I could not answer. Cold fear coiled around my neck like an insistent noose.
Sky tried to enter my cell but found it locked. He impatiently motioned for the key before barreling inside. But I shrank from the proximity of him.
“Meilin, what’s wrong?” asked Sky, kneeling before me, and his voice was so tender it made my eyes sting. I tried to push him away, but my broken hands were useless, unable to do what I wanted from them.
He caught my left hand and I gasped in pain. Immediately he let go, as if my touch burned him. “Meilin. Speak to me, please.” His eyes were wide and filled with feeling. It broke something within me, to see myself through his eyes. A pitiful creature, better left alone in the dark. “Don’t you want to be free?”
I was sobbing so hard now that I could not form words. He gave me his handkerchief, but my fingers would not close around it, and the fine cloth fell uselessly to the floor.
“Meilin, I made a promise to you. I want to marry you. Did you think I would go back on my word?”
He tried to draw me into his arms, but I flinched away again. Hurt flashed across his face as he backed away, raking his fingers through his hair. “Please. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I-I can’t. I can’t go to court,” I said, and I meant it. I couldn’t imagine myself in fine dresses, eyes painted like a doll’s, and—likea doll—face vacant but smiling, sitting silently by Sky’s side as I’d seen the warlord’s consorts do. “I want to…to leave this place—”
“I’ll take you out of the dungeons,” Sky said, but I shook my head.
“No,” I rasped. “I want to leave the…palace. The city.” The world.
His face fell. “My father’s terms were for you to remain within the Forbidden City,” he admitted, “and to return to the ways of womanhood.”
The noose drew tight around my neck. So it was the old offer, made again. I would have to relinquish my sword, my freedom, my knowledge of the world beyond. I could be Sky’s pretty ornament, or nothing at all.
Yet memories of the outside world, however undesirable, still called to me. I missed the morning sunlight and the reflection of the moon upon water. I missed my family and the ability to run with the wind at my back. When the Imperial Commander had first offered me this choice, I hadn’t understood the stakes. I understood them now.
But there was a third factor I hadn’t weighed. Here in the dungeons, I was suffocated by iron. There was no possibility of the dragon’s presence, his influence, his sly whispering voice in my head. The last time I’d seen him, he’d tried to kill me. Just like he’d killed my mother.
Perhaps once I was freed, he’d finish the job.
“Meilin? Do you want me to call your maidservants here?”
I shook my head. “Can you…can you give me some time?”
I could feel his sadness like a millstone, dragging me beneath its weight.
“I’m sorry, Sky,” I said, and the sound of his name hurt us both. “Please go.” When he didn’t move, I turned my back on him. Eventually, I felt the strength of his presence recede.
I didn’t know myself anymore. The girl he’d loved…I didn’t know if she still existed. So many conflicting desires battled within me at once, until I couldn’t make sense of any of them. I wanted to be free—of my loneliness, of my captivity, of my weakness. I wanted to be confined—I couldn’t be trusted with power, with responsibility, with choice. And all those people above, judging me, mocking me, wanting something from me…the thought made me want to hide forever.
Who was I anymore? And if I couldn’t trust myself, who could I possibly trust?
Two
After physicians deemed Emperor Zhuan’s illness incurable, he vanished for forty-nine days. Upon his return, fully restored to health, he gave no clear explanation, hinting only at Zhuque’s eternal spring. Word of his recovery spread far and wide, prompting many terminally ill patients to seek the spring, believing it could heal both body and spirit.
—A Comprehensive Overview of Lixia-Induced Disorders, 910
The very next day, Ihad visitors. Visitors I hadn’t seen since the start of the war.
“Jie!” Rouha broke free from Xiuying’s viselike grip first. She ran toward me on her sturdy, small legs, legs that were not so small anymore. How had she managed to grow so much in the span of a year? I struggled to sit up on my pallet, not wanting to appear weak and sickly in front of my family.
Rouha reached my cell and stuck her little arms through the bars. Unable to deny her, I held my hand out and let her grasp my cold fingers with her warm ones. The weight of her small palm in mine, the softness of her skin, the simple, trusting gaze she beheld me with, as if there were nothing I could ever do to harm her…it was too much. As I tried to release her hand, she clung to me. When I forcibly pulled away, she began to cry.
Plum, who had waddled forward on his own, took this cue to also burst into tears. Xiuying scooped him up, darting an anxious glance at the soldiers standing guard down the hallway. “Theymissed you,” Xiuying explained. As our gazes met, I saw that her eyes were full of tacit meaning. “As did I.”
Even Uncle Zhou had come. “Despite your father’s fall from favor, your prince asked for an exception to allow us to enter the Forbidden City,” he explained, and I was reminded of Sky’s shrewd decisiveness as commander general. He knew what he wanted, and more importantly, he knew how to get what he wanted.
Uncle Zhou continued: “He said you were reluctant to leave your confinement.”
