In her stead, a different shadow falls on the gauze drapes: tall and armored and familiar.
Hào’yáng steps in, and suddenly, everything and nothing has changed between us. I take him in—the cool beauty of his face, the strength of his shoulders, the commanding air of his stance—with the knowledge of who he is.
The child of our emperor. The heir to the Kingdom of Rivers.
We are both mortal, but it suddenly feels that we are a realm apart.
“Àn’ying,” he says. He stops by the door and does not try to come any closer. We face each other, and I feel it again, the threads of destiny that have brought us to this moment. My guardian in the jade, rendered real in flesh and blood andstanding just ten paces from me. All the secrets that were once barriers between us are gone.
Yet with that knowledge, it is as though I have lost the friend I have made in Hào’yáng these past few weeks. Before me stands the stranger I know most intimately in this world.
My hands curl around where my jade pendant rests at my collarbone. “All along, it was you.”
His gaze flickers. “You must despise me.”
I hear the unspoken words in his question.You must despise me for taking the place your father earned in the Kingdom of Sky. For living a life most dream of while you were mired in a world of nightmares.
“How could I?” I whisper. Hating him would be like hating a part of my own heart.
His eyes soften. “It must be strange, that you have known me for just a few short weeks yet I feel I have known you for nine years.”
The sun dapples him; an errant breeze stirs petals into the blue skies behind him. Again, I have the feeling that I am in a dream.
I slide off my bed and stand. Step by careful step, I approach him, my heartbeat easing as though pulled by an invisible string. He does nothing, only watches me, his eyes never leaving my face. I peer up at him, trying to reconcile the quiet, steady hand that wrote to me through the jade…with this man before me.
“I know you,” I say softly. “I wouldn’t be here without you.”
He gives me a look I can’t decipher. His eyes trail every edge and curve of my face as if he is allowing himself to gaze at me, truly gaze at me, for the first time in his life. His handsare folded behind his back, his shoulders tight.He’s nervous,I realize. Hào’yáng, captain of the guard and heir to the Kingdom of Rivers, is nervous meeting me like this.
He clears his throat. “I’ve imagined this moment a thousand times and prepared a hundred different things to say to you, yet I find that I cannot remember a single one of them,” he confesses with a rueful smile.
I remember what he told me of growing up as a mortal in the Kingdom of Sky, and I imagine him as a young boy, perched by a smooth piece of stone, imagining meeting the girl inside.
Only, he doesn’t know that on the other side of that jade was a lonely girl, holding on to that piece of rock as if it was her life.
“Then I’ll consider it a debt,” I jest, and I’m surprised at my own audacity. “We’ll have plenty of time for you to remember the hundred different speeches you prepared.”
Hào’yáng’s smile widens, and it’s the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen: like the sun coming out from behind clouds, shining upon me. It’s a smile, I realize, reserved only for me.
“I wish you’d been there all along.” It is only after the words fall from my lips that I realize I have spoken aloud.
He studies my face. “Àn’ying, you’re safe now,” he replies, and I marvel at how he reads the words I don’t say instead of the ones I do. “The culprits behind the murders have been caught. I will coach you through the remainder of the trials, and together, we will return to the mortal realm to cure your mother and spread the word that we are fighting back against the mó.”
The culprits have been caught.
Cold pierces my heart. “Yù’chén,” I whisper. Hào’yáng—and the rest of the guards—must still believe him to be guilty. “Where is Yù’chén?”
The warmth leaves Hào’yáng’s expression, as though he has slid on a mask: that of the cool, efficient captain of the guard I first knew him to be. “He is being held in a solitary chamber in this temple. We must heal him before we subject him to interrogation, then execution.”
Interrogation. Execution.
“No.” The room spins a little. “Hào’yáng, listen to me—Yù’chén is innocent—he wasfightingYán’lù—”
“He is a mó, Àn’ying. The Temple of Dawn has seen demonic murders committed on its grounds, which has heavier implications: that the Kingdom of Sky could have been infiltrated by the Kingdom of Night.”
“He’s a halfling—”
“—who could be here in the employ of the Kingdom of Night,” Hào’yáng interrupts. His hand is back on the hilt of his sword. “We won’t know until we interrogate him. You must understand how serious this is. Until now, the Heavenly Order declared the child of a mortal and a mó an impossibility; demonic ichor cannot run in the same veins as mortal blood. We must find out how he is alive, whether there are more of his kind, who his parents are, and how a mó came to produce a child with a mortal even before the Kingdom of Night broke through the Kingdom of River’s wards. His existence changes much of what we know about the war.”
