Chapter 15 Àn’yīng #2
“Oh, yes.” The Higher One giggles. “He begged her to spare your life. He made her an unbreakable bargain, held by the old magic of our kind.” Behind her, Niefuzan’s underlings titter.
“You see now why mortals are weak? You see how easy it is to manipulate one at the mercy of love? The mó were born without this weakness, and we are all the stronger for it.” She raises a hand, and ice crackles beneath her feet.
“Well, Princeling—as much as I’d love to say we dropped by for a bit of fun, there is a reason we came to seek you out. ”
“Then spit it out and leave,” Yù’chén snarls.
“Our empress has left for business in the Kingdom of Sky, but she returns tomorrow night. She has requested your presence then. And she has asked us to remind you that she will be expecting the answers you promised her.”
Yù’chén falls silent.
Xisenyin smirks. “It seems you understand. Well, Princeling, if you were desperate enough to invoke the name of our empress, it seems we have overstayed our welcome. Until next time, little flower.”
The air ripples with dark magic, and in a flash of frost and shadows, they’re gone.
—
As soon as we’re back in Yù’chén’s chambers I pull away from him, clasping a hand over where Xisenyin licked me. The feeling of her teeth against the most vulnerable part of my throat has unmoored something inside me.
Worse, the knowledge that she holds at least one of my crescent blades—my most precious possessions and the last items Bà gifted me.
Yù’chén follows me as I rush across the chamber to where the moonlight and wind from outside spills through the open-air terrace. “àn’yīng, wait,” he calls, but I keep running.
Except I have nowhere to go. Outside, the night sky is beyond my reach with the wards over the Palace of the Aurora. And even if I return to the Kingdom of Rivers, there is no escaping this.
“àn’yīng.” Yù’chén approaches. He reaches for my neck, his fingers scraping the bleeding wound there.
“Don’t touch me,” I gasp. I’d tried to think of him as my one ally here, but tonight as I look at him, I can’t help but remember that he, too, is one of them.
The red and black scales are gone now, the crimson in his eyes faded to a faint glow, but just the same, he could command me at will.
Could make me do things like slit my throat or walk off a cliff.
He draws back. “Let me heal you,” he begins, but I whip out the porcelain shard from the bodice of my dress and point it at him.
Yù’chén’s eyes flick down to it. He’s silent for several moments. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says quietly, but makes no move to approach me again.
I don’t lower the piece of porcelain. “You’ve hurt me enough,” I choke out.
He’s silent for a long time.
Then, slowly, Yù’chén tips his chin back, baring his throat to me. He takes my hand and sets it against the curve of his neck, the sharp point of the shard digging into his flesh. I can feel his pulse beneath my palm, warm and insistent.
He reaches for my neck. I shudder as his fingers slide across my skin, then as his dark magic flows, hot and intoxicating, through me. He keeps his eyes lowered the entire time, but I still catch the flare of red in his irises.
Slowly, the fog pulls back from my head. Strength flows back into my limbs, warmth into my core.
Yù’chén retracts his hand. We sit, facing each other, my porcelain shard against his throat, his gaze lowered to the grass as the crimson fades from his eyes.
“I want a weapon.” My voice is too loud in the silence.
“I can’t give you one,” he replies.
“You can’t keep me here without a means to defend myself. You saw what she—Xisenyin—almost did to me.”
“She can’t hurt you,” Yù’chén says. “No one can—you’re protected under the bargain I made with my mother.”
The bargain.
He begged for you.
I draw a deep breath, trying to steady the tremors jittering down my body. “What is the bargain?” I ask.
A muscle tenses in his jaw. “I made a covenant with Sansiran,” he says at last.
“A covenant?”
“A bond between two beings, forged by the strongest old magic of this realm. So long as one side fulfills a bargain, the other is held to their service for eternity.” Yù’chén recites this mechanically.
“It’s how power dynamics work here. There is no trust, no loyalty—the mó thrive on power and obedience, on fear and pain. ”
I consider this, my eyes narrowed. “And your covenant prevents you from arming me.”
“It prevents me from acting against the interests of my kingdom, so, yes, arming you when you are hostile to my realm might fall under that.” He speaks with a touch of sarcasm, but he won’t look at me.
“You can’t keep me here without a weapon,” I repeat. “I am prey, Yù’chén; I am kept in a cage, protected by your mercy.”
“You are not my prisoner, àn’yīng—”
“Then let me go.”
Sorrow flickers in his eyes. “I can’t do that either, àn’yīng.”
“Then why did you do it?” I ask. “Why keep me here at all? If you want me as your…your mortal escort, you could just drug me on oleander nectar or enchant me to do as you please—”
“I see your assumptions of me still hold,” he snaps, his temper rising at last. “àn’yīng, when have I ever forced you to do something? When have I ever misused my power and commanded you for my benefit?”
“My assumptions of you are based on when you deceived me about your true intent in the Immortality Trials, used me to find the identity of the mortal heir, and opened a gate for the Kingdom of Night to invade the Kingdom of Sky!”
