was not a skill the Black Wolf needed either. Rather, he was a man who hated other men, who had sealed away his compassion with his music when he was just a boy, even younger than the troubled lad before him.

An audible sigh of frustration carried far enough to attract the boy's attention to the man still standing in the doorway, watching him. The young prince straightened his back and glared directly at Shouka, his face a portrait of suspicion and distrust. The older man saw the small hand tighten around the ax handle. His brow arched in surprise at the threatening gesture, and the fiery embers in his eyes flashed with a mixture of amusement and defiance.

"Is that so?" he muttered softly to himself and stepped through the door, striding purposefully toward the boy. As he neared him, he busied himself with tying up his sleeves in preparation for work, though he never lost sight of the small, stiff body, coiled in readiness before him.

"Seiran, I think that's enough firewood for a while. Thank you," Shouka announced with an air of finality and wrapped his large hand around the ax handle just below Seiran's much smaller one. He looked directly into the wide, sea-colored eyes that stared up at him like a cornered animal's. He felt the minutest shift of pressure from Seiran's hand, but Shouka held fast and Seiran couldn't budge the handle in his direction. After a moment, the boy relinquished the ax, and his head bowed as his hand fell limply to his side. Shouka couldn't tell if the boy had let go in defeat or relief.

"I...I would appreciate your help in the garden," Shouka stammered awkwardly, feeling an indefinable twinge in the center of his chest as he looked at the silver hair curtaining the boy's downturned face. "Lady Kou's precious radishes are under attack again from an old tree root. It's a two-man job, and now that there are finally two men in the house, we might beat that old bastard at last."

Shouka frowned when no response came from the boy. Frustration evolved into disgust quickly in his mind when he considered that this mute, motionless void was once hailed as the empire's most brilliant and blazing star. Now, he simply capitulated, submitted and let himself be buffeted by any wind. He followed Shouka without question to the vegetable garden and did as he was told, shoveling dirt away from the tree root until the dew-sodden soil smeared his face and clothes and matted his striking silver locks. The older man almost wished the boy would attack him and show some hunger to live. Every shred of pride and self-reliance, traits that had made Prince Seien both revered and feared, had been ripped from the promising young man, and a heartbreaking shell was all that remained.

Or was it? Here and there, Shouka caught glimpses of expression in the hollow eyes and blank face that he understood all too well. Perhaps he was the only one capable of seeing through Seiran's inhuman mask because he wore one himself until he could no longer remember his face without it. Rage bubbled like magma beneath the thin and fragile shell before him, but not a mindless, instinctual anger. The silence, the methodical and endless toil, the humiliating submission—they were all punishments to appease the self-hatred that ate at the core of the shattered prince's existence. Whatever Seien had become since leaving Kiyou, whatever had kept him alive against all odds, he now despised and buried deep within himself.

Yet, despite the freedom he now had to end his own suffering, he had not chosen that path. Shouka had no doubt that the boy must have considered it. Maybe every time he picked up the ax to chop wood, every blow was a last-second redirection at the wood instead of at himself, second by second, one choice at a time. So far, the boy had chosen to live. Shouka, too, as a boy, had chosen to live, despite the murderous monster he harbored inside himself that ate up men's lives with a hungry lust. Why had he chosen to live when he, like Seiran, couldn't bear to acknowledge his own truth?

Shouka looked squarely at the boy's filthy face, sweat, like tears, streaking scars of dirt down his pale, thin cheeks. Seiran hesitated and stared back, wide-eyed, uncertain, his lips moving slightly as though wanting to ask if he'd done wrong. In that instant, Shouka remembered another boy—two boys in fact—with faces similar to his own, one nearly his age, the other much younger, playing in the mud in Kou Province. He reached his hand out to Seiran, and his fingers spanned decades of time and anguish, and touched the cheek of his younger brother, Reishin, muddied by their baby brother Kurou. Seiran's flinch at Shouka's touch brought the older man back to the present.

"Eh, you've got some dirt," he muttered awkwardly and motioned toward Seiran's cheek. The boy quickly rubbed his sleeve over his face smearing the dirt around even worse. Shouka smiled at the child's face that looked at him with trepidation.

He's just a boy, Shouka thought, and he has something, someone, to live for.

"All right, Seiran," Shouka announced with a deep breath as he plopped his rear in the slick dirt and dug his heels into the ground. He jerked the tree root up from the soil Seiran had cleared away. "It's time to see if this old demon is stronger than us." He reached behind him for the ax and pointed the handle at Seiran.

Seiran's wide eyes darted from the ax to Shouka and back again, as if the older man were trying to trick him. Shouka pretended not to notice the boy's shaking fingers, nor his nervous glances, nor the way he squeezed the handle in his fist until his knuckles turned white.

Adrenalin surged through Shouka's arms as he pulled the root taut with both hands, nearly defenseless if Seiran so much as slipped or fumbled the ax in his grip, or decided one enemy's death was as good as another's.

"Give it everything you've got," he urged with a confident nod to the boy.

Seiran frowned, his lips trembled as they pressed together, and he drew rapid breaths, one after another. He raised the ax over his head and held it there, wavering perilously. His chin quivered and his eyes filled with pain and mortification. He glared at Shouka as though he were the devil himself.

"Cut it loose, Seiran. Let's make room for something new," Shouka told him and grinned his reassurance. The older man lowered his gaze to the straining tree root and waited.

Every man faced moments of decision like this throughout his life, moments on which it seemed the universe teetered. For Shouka, this moment challenged the bloody Black Wolf to choose whether or not he could ever have faith in humanity again. When he handed Seiran the ax, he had made his choice, and he now awaited Seiran's decision to know if he was right.

