Chapter 43 #2
“You monster! Give him back to me!” She pounded her fists on his chest, but he made no move to stop her. “Give him back! He’s all I have— He’s all—”
Yat-sen yanked her off Muyang, but she didn’t resist this time. Her body went limp, more sobs wracking through her.
“How could you do that to him? To me?” she wept. “How can I move on from this?”
An expression she had never seen on Muyang’s face almost gave her pause; it was so foreign, so strange, that it was hard to look away: discomfort. He seemed thoroughly uncomfortable standing there, watching as she wept and screamed. Almost like he didn’t want to be there, but had no choice.
“Biyu.” His voice cracked like a whip in the room and he grimaced, as if not realizing his default tone was commanding and harsh. Then he said more quietly, “Please cease your crying. Nikator is not dead.”
The world came to a standstill.
Her heart skipped a beat.
The words echoed in her mind: Nikator is not dead.
It didn’t make sense, but the hopeless part of her clung to it, grasping onto the threads of hope that had long been incinerated. She rose up to her feet, shivering all the while.
“W-What did you just say?”
Muyang stared at her pointedly. “You must feel him through the bond, correct? I never broke the bond you both share. Just as how he must be feeling your pain. I can imagine he’s panicking right now, trying to rush here as soon as he can.
I sent him away this morning, since he wouldn’t leave your bedside these past three days.
I thought the outside air might be good for him.
It wasn’t easy ripping him away, but he needed to eat, to breathe, to do anything but worry over your unconscious body.
I told him it’s normal to fall into a comatose state if you drain your magic entirely, but he had never seen it first-hand from someone who isn’t used to magic—”
The rest of his words drowned away; she could scarcely pay attention to anything other than Nikator being alive.
She grasped onto the bond, filtering through her own heavy emotions of pain and grief, and tried to feel his.
He wasn’t hiding his, but she had been so consumed by grief that she hadn’t felt the tendril of panic, the relief, the confusion that he felt.
She swayed, her limbs suddenly feeling light. “He’s alive?”
“And well.” Muyang nodded stiffly. “I could never kill one of my own.”
“Then why?” Her eyebrows pulled together. Nothing was making sense.
“I had to test you both—well, you, mostly.” He crossed his arms over his chest, peering down at her with black eyes that seemed to swallow all the shadows in the room.
“You betrayed me, and I had to see if you were serious about loving Nikator. I needed to see how far you would go for him. I needed to see if you were simply using him to try to kill me and my people, or if there was more to it. I also needed to see how serious Nik was about you.”
“It was all a test?” She felt sick to her stomach.
Muyang didn’t appear too happy about it, either. “Trust me when I say I didn’t enjoy it. I don’t enjoy hurting you and Nikator. I wish for the best for you both, but I needed to see if you were loyal—to him, at least. I needed to see that you weren’t a threat to my reign, to my family.”
He could have killed her if he had wanted to, but he hadn’t. He had tested her to see if she still posed a risk. She could understand his reasoning, even if bitterness coated her mouth at the idea of it all being a farce.
But Nikator was alive. That was all that mattered.
“You both tried to murder me.” Muyang’s voice came out flat. He leveled them with a sharp stare. “If I were anyone else, you would both be dead. And if you were anyone else, I would have killed you on the day of the coup.”
Yat-sen winced. “Why didn’t you?”
“You are …” He seemed to struggle to come up with a response. Another uncomfortable look passed over him: conflicted. Unsure. “… family.”
He had killed their horrible father, and yet … Biyu could understand. He hadn’t needed to befriend her when he was pretending to be Feiyu. He hadn’t needed to help her. He hadn’t needed to be anyone other than the wicked emperor. And yet he had shown care and consideration in his own way.
“The entire empire thinks you both are dead; be sure to keep it that way.” He pursed his lips as if the next part was especially hard for him.
“Biyu, Yat-sen, you both must realize that your actions, your treason, and your attempt at taking my life cannot go unpunished. My wife is pregnant and I will be a father soon; I cannot risk them being in danger in any way, and you both have betrayed me. As must as I hate to do this, I must—you are both henceforth exiled from my empire.”
Yat-sen sucked in a breath, cheeks hollowing.
Biyu didn’t really care if she was exiled or not.
As long as Nikator was alive and well, that was all that mattered.
This was the chance of a lifetime. Under any other circumstances, they would both have been executed.
So this punishment came across as extremely lenient, especially considering it came from the wicked usurper.
“The exile will last for about … ten years.” He shrugged, as if he had come up with the number on the spot.
“Just long enough for you both to look different and for the court to forget your memory. Then you’re free to enter again, but you mustn’t involve yourself in any politics, armies, or positions of power. Do you both understand?”
“What about my mother?” Yat-sen asked. “And her family?”
He tilted his head, as if he hadn’t realized they were still alive. “What of them?”
“Will they be punished for what we … for what I did?” There was a tremor in his voice, like he was afraid of the answer, and yet her brother raised his head bravely. His hands fisted by his sides, his breath catching in his chest as he waited for an answer—for a sentencing.
