Chapter 5 #2
Yat-sen was dressed in fitted, black clothes that were unlike the clothes he typically wore—loose, fancy robes meant for a prince.
All of his jewelry and regalia—the gilded hair crown, the earrings, necklaces—were gone and he appeared younger this way, without all the gold and finery making him more refined than his boyish sixteen years revealed.
He smiled at her faintly and jerked his chin toward the knife.
“Are you still planning on stabbing me?”
“Oh. No. No.” She probably would have laughed if she wasn’t in such shock; she lowered the blade and glanced at the doorway, her voice barely a whisper. “What are you doing here? How did you even get passed your guards? Or mine?”
Her bedchambers were dark except for three glowing candles on her nightstand, and she wondered, briefly, if Yat-sen had lit them when he entered.
“Yours were sleeping.” He shrugged, and the motion appeared so awkward on him; she was used to him being rigid and princely, since his every move was monitored.
Such a casual movement was … almost too informal, and it made her realize she knew nothing about how he acted outside of that role. “So it wasn’t particularly hard.”
Typical behavior, she thought with a frown.
She had always been too afraid to escape her room to even know whether or not her guards were guarding her as they were supposed to, or if they were shirking their duties.
She could imagine which of her guards were posted outside; it certainly wasn’t the older guards from the morning prior.
“And your guards?”
“I walked past them.” The corner of his mouth rose. “With magic.”
She gasped. “M-magic? Yat-sen!” She dropped her knife on her nightstand and swung her legs around her bed and came to stand in front of him.
“That’s dangerous! The mages will be here at any moment!
You have to get out of here. What if the emperor actually kills you this time for using it?
” Biyu grabbed his bicep and tried leading him back to the door, but then she hesitated, her gaze flicking over to the window.
“Maybe you can actually jump through the window? You have to—”
“Sister, it’s all right.” Yat-sen gently eased her hands off. “The mages won’t be coming.”
“Why not? They’re notoriously terrible and whiff out any—”
“Sister,” he started.
“Please don’t act so formal with me. We’re siblings.
” She hesitated; she was sure Liqin would turn her nose up at this little interaction.
But Biyu wasn’t like her, and she didn’t want to become like her any time soon.
She didn’t want to distance herself from her brother, either of them. “Call me Biyu, please.”
He blinked in what she could only imagine was surprise, but the emotion quickly shuttered away and he nodded sharply. “Biyu, then,” he said. “Don’t worry about the mages. I found a way to bypass them, but we can discuss that later. I don’t really have much time right now, so I’ll try to be quick.”
Bypass the mages? That alone piqued her interest and she wanted to press him about that, but he was already talking.
“I wanted to talk to you earlier, but I understand that it’s quite difficult to get any alone time, all things considered.” He waved toward her door. “You did receive my note, yes?”
Biyu cringed as she remembered everything that had happened after she had received the note, particularly Nikator’s suspicions. “I did,” she said. “I actually wanted to discuss things with you, but … I ran into some trouble.”
“I assumed as much. I have … a plan.”
“Yat-sen …” She had wanted to tell him to forget whatever he was planning, but now she wasn’t so sure. He was here, after all, and that was a feat she never would have thought possible. Maybe there was some merit to hearing him out. “A plan for … escaping?”
“No, more than that.”
“What’s more important than escaping?”
There was a hard glint in his eyes. “You know what.”
Biyu only stared at him. He couldn’t be serious. He simply … couldn’t.
“Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?” she asked slowly.
“Yes.”
“You want to …” She swallowed down the horror, panic, and … hope that clawed up her throat and made her want to empty her stomach onto the hardwood, polished floors. Nausea swirled in the pit of her stomach; this wasn’t something they should even be discussing. “You want to kill the emperor?”
A sharp nod.
She inhaled deeply and suddenly, her legs were too weak for her to stand.
She swayed on her feet and nearly fell on the bed.
Yat-sen wanted to kill Drakkon Muyang and take the throne.
That was treason, that was … something she had always wished for.
Secretly, of course. But a dream she’d had for the past five years.
“How are you going to do that?” She cast a furtive glance at her door again, expecting someone to barge inside and arrest them both for even uttering such blasphemous words.
