The wind was fierce.
Not just fierce, but fierce enough to strip three layers of skin off a face.
Clouds split apart on either side, and the air battered his body like someone scrubbing him from head to toe with a wire brush. Yaha maintained a straight flight path three thousand meters above the ground, with nothing supporting his feet. He relied entirely on Cursed Energy blasting out from the base of his spine to keep him aloft.
Shinobu Kocho was tucked under his right arm.
It was an utterly undignified position.
She lay sideways against his waist, facing down at the mountains and rivers racing backward beneath her. They were so high that the villages below had become sesame-sized patches of color, and the rivers were as thin as silver threads.
The shriek of the wind flooded her ears, churning every sound into white noise. Shinobu Kocho's hair had escaped her butterfly hairpin and whipped wildly through the air.
She tried to adjust her position, instinctively reaching up with both hands and wrapping them tightly around Yaha's neck. All ten fingers dug into the flesh at the back of his neck, her knuckles white from the force.
Yaha glanced down.
Her face was less than a fist's width from his collarbone. Her purple eyes were wide open, her lashes swept back by the wind. Her lips were pressed tightly shut, and the tip of her nose rested against the fabric of his haori.
"Don't get your spit on my damn clothes."
His voice bore down on her from above, torn into fragments by the wind, but every word came through clearly.
Shinobu Kocho said nothing. She did not even dare open her mouth, afraid she would throw up her breakfast all over this tyrant's chest.
Yaha turned his gaze