The inevitable happens. Sarasa and Shuri become lovers as private persons, and promptly the next day meet each other on the battlefield in their public roles. Shuri tries to kill himself. Sarasa goes catatonic. In an effort to bring her out of her despair, Ageha takes her away to Mount Fuji, but she responds to nothing, not even when Ageha throws her sword away down the mountain side. Ageha realizes that Sarasa will never be Tatara again, and he leaves her in the country to her private life- and cuts off his hair before he goes, as a sign that he's now going to get really involved in the action that he's only been a bystander at until now. Last heard from (vol 18 or so) he was assassinating bad guys in the High King's capital. Good luck to him.

Ageha is wrong about Tatara, as it happens. One of the things he leaves her to in the country is a band of marauding robbers, and while Sarasa can't bring herself out of her depression to rescue the young boy who'd asked her to save him from them, she manages to rouse herself to prevent her own rape and murder. One rather loses sympathy with her for a bit here, though the suggestion later is that the spirit of the sword, White Tiger, has taken her over for a bit to ensure its own survival. The robber chieftain just happened to find this nifty sword at the bottom of the hill and this neat young thing at the top, and when the two meet again, bang goes the robber chieftain and all his men. After which she finds herself gradually going back to her old role, but with an obvious shift in political focus.

Meanwhile Shuri was sold into slavery by the Blue King, who dislikes his brother even more than I do and who wants to see that insensitive arrogant jerk suffer a little- or, peferably, a lot. A shortish stint of living on the bottom and recovering from his wound (Shuri makes the mistake of trying to cut his stomach open. That kills you only if you bleed to death) changes some of his ideas. While Tatara wants to rid the country of the royal family, Shuri decides he should rid the country of his father. Sarasa and Shuri become loose political allies for the moment. And Sarasa is still infatuated with him. Some women have no man sense.

Proceed to part 2

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