Come and get me, she thought.I’m already dead.
She emerged from the woods with her sword drawn, prepared for the sight of enemy soldiers, but the yard was empty. She quickly rounded the house, where she found her father raising his blade to a man without armor, covered in blood. Atfirst, she thought he was another spy. But as the man held up a trembling hand, blood spiraling in ribbons down his thin wrist, Sen met his bright green eyes.
Lee.
“Stop!” she shouted.
Her father froze, his blade catching the glint of the sun. He turned to Sen questioningly as she ran toward him, lowering his blade only slightly.
“He’s no enemy,” Sen said, standing between her father and Lee. “I know him. He helped me.”
As fire seared across her father’s vision, she realized it was the worst thing she could have said.
“You allowed aforeignerinto my house?” he said, his words echoing across the yard. “After all that they took from me?”
“Yes,” Sen said unsteadily. It was the wrong answer, but the only one she could offer. Her silence would only anger him more.
Her father raised his hand and struck her across the face. The impact jolted her teeth and she bit her tongue, hot blood filling her mouth, but she remained on her feet.
“If this curse is your doing, then you will be the one to undo it,” her father said.
Sen’s ears were still ringing from her father’s blow, and she didn’t realize at first what he meant. Then he sheathed his blade and stepped aside, crossing his arms and looking at Sen expectantly.
She swallowed blood and looked down at Lee, trembling in the dirt, his eyes starkly green against the mask of blood. Lee Turner was a liar, but he did not deserve death just because Sen’s father demanded it.
“Chichiue,” Sen said, bowing her head in subservience, “I—”
Her father seized her hair, jerking her head to the side. “Doit, or I will,” he said. “And if I must do it, I will kill you too, for defying me.”
He released her hair, tossing her to the ground. She dug her fingers into the dirt, trying to swallow her tears. “What have I done wrong?” she said. Her father frowned as she raised her voice at him, but if she didn’t yell, she would cry. “Where in theHagakuredoes it say I’m not allowed a friend?”
She tried to rise to her feet, but her father shoved her back down. His shadow fell over her, his stance squared and one hand on the hilt of his katana.
“I raised you as a samurai despite all your flaws,” he said. “Is that not what you wanted? Did you want me to sell you off to spread your legs to a farm boy? I thought you wanted to be a warrior, not to bend over for men. But I guess I was wrong.”
Then her father drew his sword and raised the point just beneath her chin, forcing her to lift her face and look him in the eye. Now she couldn’t hide the tears that streaked down her face, the tears she knew her father would despise, just like he despised every true part of her. He’d only ever loved her lies.
“I don’t want to kill you, Sen,” he said. “If I do, there’s one less person to defend your brothers when the soldiers come. Do you have any idea what they’ll do to them?”
Sen couldn’t have responded even if she’d wanted to, for her father’s blade was so perilously close to her throat that a single breath would have been her end. One of her tears reached his blade and slid down its length.
“They will disembowel your mother in front of them, then pull your brothers apart limb from limb and roast them on a spit,” her father said. “I know because that’s what they did to my friends, all the men who died so you could call yourself a warrior. What right do you have to a friend when all my friends died for you?”
He lowered his sword. Sen let out a breath, folding forward. “Chichiue—”
“Kill him,” her father said. “It is the last time I will ask.”
A cold wind tore through the clearing, the ghosts of Sen’s tears bright and cold on her cheeks.
Lee shouldn’t have come here.
He had known from the start that Sen and her father’s soul were one and the same, that she would follow him to hell. She took a step forward and Lee tensed as her shadow fell over him. As he trembled in fear of her, like he should have done long ago, Sen saw her own ghost story begin to write itself in the empty white sky. She understood, at last, why she had haunted this house.
Not because she had failed her father, or her mother, or her siblings. But because she had betrayed her only friend.
“Lee,” Sen said quietly. “I wish...” She shook her head, extinguishing the thought. It was no use missing a life she would never get to have.
Lee had gone limp in the grass, perfectly still as he looked up at her. “Sen,” he said quietly, “it’s okay.”
