Chapter 12 Yù’chén
Yù’chén
Palace of the Aurora, Kingdom of Night
I manage to stumble out onto the balcony. I’ve spent my entire life building walls around myself, so high and so thick that no one and nothing can hurt me. It was necessary for survival as a halfling in the Kingdom of Night.
One word from her, and the walls fell.
Hào’yáng. Her voice echoes in my mind. A hot knife through my chest.
I lean over the cold spring, my reflection perfectly captured by the scythe moon, my eyes burning that damning red of demonic energies, my lips and cheeks flushed in a way no mortal’s can be.
You’re beautiful. Her words, laced with the impossible sweetness of oleander nectar, drift through the wind to me.
I choke out a sob and slash my hand through the spring water.
I’d imagined her in a gown like that, in my most farfetched dreams. I’d imagined, a thousand times over, a lifetime in which she might wear a smile and a dress for me. Tonight, those dreams were willed into existence, yet I hadn’t realized just how cruel the irony would taste.
Because tonight, smiling up at me from the dais, she looked beautiful in the gown she wore to wed another man.
I extend my hand, and where scorpion lilies bloom, a carafe of liquor appears. I toss the contents down my throat, again and again as it magically refills, the oleander nectar hot and cloying against my tongue. Just this once, I wish to forget everything, so the ache in my chest will go away.
As I down another cup of the poison, I sense the air shift. Red oleander begins to bloom, a trail flowering from beneath my feet to the trees around. Magic gathers in the air like shadows. The wind picks up, and as my head begins to rush, whispers fill my mind.
Hào’yáng, Hào’yáng, Hào’yáng…
Faint laughter swirls in the air. As the shadows behind me thicken, I know it’s Sansiran.
A cold hand slides over my back. “Poor little halfling. Intended to give up his life and his kingdom for a girl, only to have her run off with another man.”
She steps out in front of me, shaking off her cloak of night. She gazes down at me, and tonight, I truly don’t have the strength to act like I care nothing for what is happening around me.
“My pitiful son,” my mother says gently, leaning forward and tracing her fingers across my cheeks.
“Why are you doing this?” I demand. No more pretending.
She’s won, and she knows it; I’m laid bare to the bone in front of her.
“I’ve let you denigrate me every day before your court.
I’ve endured your torture, I’ve said nothing as your generals use me and let their subordinates abuse me. Haven’t you had enough?”
My mother examines the wetness on her fingertips, her face inscrutable. “Why?” she repeats softly. “I could ask the same of you, Yù’chén.”
I glance at her sharply, and she sighs.
“I loved you,” she says. “The Heavenly Order would say we mó are incapable of love, but I loved you as best I could, as best I knew how. I gave you everything: a life, a throne, the promise of a future where you hold the realms in your palms. And you threw it all away—for what?”
I’m too stunned to say anything. To hear the woman who is my mother tell me she loved me when all I’ve known at her hands has been pain and terror simply feels inconceivable. I’m convinced this is another one of her tricks, that at any point, she’s going to hurt me in some new way.
“You betrayed me,” she hisses, the sudden vehemence in her tone making me flinch. “I gave you everything—I loved you—and you still chose to betray me.” A pause, and her crimson eyes go dark and empty. “Just like your father.”
The pain comes, sharp and sudden as always. This time, it’s the sensation that all my bones are snapping, over and over and over again.
When my mother’s anger ebbs, I’m sprawled on the ground, my clothes soaked through, slipping in and out of consciousness.
Sansiran’s voice resounds in my mind: I wanted your father to feel the pain I felt.
I wanted him to watch as his entire family was slaughtered, his people were fed on, and his realm was burned to ashes.
Now I want you to feel the same.
“That’s not love.” My voice is ragged.
My vision filters back slowly. My mother stands beneath a tree of red oleander, watching me. “And you think you know, because of a girl who’s so disgusted by you that she can’t even stand to look at you?”
I think of àn’yīng, limned by the light of the moon and my magic, her cheeks flushed and eyes dark with the nectar. You’re beautiful.
The pain in my chest returns.
“One day, my son, you will understand,” my mother continues.
