When Kenshin staggered into sight—his garments muddy from an apparent stumble—Kanako moved from the shadows into his path. Quirked her head at him, letting a ghostly mist take shape around her, glistening of moonlit magic.
Kenshin stopped in his tracks. Teetered to one side, recognition catching his notice. He shook his head as though to clear his thoughts. Kanako smiled at him, her black lips curling upward, beckoning him closer. She knew he would identify her as the fox from his memory, just as she’d intended.
It had been so easy that time in the forest, beside the watering hole. So easy to infiltrate his trusting mind and test its bounds for her purpose. Lord Kenshin was the kind of young man who’d lived a life without question. What he saw was what he believed; what he heard became his truth; what he felt became fact.
Simpleminded fool.
In a way, he resembled the late emperor as a young man. When Kanako and Masaru first met as children, it had been his malleable mind that had drawn her to him. He’d been entranced by her magic, enthralled by her beauty.
At the thought of him now, storm clouds darkened Kanako’s view.
He’d loved her. And she’d loved him, in her own way.
But Death always collected its due.
Now it was time to use her skills of persuasion once again. As Kanako could conjure shapes from nothingness, she would conjure outcomes from ideas. She smiled once more at Kenshin. He stepped toward her, his motions clouded by drink. Her long tail swishing through the air, she loped before him and gazed upward expectantly.
“What do you want?” Kenshin murmured, his words slurring.
She winked at him, then glided toward the vine-covered entrance of the enchanted maru. As she drew closer, the plants near her paws curled toward her. Kanako whispered to them, and they began changing their colors, the glittering mist coiling around their waxen leaves.
She glanced over her shoulder.
Hattori Kenshin watched her, mesmerized, just as the emperor had been many years before.
But he didn’t trust her. Not anymore. In his suffering, doubt had begun to take root. Doubt in himself. Doubt in others. It was clear he did not trust her as he had that day in the forest, when Kanako had first taken hold of his mind. When she’d found the rage he’d kept locked away and used it as kindling to serve her designs. It had been so easy for Kanako to infiltrate his thoughts then.
He’d wanted to kill the old man that day in the clearing, for defying him. He’d wanted to slash his swords across the girl, who’d tried to defend her grandfather, and the boy, who’d attacked him in a fit of rage. Kanako had simply made it easier for him. She’d removed the obstacles he’d placed before his own desires.
Just as she intended to do now.
She resumed the slow infiltration of his mind. He continued pushing back at her intrusion. Kanako gritted her teeth, the wound in her side burning bright. The pain momentarily blinded her, but she felt Hattori Kenshin’s resistance fade with her efforts.
His features slackened. The light dulled from his eyes. He followed Kanako past the entrance of the enchanted maru into a world bereft of color. Tones of silver and black washed across Kanako’s vision. Along the boundary, the edges of the garden flashed as though every leaf were a tiny mirror. As though the world around them was constructed of nothing but mirrors.
With a furtive smile, she led her prey toward the flowering oak tree, its massive trunk wide and its branches rustling in an imaginary wind. She waited for his drink-addled mind to see past the first glance. To question the trick of the eyes and the blurring of the senses that so many failed to notice in this realm of magic.
Making them vulnerable.
For there—buried upright in the trunk of a mighty tree—slept a lovely young woman. One half of her face was terribly scarred, but she lay wrapped in the bark of the white oak, a soft haze of silver light around her. She looked like a resting spirit, enchanted from starlight.
Kanako watched his handsome face as he recognized the girl within.
“Amaya,” he whispered. Kenshin shook his head as though it could not be possible. As though he’d finally learned not to trust everything he saw.
Inconvenient that he would choose now to doubt his own eyesight.
Hattori Kenshin took a slow step closer to the tree. His right hand rose from his side, his fingers stretching toward Muramasa Amaya’s cheek. Shock took hold of Kenshin’s features as truth settled on him. With both hands, he reached for the bark encasing her, as though he meant to rip its cocoon from around Amaya’s body.
The cloud of light surrounding the sleeping girl flared, burning his fingers. The pain startled him into full awareness.
Kanako could have warned him, but she knewthe best trials were the ones by fire. He would know now that he would need to suffer in order to free Muramasa Amaya from her oaken prison. This was necessary to drive him to do her bidding.
Then—as the shock began to wane—a figure stepped from behind the tree.
Kanako smiled to herself and let the rest of her plan fall into place, without having to utter a single word.
The sake had addled his mind.
Or he’d struck his head and was now in the midst of a frenzied dream.
Those were the only two possible explanations for what Kenshin saw now.
This had been a night of impossibility, from beginning to end. Yumi—the maiko who captured his attention the past three nights—had been late to arrive at the teahouse. His frustration at her absence caused him to drink even more than usual and leave before he had a chance to lose his sorrows in her lovely grey eyes.
Upon his return to the castle, he’d thought to seek out his sister. To speak with her frankly and close the distance that had continued to develop between them.
Only to find Mariko’s chamber empty.
His suspicions had grown, despite his drink-addled mind. Kenshin made his way to the only place he felt certain his younger sister would venture in the dead of night: the cell of Takeda Ranmaru.
When he watched a lean figure clad in the clothing of a boy climb from the castle’s underbelly into the light, Kenshin had known it was Mariko. He followed her, uncertain of how best to confront her for her lies. For her treachery.
Only when he stumbled as he chased her—drawing the attention of patrolling imperial guards—could he make a decision. He should have sent the soldiers after Mariko. Should have forced her to admit her deception and accept her punishment.
But he’d made a spectacle of himself instead, granting? Mariko a chance to conceal herself and escape. Kenshin—a samurai of the highest order—betrayed his sovereign to aid his traitorous younger sister. Still he did not know why he had done it.
He needed another drink. He needed to forget.
So Kenshin had followed the ghostly fox into a world between worlds. One limned in a delicate fog, with all its colors leached from sight. There—in the center of an immense silver tree trunk—rested the unmistakable face of Muramasa Amaya, the only girl he’d ever loved.
As his muddled mind latched on to her burned features, the images in his periphery had begun to spin. The leaves began turning in place like tiny mirrors throwing white light in all directions, as though he were in the center of a giant diamond caught in the rays of the sun.
The tree had burned him when Kenshin tried to rescue her, though it did not appear that Amaya was suffering. She looked as though she were asleep—merely blanketed by the rough bark of the ancient oak.
And now, his eyesight tricked him again.
Just like with Amaya, Kenshin had thought the man standing before him had perished. Kenshin had been certain of it.
“My lord,” the figure said in a low voice. Nobutada—his father’s most trusted samurai—bowed without hesitation.
Kenshin did not know if it was wise to speak. “I—thought you died in Jukai forest.”