“This is bigger than us. If Prince Haru doesn’t make it safely to the capital, if something happens to him on the road . . .” I let the implication hang.
“But whyyou?” Yoshi’s voice was growing shrill as panic overcame rational thought. “You’re just one man, a boy, really. What can you do—”
“I have special skills that could help. You know I do.” My heart shattered as his eyes widened, then filled to overflowing. He blinked a few times, tears streaking down his unlined face. I watched him struggling, wanting to argue but recognizing the logic. In times of crisis, duty came first. Every student at Suwa understood that, even if we hated it.
“How long?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know.” Another truth. The shadows hadn’t given me a timeline, just an order.
“You’ll come back?”
“If I can.” It was the most honest answer I could give, and it broke something in his eyes.
I pulled him against me then, fierce and desperate, memorizing the feel of him—the way he fit against my chest, the soap and sweat scent of his hair, the tremor in his breathing that said he was fighting tears. His arms came around me just as tightly, as if he could keep me there through will alone.
I wanted to tell him everything—about the black cranes, the shadow training, the vow that bound me to masters I’d never truly seen. I wanted to confess that I was walking into somethingterrible, that the shadows had plans within plans and I was just a blade to be wielded.
Instead, I held him and wondered if this was the last time I’d ever do so.
Because my heart knew it might be so.
And if the gods allowed us to return to one another, would I still be Kaneko, his friend and lover? Or would I become something else—the shadows’ tool, the Empire’s weapon, a stranger wearing familiar skin?
Would he remain the same? Would he still want me if I changed?
“Be careful,” Yoshi whispered against my shoulder. “Whatever happens, be careful.”
“You, too. Don’t let the power control you. Remember what Haru taught you.”
We stayed like that until the morning bell rang for practice, until duty called us both to our separate fates.
When I finally pulled away, I didn’t look back.
I couldn’t bear to see what I was leaving behind.
Chapter 8
Asami Eiko
The messenger’s feet pattered like rain on stone as he struggled to match my pace through the narrow hallway. My shoulders brushed both walls. These ancient passages had been built for my grandfather’s generation, when the Asami were lean mountain wolves instead of well-fed bears. I shoved a strand of iron-gray hair from my forehead, the same stubborn lock that had been escaping my pins since I was a girl. The irony wasn’t lost on me that prosperity had made us wider even as it made us hungrier.
“Did the Emperor’s dog say what he wanted?” I barked over my shoulder without slowing.
“No,Daimyo, only that he traveled with all haste to see you, that his words were urgent.”
I snorted, the sound echoing off the stone walls. Of course, his words were urgent. Five thousand of my troops stood ready on our southern border, with siege engines aimed at Toshi Daiki’ssoft underbelly. The Emperor would have to be blind not to notice that particular storm gathering.
Takashi was many things. Blind was not among them.
“Does this messenger hold rank, or did our dear leader send me an errand runner?”
My servant bowed again, and something in the nervous way he avoided my eye made me pause.
“Spit it out. I see you know more—”
“The Crown Prince,Daimyo. The messenger is Crown Prince Akira Kioshi.”
I blinked a few times, waiting for the man to clarify, to tell me he’d misspoken and the first prince did not stand in my antechamber awaiting my pleasure, but the scrawny retainer remained cowed and silent.
