"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. She was the one who planned my escape from Japan. Sold everything she owned to buy my admission and the paperwork to change my identity, then hid it where my father would never look. She died believing I'd get out. Which is more than most people get."
The casual way she delivered that information hit harder than tears would have. This was a girl who had processed her grief years ago and carried it now like scar tissue, painful only when pressed.
"Your father?"
"Head of the Tanaka clan. One of the major hunter families in Osaka. Traditional. Powerful. Absolutely certain that women do not inherit. He had a daughter and three nephews circling the seat." Hikaru's mouth twisted into something that wasn't quite a smile. "When I was born, he told my mother that she had failed him. When I awakened with Phantom Edge at fifteen, he decided I was too valuable to hand to a cousin and too female to name. So he came up with a solution."
