Sunbreak

A Sun blew apart Kagurazaka Rihito’s world.

Flames belched out of the quaking lighthouse island, the flare its own sun against the cape’s black waters. Smoke blotted the sky and muffled the blaring alarms. And yet, the creak of gears squealed on under the blaze and mayhem, the lighthouse beams casting streaks into the dark.

Those same flames had once kindled the rotating lights. How the “Disciple of the False Sun,” the Heretic of Flames, the Witch of Obotsu Kagura—how Onaga Nika controlled her shiji so perfectly had never been clear to Rihito. His coat and citation cord whipped him in derisive fury. How could a Chief Warden allow this ignorance? This blunder? He tugged down the bill of his cap and wrapped a white-knuckled grip around his saber. Containment was his only recourse. So he swore by the glory of the Great Sun of Yamato.

Embers fluttered as the lighthouse leaned. Rihito drew his saber and wedged the point into the sand, both hands around the pommel. With evacuations underway at the lighthouse’s main docks and torii gate, Onaga Nika would have no choice but to choose here, the rear path, to escape. How she planned to navigate the coral-spiked currents around the island without a boat, Rihito again had no idea. Neither did he have any plans to find out. The iron cuffs on his belt loop were ready to blot the brilliance of her shiji.

Heat swelled and the flames parted. Rihito tightened his grip again and clenched his teeth. The scalding drafts rattled the medals and ribbons on his coat as the Witch emerged. Wayward sparks caressed but never burned her coppery skin. Her black hair rolled and curled like the smoke above. She stretched her wiry arms up as another butterfly landed and blossomed into an inferno behind her. The lighthouse listed further.

Rihito blinked back smoke. “Refreshed, are we?”

Onaga Nika froze mid-stretch. She regarded him with mild shock, but the expression soon slackened into a grin again. “A brisk little workout, yes!” She lowered her arms and folded them over her chest. “But sir, I don’t feel like going back to that cramped little cell. Far too damp and cold. So I blew it apart and won’t be going back.”

“Nika.” He flinched at the familiarity of her given name. Four months of interrogation had apparently worn down his decorum. “Heretic. You’re smart enough to take this entrance. You recall I put you in that cell in the first place. I can do it again.”

“Oh, how sad!” She cocked her head aside, her eyes affecting heavy consideration, yet with a mischievous glitter. Madwoman. “I thought you and I could be friends in this trying time.”

“I’m not here to indulge you.”

“Even though that’s exactly what you’ve been doing for the past four months?”

To investigate. For her redemption. To aid her rehabilitation. Nika once blithely dismissed those benefits but welcomed Rihito’s attempts at taming her, and he spared nothing in order to make that favorable report to the Great Sun.

Four months of those attempts had only stoked Rihito’s fascination.

She joked around at first. Thanks for the nice view, she said. And the free food. Lovely weather. Have you heard about the rumored treasure? And then she told stories, of sugarcane fields against the waves, of the shisa and ocean spray stenciled across her cotton hems, of the black bands and dots tattooed across her hands, of the melody of the snakeskin lute. Other times, she elaborated on her power, her magic, her shiji—and its origins in the southern heavens of Obotsu Kagura, practically neighbors to the heavens of Yamato.

Indulge her, did he? Rihito cursed himself and tossed his saber up into position. He would kill his curiosity himself, would smother the breath that once caught at the sight of her smile, as breezy as the scent of the sea perfuming the morning. He seized a fistful of his coat to still the quakes of his soul. Don’t recall the sunlight from that day. Don’t recall the mirrored glitter in her golden eyes. Don’t—Rihito scolded himself—don’t re-enact that frenetic dance of embers or the race of his heart or—

Or the desire that unfurled in him, to cage this flame for himself.

Shudders snaked through him. Do not indulge her. Do not want her. Remember, she’s a false sun. A heretic.

The set of Nika’s eyes deepened in the shadows. “Move aside, Warden. You had your chance.”

“You don’t have my authorization.”

Nika sighed. “Since when did I need that?”

She swayed, stamped, and kicked up a pillar of debris as she leaped forward, palms ablaze. Rihito’s arc of cold steel slammed back in reprisal. The parry blasted her into the air but she spun back down, her heel a fiery sledgehammer. His blocking blade split the flames as they wreathed and seared him, his eyes, his skin, the hems of his coat and the breath in his throat. He threw an arm over his nose and mouth. Desperation rattled his nerves and gnawed up his chest as Rihito and Nika broke their lock then crashed together again.

His blade rattled against the white-hot force of her palm as he glowered into Nika’s sun-flecked eyes. “There’s only,” Rihito hissed, “only one Sun.”

“So tell me!” she roared, “why the Sun has as many faces as it does!” Did she hear his throat knot? She lunged, heaved, and blew his stance wide open. “How is my Sun any less than yours?” Then she seized Rihito’s tie, her grin demonic as flames licked the corners of her lips. “What right do you have to assert any power over me?”

