Chapter 32 #2
She clenched and unclenched her hands. She had the urge to hurl something at him.
She couldn’t think straight, but she knew she was a mess.
“You’re angry at me for betraying you. I understand that, but you saw what I went through!
You knew I was imprisoned. That I had no choice!
And now you’re angry at me for making a move?
Did you want me to sit there and just listen to what everyone has been telling me?
For me to be obedient to His Majesty and never do anything for myself?
You would have fought back too! You can’t fault me for wanting more out of my life than being a pawn!
If you care—if you cared about me—” Her voice cracked and her throat tightened with a strangled sob.
She could barely get the words out fast enough.
“If you cared about me, you would have found a way to help me escape! You wouldn’t have allowed me to rot in that place. ”
“You didn’t have to betray the emperor and start a coup for that!
You could have escaped like any normal person!
” He pushed himself into a sitting position, the shadows of the night engulfing the sharpness of his eyes.
“You had other choices that didn’t involve hurting the ones I love, princess.
You didn’t have to hurt anyone for you to be free. ”
“I didn’t—” Her eyebrows pulled together. “I didn’t hurt anyone—”
“How many mages do you think died because of your failed coup?”
She flinched. The rush of memories—the corpses, the screaming, and the mages fighting—made her avert her gaze.
“You put Vita, Minos, myself—so many of us in harm’s way with this coup. What if any of them had gotten hurt?” he continued stiffly. “Not to mention you planned on killing His Majesty. Do you not realize he is family to me?”
She had heard that the Peccata were close to Drakkon Muyang, and that he had raised them as his personal warriors, but that was about it. She swallowed down the nervous laugh bubbling within her. “He’s not your family, Nikator. He raised you to be a monster.”
Nikator went very unnaturally still. “What did you say?”
“You … He …” Biyu found it hard to speak with the way he was staring at her—like she was the monster.
The air around him became sinister and she could feel his rage through the bond, making her grimace at the intensity of it.
“He’s a cruel monster, Nikator, and he wanted you to be the same.
He wanted all of you to become his blades. He didn’t … love you.”
“What do you know about my childhood, about my relationship with Muyang, or about Muyang himself?” He hissed the words out like a curse.
Biyu’s lips parted but no sound came.
“You don’t know anything,” he continued with a growl.
“I understand he killed your father, but let’s be real here, princess.
Your father was a cruel, horrible man and he deserved to die.
You should be happy he killed him! Do you even know what your father did to Muyang growing up?
Do you even know why your sister hates you? ”
Biyu’s lips quivered. “What does my sister have to do with this?”
“Think hard, princess. Why does your sister hate you?”
“Because … because I—because I was a lower rank than her.”
“Is that really what you think?”
An uncomfortable moment passed and Biyu could only gape at him.
She had no idea why Liqin might have hated her.
She always thought it was because Liqin thought she was a higher status than Biyu, as a favored princess, and because Liqin’s mother was favored by their father.
Her sister had never been kind to any of their siblings.
“Your father loved Liqin, and he mostly ignored you.” Nikator leaned closer, his words growing harsher. The fire waned, the forest growing quiet. “Do you really think it’s a good thing for a man like your father to love someone? Do you ever wonder that she was jealous that he ignored you?”
A numbing sensation spread through her chest, needling its way inside her heart. “What are you talking about?”
“Your father raped your sister ever since she was a young girl. That’s the kind of man he was.”
Nothing he would have said could have prepared her for those words.
She reeled back, limbs trembling and her breathing coming shallowly.
She didn’t want to believe it—she didn’t want it to be true—but she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was telling the truth.
Father had always been cruel and cold, but she had thought …
she had thought that this his wickedness only extended to those who weren’t in his favor.
How could he do something like that to his own daughter?
An uncontrollable rage, grief, and guilt wallowed within her like a yawning chasm.
How had she not realized something had been plaguing Liqin for all these years?
They were sisters, and yet they knew nothing about each other.
