With a sudden, deadly whoosh of displaced air, the three assassins dropped from the ceiling, their curved blades glinting in the flickering candlelight.
They expected a terrified, weeping noblewoman. They expected to cower, scream, and beg for my life.
Instead, I snapped my heavy iron Tessen open and swung upward with everything I had.
I didn’t have formal dojo training. I didn’t know elegant sword stances. But I had spent nine years dodging Uncle Kenji’s flying sake bottles and swinging heavy wooden brooms at giant basent rats. I knew how to hit a moving target.
CRACK.
The solid iron edge of my war fan slamd directly into the jaw of the first assassin before his boots even touched the floorboards.
He didn’t even make a sound. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he dropped like a sack of wet flour, his dagger clattering harmlessly against the wood.
The other two assassins hit the floor, freezing for a fraction of a second in pure shock.
That fraction of a second was all I needed.
I didn’t stand up. I stayed kneeling, my hands diving into the massive pile of pure, granular white salt that made up the holy purification circle around .
The second assassin lunged, his dagger aiming straight for my throat.
"Holy purification!" I yelled, and threw a massive, blinding handful of coarse salt directly into his eyes.
"GAAAH!" The assassin shrieked, dropping his dagger to claw frantically at his face.
I snapped the war fan shut. Gripping it like a solid iron club, I swung it hard into the side of his knee. He collapsed with a sickening crunch, and I followed up by bringing the heavy iron down directly onto the back of his head. He slumped over, completely unconscious.
Two down. One left.
I finally scrambled to my feet, my chest heaving. The adrenaline was screaming through my veins, making my hands shake, but my mind was completely clear.
The third assassin didn’t rush . He stepped back, his dark eyes wide with disbelief as he looked at his two unconscious comrades. He realized I wasn’t a delicate flower.
He adjusted his grip on his dagger, crouching low.
"You little witch," he hissed, circling just outside the scattered salt.
"I prefer basent rat, actually," I shot back, gripping my closed iron fan with both hands like a stick.
He lunged.
He was fast, too fast for to completely dodge. He faked a strike to my neck, and when I raised the fan to block, he seamlessly dropped his shoulder and drove his dagger straight toward my heart.
I twisted violently, but the blade connected.
Thwack.
The assassin’s eyes widened in sheer confusion. His dagger hadn’t sunk into soft flesh. It had sparked against sothing completely solid beneath my silk robe. The force of the blow bruised my ribs, knocking the wind out of , but the blade didn’t penetrate a single inch.
"Northern chainmail, idiot," I wheezed.
Before he could pull the dagger back, I grabbed his wrist with my left hand, anchoring him in place. With my right hand, I drove the heavy iron hilt of my war fan directly up into his chin.
His teeth clicked together with a horrifying snap. His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed onto the floorboards in a heavy, lifeless heap.
The Ancestral Shrine fell completely silent once more.
I stood there for a long mont, my chest heaving, the heavy iron fan trembling in my grip. I waited for another shadow to drop from the ceiling.
Nothing happened. It was just , the flickering white candle, and three unconscious assassins bleeding onto the sacred wood.
I let out a massive, shaky exhale and dropped to my knees. My ribs ached where the dagger had hit my armor, and my knuckles were scraped, but I was alive.
"Okay," I muttered into the quiet room. "Step one: survive. Step two: make sure they don’t wake up."
I spent the next ten minutes unspooling the black silk sashes from the assassins’ waists. I tied their hands and feet together with tight, unforgiving knots. Once they were securely trussed up like festival pigs, I dragged them into a neat pile in the corner of the room.
Then, I went back to the center of the room, sat down in my ruined salt circle, and waited for dawn.
The hours dragged on. It was freezing inside the unheated shrine, and the cold seeped through the floorboards into my bones.
To keep myself awake, I thought about Akira. I thought about the sheer panic in his amber eyes when the mages ca to take . He had been willing to throw away his entire position, to start a war and beco an enemy of the state, just to keep safe.
He wasn’t protecting because of a magical obligation. You don’t look at soone like your world is ending just because of a spell.
I am going to survive this night, and I am going to make him admit it, I promised myself again.
