Chapter 16
Kaneko
Serve the Son of Heaven? The Emperor?
My mind raced, trying to understand, to catch up to whatever insanity this woman was proposing. Clearly, she was mad. This was a house of many things, but service to a higher calling wasn’t one I’d ever imagined.
What did she want? What was that coin? And why me, of all people?
But before I could form a single question, the black-clad woman spoke again. “You ran today, from the common area. You abandoned your post because you saw someone you knew, someone from before you were taken captive.”
My blood went cold. There was no way she could know any of that. No one on the mainland could. The time Yoshi and I had spent with the Prince felt like a lifetime ago and had been hundreds of ri from where we sat. We’d done so in the privacy of secluded chambers on a distant isle.
“Prince Haru,” she said, interrupting my thoughts again, the Prince’s name dropping into the silence like a stone into still water. “Of the northern provinces, he visited your village once. He spoke to you and your brother about love, about not waiting for permission to live.”
The way she said “brother” chilled me, as though the word carried some hidden weight, some meaning with depth beyond knowing.
And it did—but there was absolutely no way anyone else could know that.
Yoshi and I had never shown affection in front of others.
Hells, we’d barely given it to each other in private.
And yet, somehow, she knew. She knew everything.
How long had she been watching?
Since I arrived? Since before?
“Your brother . . .” Her voice softened as she seemed to struggle with her next words.
“You fear for him.” Another statement, not a question.
“Yoshi is younger than you by two years. You were separated when you were captured. You do not know if he lives or dies. You think about him every night. You are terrified you are forgetting his face.”
My heart stilled. This woman—this ninja witch—knew thoughts I’d never spoken aloud, had barely let myself think.
Every instinct I’d ever possessed screamed for me to leap off the cushion, run out of the office, and flee the House of Petals, consequences be damned.
And yet, tears burned behind my eyes. I blinked them back, refusing to let them fall.
For another to know our secret, to know the depth of my longing and sorrow and, in the darkness, my thin thread of hope, was almost too much to bear. In an odd way, it was also a comfort. My fear was now a shared burden, no longer truly a secret.
But I couldn’t think about that, couldn’t give myself quarter in this battle of wills . . . and understanding. This woman knew too much. She wasn’t my friend. She wasn’t here to help me. She was a predator and nothing more.
The air around her pulsed. I felt it against my skin. A pressure. A weight. Something vast and unknowable closing in from all sides, like a trap being sprung.
I was the hare, and I could feel the hunter’s breath.
“Your pain,” she whispered, taking on an intimacy that frightened me more than any magic she might possess, “your desperation—it makes you valuable.”
She stood in one fluid motion. There was no sound, not even the whisper of fabric. There was only stillness, then standing, with no transition between.
I started to rise as well, but she gestured for me to remain seated. I obeyed without thought.
“Think on what I have said,” she told me. “Consider what greater purpose your suffering might serve. Consider what you could become. It is time you ceased reacting and took hold of your future, of the man you might one day be.”
She moved toward the door. Her steps made no sound at all. Nor did her breath. As if she were not quite real. The power in the air intensified. The shadows in the room seemed to reach for her, long for her, embrace her.
My skin prickled, and my breath hitched.
“You have much to consider,” she said, pausing at the door without turning back. “Speak of this only to Sakurai. A word to anyone else would, well, waste the mistress’s investment.”
I blinked, unable to ask any of the hundred questions tickling my tongue.
It mattered little. She would offer no answers.
Then I blurted, “Who are you?”
And she was gone.
Simply gone.
The door had not opened. She had not passed through. She was simply no longer there, as though she had never existed at all.
The temperature in the office returned to normal instantly. The oppressive weight lifted. The shadows retreated to their proper places. And that strange pressure, that sense of otherworldly power, dissipated like steam curling above a teapot.
But I could still feel the echo of it, still taste it on my tongue.
I gasped, sucking in air, and realized I was drenched in sweat. My entire body was shaking, and my legs rejected me when I tried to stand; so I remained kneeling, trembling, trying to process what had just happened.
On the desk, the golden coin gleamed in the candlelight. I reached for it with shaking hands. It was ice cold, no longer exuding life. Whatever warmth it once possessed had vanished with her.
I stared at it, at the Emperor’s face, at the dragon breathing fire.
At the symbol of service to the throne. From what Yoshi’s tutors taught, only the Emperor himself could gift his personal badge.
Only one who served him directly could possess it.
Yoshi’s father held such a coin, though he allowed only family—and those taken in as such—to see it.
This woman was the Emperor’s own. She served him—personally. But served him doing what?
As I returned the coin to the desk, the door slid open—this time with the normal scrape of wood on wood.
I glanced up, my heart lurching, expecting her return, but it was only Sakurai.
He stood in the doorway, his face carefully blank, but I saw the tension in his shoulders, the way his eyes would not quite meet mine.
“Come,” he said quietly. “I will take you back to your chamber.”
I stood on shaking legs and started toward the door.
“Wait,” I said.
I turned back and reached for the coin.
Sakurai’s hand shot out, gripping my wrist. “Leave it.”
“But—”
“Leave it.” His voice was sharp. Urgent. Almost frightened. “And do not speak of this until I say you may.”
“But—”
He leaned in, his whisper a plea. “Kaneko, listen to me. For the love of the gods, do as I say. These walls hear; you know this to be true. You must not speak of this evening to anyone, and certainly not where others might overhear.”
He withdrew his hand and stepped back.
My gaze shifted from his eyes back to the desk.
The coin was gone.
I blinked. Stared. Blinked again.
It had been there a moment ago. I had seen it, reached for it, held it, but now the desk was empty, as if nothing had been there at all.
“Come,” Sakurai said again and then led me from Momoko’s office.