Chapter Text
The letters look so innocent, in their tidy pile on the table by the door. Shirayuki always sets them there the same way, corners square, addresses sorted. He’s seen them there every day for years now. Mitsuhide has to be wrong; if he’s not, then Obi’s been blind all along.
He can only handle lying to himself so long as he doesn’t know he’s being lied to. As much as he fears what he’ll find, he won’t look away now.
The letter to Prince Raj slides off the stack as if eager to be on its way. In his hand, it hardly seems like it can be just paper - perhaps guilt has a weight. He has to know. A second with candle and knife is all it takes to pry up the seal, nothing Obi hasn’t done so many times before. It’s only different this time because it feels like a betrayal.
“Zen won’t listen,” Mitsuhide warned him, and as much as Obi trusts him, he doesn’t want to listen either. He wants to believe her, needs this to be all a misunderstanding that they’ll laugh about someday over a glass of wine. But he trusts gut feelings and he trusts Mitsuhide. Wanting isn’t enough for him. He needs to know for sure.
Three years as Shirayuki’s shadow has left him familiar with her handwriting, her choice of words, and at first everything seems as it should be. He’s about ready to fix the seal and go on with his life, but the afternoon sun betrays her. The letter T shines.
Ryuu showed him the trick once, how a particular juice added to common oak-gall ink gives it an extra luster. The king’s fond of it for official documents and Yuzuri says it gives her garden labels a certain something. Shirayuki wasn’t a fan, he’d thought.
Tilting the paper in the light, she still isn’t, but only half the time. Without the glint of sunshine, every letter looks the same, but half of them sparkle in direct light. It’s a cipher.
His heart, so carefully resurrected by his miss over the last four years, shatters in his chest.
***
His knife lies gently against her throat, that fine pale skin ever so slightly dented under the pressure. She’s in his arms, in a way he never wanted, and even now he hesitates to mark her, despite the needle she’s holding a hair’s breadth from his arm. Clearly it’s poisoned, and he knows her too well to think it’ll be anything less than fatal. The Shirayuki he knows may be a lie, but she can’t hide competence.
“And here you said you weren’t interested in poisons,” he says, because even now he wants to make her laugh.
“More of a survival skill than an interest.” Even muted by his blade and turned away, her voice is beautiful. It’s hard to hear her over the din on the street below, revelers just as ignorant of the combatants motionless on the roof as they are of their beloved young prince gasping in an infirmary bed. Obi can’t tell whether the curve of her cheek signals her usual sunny smile or something more triumphant.
“How much of Tanbarun was true?” He’s desperate to find something, some piece of truth to grab onto, even just one thing he can believe in. She’s all but confessed, but maybe there’s an explanation, something that can excuse her, some way she can be forgiven. He sees himself in the snow at her feet, promising his faithfulness, and he’s sick all over again wondering just who he handed over his heart to.
“Raj tried to sleep with me, once.” Her voice is fond at the memory, even though Obi still can’t see her eyes. “I like to think I taught him something about respect for women.” All this time he’d thought the fear in Raj’s eyes was just by connection to Zen. How blind he’d been.
“So he knew.”
“Of course he knew,” she laughs, more poised than she ever was in a ballroom and far from threatened. “He was the weakest part of the plan.”
“And what plan was that?” The muscles of his wrist twitch, skin imagining the deadly thrust of a needle dozens of times over. It’s been so long since he’s been in this position, because he was trying to be a better man. For her.
“To seduce the prince, of course.” She says it like it’s nothing, like Zen was truly only a target to her. Obi aches for him, how badly he wanted to be loved for himself.
“And kill him?”
Her answer is swift and indignant. “Of course not! I’m no assassin.” It hurts more than he thought it would, and he lets the silence stretch a moment, in case she’s forgotten the poison she’s currently threatening his life with. “I was just there to collect information. I thought it would be easy, too, until you showed up.”
Her hand wraps around his forearm, poisoned needle gone, and he tenses. He should have the advantage now she’s put her weapon away, and yet his intuition tells him he’s cornered. “There on my heels day and night, distracting me every time I thought I had an opening- You probably don’t even know how effective you were.” The grip turns into a caress, a gentle slide of skin on skin, and no matter how he should stop her, he knows better than to let her, he can’t do anything but hold her and breathe.
It’s almost a relief when she makes her move, at last. His knife flies from numb fingers, the sky turns end over end, and he’s sliding down roof tiles on his back but he’s safe. He doesn’t have to see the pity in her eyes when he can’t even try to hurt her. She’s won, she’s gone, and he’s glad.
His foot catches on a tile border, halting his slide, and he just lies there. He thought this would be easier when he heard the truth from her lips, but it changes nothing. He still loves her, in spite of everything.
“Obi!” Mitsuhide shouts up from below. He was right all along, and Obi already wants to push him, make him angry, make him grind it in how miserably Obi’s failed. He scoops his knife out of the gutter, a scrap of fabric tangled around the blade, and drops down to the street to answer.
“How’s Master?”
“Safe. Recovering. The king’s men are with him.” Obi has to wonder what’s pulled Mitsuhide away from his master’s side. Did the king push him out, or does he feel responsible? The lines in his forehead aren’t giving away any clues, and Obi can’t quite meet his eyes. It’s been a long time since that’s been the case, and he’s sure he’s not going to like what he finds when he asks himself why.
“Garrack says the dose was exactly calibrated for Zen to survive,” Mitsuhide continues. “He’ll be back on his feet in a day.” He’ll be mourning for a lot longer than that, nobody says.
They’d handed her everything on a silver salver. She might call herself distracted, but she’s been miles ahead of all of them since day one. Nearly four years she was flawless, four years she held the course-
But two of those were at Lyrias. If her job was to get close to Zen and report on him, why did she stay when she saw him three times in two years, when she was buried in sickrooms and greenhouses and as far from royal gossip as Tanbarun. She barely even took advantage of her letters to Zen, letting Obi himself write them half the time. What could it have been worth putting up with the diversion, the . . . distraction?
Herself. That’s the only thing he can come up with, that she fell for the life, the friends, the challenge and the respect and the love that surrounded her every day in Lyrias. He knows all too well what a potent drug they are, especially in combination. She may be running now, giving up, but the fact remains that for two years, it was worth defying orders.
His hands, busy while he thinks, disentangle the scrap of fabric from his blade. It’s white linen, well-worn, and he knows the pattern of the embroidery under his fingers. Her headscarf. He never touched her scarf, never caught his knife in it.
It’s a message. He smiles, all teeth, and Mitsuhide stiffens at the look. Not just a message, an invitation. Come get me, assassin, it says, and he shivers. He’s never denied her anything. Why start now?
“Anyway,” Mitsuhide continues. “She can’t be allowed to get away with this. The king’s sending everyone he can spare, and Zen suggests you go too.”
He didn’t expect it to be this easy. “I’ll make sure she’s taken care of.”
Hiding his intent under double meanings is wasted on Mitsuhide, always more perceptive than anyone gives him credit for. “Take care of yourself too, Obi.” Mitsuhide’s eyes are compassionate, but not enough to change Obi’s mind.
“You too.” When their clasp of hands lets go, Obi sheds Clarines and his name like a snake’s skin. His mistress is waiting.