6. The Craftsmanship Is Exceptional
The Craftsmanship Is Exceptional
The box sits on my table like a polite threat.
I don’t recognize the seal at first. The wax is black, stamped with something old—older than the dynasty, older than the palace, older than most of the things I’ve killed. Then memory catches up, and my hand finds my stomach before I can stop it.
I know that seal.
I’ve seen it carved into the walls of temples that were ancient when I was young. Pressed into the skin of corpses arranged like offerings.
“Your Highness.” Right. They call me that now. Still not used to it.
I look up, her voice wobbles. She’s young—barely twenty, hands shaking around the tray she’s using to present this particular nightmare. “It arrived this morning. With instructions for personal delivery.”
Personal. How thoughtful. The ancient horror who’s been hunting my bloodline for eleven centuries has at least made an effort.
“Who brought it?”
“A… a man, Your Highness. He didn’t give a name. The guards couldn’t—” She swallows. “They couldn’t seem to stop him.”
Of course they couldn’t. You don’t stop the Hungering King. You survive him, if you’re lucky. Or you don’t, if you’re everyone I’ve ever been related to.
“Leave it.”
She sets the tray down so fast she nearly drops it, then flees. Smart girl. I’d flee too, if I had anywhere to go.
The box just sits there. Lacquered wood, brass fittings, beautiful. The kind of craftsmanship that only a true master could make. I should burn it. Throw it out the window. Send it back with a note written in something anatomical.
Instead, I lift the lid.
Inside, nestled in silk that’s probably older than most religions: a rattle.
Jade. Pale green, almost translucent, carved with patterns I don’t recognize.
The kind of thing you’d find in a museum, behind glass, with a little placard explaining that it belonged to someone important a very long time ago.
There is also a note.
The paper is heavy, expensive. The calligraphy is beautiful—elegant brushstrokes, the kind that takes decades to master. Centuries, maybe. Practice makes perfect, and he’s had plenty of time to practice.
For the child. May she know peace I could not give.
No signature. Just the seal again, pressed into the corner like a promise or a warning. Same thing, with him.
I read it three times. Four.
Something in my chest goes cold and doesn’t warm back up.
I sit with it for a while. The note. The rattle. The impossible fact of a monster reaching through eleven centuries to wish my daughter well.
The morning had been going so well. Only mild nausea—practically a vacation.
Ren had stopped by before court, bringing tea at the wrong temperature again because he’s still learning and refuses to let the servants do it.
We’d almost managed a conversation that didn’t involve assassination attempts or ancient prophecies or the fact that I’m growing a human and my body does not enjoy it.
And now this.
I pick up the rattle again. Turn it in my hands. The jade catches the light, pale green shadows moving across my palms like water. Whoever made this was a true artist. Someone who cared about beauty, about permanence, about creating something that would last.
I wonder if the Hungering King commissioned it. Or if he made it himself—those elegant hands that have destroyed so much, crafting something meant to soothe. Was this created for my daughter? Or had he kept it for centuries, waiting for the right moment to give it away?
The thought makes my stomach clench, and not from nausea.
“He’s sending baby gifts.”
Lady Mei holds the rattle up to the light, turning it with gloved hands. Her face does something complicated—assessment, calculation, the particular blankness she wears when she’s thinking through seventeen contingencies at once.
“It’s not poisoned,” she says.
“That’s somehow worse.”
“Not cursed either. No magical signatures. No hidden compartments.” She sets it down, pulls off her gloves with the precise efficiency of someone who’s handled worse. “It’s genuinely a gift.”
“From the monster who wants to consume my bloodline.”
“From the monster who wants to consume your bloodline, yes.” She picks up the note, reads it.
Her expression doesn’t change, but something shifts behind her eyes.
“Pre-Dynasty jade. The carving style suggests temple work—ceremonial, not decorative. This rattle is at least twelve hundred years old. It’s value would be impossible to determine. ”
“Mei.”
“The paper is handmade. Traditional process. The ink contains—”
“MEI.”
She looks up.
“The ancient horror who murdered my grandmother is sending nursery items, and you’re appraising their value?”
A pause. The longest I’ve ever seen from her.
“The craftsmanship,” she says finally, “is exceptional.”
I laugh. It comes out wrong—too sharp, too close to something else. My hand finds my stomach again. She’s in there somewhere—oblivious to the fact that a monster just sent her a present.
“What do I do with it?”
