Closing his eyes, he tried to calm down. If Keiko had wanted him dead, he’d already be dead. Still . . .

He had no way out, and he was at her mercy.

Trust her.

That was easier said than done, when the truth was that he didn’t really know her. She’d been lying to him his entire life. Pretending to be something she wasn’t.

And she’d told him not to trust anyone!

Did she mean herself too?

All these years he’d wanted answers about his parents . . . and she’d known them. Rather than tell him, she’d stood by and allowed him to be abused and humiliated while knowing he wasn’t some poor, honorless samurai’s son.

I’m the son of a kami. Two of them.

He had outranked the lord who had abused him. All of them, in fact. Instead of humiliating him, they should have been honoring him and his parents.

That put a bitter taste in his mouth and stung deep inside his heart.

“Masaru?”

For once, the tricky little beast manifested in front of him. Too pretty for a man, Masaru stared at him with an interest he’d not shown before.

“Did you know my parents?”

“I knew your mother well. Aye.” Masaru held up his hands and made a small, fiery ball in his palm. Inside, an image formed of a beautiful woman with snow-white skin and ebony hair. Cherry blossoms fell from her comb, and their pink matched the color of her lips and cheeks.

Ryuichi stared in awe. “She’s beautiful.”

“She was indeed. But her heart was frigid . . . until she met your father.”

He set his tea aside. “How do you mean?”

“Your father was a fierce warrior, Ryuichi. They called him Ryu the Dragon because he moved so fast and deadly that no one could touch him in battle. His legend went all the way to the Imperial Court of China, where even the emperor there feared his name and his sword.”

That caught his attention and made him widen his eyes.

Masaru moved closer to take the rice cake from Ryuichi’s platter. “Like all great men, his enemies were many. They united with the help of the Bureau of Onmyō.”

Ryuichi was surprised by that. The Bureau of Onmyō was a joke. Just a group of diviners who practiced for the emperor. Not even the shōgun believed in their abilities, as they were wrong more often than right. “I don’t understand.”

Masaru swallowed the rice cake, then licked his fingers. “In your father’s time, the bureau was very different from the one you know. Back then they were a force to be reckoned with. Powerful exorcists . . . great fighters who believed your father had a demon inside him.”

“Like the way I’m supposed to fight using you?”