“Love is nothing like all the mortal poems describe, all peach blossoms and sunshine and beautiful things. Love can grow dark and twisted and sharp, can hurt you like nothing you have felt before. One day, your love will hurt you so much that you will understand why I would burn down kingdoms for it.”
I press a hand to my ribs, willing the ache to go away. And I think, in this moment, that I understand a little of what my mother means.
Maybe this is how love is meant to be for the likes of me. Maybe this is the only kind of love I deserve.
Sansiran kneels by me and grasps my chin.
Her fingers are cold, so unlike the heat of my mortal skin.
“Let it be known that I am never unmerciful to my son,” she whispers.
“I have given you the woman you want. I will bind her to you through marriage. Coax the secrets to the mortal throne from her, my son, and you will become the ruler of all the realms.” Her lips curve, and I believe she actually means it when she says, “I am giving you everything that you desire, Yù’chén. ”
Everything my mother is saying makes sense; it’s all that I could dream of, as though she’s pried open my chest and clawed out my deepest, most desperate desires.
I want to be accepted by both realms I come from.
I want to be with the girl I love.
But somehow, it’s all wrong.
Sansiran’s nostrils flare, and her eyes narrow. Her grip on my face tightens painfully. “I give you everything you want,” she says, her voice dangerously soft, “yet still, you are dissatisfied.”
I should return to my mask, to the performance of drunken indifference I’ve put on over the past few weeks.
Yet as I gaze into her face, I recall the woman who saved me from the wrath of the man who fathered me; who pulled me from the clutches of death as the mortal imperial army came for us that fateful day.
I think of the mother who did not know how to raise a mortal halfling like me—but who tried, nevertheless.
She had no one to show her the kind of fiery, blazing love I’d found in àn’yīng. She’d only learned of love’s cruelty, its sharp edges made to hurt.
“Because it’s not right,” I say. This conversation—with me prostrated on the ground before her, her nails piercing my flesh—is the most intimate one I’ve had with my mother in a while. “Taking everything you want like this isn’t right.”
My mother’s lips curl in disgust. “Again, you show your mortal weakness,” she says.
“Mortals are so concerned with right and wrong. A set of arbitrary rules, as defined by the Heavenly Order, of what constitutes good and evil. The world is made of pain and cruelty, Yù’chén.
Even if you satisfy all their arbitrary rules, the Heavenly Order will still mark you as less-than because of what you are. ”
“What does it matter?” I demand, pushing myself into a kneeling position.
I face Sansiran. “Isn’t our realm enough?
Growing up, I never thought of our kingdom and our way of life as lesser.
We live on the energies of darkness and night.
Our realm is beautiful beneath the moon.
I was never ashamed of what I was until we began the war against the mortal realm. ”
My mother is silent, unblinking as she watches me.
I’ve spent half my life around pure mó, and still, I find myself thrown by their thoughts, their expressions.
Like the immortals, they possess their own codes of behavior, their own traditions and thought processes, which feel so different from mine.
It is hard for me to fathom that Sansiran birthed me of her flesh and ichor, that we share a bond stronger and older than any other magic in this realm.
The pure mó do not feel love, loyalty, and most other emotions as the mortals do.
To them, the world runs on power, pain, and cruelty.
And I have no doubt that, in my mother’s mind, she believes she is doing the right thing for me, for us, for our bloodline.
Sansiran blinks at last. “In this world, no matter which realm you are born into, power is the only thing that matters. Whether you are made immortal, mortal, demon, or anything else, the only rule that holds true is that the strong will vanquish the weak.” She rises like a serpent uncoiling, impossibly graceful.
“If I ruled all the realms, even the Heavenly Order could be remade by me. You see, it does not matter how one goes about attaining power. Once you have it, you can rewrite the entire world.” She smiles at me, and it is dazzling.
“The realms will be ours soon, my son. You can choose to come willingly and take all that you desire in this life and bask in the glory of our power. Or I can force you to by invoking the terms of our covenant. You will always belong to me. And if I find you succumbing to any weaknesses and foolishness of your heart, then I shall have to break it until you no longer feel anything at all.”