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“No.” Misaki froze ice across her knuckles. “I am.”
Encircled with delicate vines and blossoms, the sheath had the appearance of burnished wood, though in reality, it was made of something far stronger. “Like you,” Koli had told her in delight. “Pretty flowers on the outside.” “And inside?” Misaki asked, raising an eyebrow at the numu. “Inside?” He beamed. “Just like you.”
“You—” Misaki’s words caught in her throat, and she had to swallow. “You think I’m a good person.” She touched Setsuko’s hands. “That saved my life.”
Her body was angled slightly to hide the sword at her hip, giving her the appearance of a diminutive housewife. In its own way, that was better cover than any shadow.
Thank the Gods she was a monster.
There was only what Mamoru had been bred and trained for since he was old enough to hold a practice sword—to charge down the mountain at his enemies and kill.
A decade later, a fifteen-year-old Hiroshi would become known as the youngest swordsman ever to master the Whispering Blade. What the world would never know, was that he was the second youngest.
Instead of recoiling from the threat of frostbite like a sane tajaka, Robin sank into it, drinking the cold like a parched man at a half-frozen river. Misaki melted.
He thought through everything. How could she have expected to overcome that with nothing but a full heart and her tears?
You’re Sirawu, the Shadow. You can go anywhere.”
If she wanted him to walk away, she had to wound him, make herself the enemy.
“I just need to understand,” he said. “I need you to be honest with me. Is this what you want?” Misaki drew herself up, employing the posture she had learned to tower over taller theonites. “It is,” she said, voice icy. She didn’t feel tall. “I don’t believe you.” His gentle tone sent a spike of rage through Misaki.
“Who do you think you are?” “Your friend,” Robin said earnestly—and Nami damn it, Misaki had never seen so much pain in his piercing black eyes. “We didn’t just go to school together; we fought together, learned together, saved each other’s lives—”
But Misaki couldn’t explain honestly. To do so, she would have to admit that she still loved him.
Robin always did the right thing, no matter how hard it was. That was why Misaki had always followed him, why she loved him.
Robin, her best friend, the only person she had ever wanted.
With no small amount of shame, she realized that, to her, those horrors belonged in violent adyn countries, far across the ocean. Not here. Not where she had rocked her babies to sleep and taught them their first words. Not where she had met Hyori. Not where she had laughed at Setsuko’s jokes and cooking.
She would let a fonyaka pull her life from her mouth, she would give her soul a thousand times over, if she could just bring Mamoru’s back.
“Sorry!” She gasped, wiping the blood from her hands in the snow. “I’m so sorry!” She bowed down, crushing her forehead into the frozen ground until it hurt, until ice and then rock ground into her brow. “I’m so sorry.”
“The Kotetsu line survives, with all its knowledge, because of you.” That was the first thing he needed know: that he hadn’t died for nothing.
“You did right by your family and your country, even though, I think none of us did right by you. There is nothing in this world for you to regret. Nothing at all.”
“I never loved you the way I should have.”
Just one more time, you’re going to let Kaa-chan hold you and treasure you the way I should have the day you were born.
“It is enough that, even for a moment, I had a son like you. It is enough that Hiroshi, Nagasa, and Izumo will have a brother like you to look up to as they become young men themselves. It is enough,”
“He can’t go yet.” He stared through her, looking almost fevered. “He can’t.”
“But he can’t.” Hiroshi’s face twisted in anger, his eyes still unfocused. “I didn’t catch up to him yet.”
“It gave its maker and wielder to earn it. That is Mamoriken,” he nodded to the sword, “the Protector.”
He held her gaze with an intensity somewhere between the expectant trust of a child and the resolve of a man. Her little brother still trusted her to know what was best—like Robin had, like Mamoru had…
“and these are not your people, Matsuda. You and all these villagers belong to the Emperor.”
he had decided that if enemies came to Takayubi, he would fight them no matter what. Whether the Emperor commanded it or not, whether he was remembered for it or not, he would fight to protect the people of this mountain and all the farmers and fishermen behind it. And that was what he did. He…”
The tears she wouldn’t let herself cry were rolling down other women’s faces.
One of us is going to rest here with our son. Draw!”
Takeru, resting his head against the bunker door as his shoulders shook. In the dark, the low sound had mixed with the weeping all around them, and gone unnoticed.
Misaki realized then that when he had shouted at her to get out, it hadn’t been anger in his eyes but panic. He had been worried for her safety.
“You couldn’t face it so you ran away, to retreat into the mountain.” “I tried,” Takeru said. “The anger didn’t go away.” “Oh, Takeru-sama,” Misaki breathed, voice high in a mixture of exasperation and grief. “The anger isn’t going to go away.”
“Because this time, when we head up that path, we do it together. This time, you will have me.
She would fight it, kill it. And when she was done, she would have a husband. Her children would have a father. Takayubi would have a leader. Mamoru could rest.
“I’m Matsuda Misaki,” she said with pride and honesty she never attached to those words before. “I’m your wife.”
Then she came at him, black eyes gleaming as bright and sharp as the obsidian. So many years, he had avoided touching this porcelain doll he had been given for fear of breaking her. He hadn’t wanted to see this beautiful, strange woman crumble the way his mother had. Somehow, he had broken her anyway, but she hadn’t broken quietly like porcelain. She had broken like black glass and ice—jagged and more dangerous than ever.
For his whole life, Takeru had been certain that he was right to cast his pain off on the mountain, that it was the only way—because how could one possibly hold so much suffering in something as small as a human form?
In that moment of awe, Takeru realized how much he owed this woman, who had borne his children, who had fought, and fought, and fought for a family she had never asked for. She had given him her life and demanded nothing in return. Mamoru hadn’t inherited his strength from his father. It had come from her.
For the first time, they met each other—not a frozen mountain and a doll, but living flesh, a man and a woman. Misaki’s smile grew. She had what she needed from him. But in
“You think I killed your children,” Misaki said, “like your father always said.” “I think you saved my wife,” Takeru said.
It didn’t heal the pain of Mamoru’s absence. But it was something, like the beginnings of a scab. It was the first sign that things could get better.
a person’s tragedy doesn’t define them or cancel all the good in their life.
Wholeness, she had learned, was not the absence of pain but the ability to hold it.
To Misaki, it perfectly captured her son—a boy with enough talent to never have to try hard at anything, who had tried harder than everyone at everything, until the very end.
Her little boy smiled up at her, and the future was no longer at the burning edge of the sea. It was here, in a softly beating heart and black eyes, bright with promise.
