As Sen brought her blade down, so did Lee.
He gripped the handle as tight as he could, then stabbed his own hand into the counter.
He felt his father’s hands on him before he felt the pain, an earthquake that began in the bones of his hand and rippled through his whole body. His knees shook and a wave of nausea choked him as the blood gushed across the counter.
“Lee, stop!” his father said, trying to grab the knife.
Lee wrenched the blade out of his hand and pressed it to his wrist. He would saw off his own hand—the blade was more than sharp enough, Hina had made sure of that. It had cut through pork bones and raw squash and all those things were so much harder than human flesh. Lee would be free. He could never hurthis father if he didn’t have the hands to do so. He didn’t know how he would cut off his right hand once the left was gone, but it hardly mattered at this point—he couldn’t think of anything but blood and salt and pain surging through him like electricity.
Then warm arms closed around him and tugged him back, the knife clattering to the floor.
No, Lee thought, reaching for it with his free hand, but his father had wrestled him to the floor, far from the knife. His father braced him in his arms, and Lee was too dizzy to fight back.
“What the hell are you doing?” his father said. “Lee, stop!”
Lee’s feet kicked helplessly in the pool of blood on the floor as he struggled against his father.What have you done? Why are you like this? Why can’t you be normal?He could taste the words his father had never said, could hear them even though he’d never spoken them, so why did they seem so loud?
Blue light washed over his face, and for a moment Lee thought he’d fainted, but then he jerked his face toward the window and saw it.
Police cars.
Lee looked back at his father, his expression stricken, splattered with blood.
His father couldn’t have called them after he’d stabbed his hand—there wasn’t enough time.
He called them before I came to the kitchen, Lee realized.
This was why he’d positioned Lee’s chair away from the window—so Lee wouldn’t see. So he could ambush Lee and send him away.
“Dad?” Lee whispered, meeting his father’s eyes, which had never really seen him, not even once.
Even now, his father looked away, because Lee seared people’s eyes like the sun.
Lee elbowed his father hard in the ribs. He coughed and loosened his grip enough for Lee to break free. Lee stumbledto his feet, slipping in blood and grabbing the counter with his good hand for support. His father reached for him but Lee was faster. He ran to his room and locked the door behind him. His father was punching through the paper doors to find the lock, but Lee didn’t need more time.
He threw open the door to his closet.
It resisted his pull, stuck on something on the other side, but Lee pulled and pulled until it unlatched and he met a wall of wood. He rammed into it with his shoulder and it fell forward with a crash. A dresser, Lee realized as he stumbled dizzily to his feet, shoving the furniture back in place so his father couldn’t follow him here.
Lee fell to his knees, suddenly acutely aware of how fast blood was leaving his body. He grabbed a piece of clothing from the floor and bound it quickly around his hand, but the room still spun. He stumbled into a small table and sent scrolls rolling to the floor. Across the room, the painting of his mother stared back at him, tilting from side to side as his vision fizzled at the edges.Let me out, Lee.
Footsteps approached as a warm fog tried to pull him under. Sen would help him. He could stay here. He never had to see his father again. Sen would help him. He could see her face, her dark eyes, her cold hands that peeled the cruel world away.
Then the door opened, and the shadow of a man fell over him.
Lee only had a moment to process the glinting armor, the hard lines of the shoulders, the crushing realization thatthis isn’t Senbefore the man shouted something in outrage that Lee couldn’t understand.
The man rushed forward and Lee dove to the side, shock quickly sapped by adrenaline. The man tried to grab Lee, but Lee glinted away like a river fish and fell against the opposite wall. The hilt of the man’s sword gleamed on his belt, but he didn’t draw it.
The ceilings are low so you can’t raise a sword indoors, Hina had said. So the next time the man lunged for him, Lee raced not for the door to the forest, but into the hallway.
He tripped over startled servants. One woman screamed as he stomped on her foot. Sen’s father raced after him with a roar, all but shoving the door off its hinges.
Lee tried to turn a corner, but his feet were slick with blood and he fell into a paper door, crashing straight through it onto the porch. He caught himself with his injured hand and the impact sent agony echoing through his bones. He didn’t know how he managed to rise to his feet and avoid the first strike of the katana, but he somehow rolled off the porch as the katana struck wood.
But after that, there was no escape. The man’s shadow eclipsed him, and he raised his sword, clean silver against the white sky.
Chapter Thirty
