Two-minute warning to save my men from death.
I closed my eyes.
Mom. . .should I do this?
The elevator chimed.
I opened my eyes as the doors slid open.
Warm light spilled in from the corridor as the doors parted.
My other guards were already waiting for us.
We stepped off. The air changed the moment my shoe hit the marble. Garlic seared in butter. Ginger. Citrus notes with a savory aroma.
The kitchen had been working for hours and had filled the whole house with the evidence of that.
Reo kept my pace. "Tomorrow night is a full moon."
My heartbeat picked up.
"Do you want to do this?"
I looked at him. "What do you think I should do?"
Reo shook his head. "This is a big decision. If all of this is really true. . .this is a choice that only you and your Tiger could make.”
“And do you think it could be true?”
"I'm smart enough to know I know nothing about the mysteries of this world. Anything can be true."
We walked forward.
The corridor stretched ahead.
Servants passed and bowed.
My face gave nothing, even though a war had ignited inside my chest.
Should I do this ritual?
I turned the question over and over until the thought began to cut parts of me.
A man asked a woman to be his wife. That was one thing.
A man asked a woman to bleed into the dirt with him and braid her soul to his until the grave. . .that was something else. That was not a question a man put in front of the woman he loved.
That was a chain.
And what kind of man offered his woman a chain and called it love?
I swallowed.
But the war was coming. My father and brother were plotting.
And I had men behind me with wives and mothers and children waiting at tables for them to come home.
If an answer existed—even a strange, half-believed, ancient answer—could I walk past it? Could I look those mothers in the eye later and tell them I'd held the answer in my hands and set it down because the price felt too high for me?
