“You want me to give Okugawa a child?” I asked, my voice breaking.

“This wouldn’t be Okugawa’s child.” Ansei paused, and closed his eyes. When he opened them, it was as though he had lifted a mask. “The child would be mine.”

The breath caught in my lungs, freezing with the mental image of myself nursing Ansei’s baby.

“Our child will be the heir as long as Okugawa survives. And he will believe the child his own,” Ansei said.

“But it wouldn’t be in the line of succession. He has a first wife.”

“She will not bear a child. Okugawa depends upon you for an heir and he knows it.”

I trembled and my head reeled. Ansei closed his hands around my shaking fingers. “You are free to choose.”

“He said I was already his.”

“The choice is yours.”

“It seems possible for him to doubt—”

“He will have no interest in contesting his paternity of our child. Producing an heir is his most urgent business.”

I had so many questions, but Ansei answered slowly, patiently as ever.

“Am I to live as his wife?”

“But briefly. In his illness; he won’t threaten you. I don’t believe he will long outlive the birth of the child.”

I bit my lip. “How can you possibly be sure he will die?”

“Before I followed you to the Ozawa mill, I served at Western Capital—at court. I also studied with the Emperor’s private physician. I’m trained in clinical and theoretical medicine. My particular expertise is poison—specifically, yours. He will die.”

I stared, but didn’t doubt him. I had seen my poison kill. At last he disarmed me, question by question. And yet it wouldn’t be enough. Ansei might answer everything else, but there remained one problem he could not resolve, and that was this:

Ansei was at least half mortal. Male Earth Kumo never survived procreative acts. We would make love together, and soon thereafter, Ansei would die.

We were silent, but for the rush of the river and our patient, deliberate breathing in and out. I had not forgotten Ansei’s honesty with me. I would have been his at his asking years ago, but he hadn’t been willing to deceive me that far. He wanted me to choose this. And what choice was it really? Could I truly walk away from him and be free? I could hardly breathe through this thought. And yet I asked it, “You will let me go if I chose to leave?”

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Ansei’s mouth hardened. “On my honor, I would let you go, though it would frustrate more than a decade of planning, the underpinnings of the entire revolution, and,” he paused here to swallow. “And wound me, personally, more than I can say.”

I scoffed.

“I had better wound you than kill you.”

“I had much rather die than let you give up on me now.”

“How can you say that?”

“I never expected to--” his face flushed. “I can’t say it.”

“Then don’t. There’s no need. I could never—”

Ansei opened his mouth as if to continue, but his words wouldn’t come, and when at last they did come, they came brokenly.

“Furi—there’s a language. A language only our bones know.”

He took a tiny step nearer and I frowned a warning.

“When you come close enough—listen hard enough, my bones will speak to yours.”

My lips parted in mute disbelief.

“You won’t understand the language in your mind, but you will in the soft hollows of your bones.”

His hand found my shoulders, his fingertips, trembled across the line of my collar bone.

“You will know the sum of my life. Its beginnings and its ends. You’ll feel your own place there, and how, if you don’t hear—if you don’t answer back again, in only that language, you’ll have let my life fall away wasted.”

His words and touch on my skin worked a hypnotic effect. My collar bones burned under his fingers. I did not know how I resisted, but I wrenched free.

Ansei sighed and cast his gaze to the window.

“Furi. At least let me tell you about your past—about your father and mother.”

This, I wished very much to hear, and I knelt at the kotatsu.

He knelt beside me and began, “You were raised by low people. They despised themselves and taught you to do the same.”

“I suppose the Ishiyamas did. What bearing does that have?”

“I’m explaining why you won’t believe what I’m about to say.”

“What will you say? My mother is the moon?”

“It is not far from the truth. Remember the Princess’s name for you?”

“Orihime?”

“Orihime is your mother, The Weaver of the Gods.”

I closed my eyes.

“If you cannot accept that, you should also reject the explanation of my parentage.”

And with those words, he pinned me with my own hypocrisy. I had believed him a god—at the very least, an immortal. My breathing came sharp, but I replied in a wordless answer into his mind.

“I know.”

“Orihime had many daughters, but all of them were different. You, in particular, are most unique. Near the time of your conception, your father and mother had enemies—gods, jealous of their love. These combined to thwart your parents’ already rare meetings by sending floods of rain on the seventh lunar month. This went on for some time, and your mother began to despair. In her desperation, she made an ally of The Earth Kumo, who for their part, had no prior access to the Skies.

“Orihime gave you to my mother, to be your godmother, and blessed you with her defenses. She made you the only of Orihime’s daughters to carry a few of my mother’s traits. Your mother never regretted the poison for your sake. She knew you would become a magnificent weaver and change the power balance in the immortal realm.”

It was a strange tale, and yet not strange. Acceptance washed a flood of emotions to the surface.

“That is how you became the Nagaishi Clan’s hope, but also a crucial ally to the Earth Kumo—if you accept.” He paused without a breath. “I’ve spent my life waiting for this—for you.”

“And that history somehow negates all the harm I will do to you?”

“It animates that harm with purpose. It gives me hope for another home where we can meet again.”

I turned my face away from him.

“I can’t listen to you, sitting here, persuading me to kill you.”