32. The Red Spider Lily
32
The Red Spider Lily
EARLIER THAT MORNING…
R yu had awoken that morning a bit unsettled. Everything was fine. Great even. However, maybe it was seeing Eira in his mother’s wedding dress, but something in his gut felt uneasy about her safety.
Now that she was his wife, Ryu was able to really make changes in his staff and update mandates for her protection, which he planned to do first thing this morning with his father and staff. After the flower incident, he had wanted to enact this immediately, but it was something he could only do after they were wed.
He didn’t exactly want to spend the morning after his wedding doing this duty, but he was glad he had when he’d woken up with a knot in his stomach.
What he didn’t plan on, though, was waking up an hour earlier than planned, but since he couldn’t sleep with thoughts of Eira’s safety, there was something he could do to pass the time that always helped to bring his mind at ease.
Whispering over to his newly wedded wife that he would be back before she awoke, he quietly got ready and left the room, heading to his favorite place in the world.
Just going inside the training building made him exhale all the terrible thoughts and release any bad energy he had pent up before he found himself pleasantly surprised to see he wasn’t the only one up before dawn.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“You know me,” Kage said, not even bothering to open his eyes from his meditation. “But I am surprised that you’re up so early. I thought you might be too tired after your big day.”
“Yeah …” was all Ryu could muster to say, not knowing whether to tell him about the uneasy feeling he’d felt the moment he had awoken.
But leave it to his sensei to notice, as one of Kage’s eyes peeked open to look at him. “Something bothering you?”
Running his hand through his hair, Ryu remembered Eira asking him the same question he was about to ask. At the time, he had answered so confidently, but now, why was he no longer so a day after their wedding?
“You don’t think … anyone else would try to hurt Eira, do you?”
“The old man is dead, right?” Kage said, getting to his feet with a ready stance. It was obvious his meditation was over. “So, stop your worrying. Eira is perfectly safe here on Kasumi Island.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Ryu pushed his hair back out of the way, the nervous action revealing it was easier said than done. “I’m just overthinking, is all.”
His sensei laughed. “Don’t tell me marriage has already made you whipped.”
Knowing his longtime friend was only joking, Ryu readied up at his words. “I’ll show you whipped.”
“Oh”—a bloodthirsty smile touched Kage’s lips—“I’d like to see you try.”
“Eira, what in the world is wrong?” Her grandmother looked at her as if she were crazy.
“There’s no time to explain,” she cried, knowing Yuri or Kage could find them at any minute. “We must get a boat and get off the island—now!”
“Oh, honey, I told you I’d get your grandfather to steal a boat before you got married, but you’re married now.” She patted her granddaughter’s head not so sympathetically. “Too late.”
“I ain’t leaving. No way,” Grandfather agreed, sipping on an ice-cold drink as if he were the king of Kasumi Island. “I’ve already grown accustomed to a certain way of life.”
Eira rolled her eyes, understanding Tatsu a bit more. “Grandfather, we haven’t been here that long to get accustomed to anything.”
“Well, it’s been long enough to know I’m not crossing back over that ocean to drink your grandmother’s hot tea again.”
When Grandmother went to swat at her husband, Eira knew she needed to knock her own bit of sense into them.
Grabbing her grandmother’s arms in a tight vice, she shook her desperately. “Do you trust me?”
Sensing Eira was serious now, she nodded her head. “Yes, of course.”
“Then we need to leave,” Eira repeated the urgency. “ Now .”
“Honey …” she called out for her husband’s attention.
“Yes, dear?” Grandfather slurped up the last bit of his cold drink through his straw.
“We’re leaving.”
“Where the hell did she go?” Ryu growled when his father joined him.
“I don’t know.” His father sounded helpless, catching up to him with even more bad news. “Her grandparents are gone, too.”
Red was the only color Ryu saw as he busted down the last room he had yet to check. The library looked like it had been used recently, as a book sat on the table, but it was otherwise empty, causing Ryu to slam his fist down on the desk so hard that it made the book on top fly open.
“Why is no one here? And not a single staff member can locate my wife or tell me her whereabouts before she left the palace?”
“Son, I’m sure they’ve just gone on a walk …” Tatsu tried his best to not have Ryu jump to conclusions … yet.
Thinking only for a moment, Ryu took a calming breath, trying to take his father’s advice, but his gut only screamed at him louder. “Something’s not right—I can feel it.”
Tatsu abruptly nodded. “Then let’s ring the gong.”
Ryu looked at his father strangely. To ring the gong on the island meant everyone went into life-or-death mode. It was reserved only for the most dire and serious or life-threatening and life-altering consequences.
“You’d do that?”
“Son, I do not wish my fate upon you. You only just found her; I at least spent many good years with your mother before she passed.”
With fists still on the table, Ryu looked down, needing to think for a moment. If they rang the gong and Eira was in danger at the hands of someone, it could mean they might only kill her faster. He needed to be strategic and only wished he knew all possibilities before he leaped into action. Deciding he had nothing to go off of, he was just about to tell his father to go through with it when something caught his eye—a hand-drawn flower pasted on the pages of the book.
His anger, or maybe even fate, had conveniently opened it to the all-too-familiar botanical. Flipping the book to look at the cover, he saw the title, Kasumi Island Family History .
“What is this?” Ryu asked, mostly to himself, but was shocked to hear his father answer.
“That is Kage’s family crest. Tei’s are dragons, but Kai’s is the red spider lily. You didn’t know that?”
Ryu’s heart suddenly sank to the floor. “No …”
“You must not have paid attention to me when I was teaching you the famous family crests, then.” Clearing his throat, his father went into the teaching voice he often used when Ryu was a child. “They are said to be very poisonou—”
Tatsu didn’t finish his words as both he and Ryu looked at each other with fear in their eyes.
“Oh no.” Seeing the writing on the wall for his son, Tatsu felt horrible for him, both of them knowing exactly what must’ve happened and the betrayal that was happening right under their noses.
Knowing all too well what that look in his son’s eyes was, he was almost envious. Tatsu hadn’t had anyone to fight when his wife’s life had hung in the balance. Fighting an illness was a losing battle against an evil you couldn’t take your pain out on. But his son was lucky; lucky that he could fight and possibly save Eira still.
“I’ll find Eira; you handle what you need.”
“Thanks, Father,” was all Ryu said before the dragon under his skin stirred to be let free.