Biyu triedto control the maelstrom of her emotions, but the closer she and Nikator drew to her chambers, the harder it was to rein them in. The corner of her eyes pricked with tears and she bit her wobbly bottom lip to keep from sobbing in the middle of the hallway. She hadn’t expected any of it—the marriage, Jian’s rude demeanor, and the reality that if she was married to him, her life would become much worse than it was now.
The only way she could escape from Jian was if she succeeded in her and Yat-sen’s plan before she married him in autumn, but that also meant that they only had two or three months . A plan Yat-sen had been concocting foryears. She couldn’t imagine condensing such tactics to a few weeks. Not to mention that she was already bound to Nikator, which simply complicated everything.
She was under so much stress that she wanted to curl up underneath her covers, weep, and forget the world existed.
First, she needed to find a lethal spell that Yat-sen could use against Drakkon Muyang. Then, she and Yat-sen needed to find a way to disable the wards preventing them from using magic. Lastly, and most importantly, they needed to somehow defeatMuyang in a battle of magic. All before she was married off to Wu Jian.
Her mind was bursting with how everything could go wrong and how impossible the plan seemed. There was no way they could work with such a tight deadline, but then that meant she would have to marry Jian and help Yat-sen from afar. But … But she didn’t want to marry him.
She whimpered and it was like a dam breaking, because in seconds she was ugly sobbing in the middle of the hallway, her face clutched in her trembling hands and her shoulders wracking back and forth.
She was doomed. And she was miserable enough to realize how she had always been doomed. Whatever strategy she had set in motion was making everything more complicated by the day.
From the corner of Biyu’s teary vision, Nikator stiffened and stared at her uncomfortably; he was no longer the terrifying beast baring its fangs like he had been moments ago. He said something softly to her—comforting words, maybe—but they were lost to her in the torrent of her loud, broken cries.
He wound his fingers around her wrist gently and pulled her forward. “Come on, we’re almost there.”
She kept weeping and wiping her face. It reminded her of yesterday when he had dragged her through the halls in search for His Majesty; the circumstances were different this time, but she was still crying. She was doing that a lot lately. Weeping. Losing her sanity. Attempting not to shatter.
When they reached her bedchambers, her grief twisted into something aggressive, somethingdark. She ripped out her golden hairpin, tearing out a few strands of hair in the process, and tossed it against the vanity. It bounced off the surface and the violets attached to the ends snapped off on impact. Half her hair fell over her shoulders and she clawed at the second hairpin and threw it across the room too. But it did nothing to calm therage welling within her. The fury that had been tamped down for too long.
Biyu yanked off her necklace, the beads snapping and pouring out of the gold chain. She threw that, too. Next came the earrings. Her ears throbbed from where she ripped them off her earlobes, but she didn’t care. They, too, joined the rest of the chaos. But still, it wasn’t enough.
She went to her vanity and grabbed her vial of lavender and rose oil. She grasped the bottle and chucked it across the room. It smashed against the door frame in a spray of thick oil and shattered glass, a few feet away from Nikator’s stock-still form.
Biyu tore through the rest of her belongings, tossing them as far as she could. One of the glass bottles broke in her hand, a shard of glass slicing against her palm. The sharp sting made her drop the vial and it cracked further on the floor, tiny slivers breaking off and scattering by her feet. Blood welled at the wound then pattered on the floor in thick splotches. Tears streamed down her face and she hated everything in that moment.
She hated that she’d been trapped here for all these years. She hated that she was unable to change her fate, no matter how much she tried. She hated that her plans were always failing. She hated that she was too timid to do anything drastic and that she hadn’t done anything until recently, and even that had failed. She hated that Drakkon Muyang was emperor, but she also hated that her father had been a terrible emperor and father, and that he had never cared for her. She hated the fact that Jian was right.
She was a nobody. She had always been a nobody. Even before Drakkon Muyang took the throne, nobody had cared for her.
The harsh reality of it broke something within her.
She sank to the floor, the broken shards digging into her shins; the sharp pain made her sob harder. She reached for the fractured bottle, intent on throwing that, too, to somehow ease the emptiness waning within her, but Nikator’s large, calloused hand covered hers in an instant. She raised her head. He was too close, his breath warming her tear-streaked face.
“That’s enough,” he murmured as if trying not to scare her, and yet she could see the quiet anger on his face.
“Let me go!” Biyu yanked her hand back, but he held it firmly. “Let me go, you brute!”
“Stop this. You’re hurting yourself.”
“Why do you even care?” She shoved him with her free hand. He didn’t budge in the slightest, but his sharp eyes narrowed on her, appearing colder than usual. “I hate that you pretend that you care sometimes, but I know you’ll kill me if you’re given the chance. I hate you! I hate you so much! You—you ruined my life. I hate you. I hate you—” The words cut off as uncontrollable sobs took over. She hit him again, this time managing to slap him across the face and then his chest. “You’re a monster. A monster! I hate you!”
She kept slapping his chest, sobbing, releasing all of her frustrations on the man who had ruined everything. He didn’t retaliate, allowing her to rain blow after blow on him. She fisted the material of his shirt and screamed.
She hated this all.
Everything.
She was a nobody.
She didn’t know how long she sat there in front of him, her bloodied hands bunching over his shirt, her shoulders wracking back and forth. Moments ticked by, and realization slowly seeped in.
Her attention swept up to his face, at the redness of his cheek where she had struck him. He watched her with an unreadableexpression, a muscle feathering across his jaw, his entire body coiled like a weapon ready to strike—and yet she knew he wouldn’t hurt her.
Her body quivered with shame. She was being unreasonable, violent, and … horrible.
How could she call him a monster when she was the one attacking him? He was allowing her to vent her frustrations on him. She had never lost control like this. Had never had violent tendencies until now.
