She shook her head, even as she sensed her father’s impatient glare behind her. “It’s not okay,” she said.
Lee reached up for Sen, but she couldn’t bear to bend down to meet his bloody hand halfway, so it fell back to the grass. “Sen,” he said, “I understand, and I forgive you. When you die, please remember that.”
Sen stilled. Her blade felt impossibly heavy in her hands, her fingers locked tight around it. “What?” she whispered. “Why would you...”
As his words sank in, her trembling hands stilled.
He was setting her free.
She wouldn’t die carrying a debt to him. All she had to do now was stay and fight with her father, and she would die with honor.
And if she died with honor, she wouldn’t become a ghost at all.
She would never see Lee Turner in her window, never follow him into a world one hundred and forty years in the future, never fall with him into a dark sea. She would die standing beside her father, and then she would rest.
She could hear the ocean inside her mind once more, could feel its frigid waves kissing her feet, its brine scraping off her dead skin, peeling her down to the bone. She was the sea and all its secrets. She was a child reborn in salt and sand. She was a warrior fighting for nothing at all.
“Thank you, Lee,” she said quietly.
Then she turned to her father, bowed, and placed her katana carefully on the ground. She rose to her feet, meeting her father’s startled expression.
“I refuse,” she said.
For a moment, her father stared unblinkingly at her, as if he hadn’t heard her words. Then at last, his gaze dropped down to the sword he had given her back when he’d believed she was strong, the sword he’d thought represented her soul.
But Sen’s soul was not her father’s to give.
There was no point in raising a blade to her father, for she could never bring herself to harm him. Instead, she stood unarmed before him. She had sworn to die on her feet.
“You refuse me?” he echoed, his voice low. “You’ve chosen a foreigner over your father?”
Sen smiled and shook her head, blood running hot down her chin. Even now, he didn’t understand. He had trained her to prepare her mind to die in battle, and at last, she was ready.
“I’ve chosen myself,” she said evenly. “And you are not my father.”
His expression slid into a frown, his dark shadow stretching longer across the grass, but Sen spoke over him.
“My father died in the rebellion,” she said. “He died the moment you decided to return home instead of spilling your own blood with honor. He died when you punished me and my mother for not following the rules that you yourself have violated. My father is gone, and the creature that crawled home in his place is acoward.”
With one sharp movement, her father drew his katana. He was done listening.
Sen held her breath as he took a step forward, the sunlight catching on the keen edge of his blade as he kicked her sword aside. His eyes darted across her form, as if trying to decide where best to cut her. Would he be merciful and cut off her head first? Or would he cut her abdomen and let her bleed out slowly?
Sen closed her eyes. She heard Lee moving in the dirt behind her, but he wouldn’t be able to help her now. Her father didn’t miss.
She was four years old again, it was summer in the Shimazu garden, and her uncle was pushing her on a rope swing while her father stood in front of the blue hydrangeas.On the count of three, let go of the rope, and your father will catch you, her uncle said.
Her father raised his blade above his head with both hands—a vertical cut. He would split Sen from her skull straight down to her toes.
One!her uncle said as she swung high above the lotus pond and its orange koi, her feet kicking at the sky.
“I regret many things,” Sen’s father said, tightening his grip on the katana. “But my greatest regret of all is that I didn’t do this sooner.”
Two!her uncle said. Sen looked down at her father on the grass. He had his arms outstretched, ready for her when she fell.
“Chichiue,” she whispered. “Please.”
Three! Sen let go of the swing, weightless as she sailed across thecloudless blue sky. Her father caught her under the arms and swung her in a dizzy circle, then clutched her close to his heart.
