“You want to …” She swallowed down the horror, panic, and …hopethat clawed up her throat and made her want to empty her stomach onto the hardwood, polished floors. Nausea swirled in the pit of her stomach; this wasn’t something they should even be discussing. “You want to kill the emperor?”
A sharp nod.
She inhaled deeply and suddenly, her legs were too weak for her to stand. She swayed on her feet and nearly fell on the bed. Yat-sen wanted to kill Drakkon Muyang and take the throne. That was treason, that was … something she had always wished for. Secretly, of course. But a dream she’d had for the past five years.
“How are you going to do that?” She cast a furtive glance at her door again, expecting someone to barge inside and arrest them both for even uttering such blasphemous words.
“Like I told you, I have a plan, but …” There was a clear hesitation in his voice as he looked from her, to the floor, then to Jade who was curled on the foot of the bed, and then to the shuttered window. He sucked in his lower lip, contemplating, thinking, and then finally, he sighed long and hard, and said, “I can’t tell you until I know for sure that you’re on board with this. I need your help, but I understand that it’s a lot for you to do, and I don’t want you to be complicit if you don’t want to be. I also can’t risk this plan getting out. So, are you in?”
“I know nothing of this plan of yours, but I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask. I’m not strong, Yat-sen, and I’m not evensure if this is a good idea. What if we’re caught? What if the emperor decides to kill us over this?”
His mouth flattened into a thin line. “I would rather die trying to free myself than remain as a prisoner for the rest of my life. Are you satisfied with your life the way it is? It’s only a matter of time before the emperor decides to be rid of us anyway.”
She winced at the vitriol in his harsh tone and suddenly couldn’t meet his gaze.
Was she satisfied with this life? No, not at all. But she was also a coward and she didn’t want to lose any more than she’d already lost.
“He can make our lives harder,” she said carefully. “He could torture us. Flay our skin off, heal us, and do it all over again! He’s a monster, Yat-sen, and there are worse things than death and imprisonment!” The backs of her eyes burned as she thought of Feiyu, their uncle who had disappeared all those months ago, and the fact that nobody spoke of him anymore, like he had never existed. That would become their fate too if they embarked on this. “He could do so much worse.”
“I have to try.” Yat-sen’s hands flexed and something flared in his eyes. “We won’t ever get anywhere if we never try, Biyu. I understand it’s not a decision that can be made lightly, but it’s clear to me: I want freedom.”
Biyu’s hands curled together and she hated that she was so cowardly, that she didn’t immediately tell him that she wanted to join in his cause. As much as she loved the idea of freedom, she didn’t want to risk anything for it. She didn’t want to be caught. She didn’t want to live with the anxieties that it brought on. She would rather someone rescue her from this hell than do anything about it.
“I can … hear you out, Yat-sen, but I don’t know if I can—if I can do anything for you.” She tried to keep the stutter out of hervoice but fear had her whole chest rattling, her limbs heavy and trembling, and her skin clammy. She fell down on the edge of her bed, making sure not to disturb Jade. “Please don’t give me all the details, just in case … but I need to know what I might be getting myself into, or if this is just” –a stupid, stupid dream that would amount to their deaths—“um, pointless.”
Yat-sen didn’t look like he liked that, but he nodded, his tone bitter as he murmured, “I understand. You want to know if there’s actually hope in this plan of mine before you commit.” He strode over to her window and cracked it open, peered outside, and then quietly shut it, grimacing at the creaking of the wooden shutters. He eased himself onto the bench she used to peer outside, and folded his hands on his lap neatly. Pertly. His back straight, his eyes forward. Very princely. “Do you know how the wards in the palace work?”
Wards? In the palace? She had no idea what he was talking about.
He only bobbed his head at the expression on her face. “You understand how wards work, correct? We were taught about it during our lessons, before …”
Before the throne was usurped and their lives were upended.
“Um, well.” Biyu cleared her throat and racked her brain over the lessons she had been given for years. How to speak politely, how to sip tea, how to hold her head regally, how to … do things that were completely useless now. Her magic lessons had been quick and flippant, the mage in charge of her studies uninterested in her since she was a woman and would likely never use whatever she learned. But she had read books from time to time, passages that the mage had recommended she should read if she was serious about magic. Which, at the time, she hadn’t been. She had been too shy to even think of using magic, even if she enjoyed making flames dance on her palms when she was alone in her bedchambers.
Yat-sen waited patiently, even as she fidgeted in her seat, trying hard to remember anything about wards. She knew about them, she was sure, but her mind came to an abrupt halt at being put on the spot. A fog seemed to spread thinly over her mind the more she tried to think, and the more she felt his patient gaze on her, the thicker the fog became.
“Sister?” he asked quietly.
“Um, I … I know about wards.” Biyu blinked at him. She hated how anxious she always was. How she couldn’t think whenever it was important. “And remember, call me Biyu.”
Yat-sen smiled, and that eased some of the tension roiling in her mind. “A ward is a protective spell, or barrier, that is placed around an area for certain purposes. Either for protection, detection, or repelling something.”
“Ah. Yes, that’s right.” She fidgeted with the wide sleeve of her white night gown, her fingers prodding on the seams, searching for a loose thread to tug on. “The palace has a ward placed on it? For what purpose?”
“Various reasons.” He lifted his shoulders. “Have you noticed that you aren’t able to use your magic? Or have you never tried?”
Her eyebrows knitted together, and her fingers stalled their futile search. “I didn’t know wecouldn’tuse magic. I just thought that we … that we would simply get punished for using it. If we were caught using it, that the emperor would be able to tell, and then we would … we would … be tossed in the mage towers.”
“Of course that’s what we’ve been told, but it’s not true. We can’t use our magic because the wards prevent us from using it. You can certainly draw on your magic and feel it thrumming beneath your skin, but we can’t use it. You’ve never tried, have you?”
No, she hadn’t, because she was too cowardly and believed the emperor and his men when they said that they would know if she used her magic, and that she would be imprisoned in thetowers for even trying. So she never did anything. She simply let it simmer beneath the surface. Let it fester within herself.
It felt like a yawning chasm was cracking open in her chest, growing wider and more precarious, as if she was losing herself to it. Because while she’d always known she couldn’t use her magic, she had always thought that she could rely on it if there was an emergency. Like all those years ago when the palace guards had tried to assault her; although she hadn’t used her flames, she had thought … she had thought she had that option, if only fear hadn’t stalled her. But to realize that she had been helpless all along? And that she would continue to be helpless?
Something splintered in her heart.
She wiped her trembling, sweaty palms on her thighs. Jade pulled herself up into a sitting position and began grooming her paws, her golden eyes flicking over to Biyu as if detecting her unease, her grief.
