In the Age of Love and Chocolate (Birthright #3)(50)

So I determined to be alone. Maybe occasionally, I would take a lover. (The Catholic schoolgirl in me was scandalized by the thought; I told her we’d been thrown out of Catholic school so she should shut up.) Theo had effectively been my lover, and look how well that had worked out. Definitely better to be alone. I would fill my spare time with productive hobbies. I would take up reading like Imogen, go to cooking school, learn to dance, volunteer with orphans, become a more involved godparent to Felix. I would write my memoirs.

(NB: Even many years later, it is hard for me to admit this. Marrying Yuji Ono, despite the good it had done the Dark Room, would probably go down as the worst mistake of my life. As anyone who has read these accounts knows, I have made many. That night, I was not quite ready to admit that the error had been mine and not perhaps the institution of marriage itself.)

In the middle of having these thoughts, I felt something hit me in the back, underneath my left shoulder blade. It felt wrong, but that said, it did not feel significant either. It felt blunt, of medium size, harmless. It felt like a softball or a grapefruit. But when I looked down, my chest was pierced by the sparkling tip of a blade. Suddenly, the blade retracted and I began to bleed. It did not hurt much, but this was just adrenaline. I tried to retrieve my machete from beneath my kimono, but the garment was so voluminous, I could not reach it quickly. As I turned my neck to see what was coming, the blade penetrated again—this time, somewhere in my lower back. I tried to stand, but my right foot gave out, and I fell, slamming my chin and neck on the stone bench. Above me, Sophia Bitter held a sword. The look in her eye said she would not stop until I was dead.

How had she broken in to the estate? Who else was with her? I did not have even a moment to contemplate. I wanted to live. I needed time to get to my machete, so I decided to talk to her. “Why?” My voice was barely more than a whisper—I had injured my larynx when I’d fallen into the bench. “What have I ever done to you?”

“You know what you’ve done. I would rather poison you, but I have neither the time nor the access. I’ll have to make do with this.” She drew back the sword and she raised it in the air.

“Wait,” I whispered as loudly as I could. “Before you kill me … Yuji said to tell you something.” It was a pathetic ploy on my part, and I had almost no faith that it would work.

She rolled her eyes but lowered her weapon. “Speak,” she said.

“Yuji told me—”

“Louder,” she said.

“I can’t. My throat. Please. Closer.”

She crouched down so that we were eye to eye. I could feel her breath on my cheek. The scent was slightly acrid, like she had been drinking coffee. I thought of Daddy making coffee for my mother on the stovetop. Oh Daddy, it might be nice to see you again. I felt my eyelids start to drop.

“Speak,” she repeated. “What did Yuji say?”

“Yuji said … He was so handsome, wasn’t he?”

Sophia slapped me across the face, but I didn’t even feel it. “Stop stalling!”

“Yuji said that the fish have no regrets because…”

“You are not making any sense.”

I was about to pass out when I felt something tickle my thigh. Of all things, it was the peacock feather I’d put in my sheath—Win’s feather. Get the machete, I thought. Machetes are meant for chopping, not piercing, and my injuries had left me at a serious disadvantage. But I knew this was my only chance.

I wrapped my fingers around the machete. I pulled up my arms as high as I could, and I thrust forward, piercing what I hoped would be her heart. I withdrew the machete. She fell over into the koi pond, and strangely, I remember feeling guilty for the disturbance it would mean to the fish.

Sophia Bitter had once given me good advice. What had she said? It isn’t tough to have injured someone if you ought to have killed them.

I tried to scream for Kazuo, but my voice would not work. I could tell I was bleeding out fast, that if I did not get medical attention soon, I would die.

I tried to stand, but I could not. My left leg felt dead. I did not have time to be scared. I dragged myself by my hands along the stone path. It was perhaps a thousand feet back to the house, and I knew I was leaving a trail of blood behind me.

My heart was beating faster than I can ever remember it having beaten. I wondered if it might give out.

When I was about halfway there, a man with a hook for a hand came out of the bushes. I knew him. My advantage, in that moment, was not that I would be able to outrun anyone, but that I was level with the ground.

“Sophia!” the man called.

Obviously she did not reply.

I saw him look at the bloody trail, but he did not pause to consider that it led toward the house and stopped. At that moment, Yuji Ono’s cat began walking on the path in the direction of the koi pond. Upon spotting me, the cat paused—I worried that she might come over—and then she meowed, attracting the man’s attention. She continued walking to the koi pond, and he followed her.

I pulled myself to Kazuo’s room. The adrenaline had begun to wear off and the pain was nothing short of excruciating. I scratched at the door. Kazuo was a light sleeper, and he was immediately on his feet.

“Sophia Bitter is dead. Her bodyguard is on the estate. There may be others, I don’t know. Also, I may need to go to the hospital,” I managed to say.