But he wouldn’t stop.
His hands began roaming, clutching, squeezing, and though he was moving too swiftly, he was her Lord, and she wanted desperately to please him. He tore at the outer layers of her j?nihitoe, and she said nothing. He pawed at her breasts and she breathed not a word. But inside, her melting warmth turned to horrid chill. This was brutish. Ugly. And when he forced his hand between her legs, his fingers, Gods, his fingers …
She screamed. Cried no.
And he’d laughed.
The sound was a knife in her chest, as cold and hard as his hands. And she screamed again, louder, NO, slapping as hard as she could, fingers hooked, nails across his cheek.
He drew back, eyes wide, bringing those awful fingers up to touch the three ragged gouges in his face. She’d turned away, terrified, waiting for him to cry for his guards. Would she be arrested? Exiled from court? They’d know she’d come here unaccompanied. She would shame her father’s name. Gods, what would he say?
But she heard no cry for the guards. Instead, he struck her. A closed fist sending her sprawling, a terrified cry on her lips. And then he was sitting on her chest and she couldn’t breathe to scream again. She struggled, arms pinned, and as her lungs began burning she saw the blade in his hand, sharp enough to cut the air in two.
No breath to beg him.
No breath to scream.
“You deny your Shōgun?” he’d hissed. “You dare?”
He pressed the blade to her throat and the tears came then, black light burning before her eyes. And though it shamed her near to dying, though in years to come, she denied it to herself with everything inside her, she would have let him, then. She would have turned her head and closed her eyes and let him do what he wanted if only he’d have put the knife away. She was so afraid. Small and frightened and completely alone.
Sixteen years old.
“Have no fear.” Amusement in his voice. “The mood has fled. I have no wish to take your maidenhood any longer.”
Momentary relief evaporated as she felt the knife being pressed against her forehead. Hard enough to cut her. To make her bleed.
Gods, oh gods, it hurt …
“But I think no other man should want for it either.”
And she couldn’t even scream.
*
Kaori sat alone, staring at the empty pit where fire once burned. Listening to the rain’s spatter-patter, footsteps, hushed voices, sky-ship engines idling amidst the shifting sea of leaves.
Exodus.
It was better, she told herself. War was coming, and she needed only warriors. Not bakers or carpenters or seamstresses. Not children or old men or babe-laden wives. Men and women prepared to do whatever it took to free this nation from the Guild, the Imperium, the blood lotus. Let the weak hide with the Stormdancer in Yama city. The warriors would remain—Maro, Michi and the others. They remembered her father. They remembered the cause.
The lotus would burn.
“Kaori.”
“Michi.” She didn’t look up from the firepit, black coals reflected on steel-gray. “When they’ve left, we must take stock of those who remain. There will be—”
“Kaori, we need to talk…”
She turned then, saw the girl in the doorway. Pale skin and bee-stung lips, chainblades crossed at her back. The girl Kaori had turned from a simple peasant child into one of the sharpest blades in the Kagé armory. The girl she’d trained to infiltrate the Shōgunate court. After years at Aisha’s side, Michi had returned home. Older. Harder. So sharp the air fairly bled where she walked.
But there was a crude wooden scrollcase tucked under one arm, a satchel over her shoulder. And the look in her eyes nearly set Kaori’s heart to breaking.
“… You’re leaving?”
The girl nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“But why?”
“Aisha wouldn’t have wanted this. It shames her memory.”
“You think this sundering is my doing?” Kaori climbed to her feet. “Yukiko is the one leaving. I would have us stay and fight as we always have.”
“It’s more than this, now.” Michi gestured around them. “Daichi always said this was never about us. The Kagé were about opening people’s eyes, showing them they need to fight. We have a chance to win, with the Guild rebels on—”
“Rebels? Gods, call them what they are, Michi. Cowards.”
“You don’t know what it’s like. To live in the quiet. To sit surrounded by brutality and injustice, knowing if you speak a word, as every part of you screams to do, nothing happens save that two die instead of one.” A sigh. “But I know. I lived it every day for the past four years. And it takes a strength you wouldn’t believe.”
“When it comes to these Guild pigs? No. I wouldn’t.”