The fires swelled again, engulfing the lighthouse leaning on its last stable brick. Spinning beams shot into the smoky night as Nika skidded back, crouched, then launched forward again. Rihito forced his head back down against the heat and swung his blade to catch her—but Nika rocketed past him. Cap blown off, tied hair whipping, a strained protest knotted in Rihito’s throat. Wait…!

Nika’s heel landed on the dock. Free.

Rihito’s chest thudded like a cannonball to the stomach.

She was always free, never his flame to control.

Please—no—stay—!

She was a dreamlike blur, a streak of sunbeams through the sieve of Rihito’s fingers. A free woman, bound to nothing but her rapturous zeal. Why did that make her a heretic? A witch? The lighthouse bellowed in cracks and squeals against the pull and churn of the sea. Rihito whirled and reached out to grab Nika’s arm but she wove through his grasp.

The dock groaned under Nika’s step. Time slowed to the heave and exhale of Rihito’s breath. Behind and beyond, panicked shouts punched against the long blare of the alarm. Flames burst again. Mortar cascaded. Glass shattered. Wood spit. The island shook. The lights teetered. Kagurazaka Rihito, Chief Warden of Hiyori Lighthouse, held his breath.

A death knell rang, sickened and spent.

Hiyori Lighthouse fell.

Chills crawled down Rihito’s spine as heat and feeling left his limbs. His blade fell onto the sand. Retribution. Punishment. Forsaken, for doubting the Great Sun of Yamato, for entertaining the Witch—Nika, neither false or heretical but a Sun herself—of Obotsu Kagura.

She stopped at the edge of the dock and regarded the lighthouse collapsing into the sea. Neither censure or mocking rose in her expression: a downward curve of her pursed lips, a furrowed brow, hardly blinking. Pity? Regret? Judgment?

Onaga Nika instead extended an open hand. “Here,” she said. “Come with me.”

The waves churned. The rush swallowed the torched night and rubble. Rihito welcomed the cool caress of the breeze against his grimy face and parched throat. “Why?”

The Witch smiled. Embers drifted as ocean spray crashed over her feet. “Does it matter?”

It doesn’t. Rihito choked the words on their way up. None of it matters. Not anymore. His medals and ribbons jangled in protest. These once mattered. But with his greatest failure crumbled behind him and his greatest accomplishment teetering at the edge of the sea, what exactly mattered to him anymore?

No; Yamato would make sure nothing mattered to him anymore. Rihito forced his eyes away from Nika’s open palm. “Ask me next time.”

“Next time?” He could hear her raised brow. “That might not be possible. Once I pass through Obotsu Kagura, I don’t know where or when I’ll be next."

Dawn fractured over the horizon as Rihito snapped his attention back to Nika. He might never see her again? After only four months? Her expression reflected none of Rihito’s shock as splinters and rubble released the last tendrils of smoke.

“Surely you don’t mean that.”

Nika chuckled. “I haven’t once lied to you.” She offered her hand one more time. “So come with me. Or forever hold your peace.”

Voices rose over the ruins of the lighthouse. Yet Rihito’s thoughts blotted out his deputies’ calls as he placed one shambling step in front of the other. He crossed the planks, a hand raised to grasp the curl of her fingers. He could leave his failure behind and stay with his accomplishment. He could have more time to learn her, her stories and her world.

He could, perhaps, keep her chained to him.

He held her fingertips in the cup of his palm. Was she cognizant of the heat of her skin? The sunsparks in her eyes? How he almost breathed “take me with you” but then some shred of integrity strangled his wrong and twisted thoughts to instead squeeze out, “I can’t”?

Rihito dropped his hand and stepped back. “I’ve too many debts.”

“So do I. I simply don’t pay them.”

“Well, you’ve always been a free woman.” He chuckled, dry and derisive, knots of regret already tightening his chest. “I never truly caught you, did I?”

Nika nodded, her smile vixen as she drew closer. Reached up and pressed her palm against his face. “But you were the closest.”

He clasped her hand. “Then I’d like to try again.”

She mouthed an echo of his words, her face down in exasperation. “Like I said, that might not be possible.” She curled her fingers over the line of his waistcoat and tugged as she skipped back, bringing Rihito stumbling after her. “But I do so love your persistence, Lord Warden. I can say I look forward to you chasing me again.”

“To the ends of the heavens,” Rihito swore.

A pause locked their gazes, until Nika suddenly shoved him back and twisted into the water. Currents swelled over her as she slid into the depths. Then a sun flared in the sea, Onaga Nika an ocean star shooting through the deep, sea foam her clouds across an abyssal sky.

Kagurazaka Rihito crumbled onto the dock. Some impossible day, by some impossible chance, that star would land in his hands again. He flared alive with enrapture, with divinity, with conviction.

“Until next time, Lady Nika,” he sighed. “I will catch you, the Sun.”