Yukihime held it. Then she reached up both hands to the collar of her kimono and drew it slowly off her shoulders, the pale silk parting to reveal skin that was the white of fresh snow and somehow warmer than anything that color had any right to be — luminous and flawless, untouched by time or cold or the thousand years of solitude that had shaped everything else about her.
Still holding his gaze, Yukihime let the kimono fall.
It happened slowly — the silk whispering down her arms, catching for a moment at her elbows before she shrugged it loose and let it pool around her waist in a loose tangle of pale fabric. She didn't look away from him. Whatever courage had carried her this far, she wasn't surrendering it now, even as the cool air of the room settled against her bare skin and raised every fine hair on her body.
Nathan forgot how to breathe.
