Mito's fingers curled too-tight around her brush, but she finished her strokes with elegant precision as always, and set it aside it with easy grace.

"You know what is expected of you," her father said from the doorway, and Mito smiled, precise and empty as the sky over the sea outside; hiding poison and vicious edges just as the sea beneath, "Mito-chan. You will do your duty. The Senju will be here on the morrow."

"I have always known," Mito said, letting the fury at Mito-chan, as though she were still a girl; as though she had been allowed to be a girl for years, slide beneath the surface with her poison and blades, "and I have always done so.