I imagined scenarios where I found him, where my training concluded in a rousing success and a newfound strength allowed me to rescue him. It was a fantasy. I knew that. The Empire was vast, and the chances of finding one person among millions were impossibly small.
But fantasies were all I had.
I closed my eyes and saw the strategy board, saw stones representing forces, terrain, obstacles, saw a pattern emerging from chaos. Only then did I hear a voice, a whisper, barely a hint of a rasp.
“Yoshi.”
I shot upright, my head swiveling. I was alone.
“Yoshi.”
Sweet Amaterasu, I was going mad. No one had spoken aloud, yet I heard my name as clearly as if someone sat next to me.
“You must persevere. You must not lose hope. There is great strength in you, though few may yet see it.”
A flicker of a memory flashed in my mind.
“Nawa?” I said to the darkness of my chamber.
A feeling of approval, of assent, washed over me.
“Yoshi, you must rise. You will rise.”
I stood, unsure how else to handle a dragon’s words slipping inside my head—or how to respond. Did I think a reply and hope she heard? Should I speak aloud? How did the dragon even speak from this distance?
I decided to simply speak. “Honorable Nawa, what must I do? I can’t keep up. I’m not strong enough.”
“You are, Yoshi. Your strength rises like the tide.”
I tried to speak, to fight, to scream that she knew nothing, but one did not resist the will of the Emperor’s worm. It was known that she could not lie. Her words must’ve been true, her sight keen, but I . . . I was strong?
Her last words echoed in my mind, and I knew sleep would not come that night.
“Son of the Goddess, hear my voice and awaken.”
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 ofrifrom 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 yourbrotherabout 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 kneweverything.
How long had she been watching?
Since I arrived? Since before?
