“I doubt you would have needed to.”
“I have never even been kissed,” I confessed.
Now he paused. Cleared his throat. While he had spoken so openly of seduction without a trace of emotion, it was somehow this that drew a flush of shyness from him. For the first time, I saw how close he was in age to me. Only two years older.
I smiled a little, despite myself. With a sudden boldness, I said, “And you say that you will teach me how to bewitch the king. Could you truly help me?”
His left hand curled, a slight, unthinking movement, half-hidden by the sleeve of his robes. “You are mistaken.”
“About what?”
“If you agree to the mission, I won’t be the one helping you. You’ll be the one helping me.”
I stared at him, my humor vanishing, my pulse striking faster in my veins.
“I am the one who needs you.” He said it like a grave confession. “I am the one who suggested the plan to His Majesty, who is responsible for organizing this mission. Without you, I will fail.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, unsure what to make of this. Of anything. Plenty of people had made it clear how much they wanted me: my face, my beauty, my company. But nobody had ever reallyneededme before.
From all around us, the village began to stir: the gurgles of young children, the splash of water from the well, the whisper of dried corn, the wet slap of straw sandals over mud. For the villagers, it was only another morning, one of thousands just like this. But for me, this morning might be my last here.
As if reading my thoughts, Fanli said, “I tell you all this not to sway you in either direction. Some may prefer the comfort of lies to the sting of truths, but I wish to be completely honest with you from the beginning, even if the picture I paint is not always pretty.”
“What if I were to say no?”
“I would leave,” he said at once, “and never disturb you again. There will be no repercussions for your choice.”
No direct repercussions, I corrected in my head, tilting my chin up to the yellow wash of sunlight. Because if the plan did not work out, the king of Wu would go on undefeated, safe in the riches of his palace, while the people of Yue suffered and grew weaker day by day, living in constant fear of another war. I took in the view of the great green elms, the ripe mulberries glistening like little red jewels from the trees, the wooden toys strewn along the cobbled path, the hoofprints pressed into the dirt. All the signs of hard-won life. All that had survived through the first battle. But would it survive the next? Or the one after?
I thought of Wuyuan, her skin stretched painfully thin over bones, the raw, pink scabs where her nails had once been. I thought of my parents inside the house, who were getting older and frailer; already my mother’s eyesight had started blurring, though she would never admit it, and my father had never recovered from his fall in the forest. I thought of their faces when they ran inside and saw Susu crumpled on the floor, the harsh sob that had left my mother’s body, as if something inside her had shattered.
And I thought of Susu herself frombefore, her sweet smile, her pockets filled with berries, her eyes filled with light.
When it came down to it, the choice was this: a kingdom, or my happiness.
And how many people under Heaven were really fortunate enough to know happiness? Happiness was a side dish, like the sweet, sticky rice cakes Mother made during the festivals, or the glutinous balls stuffed with rich sesame paste. Butrevenge—that was the salt of life. Necessary. Essential.
“It is a difficult decision,” Fanli said from beside me. “But it is yours to make.”
“Let me think about it some more,” I told him, though the answer had already come to me. The answer had always been there, as if scrawled across the scripts of history. I was only deluding myself now, pushing back against time. “I will give you an answer by midnight.”
“Then I will be waiting for you at the eastern gates, where the river flows. The same place we met.” It was the first time he had acknowledged aloud our encounter from yesterday, and it flickered between us like a secret, a silent flame. His gaze was heavy on mine, dark and appraising. Yet the instant he turned away, I felt the sudden absence of its weight. “Find me there.”
All day and night I thought about it. It was impossible to think of anything else.
My mother said very little, yet the mournful look in her eyes, how she held me longer than she ever had before, her hands soft despite their calluses, told me that perhaps she already knew the answer too. What was it that people said about mothers having a sixth sense? Sometimes she seemed to see my heart even before I did.
“I wish I could keep you safe forever,” she whispered, and Iheard the unspoken part of her sentence, the fresh pain of it.But I cannot.“My daughter… I do not wish to lose a child again.”
A sharp, sour feeling twisted inside my chest.
“And your health,” she continued, her voice steady, even as her lips trembled. “You have always been so frail. What if…”
“I am not as frail as you think,” I told her, and it was true. My whole life, ever since that inexplicable pain had flared up in my heart, I had been protected and treated like a precious vase, capable of cracking at the lightest touch. But even if I could not rid myself of the pain, I could live with it. One could live with almost anything, so long as they had something to live for.
My mother placed a warm palm on the back of my head, but said nothing. She just looked at me for a long time in the quiet, as though hoping to memorize my features. Then she returned to the chores.
Fanli had left the house already. The tea was all but cold now, the leaves sunk to the bottom, the water deepening to a murky, bitter green. All the cups were still full. A waste.