“Like I told you, I have a plan, but …” There was a clear hesitation in his voice as he looked from her, to the floor, then to Jade who was curled on the foot of the bed, and then to the shuttered window.
He sucked in his lower lip, contemplating, thinking, and then finally, he sighed long and hard, and said, “I can’t tell you until I know for sure that you’re on board with this.
I need your help, but I understand that it’s a lot for you to do, and I don’t want you to be complicit if you don’t want to be.
I also can’t risk this plan getting out. So, are you in?”
“I know nothing of this plan of yours, but I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask. I’m not strong, Yat-sen, and I’m not even sure if this is a good idea. What if we’re caught? What if the emperor decides to kill us over this?”
His mouth flattened into a thin line. “I would rather die trying to free myself than remain as a prisoner for the rest of my life. Are you satisfied with your life the way it is? It’s only a matter of time before the emperor decides to be rid of us anyway.”
She winced at the vitriol in his harsh tone and suddenly couldn’t meet his gaze.
Was she satisfied with this life? No, not at all. But she was also a coward and she didn’t want to lose any more than she’d already lost.
“He can make our lives harder,” she said carefully.
“He could torture us. Flay our skin off, heal us, and do it all over again! He’s a monster, Yat-sen, and there are worse things than death and imprisonment!
” The backs of her eyes burned as she thought of Feiyu, their uncle who had disappeared all those months ago, and the fact that nobody spoke of him anymore, like he had never existed.
That would become their fate too if they embarked on this. “He could do so much worse.”
“I have to try.” Yat-sen’s hands flexed and something flared in his eyes. “We won’t ever get anywhere if we never try, Biyu. I understand it’s not a decision that can be made lightly, but it’s clear to me: I want freedom.”
Biyu’s hands curled together and she hated that she was so cowardly, that she didn’t immediately tell him that she wanted to join in his cause.
As much as she loved the idea of freedom, she didn’t want to risk anything for it.
She didn’t want to be caught. She didn’t want to live with the anxieties that it brought on.
She would rather someone rescue her from this hell than do anything about it.
“I can … hear you out, Yat-sen, but I don’t know if I can—if I can do anything for you.
” She tried to keep the stutter out of her voice but fear had her whole chest rattling, her limbs heavy and trembling, and her skin clammy.
She fell down on the edge of her bed, making sure not to disturb Jade.
“Please don’t give me all the details, just in case …
but I need to know what I might be getting myself into, or if this is just” –a stupid, stupid dream that would amount to their deaths—“um, pointless.”
Yat-sen didn’t look like he liked that, but he nodded, his tone bitter as he murmured, “I understand. You want to know if there’s actually hope in this plan of mine before you commit.
” He strode over to her window and cracked it open, peered outside, and then quietly shut it, grimacing at the creaking of the wooden shutters.
He eased himself onto the bench she used to peer outside, and folded his hands on his lap neatly.
Pertly. His back straight, his eyes forward.
Very princely. “Do you know how the wards in the palace work?”
Wards? In the palace? She had no idea what he was talking about.
He only bobbed his head at the expression on her face. “You understand how wards work, correct? We were taught about it during our lessons, before …”
Before the throne was usurped and their lives were upended.
“Um, well.” Biyu cleared her throat and racked her brain over the lessons she had been given for years.
How to speak politely, how to sip tea, how to hold her head regally, how to …
do things that were completely useless now.
Her magic lessons had been quick and flippant, the mage in charge of her studies uninterested in her since she was a woman and would likely never use whatever she learned.
But she had read books from time to time, passages that the mage had recommended she should read if she was serious about magic.
Which, at the time, she hadn’t been. She had been too shy to even think of using magic, even if she enjoyed making flames dance on her palms when she was alone in her bedchambers.
Yat-sen waited patiently, even as she fidgeted in her seat, trying hard to remember anything about wards.
She knew about them, she was sure, but her mind came to an abrupt halt at being put on the spot.
A fog seemed to spread thinly over her mind the more she tried to think, and the more she felt his patient gaze on her, the thicker the fog became.
“Sister?” he asked quietly.