But she should have noticed the signs—all that anger Liqin carried, the disdain for everyone, the bitterness. Biyu wished she could do something now.
“I—I had no idea,” she whispered, tears welling.
“Muyang didn’t raise me to be a monster, princess.
You keep throwing that word around, but you don’t even know enough about monsters to be talking like that.
” He cracked his knuckles and raked a hand through his blood-colored hair.
“He’s many things, but he’s not evil. Not like your father.
Your father was a fucked up man who thought he could have whatever the hell he wanted.
He got what was coming to him. Muyang is nothing like that bastard.
He didn’t raise me to be cruel. He didn’t raise me to be selfish.
He didn’t raise me to be a heartless killer. ”
Her head began to swim and throb, feeling heavier than ever.
It was suddenly hard to breathe. Father was an evil man; she’d secretly known that, but hearing it out loud brought it to reality.
She pushed past those feelings, her voice coming out small.
“But—but he kept me imprisoned, Nikator. Do you think that because my father was evil, that my siblings and I deserved to be prisoners all these years?”
A gentle breeze tousled his hair and crickets sounded in the distance. Nikator stared at her and she couldn’t read his expression. Finally, he said, “No, I don’t think you deserved that.”
Some sort of relief pooled in her chest—at the validation that it wasn’t fair—but it vanished with his next words.
“But it’s better than the alternative, princess.”
Her brows furrowed. “What’s that? Death?”
“Yes. What do you think normally happens when someone usurps the throne? Do you think the rest of the royal family ever lives? You should be grateful Muyang didn’t murder you. He could never hurt children, which is why he let you all live, despite the insistence from everyone in his council.”
Biyu couldn’t stop the hysterical, cutting laugh that broke from her. “Oh, so I should be grateful that he allowed me to live and be a prisoner in what used to be my home? What else am I supposed to do? Kiss his feet? Thank him for sparing me?”
There was a challenge in his eyes. “Yes, I think so. But instead, you tried to kill him. He gave you and Liqin a way out.”
“Through marriage to dangerous people? I’m sure that was very generous of him!
” She blinked back the tears threatening to spill.
“He sent Liqin off to be married to some assassin and he was about to marry me off to an inconsiderate, abusive man who would have treated me like a prisoner in his bed and in his home! How is that freedom, Nikator? Should I thank him for that?”
“He’s trying! For fuck’s sake, what do you want him to do?
” he roared, slamming his fist on his thigh.
“Politically he can’t let you go and do whatever you want!
If you both married respectable people who are close to him and won’t move against him, he could have let you live in peace! You both have reached that age.”
“Wu Jian is not respectable.”
“He’s a liar, and I’m sure Muyang would have figured that out sooner or later,” he gritted out.
“But that’s not the point. The point is that he didn’t lock you away and make you a political prisoner because he wanted to.
He didn’t have much choice in the matter.
I agree that he might not have handled it in the best way, but he wasn’t cruel to you.
He allowed you privileges. That’s more than most rulers would do. ”
“Do you hear yourself right now? I was a prisoner! He made it so I had no choice but to attack him and change my own fate. You would have done the same!”
“You had a choice, and it didn’t include me … or us,” he snarled the words like they meant nothing, but the weight of them hung in the thick air between them.
Biyu’s lips trembled and a lump formed in her throat. Suddenly, all of her anger deflated and she could only stare at him. He looked away first, letting out a ragged breath and brushing another hand through his hair roughly. She didn’t miss the hurt on his face, nor the tightness of his expression.
She had betrayed him in more than one way. She had schemed and attacked the man who had raised him. She had put his loved ones in danger. And she had ruined their relationship.
Truth be told, she wasn’t entirely sure if Drakkon Muyang was evil anymore.
She thought back to how his wife, Yin Daiyu, had stared at him lovingly, the way he had caressed her pregnant belly, the way the Peccata spoke his name so casually, how he had given her a kitten when she was depressed, how he had stayed by her side until she overcame that dark period in her life.