Chapter 10 Yù’chén
Yù’chén
Palace of the Aurora, Kingdom of Night
The revelry is particularly intolerable tonight.
Since Sansiran and I returned to our realm, the mó at the Court of the Aurora have been throwing a lavish banquet in honor of our progress into the Kingdom of Sky.
Sansiran wasted no time parading me around in a magnificent new outfit—one unmarked by the teeth and tongues of the mó that feasted on me back in the Temple of Dawn.
My new circlet gleams gold on my forehead: A crown, my mother had crowed, to the roaring approval of her entire court, for the future emperor of the Kingdom of Rivers and heir to the Kingdom of Night!
The Palace of the Aurora is an ancient thing made of nightglass, rock, and old magic.
Its main ceremony hall perches on cliffs yawning into shadows, and the rest of it—wings, temples, courtyards, and gardens—is connected by passages formed of demonic magic.
Beyond, our realm is a world of jagged mountains and plunging clifftops wreathed in silver fog.
Brightly colored trees choke the landscape, luminous in the eternal night and illuminated by the aurora snaking through the skies.
Moonlight streams into the great banquet hall that opens to worship the night sky, spilling on scenes of debauchery before me.
Mortal prisoners, drunk on oleander nectar, follow mó around the dance floor or into shadowy alcoves, where, in the dim lighting, I make out flashes of flesh…
and often, dark liquid dripping onto the floor.
I always look away before I can see more.
Behind my throne, a gate arcs high into the sky. A magnificent hallway stretches within, its blue silk banners and warm cherrywood pillars threaded through with gold and silver engravings incongruous with the decor of our realm.
This is the gateway to the Kingdom of Rivers.
It’s the one Sansiran opened with my blood ten years ago; the entire reason she keeps me alive.
The gate refuses to remain, fading over the course of a day or a few—a source of irritation for my mother.
It isn’t the fact that she needs to use my blood to reopen it each time that bothers her.
It’s that she hasn’t found a way to permanently cement her power across the mortal realm.
A phantom ache throbs in the heart of my palm, where my mother drew my blood earlier this evening—as soon as she returned from whichever battlefield she had been off to.
Tonight, like so many nights before, she’d reopened the gates and led me into the mortal realm, then shoved me onto the mortal throne in hopes that the Kingdom of Rivers would finally accept me as emperor.
She’d learned from my father, the late emperor, that there is a divine selection process by which the land of the mortal realm crowns its emperor.
It is said that the land itself will join with the chosen emperor and that there will be signs.
Sansiran believes that when I am finally selected by the Kingdom of Rivers, the land will fall into eternal night, the gate between our realms will expand to merge the two, and mó will be free to roam between the realms.
My mother’s eyes had been blazing with renewed fervor tonight when I sat on the throne. But when nothing happened, like all the other times, she’d taken out her rage on me right there for all to see.
If the mortal throne ever chooses to accept me as its emperor by whatever divine selection it runs on, all I will remember when I sit upon it is pain.
Several mó have come up to the dais to proffer me toasts of oleander nectar, which I decline.
I know what the sparkling fuchsia liquid swirling about their bronze cups will do to me.
Oleander nectar has the effect of strong alcohol for the mó—but for mortals, it behaves like a drug.
One sip and your judgment weakens; another, and your memory goes.
A third, and you’re at the mercy of whoever and whatever is around you—a vessel made to please.
The mó love using it to command mortals to do their bidding: crawl like a dog, lick their feet, and whatever other depraved acts they find amusing.
I would know.
My mother bade me to drink wine instead, and I obliged. Toast after toast, I sipped from bronze goblets that servants swapped in and out of my hands until the banquet hall began to blur and the music began to swell and I couldn’t remember why in the realms I was so worried in the first place.
It is in this state that I notice the surge in cheers and hollers somewhere beyond our banquet hall.
A group of our soldiers seems to have returned.
Lower-class mó rush to them immediately, plying them with wine and nectar and cold cuts of meat, scrambling to see if they’ve brought back young, beautiful mortals for entertainment.
My mother rises to greet them, but I remain seated on the starlit throne next to hers. My head is starting to pound in an unpleasant way.
The procession of soldiers is beginning to make its way down the hall.
I frown, straightening slightly. There’s a palpable air of excitement spreading through the crowd; they all turn to the new arrivals. I make out a figure slumped in their midst, catch the whites of my mother’s smile, and suddenly I’m sitting forward, my heart in my throat, unable to breathe.
The floor tilts beneath me as two of the generals approach the dais, half carrying the figure between them.
From here, I make out the locks of her black hair against her pale shoulders, the spill of her deep red gown—but my heart, my soul, knows who it is even before my mother reaches her and tips her chin up.
àn’yīng.