The anger vanishes from Yù’chén’s face, leaving behind something raw. “àn’yīng.” His voice is low, steady, when he speaks again. “I told you once, very early on, that I wanted a better life, in a better place. Do you remember that?”
I do. I remember, painfully, every word he said to me. All the lies he gave me about wishing to be mortal, about his beating, human heart.
“My tenure here demands me to act in the interests of my kingdom,” he repeats.
“This war—it isn’t good for my realm, àn’yīng.
The mó are beings of the night, the moon, and the stars; our energies and our lives depend solely on those.
Not the flesh and blood of mortals in your realm, nor anything in the immortal realm.
Each day that my mother continues these wars, lives are lost. Across my realm and across yours. And now, across the Kingdom of Sky.”
I frown, trying to unpuzzle where he is going with this.
“This war is ruining my kingdom and destroying this world,” Yù’chén continues. “I want to stop it.”
Five words, and time comes to a halt.
Yù’chén speaks slowly, as though choosing his words carefully. “It’s very hard for me to…influence things here. But soon, I may be able to.” He inhales deeply. “I’m asking you to work with me when the time comes.”
I stare at him, my heart pounding with the hidden meaning in his words. When the time comes.
I turn away, running my fingers over the sheer sleeves of my gown. Over the intricate patterns of swirling stars and crescent moons that Yù’chén conjured with his magic. “You really expect me to believe you? After you tricked me into giving my heart away and then used me.”
“It was real for me.”
Real. The word hits me like a punch to the gut. A strange, tender pain blooms in my heart when I recall the number of times he saved my life—risking his own. When he fought that mó back in my village. When he went up against Yán’lù for me. When he begged his mother for my life.
“How?” I ask at last. “How do you plan to influence things?”
Yù’chén summons a deep breath, as though steeling himself, then looks me in the eye and says, “I am heir to the mortal throne, àn’yīng.”
The dam I’ve built in my mind breaks. Memories of Hào’yáng flood me: his steady brown gaze and warm smile; the steel of his eyes and power of his tone as he issued commands to our villagers; the glint of sunlight on his armor as the river waters bore him like a throne; the flash of his sword as he leapt to attack Qióng’qí to buy my village time to evacuate.
The grief in his eyes whenever he thought no one was looking, grief he’d quietly held from when he was just a child and began to carry the weight of an entire kingdom upon his shoulders.
And I miss him, I miss him so much that it could carve me open.
The sunlight and waters and flowers are gone. I am once again in the darkness. Yù’chén’s words ring in my ears, and the only thing I can think to say is “No.”
Yù’chén draws a swift breath. He blinks quickly, then his jaw clenches.
It’s a few heartbeats before he speaks, a hard edge to his voice. “Whether or not you like it, I am.”
I push myself to my feet. “You will never be heir in the way he was.”
His fingers close around my arm just as I turn to leave.
“Let go,” I snap.
“No. Not until you hear me out.” He spins me to face him, his other hand coming to grip my chin in a viselike hold, and I realize, truly realize, the extent of his strength, how gentle he has been with me until now.
His eyes are livid with anger and something like grief as he beholds me.
“àn’yīng, I brought you here to make you a deal.
Help me take the mortal throne and become emperor of the Kingdom of Rivers, and I vow to formally appoint you to a seat by my side—to help me protect it.
” He draws a shaky breath, and his grip loosens.
“Hard as it is for you to believe, I love the mortal realm, too, and it is, in some ways, my home. I never wanted this war. Help me end it, àn’yīng.
Help me save your realm from the Kingdom of Night. ”
“You’re mad.” I snatch my hand back, but my heart is pounding. Of everything I might have imagined, this is the last thing I expected.
An alliance. A means to protect my home.
I squeeze my eyes shut, thinking of Méi’zi and Mā and Lì’líng and Tán’mù and Fú’yí, gathered in the scattered sunlight beneath the plum blossom tree. I’d sought to achieve that by seeing Hào’yáng on the throne.
The vision shifts: a throne of red scorpion lilies, night and a scythe moon, Yù’chén bearing a crown.
And the mortal realm—home—a world away, my loved ones safe in an eternal twilight.
My eyes fly open. The vision vanishes.
Yù’chén is gone. The shadows where he stood are still and empty.
I dig my fingernails into the sleeves of my gown. In the dark, it is easier to recall Xisenyin’s hands and tongue on me. Easier to remember that I am nothing more than a bird trapped in a cage here.
Prey.
I curl my fingers into fists.
I will not be prey.
I grip the porcelain shard, thinking of the curve of my crescent blade nestled in my palm for that brief moment before Xisenyin took it again.
I’m going to steal it back from her.
Yet as I gather my dress around myself, I can’t help but think of Yù’chén’s words.
Help me save your realm from the Kingdom of Night.
If I can keep my loved ones and my realm safe by giving up all the values I’ve held close for years…if I can save the Kingdom of Rivers by putting one of its enemies on its throne…if it’s the only way out, is that a trade worth making?
I sit by the crystal spring, flipping the porcelain shard between my fingers, lost in thought.