Chapter 2

The estate gates rose ahead of the palanquin like the walls of a prison dressed up in good architecture.

Meimi had expected grandeur, and grandeur was what she found — sweeping tiled roofs, a garden visible even from the road, raked gravel that spoke of servants with nothing better to do than smooth stones into perfect lines. She hated all of it on sight, the way she had promised herself she would, the way it seemed the only weapon left to her now that every other choice had been made without her.

The bearers set the palanquin down in the entrance courtyard, and for a moment Meimi did not move. She could refuse to step out. She understood, even as the thought formed, that it would accomplish nothing — she had nowhere else to be carried, no other door that would open to her now that the okiya’s had closed for good — but the small, useless defiance of it appealed to her anyway. She had spent ten years being carried places she had chosen willingly, into rooms where her presence was a gift she gave. This was the first time in memory that arrival felt like arrest.

A woman was waiting at the top of the entrance steps. Not a servant — her bearing made that clear before Meimi had climbed halfway toward her, a straight-backed composure that belonged to someone accustomed to being obeyed rather than to obeying. She was perhaps thirty, dressed simply but well, her hair arranged with none of the elaborate ornamentation Meimi had worn nightly for a year, and she watched Meimi’s approach with an expression Meimi could not immediately place. Not pity. Not curiosity. Something closer to recognition, as though she had rehearsed this exact meeting in her mind more than once before it happened.

“You must be Meimi,” the woman said, and inclined her head — not a full bow, but more courtesy than Meimi had expected from anyone in this house. “I am Hikari. Fuyuki-sama’s sister. I keep this household.”

“Then you know what I am,” Meimi said. She had not meant to let the bitterness surface so plainly, not this soon, not before she understood the shape of the ground she was standing on. But it came anyway, sharp and immediate, the first honest thing she had said aloud since leaving the okiya. “A thing your brother purchased.”

Something crossed Hikari’s face — not offense, which Meimi had braced for, but something closer to weariness, as though she had heard this exact bitterness before and knew precisely how it tasted on someone else’s tongue.

“Walk with me,” Hikari said. It was not quite a command and not quite a request. “Before you decide what kind of house this is, you should hear what kind of house it actually is. You are owed that much, at least, before you spend a single night hating a roof you have not yet slept under.”

Meimi followed only because refusing would have required more energy than she had left. They walked the length of a covered corridor overlooking the garden, Hikari’s pace unhurried, and for a long moment neither of them spoke. Meimi studied the garden instead — a koi pond, a stand of maples not yet in their autumn color, a stone lantern positioned with the same deliberate care as everything else on the grounds. Beautiful, and none of it hers, and none of it asked for.

“My brother entertains a great deal,” Hikari said finally. “It comes with his position — a hatamoto’s household is never entirely private. There will be dinners here. Gatherings. Occasions where you will be expected to appear, and others where you will not. In time, if you wish it, you will attend functions outside this house as well, at his side.”