“After tonight?” Sansiran repeats, amused. “When your head hangs from the front gates of the Kingdom of Sky, an example they like to make of us?”
Yù’chén draws a sharp breath, and I think of what he told me earlier, in this very chamber.When we are born, we are set on a path to walk. One drawn by our birthright, our status, our blood. I have known since the start what mine was meant to be.
I should have known there was only one path a demon could walk.
“Don’t do this,” Yù’chén rasps. “They don’t deserve it.”
“ ‘They don’t deserve it’?” Sansiran echoes. Her features grow sad for a moment before turning cold with fury. “Did I deserve it, Yù’chén? Did I, aqueen,deserve for the mortalemperor to use me for his pleasure as a bedthing, only to be discarded when he found out what I was?” She stalks toward him, and he doesn’t move, only flinches slightly as she presses a hand to his cheek. Her voice is softer when she continues: “Did you deserve it, my son? Did you deserve for your father to raise you in the shadows, scorning you for being a bastard ofhiscreation? Did you deserve to be sentenced to death when he found out what I was, and what you were?” Her grip tightens; her nails, long, sharp, and crimson, dig into his skin. Yù’chén is still on his knees; he looks up at his mother in powerless supplication. “Never forget that this life you have right now is the oneIgave you, twice over. One thatIfought for and pulled from the clutches of the mortal emperor and his sword.”
My mind is struggling to keep pace with all that is being shared.Mortal emperor. Bastard.
The story fits with what Yù’chén told me of his life—that he was born in the Kingdom of Rivers, that his father was mortal. He had simply never mentionedwhohis father was.Whohis mother was.
My mother was his mistress.
When he found out what she was—and what I was…he tried to have us killed.
My head spins; the world seems to slow to a stop.
Yù’chén is the son of the late mortal emperor. A halfling son, heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Night…and the Kingdom of Rivers, by blood. Half brother to Hào’yáng…with a claim to the mortal realm.
“So tell her, my son,” Sansiran finishes, her tone sharpened by cold rage and pure spite. She pulls her nails from his face and thrusts him away so that he is facing me. “Tell her whatyou have been here to do all along. Tell her how you have manipulated her mortal heart into trusting you. Tell her what you truly are, and see if she still claims to love you.Tell her.” Her voice amplifies, and I feel her tremendous magic shudder in the air as it wraps around Yù’chén.
He struggles for a moment as though with an invisible force; unlike me, he can fight off her magic, if only temporarily. I see it as it takes hold and he falls still, his eyes dulled, his tone hoarse and resigned. “My mother wished the mortal emperor to take her as his empress, and for me to be his heir. When he refused, she began the war.” He swallows. “She killed him, but the mortal heir fled that night—saved by a man with ties to the immortals. Your father.”
The mortal heir—Hào’yáng. My father escaped the capital with Hào’yáng…and gave him over to Shi’ya in the Kingdom of Sky, where he would remain safe and hidden from the war.
“She tracked down your father and learned that he had given the mortal heir into the protection of the Kingdom of Sky,” Yù’chén continues.
“Oh, it was so difficult to wring that from him,” Sansiran says. “He watched me drink his wife’s soul rather than tell me. Then he proffered his own body.” Her eyes flick to me. “It was only when I threatened his darling girls that he admitted I would never find the emperor’s son, because he had put him in the one place I could not reach.
“Looking back, I should not have killed him out of anger,” she sighs. “I had no choice but to bide my time and wait. I was certain that a mortal with ties to the Kingdom of Sky would have left a path for his offspring, too.” She smiles sweetly at me. “I watched over you all these years, Àn’ying.I made sure you did not die. Not before you led us to the secret your father had kept.”
I can’t breathe. All those times I glimpsed her beneath the plum blossom tree, that shadow waiting in the night, I dismissed as figments of my imagination. As hallucinations from my trauma.
But the monster outside my window was real all along.
“I went through your father’s journals,” she continued, “and I learned of a way into the Kingdom of Sky.” She bares her teeth. “The Immortality Trials: the only time the immortals would allow mortals to cross into their lands. I made sure you found his journals and learned of the trials, too. By the time you were old enough to attend them, so was my darling son. When you finally left for the Kingdom of Sky, I sent him after you; I told him to earn your trust, to capture your heart, to do whatever he needed to do to find the emperor’s son hiding among these immortals, and to break the wards that kept us out. Wards that are impenetrable from the outside, yes…but not so much from the inside.”
I stare at Yù’chén. From the start, this was all a show. Everything he did was to deceive me into giving up Hào’yáng’s identity.
And he succeeded.
“I don’t have what you want,” Yù’chén says quietly. He won’t look at me, but his jaw locks as he looks up at his mother. “I don’t have the identity of the mortal heir.”
Is he lying, or did he simply not realize what I spoke of when I told him of the revolution Hào’yáng was planning?
Sansiran studies her son with a small smile. “You don’t have it, or you won’t tell me? Answer me, my son.”
In his silence, she moves so fast that I don’t catch it. Aresoundingcrackechoes in the chamber as she brings her hand across his cheek. Tremors of dark magic emanate from her, forcing Yù’chén to fold in on himself. He hisses a breath as he rolls over on the floor. Blood darkens his lips.
Sansiran glances at me. “Fortunately, I knew my own son all too well. He is a fool, drawn to the weaknesses of his mortal heart. So I sent another to watch over him, in case he failed.”
Realization dawns on me. “Yán’lù,” I whisper.
“Unpredictable and violent,” Sansiran says, her lips curling in disdain. “Greedy, too, for he believed he would be rewarded if he was the one to hand me the name of the heir. My second-in-command fathered him and warned me of his beastlike tendencies.” She brushes at an invisible speck of dust on her sleeve, her fingers extended like claws, dark magic pouring from her in torrents. Sansiran barely looks at her son, writhing on the ground from the pain she inflicts on him, as she muses, “Better that he is dead, or I would have killed him myself. Perhaps there is reason to the Heavenly Order after all. Halflingsareaberrations; there is no telling what monstrous traits they might harbor.
“But the halfling Yán’lù served his purpose,” Sansiran continues. “From the start, unknown to my son, Yán’lù watched him and reported progress to me. He threatened you and tried to find out the identity of the mortal heir from you. He failed, but he gave me one crucial piece of information before his death.”