“Your mother and her family have nothing to do with this. I checked. You acted alone. Well, mostly. Those you conspired with—members of the rebel faction—are being hunted down by Li-ling as we speak. From my understanding, your only link to them was during the coup. They supplied their men to you while you tried to kill me. Is that correct?”
Yat-sen’s head hung down in shame, but relief made his voice light. “It is.”
“If you try to take this throne from me—” The shadows in the room darkened and Muyang’s voice dropped an octave.
They both shivered as a burst of air hissed throughout the room, making the bedsheets levitate and lash against the bed frame, their hair rise, and the temperature drop dangerously low.
“I will end you both. Do not take my leniency for weakness. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Yat-sen said with another flinch.
Muyang leashed his power within him, the contrast so sharp that it made Biyu gasp. The temperature returned to normal, the sheets fell limply back on the mattress, and the shadows winked away. His gaze swiveled from Yat-sen—watching, analyzing, seeing if he was being truthful—to Biyu. “And you?”
“I have no intention of betraying you again, or doing anything that would threaten you. Believe me,” she said.
Whatever he saw in her gaze made him nod curtly.
He folded his arms over his chest and seemed to be speaking to himself. “Good.”
“Why are you being so …” Yat-sen struggled to find the words, his eyebrows pulling together. “Kind?”
Muyang stared at them for a moment longer, before glancing over at the single window.
His gaze locked on there, a distant glaze entering his eyes.
He absentmindedly pulled his sleeve back to reveal his forearm, where the serpent and moon was still etched in his skin.
“Your father, Yan, was a horrible monster beyond comprehension. And yet …” When he turned to look at them, the harsh glint softened.
“And yet when I look at you two, I see that you are nothing like him. Neither are Liqin and Daewon. I see that his legacy died a long time ago, and I have no interest in perpetuating more cruelty like he did.”
Silence followed, but it wasn’t as uncomfortable as she would have thought.
They were all family—brother, sister, uncle—but there was a distance between them that their respective loyalties had caused.
And yet, Biyu got the impression that they all wanted the same thing—peace.
And perhaps, to care for one another. In an awkward, strange, different kind of way.
Muyang cleared his throat, not seeming too keen to linger on the confusing, conflicting emotions they all were feeling.
He gestured to the doorway. “Biyu, you’re free to search for Nikator if you’d like.
I sent him to the market with Thera to catch some air, and with an excuse to find medicinal herbs for you—that was the only way to convince him to leave. ”
Biyu didn’t need to be told twice. She rushed to the threshold and was about to run, but stopped herself. Her hand gripped the door frame.
“Thank you,” she said.
Muyang only gave another short nod. “Go.”
She ran without a backward glance. She raced down the hallway, her skirt flapping behind her, her hair streaming.
She didn’t know where she was headed, and yet she could feel a pull toward Nikator, as if he too was racing against time to catch up to her.
She ran down the winding paths of the palace, her heart racing, her lungs expanding.
The guards didn’t react as she shoved past them.
They must have been given orders to ignore her, or maybe Muyang had used magic to cloak her presence—whatever the case, she didn’t care.
She ran.
Through the gates of the palace and into the streets of the capital, she kept running. The surroundings blurred, her shoeless feet slapped the paved ground, and the wind ripped through her wild hair. She barely registered anything. The wind, the cuts on her feet, the people—all of them disappeared.
The pull grew stronger. She paused in the middle of a road with rows of houses lining the sides, her gaze flicking over the various people milling about.
Red hair, red hair.
Where was he?
Her heart clenched. Across the crowds of passing women with baskets on their hips, children racing after balls, men pulling horses and carts, and palace guards patrolling the street—everything went serenely still.
At the end of the road, Nikator stood, his chest heaving, his gaze locked on hers.
Time slowed and they both stared at one another from across the sea of people.
She took in everything about his appearance like it would be the last time.
His long blood-red hair pulled back messily, the shadows rimming his blazing eyes, the black armor hugging his muscular frame.
And then she ran at the same time he did. They wove through the crowd until their bodies crashed into one another. Biyu’s hands scrambled over his broad chest, a sob of relief ripping through her as she embraced him.
He was alive.
He was alive.
He was alive!
Biyu’s grip on him tightened and she wept against his chest. “Tell me you’re real—please, please, tell me this is real.”
“It’s real,” he murmured into her ear, and hoisted her off her feet.
A sob of relief left her throat; she hugged him tighter than possible, and then with the desperation yanking on all the broken shards of her heart to repair itself, she grasped his face in hers.
Her fingers skimmed over his warm cheeks, and she kissed him for everything she had thought she had lost. He kissed her back just as passionately.
He tasted like rain in the forest, like vanilla and spice, like the feeling of losing yourself in immense joy. Like … home.
And as he pulled back, his eyes crinkling as he grinned down at her, she realized that he was everything she had ever wanted. Everything she ever needed.