He exhaled slowly, like dragging the words up from the grave. "Yes."
The room tilted. Her father's voice rose in her mind—his warnings, his control, the way he'd always told her she wasn't strong enough to survive alone. And here was Ghost, living proof that he'd been right in one way: her father had kept her leashed even through the man she'd once let in.
She stood up fast, her chair scraping back. "You were supposed to kill me."
Ghost's jaw tightened. "I didn't."
"Don't twist this." Her hands shook, but she balled them into fists. "You had the order. You had the chance. What stopped you?"
Silence again.
She hated him in that silence. Hated the way he wouldn't just say it, wouldn't just rip it open.
Aiyana leaned back, crossing her legs. "This is why you can't trust him."
"Shut up," Hayamei snapped.
But Aiyana only arched a brow. "I'm not the one who kept a knife behind my back while pretending to protect you."
Ghost finally stood, the chair groaning as he pushed it away. His voice was low, steady, dangerous in its restraint. "I didn't kill you because I couldn't. Not because of weakness. Not because of mercy. Because somewhere in me I knew it would destroy me. So yes, I followed orders, until I couldn't anymore. You want the truth, Hayamei? That's it."
Her breath caught. The room felt too small, too hot, too thick with things she didn't want to feel.
Aiyana's voice was quieter now, but no less sharp. "And you expect her to just believe that?"
Hayamei's eyes burned. She looked between them—the man who could have ended her, the sister who had faked death to escape the same monster. Both of them tied to the man who still hunted her.
"You're both poison," she whispered.
The words hung heavy.
Ghost's hands flexed at his sides but he didn't argue. Didn't deny it.
Aiyana tilted her head. "Maybe. But poison can kill poison."
Hayamei sank back onto the bed, her strength faltering. She buried her face in her hands for a moment, trying to breathe past the knot in her chest. She wanted to scream, to run, to put miles between herself and both of them. But she couldn't. Running wasn't enough anymore.
When she finally looked up, her voice was hoarse. "If we're really going to war, then I need to know. Both of you. No more half-truths. No more silence."
Ghost met her gaze, and for the first time there was no wall, no shadow. Just bare honesty, ugly and raw. "You have everything. That's the whole truth. I was sent to kill you. I didn't. I won't."
Aiyana studied her sister, her face unreadable. Then she leaned forward, voice soft. "And me? I survived because I played the game better than him. I faked my death, disappeared, built myself back from ashes. And I came back because you're the only family I have left. Not because I'm pure. Not because I'm safe. Because you're mine, Hayamei. And I'll burn everything before I let him take you."
Hayamei sat in the silence that followed, staring at them both. The weight of it pressed down, but something else burned beneath: resolve.
If this was her army—broken, dangerous, tainted—then so be it.
She exhaled slowly, the tremor in her hands steadying. "Then we make the plan. But if either of you betray me, I swear, I'll end it myself."
Neither of them argued.
⸻
The rest of the day moved slow, heavy with tension. They didn't touch the notes from the night before. They barely spoke. But the air was charged, like the silence itself was shaping them sharper, harder.
When night fell, Hayamei lay awake on the bed while Ghost leaned against the wall near the window and Aiyana pretended to sleep on the couch. She stared at the ceiling, her body still, but her mind restless.
Her father was coming. Zora was waiting. The war loomed closer with every breath.
But the real battlefield was already here, in this room, between the three of them.
And only one thing was certain: nobody was walking out clean.
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