Finally, the faint gray light of dawn began to peek through the tiny slats in the roof.
Footsteps echoed on the gravel outside. A lot of them.
"A terrible tragedy," I heard the lead Imperial Mage say, his voice completely fake and mournful. "The wild spirits of the capital are so unforgiving to those lacking a pure spiritual core. Prepare the burial shroud."
"Open the door."
The voice belonged to Akira. It wasn’t a yell. It was a low, vibrating, absolute command that completely froze the blood in my veins.
"L-Lord Kurogane," the mage stamred. "You must prepare yourself. The vigil is harsh—"
"I said, open the door," Akira snarled.
The heavy iron locks rattled. The wooden bar was lifted.
With a loud creak, the heavy cedar doors of the Ancestral Shrine were pushed open, letting the cold morning light spill into the dark room.
The six Imperial Mages stood in the doorway, holding their staffs and a white burial cloth, already bowing their heads in mock sorrow.
Akira stood right behind them. He hadn’t slept. He was still wearing his dark training tunic, his katana strapped to his waist. He looked like a man walking to an execution.
They all looked into the shrine, expecting to find my mangled corpse.
Instead, they found .
I was sitting comfortably on top of the pile of tied-up assassins. I was casually tapping my closed iron fan against my knee, shivering slightly in the morning chill.
"You guys took your ti," I complained, squinting against the sunlight. "It is absolutely freezing in here. Do you ever clean this place? It’s super dusty."
The Imperial Mages froze. The lead mage’s jaw physically dropped open, his staff slipping from his hands to clatter against the floorboards.
"Sh-She..." the mage stuttered, looking at , then looking at the three unconscious Shadow Assassins I was using as a chair. "How...? The barrier... the spirits..."
"The spirits had knives," I corrected cheerfully, hopping off my human furniture. "But I had an iron fan. Can we go ho now? I really want a hot bath."
The Warlord aura radiating off Akira completely vanished.
He pushed past the trembling mages, his boots hitting the floorboards with heavy, desperate strides. He crossed the room in three seconds.
He didn’t say a word. He just fell to his knees right in front of and wrapped his massive arms around my waist, burying his face directly into my stomach.
He held so tightly my ribs ached, his broad shoulders shaking slightly. It wasn’t a Warlord holding a piece of property. It was a man holding his absolute lifeline.
I let my iron fan drop to the floor. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, burying my face in his pink hair.
"I’m okay, Akira," I whispered, my own eyes burning with unshed tears. "I promised I’d see you at dawn. I’m right here."
"I thought I lost you," Akira breathed, his voice raw and broken against my silk robes. "I thought I was too late."
"It takes more than three guys in pajamas to take out," I smiled, running my fingers through his hair to soothe him.
Akira slowly pulled back, his amber eyes scanning my face, my neck, my arms for any sign of injury. He saw the torn silk on my chest where the dagger had hit the chainmail. His eyes darkened instantly.
He stood up, keeping tucked firmly behind his broad back.
He turned to look at the terrified Imperial Mages standing in the doorway. The sorrowful, broken husband completely disappeared, replaced instantly by the lethal, unforgiving Demon Prince.
"Assassins," Akira said, his voice echoing in the silent shrine. "In a holy building protected by a Level-Ten Imperial Barrier. A barrier that only the Emperor’s personal mages can bypass."
The lead mage fell to his knees, utterly pale. "M-My Lord! We knew nothing of this! It must have been the Shadow Guild!"
"Tell the Emperor," Akira commanded softly, the blue fire sparking at his fingertips, "that his little test failed. And tell him that if he ever summons my wife to a dark room again, I will not wait for an excuse. I will paint his throne room with his blood."
Akira didn’t wait for a response. He turned around, scooped up into his arms like I weighed nothing, and carried directly out of the shrine.
As we walked past the kneeling, terrified mages, I let my head rest against Akira’s shoulder.
The Emperor had played his legal trap. He had tried to isolate and kill in the dark.
But he forgot one crucial detail.
I wasn’t a delicate orchid. I was a weed. And I was going to choke his entire empire out from the roots.
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