Shouka heard Seiran's soft whimper of agony choked into near silence, though it might have been a thunderclap for the way it reverberated in the older man's chest. Seiran threw the weight of his body and the weight of the world he carried on his thin shoulders into the blow that drove down into the tree root and tore it away. Instantly, his hands let go of the ax buried in the ground and he fell backward into the mud as the root snapped free and threw Shouka on his back as well.

"Ha-ha! You did it, Seiran! You did it!" Shouka lurched upward and flung the old root aside. He clapped his muddy hand proudly on Seiran's back. "Well done!"

Seiran winced and flinched under the force of Shouka's approval, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from the older man's jubilant face. He searched the smiling expression fearfully, doubtfully, but when nothing assailed him except the squeeze of a strong and steady hand on his shoulder, the boy reached out and twisted his fist in Shouka's sleeve. Before he could stop himself, Seiran tugged at the sleeve and hung on to it with both hands, as though he would blow away if he let go. He bowed his head low and his shoulders shook as he lost his struggle to maintain his composure in Shouka's sight.

Shouka grimaced at the display of agony, at the way the dam holding back Seiran's anguish disintegrated all at once. His sobs became audible and his breathing more labored as the overwhelming pain he had crushed down for so long threatened to consume him the way the tree root choked the burgeoning garden. In his current mental and physical state, he couldn't bear to face this much misery at once, and so Shouka cast about for some weapon to give him to fight off his pain. Then, as always happened when he felt most lost, Shouka thought of his wife and her taunting, haunting smile.

"Seiran, you've soiled my clothes," Shouka announced in feigned shock, pretending not to notice the boy's tears.

Seiran gulped at the air to choke back his sobs and glanced up fearfully at where his filthy hands had stained the other man's sleeve. Still, he couldn't let go, and he ground his teeth against his bottom lip anxiously. His wet, reddened eyes took in the rest of Shouka's muddy, splattered clothes and his eyebrows drew together in confusion. The sleeve he held was actually the least dirty part of the garment.

"I'm afraid you leave me no choice but to exact my revenge," Shouka threatened menacingly and leveled squinting, dangerous eyes at the red-faced boy, no longer weeping, but automatically shifting his body for attack.

Before Seiran could gain his balance on the slippery earth, Shouka darted out a hand and swiped a glob of mud across the boy's cheek and mouth. Seiran sprawled backward in shock and sunk into the wet dirt with a pronounced squishing sound.

"Ho-ho! You look like a little piggy at suppertime!" the older man announced, laughing and slapping his thigh. That is, until the wind was knocked out of him by the surprisingly powerful force of the small body that tackled him back into the dirt and drove a bony knee against the older man's chest.

For the next several seconds, Seiran poured his inner torment into his fists that pummeled the chest of his opponent, struggling beneath him. And laughing. Seiran's fist froze in cocked position over Shouka's chuckling face, and he glared at the man too foolish to know he was being attacked.

"Oh, oh, please, I'm too old for this," Shouka bemoaned between breathless snickers. "Help a vanquished old man out of the dirt, will you?"

A soft, conciliatory smile beamed up at Seiran, and after a moment, he crawled off his opponent and took the hand reached out to him—which then jerked him off balance as his feet were swept out from under him and he landed on his chest in the dirt. He immediately rolled onto his back, gritting his teeth and growling at the man standing over him and laughing again. He lashed his legs out and twined his feet around one of Shouka's ankles and jerked quickly, bringing the taller man down onto his knees. Taking his chance, Seiran dove at him, only to be flipped over the man's head and flat onto his back.

A pair of large, round eyes watched the wrestling match from the opened backdoor.

"Mama, I'm all better!" Shuurei announced excitedly and sniffled.

"Shuurei-chan! What am I going to do with you? You go back to bed right now!" her mother towered over her with her hands perched on her hips.

Shuurei buried little fists against her waist and lifted determined eyes to her mother. "I want to play with Papa and Seiraa."

"They'll play with you when their work is done," Shoukan answered firmly.

"They're already playing," Shuurei insisted.

Shoukan cocked her head to the side at her daughter's words. She quickly swept to the backdoor and her jaw dropped at the sight before her. Nearly half her vegetable garden had been ravaged by the two idiots caked in mud from head to toe, trying to bury each other in the hole where the old tree root had been. Her smile was so wide her cheeks hurt.

"Papa and Seiraa are funny," Shuurei remarked, smiling up at her mother.

"Papa and Seiran are in big trouble," Shoukan replied pointedly, trying to contain her grin. "SHOUKA!!!" she bellowed from inside the house.

Two mud blobs, one smaller than the other, but otherwise indistinct from each other, instantly sat up from the garden. Bright eyes stared at each other from mud-plastered faces.

"Uh-oh…" Shouka grunted, instantly recognizing that particular tone of his wife's voice. The two accomplices looked around in shock at the devastation they had caused to the garden.

"Eh, I'll smooth this over with Lady Kou," he assured Seiran with a nervous grin, as he tried to help the younger blob out of the mud, only to wind up on his backside again. Seiran braced himself in the slippery muck and grappled Shouka's sleeves, steadying him as he got to his feet. Holding onto each other, the two, who might have been anyone's father and anyone's son, headed toward the house.

"Don't even think about coming inside, either of you!" came the shrill voice from the kitchen that fought to maintain its sternness despite the laughter that threatened to overtake it.

"But...we…we saved the garden from the tree root…" Shouka called back sweetly, stumbling toward the house. Seiran snickered quietly beside him.