Mei sets down the note. Folds her gloves. For a moment, she looks almost uncertain, and Mei doesn’t do uncertain. Mei does eight assassination contingencies. Mei does knowing things before they happen. Mei does calm in the face of impossible.
“I don’t know,” she admits.
Three words. Three words I’ve never heard her say before.
“This isn’t in any protocol,” she continues. “He’s never done this. Not in eleven centuries. Not once. The Hungering King takes. He doesn’t give.”
“Maybe he’s getting sentimental in his old age.”
“He’s a monster.”
“Sentimental monsters still kill people.” I pick up the rattle. The jade is cold against my palm—wrong-cold, like it’s been kept somewhere without sunlight for a very, very long time. “They just feel bad about it afterward.”
“Should I have this destroyed?”
I should say yes. Every survival instinct I’ve developed over eight centuries is screaming at me to say yes. Burn it. Shatter it. Bury the pieces in different countries and salt the earth where they fall.
But I think about the note. The careful brushstrokes. The wish for peace from someone who hasn’t known peace in eleven hundred years.
“Not yet,” I hear myself say. “Store it. Secure it. But don’t destroy it.”
Mei’s eyebrow rises—fractionally, by Mei standards, which means she’s practically shouting her surprise. “You want to keep a gift from the creature that hunts your bloodline?”
“I want to understand what he’s doing. That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“Mei.” I set the rattle down. “When has the Hungering King ever been gentle? When has he ever wished anyone well?”
“Never.”
“Exactly. Something changed. I want to know what.”
She nods slowly. Not agreement—Mei doesn’t agree easily. But acknowledgment. Understanding.
“I’ll have a containment arranged. Multiple layers. If it activates anything—”
“Then we’ll know more than we know now.”
Ren arrives smelling like incense and difficult decisions.
He’s come straight from court—I can tell by the tension in his shoulders, the particular set of his jaw that means someone said something stupid and he had to pretend it was wisdom. His robes still carry the smoke of the morning audience, sandalwood and something sharper underneath.
He sees the box. Sees Mei’s face. Sees mine.
“What happened?”
Mei hands him the note without a word.
I watch him read it. I’m good at reading people—eight centuries of practice, survival as a language—but Ren makes it difficult. He’s trained for stillness, for the mask that says emperor instead of man. Most of the time, I have to look for the cracks.
This time, I don’t have to look.
His jaw tightens. His hand doesn’t quite shake, but it wants to. Something moves behind his eyes—fear, fury, both, neither—and for just a moment, the mask falls away entirely.
“He knows where you are.” His voice is too controlled. The kind of controlled that costs something. “He knows about the child.”
“He’s always known where I am. That’s the curse, remember? He finds my bloodline with dragon fire. That’s what he does.”
“He could have—”
“But he didn’t.”
Silence. The kind with teeth.
Ren sets down the note. Picks up the rattle. Turns it in his hands with the same careful precision Mei used, but he’s not looking for poison. He’s looking for understanding, and the rattle isn’t giving him any.
I watch his hands. Large hands, scarred in places where training and war have cut deep. He handles the rattle like it might bite—or like he’s afraid he might break it—and I’m not sure which interpretation is more accurate.
“Why?” He says it quietly, almost to himself. “Eleven centuries of hunting your family. And now gifts?”
“Maybe he wants to be invited to the baby shower.”
He doesn’t smile. I wasn’t really expecting him to.
“This is a change,” he says. “Something has shifted. We need to understand why.”
“We could just burn it.”
“That would be satisfying.”
“I’m sensing a ‘but.’”
“But.” He sets the rattle down, and his hand brushes mine—accidental, probably, except nothing about Ren is accidental.
His skin is warm where mine is cold, and I hate that I notice.
I hate that I’ve started noticing things like that.
“Burning it tells us nothing. Keeping it might tell us everything.”
I don’t pull away. A few months ago, I would have. A month ago, maybe. Now I just… let it happen. Let his warmth seep into my cold fingers. Let myself have this small, terrifying thing.
“Keep the murder-rattle. Study the murder-rattle. Learn from the murder-rattle.”
“When you phrase it like that—”
“I’m phrasing it accurately.” But there’s something almost like humor in it, buried deep. He’s trying. Ren is always trying—trying to be emperor, trying to be good, trying to be worthy of a throne he never wanted. Trying, now, to be whatever I need him to be. “I want to understand. Not just react.”
“You sound like a philosophy text.”
“I’ve been reading them since childhood.”
“Shocking. An emperor who reads philosophy. Next you’ll tell me you also brood dramatically while staring out windows.”