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To his credit, Takkan didn’t flinch. Then again, he knew how much I hadn’t wanted to marry him.

“I gather you didn’t take it well,” he said.

“I would have preferred a death sentence,” I replied dryly. “I cried so wretchedly that Father nearly annulled our engagement then and there, but Raikama wouldn’t have it.”

Even after all these years, the memory was sharp.

I had thrown myself to the floor, practically kissing the wood as I bowed. I hoped the display would elicit Father’s sympathy, but I was wrong.

“Have you finished making a spectacle?” he asked.

I was only nine years old, but familiar enough with the emperor’s ire to know it was most serious when he didn’t sound angry. His voice was even, just the slightest hint of displeasure coloring his words.

Raikama’s demeanor only added to my agitation. She hadn’t moved at all. Hadn’t said anything at all.

“Stepmother,” I cried, throwing myself in her direction. “Please don’t send me away because I have offended you.” I pressed my forehead to the ground, all my pride dissolved. “I’ll be good. I promise.”

Raikama raised her fan, embroidered with snakes and white orchids. She opened it with a snap that punctuated her next words: “A promise is not a kiss in the wind, to be thrown about without care.” A flicker of gold glinted in her eyes. “That lesson must be learned, Shiori, for your own good.”

I started to protest, but my head felt suddenly light. The grand speech I’d rehearsed fled my tongue, and my body melted dazedly into a bow. I repeated, “Yes, Stepmother. I will leave Kiata, if that is what you wish. You will not see me again.”

Raikama’s fan fell limp, and when I glanced up, there was the slightest wetness in her eyes. For an instant, I dared hope she might give in. That she might sweep me into an embrace and declare her forgiveness.

But her eyes went cold once more, and she snapped her fan shut so brutally I thought it would crack in two. Without another word, she stood and left the room.

That was the day I learned to harden my heart. That was the day I lost a mother.

Takkan touched my shoulder. “Shiori?”

I had expected to confront demons today, not my own past. I swallowed the lump in my throat and continued down the hall. “She would have been in her embroidery room this time of day,” I said, “stitching a scene of moon orchids or lilies. She was always sewing, though she had no great talent for it. Two ladies would be at her side, but she hardly ever talked to them. They were probably bored out of their minds.”

Her embroidery frame was still in the room, but the threads and spindles had been stowed away, the windows shuttered, and the lanterns removed.

I gestured at the corner of the room by the window.

“That’s where I sat,” I told Takkan, my voice soft. “Curled up in that corner, I worked on an apology tapestry for you and your family. It took nearly a month, and Raikama would come over every other hour to make sure my stitches weren’t crooked.” A wistful smile touched my lips. “How I hated her then—and you, for making me waste my summer.”

Takkan smiled back. “I’m relieved your feelings changed—toward both of us.”

“I am too.”

I crouched beside her sewing chest, nervous to open it. Last night, I had searched my room for the ball of red thread Raikama had once kept. I could have sworn I’d left it in my closet for safekeeping, but it wasn’t there.

By the Eternal Courts, I prayed it had somehow found its way back here, among Raikama’s belongings.

With trembling fingers, I opened the chest and rummaged inside. Nestled underneath a trove of yarns and flosses was a clump of red thread so ordinary and plain that no one would ever think it anything special.

I certainly hadn’t.

“What’s that?” asked Takkan as I lifted the red thread out of the chest, handling it with the care I would have given a crane’s egg.

I took his hand, tugging him toward the Moon Garden. “You’ll see.”

The pond still brimmed with carp, beds of lotus blossoms floating peacefully. The canopies of purple wisteria had grown long, draping over the tall trees that shaded the garden. But one thing was different: there were no snakes.

“This was Raikama’s sanctuary,” I said at last. “She used to come here every day to sit by the water and talk to her snakes. She’d bring my brothers here, but never me. I never knew why, and it bothered me. We were close then, as close as a mother and daughter.

“I’d wanted to come for ages, so one day I sneaked inside on a dare. I was supposed to steal one of her snakes, but Raikama caught me.”