My sister draws back, taking in my face with her ever-observant eyes. I pull my cloak a little tighter around myself, but thankfully, she sees only my windswept appearance and damp hair. “Jie’jie,” she says, a sly grin lifting one corner of her mouth. “You were gone a long time with— Oh, Your Highness!”
I turn.
Hào’yáng strides toward us. A smile lights up his face as he pats Lì’líng on her furry head and greets Méi’zi, who accostshim, demanding an explanation for the missing fish he’d promised to bring back for her this morning.
“Forgive me that I wasn’t able to bring back your fish,” the heir to this realm replies with a hint of bashfulness. “We ran into a little inconvenience.”
“What kind of an inconvenience keeps you and my sister in a river for an entire morning?” Méi’zi asks, glancing pointedly at me with an evil little smirk. I glare at her and drag a finger across my throat.
But Hào’yáng counters with a sweetly innocent smile. “Grown-up inconveniences,” he says, and pinches her nose.
“That’s enough!” I snap. My cheeks are burning. “No fish for you, Méi’zi!”
“Oh, well,” Méi’zi sniffs. By her side, Lì’líng lets out a sad little whine. “I suppose I’ll have to make do with plain congee for breakfast.”
“My favorite,” Hào’yáng says, and the way he ruffles my sister’s hair stirs my heart. He glances up at me, and I quickly shift my gaze away.
The villagers are beginning to trickle in, summoned by our warriors—the beginnings of Hào’yáng’s and my small mortal army. Only twelve of us, fighting to liberate the Kingdom of Rivers.
That’s not many fewer than the remaining villagers. Our numbers dwindled steadily throughout the years as more and more packed up and sought the relative safety of the distant provinces. Now there are barely forty of us left.
“All right, that’s enough foxing around,” Tán’mù growls, snatching Lì’líng by the scruff of her neck. “We have important things to do.”
In a blink, the squirming white fox has transformed into a diminutive young woman with a heart-shaped face and two buns in her snowy hair almost shaped like ears. Her amber eyes are bright and her cheeks flushed as she ducks and escapes Tán’mù’s grasp.
“Youbore.” Lì’líng giggles, poking out her tongue. “Games of hide-and-seekareimportant.” She pecks Tán’mù with a kiss before flouncing off, weaving nimbly through the oncoming crowd.
Tán’mù sighs and rolls her eyes as she hurries after Lì’líng, but there’s a hint of a smile on her lips.
“Méi’zi,” I begin, intending to tell my sister to go back to the house, but she fixes me with a stern glare.
“I’m staying for the meeting, Àn’ying.” She uses my name as opposed to referring to me as herjie’jie, “older sister.” All traces of teasing are gone from her face. “I’m fourteen years old—I’m not a child anymore.”
I open my mouth to argue, but I’m interrupted when Fú’yí comes and places her hand on Méi’zi’s shoulder. The two of them are almost the same height now.
“She’s right, Àn’ying,” my neighbor says. “We’ll go bring your mother from the yard for this meeting.”
I watch them leave with an odd sense of having lost control over something I can’t name. For as long as I can remember, my purpose in life has been to protect my mother and sister from the Kingdom of Night—the mission my father left me with before he died.
“If there’s anything I learned, it’s that you can’t shield the ones you love from danger forever,” Hào’yáng says. I turn to find him watching Méi’zi and Fú’yí, an unreadable expressionon his face. His gaze shifts to me—and there it is again, the ripple of waves in my chest as our eyes meet.
I duck my head to hide the heat rising to my cheeks. “Of all the dishes of the mortal realm you’ve been able to choose from since birth,” I say, “plain congee is your favorite?”
Hào’yáng folds his arms and smiles almost lazily at me. “At the risk of sounding extremely privileged, all they ever did in the immortal realm was hold banquets and feasts.”
I snort. “How utterly atrocious of them.”
Hào’yáng laughs, a clear, bright sound. “Congee was my mother’s favorite,” he says at last. A faraway look crosses his face. “She was a noblewoman from the Southern Province. Sweet congee—congee with a sprinkle of cane sugar—is a southern specialty. My mother used to make it for me on nights when I had trouble falling asleep. Of everything I left behind when the mó took my home, it was sweet congee I missed most in the Kingdom of Sky.”
I’m holding my breath, hanging on his every word. In most of the time I’ve known him in person, Hào’yáng has worn his armor as either the distant captain of the guard or the calculating heir to our kingdom. Rare are the moments in which he sheds that armor and I catch a glimpse of who he is beneath it. Younger. More vulnerable. With his own hopes and dreams and fears of failure.
Glimpses of the boy in the jade I came to know and love.
That all vanishes as he turns to the crowd gathered around us. It’s both incredible and disconcerting to watch him step seamlessly into the role of the imperial heir. The effect is not lost on the crowd, either; they lean into him as though he has a magnetic pull. Over the past two days, Hào’yáng has spenttime with every single villager, revealing his identity and learning about their backgrounds, of how their husbands or sons or fathers fought in the war against the Kingdom of Night. When he returned each evening, his hands and knees were dusty from kneeling before them to apologize for their losses.
He has earned their complete loyalty and their trust.
“Residents of Xi’lín,” Hào’yáng begins, his voice as clear and precise as the strike of a sword. “My fellow warriors.”
