... and crashing into metal plates.
His teeth clanged against them, rattling in his skull. He’d barely pushed himself back when a hand seized his hair and tossed him to the side. He skidded through blood, the salt of it stinging his eyes, searing his lips. He rose onto his hands and knees as a shadow fell over him.
A samurai was standing in his room.
Not like Sen, who was the sharp edge of moonlight on flower petals, graceful darkness and silent death. This was a man wrapped in sheets of black metal armor like dragon scales, a flared helmet with a golden crescent moon, thick leather gloves and golden ropes and a sword made of moonlight. The brim of the helmet cast shadows over his face, but Lee could still make out his blazing brown eyes.
Lee realized, too late, that he had been playing a very dangerous game.
Trying to manipulate the dead daughter of a samurai?What was he thinking? He’d lost his mind and upset a house full of ghosts. Sen had probably begged her father to kill him. Lee had been so singularly focused on finding the truth that little else had mattered. But now, with a real warrior glaring down at him, he wondered if all truths were really worth dying for.
The samurai stepped farther into the room, one hand on his katana. Lee scrambled away, his bloody handprints smearing down the walls. The samurai had turned around to face Lee, so he edged closer to the closet, to Sen’s world.
The samurai said something in Japanese that Lee couldn’t understand—the man’s accent was thick, his voice low. Lee thought he might have heard Sen’s name, but he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t even looking at Lee, but staring at the corner of the room, where there was nothing but shadows. The man took a steadying breath, and at last said something Lee could understand clearly.
“We live and die alone,” the samurai said. Then he drew his sword. Lee flinched back, ready to run.
But the samurai did not rise again. Instead, he unbuckled his chest plate and cast it aside, the metal clattering to the floor. Then he turned his blade around and sliced across his own stomach.
Organs gushed over Lee’s bed, a surge of blood and yellow stomach acid and bile. More blood spilled from the man’s mouth as he fell to his hands. He reached out a trembling, blood-soaked hand, gripping Lee’s bare foot before he jerked away. The man grunted something in Japanese, but Lee’s ears roared like the ocean was trapped inside his skull.
Lee thought the force of his heartbeat would shatter his ribs. He tried to back away, but slid to his elbows in the blood.
When the samurai tried to pull him closer, Lee scrambled backward into Sen’s room and slammed the door shut.
It was jarringly bright, candles burning in the hallways that cast the far wall in orange light. He’d landed softly on Sen’s bed when he fell, so hopefully no one had heard him enter.
He looked around, but Sen was missing, as was one of the swords from her hooks on the wall.
A bloody handprint slammed against the other side of the door, the paper threatening to tear.
Lee jolted back, rising to his feet unsteadily and heading for the hallway. He couldn’t stay here.
A shadow rolled across the hallway door, followed by the sound of a man speaking in Japanese too quickly for Lee to understand. Sen had told him not to come here, and with the image of the samurai disemboweling himself over Lee’s bed, he was beginning to understand why. This was not a family he could risk upsetting.
Still, he couldn’t go back to his own room, not now.
He shoved through the door to the southern yard and dashedbarefoot across the clearing lit by moonlight, feeling naked under its glow.
No one shouted or came after him as he sprinted into the forest. He crushed roots and plants under his feet as he ran, flinching as branches slashed across his face. His breathing was so loud that anyone out here would be able to find him, but getting caught in Sen’s room seemed the fastest way to be disemboweled by her father.
He tripped over a root and crashed onto his hands. When he looked up, he was staring at the tip of a sword.
Moonlight illuminated the blade in white. The cutting edge was so thin it seemed to whisper away into the night. He imagined it slicing through his spine like butter before he could form the words to beg. Lee’s father would never know what happened to him.
Maybe this is what happened to my mother, he thought. Somehow, the idea warmed him. Maybe his mother hadn’t died but had stumbled through a door into another world. Maybe the door had locked behind her.
The blade disappeared.
“Lee?”
Sen was standing over him, a katana in one hand, her eyes beautiful and terrifying in the moonlight. It lit up one half of her face, her soft cheeks and stark eyes and dark hair blowing in the breeze. Lee had never been so grateful to see anyone in his life. Sen hadn’t killed him on sight, which meant she didn’t want him dead, she hadn’t sent a samurai after him.
She cast her gaze around the forest frantically, her back turned to him. In the distance, men’s voices rose, too muffled for Lee to understand.
“You can’t be here,” Sen said, whirling back toward him. He knew her blade wasn’t for him, but he still flinched at the sight of her wielding it with anger in her eyes.
Sen sighed and sheathed her blade. “My father has found a spy,” she said. “He is not in a forgiving mood.”
