It pulled, tore, then fell away.
I sawhisface.
He was a man.
He wasSakurai.
Our eyes met.
For only a heartbeat, maybe less.
The space between one breath and the next.
Then he was gone, vanished into darkness as though he’d never existed.
Only blood on the floor and throwing stars embedded in the wall proved he’d been real.
The silence that followed consumed everything, just as shadows had consumed Sakurai.
My arm burned where the throwing star had grazed me, and my heart hammered so hard I thought it might crack my ribs.
Gods, my mind raced, stumbling, trying to process what I’d just seen.
It was Sakurai.
The man who’d sworn me to service, who’d told me I was protecting the Emperor, who’d trained me to be a weapon in the darkness that kept the throne safe.
Sakurai had just tried to kill someone under the future Emperor’s own roof.
“Kaneko?” Yoshi’s voice sounded distant, muffled by the roaring in my ears. “You’re bleeding.”
I looked down at my arm. The cut was shallow, already clotting. It was nothing serious, but my hands were shaking. My whole body was shaking.
“Did you . . .” Esumi was staring at where the assassin had vanished. “Did youknowhim?”
Every instinct I’d been trained to follow screamed at me to lie, to deny, to protect the shadows because that’s what the shadows did. It was the first rule, the most important rule; but I’d just watched Sakurai—the man who’d taught me that rule, who’d made me swear to it—try to murder people in the Imperial palace, try to kill someone under Haru’s protection.
Guards began pouring into the chamber, the clatter of armored boots echoing off stone walls. The captain shouted orders, then directed a series of rapid-fire questions at Esumi. He sank onto the bottom stair of the dais and buried his face in his hands.
“He thought I was Haru,” I heard him mutter. Then he repeated in a clearer tone, “The assassin thought I was the Emperor-in-waiting. This was an attack on the throne.”
The guards, already an angered nest of bees, redoubled their efforts to search for shadows that no longer lingered.
“Kaneko.” Yoshi was in front of me now, hands on my shoulders, divine light still fading in his eyes like dying embers. His whispers held an urgency I’d never known from him before. “Talk to me. What was that?Whowas that?”
The truth felt like poison crawling up my throat, like admitting it would make it real in a way that silence couldn’t.
“I think . . .” I whispered. “I knew him.”
“Who was he?” Esumi stumbled from the dais to kneel beside Yoshi, hovering over me in a way that shielded me from the guards.
I met Yoshi’s eyes, saw the trust there, the love we’d only recently learned to put into words, and I knew that what I said next might change everything.
“His name is Sakurai,” I said quietly. My voice sounded strange, hollow. “He’s the man who recruited me while I was a . . . a slave. He’s . . .” The words stuck in my throat like broken glass. “He swore me to serve the Emperor, to protect the throne, to die in darkness to keep the Empire safe.”
I watched understanding dawn in Yoshi’s eyes.
Then horror.
