Kenji keeps coming, unhurried, confident, every movement sharp and contained. He wipes blood from his lip with his thumb, eyes bright now, alive in a way that makes my stomach twist.
“Good,” he says softly. “Let’s finish this properly.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer.
Kenji explodes forward, speed shocking even now, his palm slamming into my chest hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. I stagger back, barely getting my guard up before his elbow crashes into my shoulder, then my jaw.
I hit him back. A knee. A sharp hook that glances off his cheek. Not enough.
Never enough.
He catches my wrist, twists, and throws me across the patio. I slam into alow stone table, pain flaring white-hot through my back. I barely have time to roll before he’s there again, driving a kick into my ribs that lifts me off my feet.
I crash through the glass doors.
They shatter around me in a roar of breaking crystal as my body punches through, fragments exploding inward. I hit the tile hard and slide, skin tearing, glass biting into my arms, my side, my hands. My breath vanishes in a sharp, panicked gasp.
For a second, I can’t breathe.
The world narrows to pain and ringing.
I drag myself onto my hands and knees, lungs burning, vision swimming as blood drips onto the floor. Glass crunches under weight behind me.
Kenji steps through the wreckage slowly.
Deliberately.
Each footfall grinds shards into the tile as he circles me, calm as ever, unhurried, like he has all the time in the world. Like he’s enjoying this.
“You always struggled when the ground dropped out from under you,” he says mildly. “Too much emotion. Not enough patience.”
I bow my head, sucking in air, shoulders shaking.
And quietly, I curl my fingers around the glass beneath my palms.
Sharp. Jagged. Perfect.
It’s always a mistake to underestimate me. And I’m going to remind my old teacher of that fact.
I push up in one violent motion and sling my hands forward.
The shards tear through the air and into his face.
Kenji shouts, real surprise breaking through as glass cutsacross his cheeks, embeds in his lips, slices into his eyes. One shard catches the inside of his mouth when he inhales, and blood sprays bright and sudden.
I don’t wait.
I run.
Boots pounding tile, I sprint across the hall as he roars behind me, half-blind and furious now. I slam through the first open doorway I see and skid to a stop inside?—
A showroom with glass cases. Silk-lined walls. Spotlit displays of Japanese weapons arranged with reverent precision. Katana. Wakizashi. Naginata. Yari. Blades old and new, ceremonial, and lethal, all waiting behind pristine panes.
I turn, chest heaving, blood slicking my hands.
Kenji staggers into the doorway moments later, eyes red and streaming, blood smeared across his face. He wipes at it with shaking fingers, rage burning through the pain.
Our gazes lock across the room.
