“Yourbrother. . .” 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—thisninjawitch—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 toomuch. 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 couldfeelthe hunter’s breath.
“Your pain,” she whispered, taking on an intimacy that frightened me more than any magic she might possess, “yourdesperation—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.
