Behind my throne, a gate arcs high into the sky. A magnificent hallway stretches within, its blue silk banners and warm cherrywood pillars threaded through with gold and silver engravings incongruous with the decor of our realm.
This is the gateway to the Kingdom of Rivers. It’s the one Sansiran opened with my blood ten years ago; the entire reason she keeps me alive. The gate refuses to remain, fading over the course of a day or a few—a source of irritation for my mother. It isn’t the fact that she needs to use my blood to reopen it each time that bothers her. It’s that she hasn’t found a way to permanently cement her power across the mortal realm.
A phantom ache throbs in the heart of my palm, where my mother drew my blood earlier this evening—as soon as she returned from whichever battlefield she had been off to. Tonight, like so many nights before, she’d reopened the gates and led me into the mortal realm, then shoved me onto the mortal throne in hopes that the Kingdom of Rivers would finally accept me as emperor. She’d learned from my father, the late emperor, that there is a divine selection process by which the land of the mortal realm crowns its emperor. It is said that the land itself will join with the chosen emperor and that there will be signs. Sansiran believes that when I am finally selected by the Kingdomof Rivers, the land will fall into eternal night, the gate between our realms will expand to merge the two, and mó will be free to roam between the realms.
My mother’s eyes had been blazing with renewed fervor tonight when I sat on the throne. But when nothing happened, like all the other times, she’d taken out her rage on me right there for all to see.
If the mortal throne ever chooses to accept me as its emperor by whatever divine selection it runs on, all I will remember when I sit upon it is pain.
Several mó have come up to the dais to proffer me toasts of oleander nectar, which I decline. I know what the sparkling fuchsia liquid swirling about their bronze cups will do to me. Oleander nectar has the effect of strong alcohol for the mó—but for mortals, it behaves like a drug. One sip and your judgment weakens; another, and your memory goes. A third, and you’re at the mercy of whoever and whatever is around you—a vessel made to please. The mó love using it to command mortals to do their bidding: crawl like a dog, lick their feet, and whatever other depraved acts they find amusing.
I would know.
My mother bade me to drink wine instead, and I obliged. Toast after toast, I sipped from bronze goblets that servants swapped in and out of my hands until the banquet hall began to blur and the music began to swell and I couldn’t remember why in the realms I was so worried in the first place.
It is in this state that I notice the surge in cheers and hollers somewhere beyond our banquet hall. A group of our soldiers seems to have returned. Lower-class mó rush to them immediately, plying them with wine and nectar and cold cuts of meat,scrambling to see if they’ve brought back young, beautiful mortals for entertainment.
My mother rises to greet them, but I remain seated on the starlit throne next to hers. My head is starting to pound in an unpleasant way.
The procession of soldiers is beginning to make its way down the hall.
I frown, straightening slightly. There’s a palpable air of excitement spreading through the crowd; they all turn to the new arrivals. I make out a figure slumped in their midst, catch the whites of my mother’s smile, and suddenly I’m sitting forward, my heart in my throat, unable to breathe.
The floor tilts beneath me as two of the generals approach the dais, half carrying the figure between them. From here, I make out the locks of her black hair against her pale shoulders, the spill of her deep red gown—but my heart, mysoul, knows who it is even before my mother reaches her and tips her chin up.
Àn’ying.
11
Àn’ying
Palace of the Aurora, Kingdom of Night
I don’t remember anything but the taste of the nectar, warm and honey-sweet as it lingers on my tongue. A bliss I haven’t known in so long crashes into me like a wave. The world sways, and overhead, a kaleidoscope of stars spin like I’m gazing at a celestial river.
Wherever I am, it’s beautiful.
So is the woman who steps before me and smiles at me with blood-red lips. She wears a black gown covered in diamonds, giving the illusion that she is draped in the night sky and all its stars. Garnets flash in her elaborately styled hair. The sight of them stirs something inside me, a memory drifting just beyond my grasp.
“Hello, Àn’ying,” she purrs. “We have all been waiting for this day.”
I beam at her, because I want her to like me. I want to please her.
“Some of us,” she continues, “more than others.”
The woman makes an elegant gesture with her fingers, and I rise, feeling like a paper kite tugged along on a string. She leads me up onto a dais, then steps to one side.
Before me, sitting on a throne of silver, is the most beautiful man I have ever set eyes on. His hair tumbles like ink over his broad shoulders. His features are sharp enough to cut, brows rising like raven wings beneath a gold circlet, soft lips stained and swollen with wine.
I meet his eyes, and that gives me pause. They’re wide; he’s staring at me as though he’s seen a ghost.
A momentary pain blazes through my mind—a streak of a memory, too quick for me to catch. Yet as I stare back at him, I’m filled with a strange intuition that Iknowhim.
He swallows, and then that expression is gone, replaced with a cool gaze as he turns to the woman. “I’m honored. You went to great lengths to find me a mortal offering.” His voice, low and rich, twines around me like an intimate velvet caress.
The woman smiles at him in a way that does not reach her eyes. She stands before her own throne, larger and darker and writhing with shadows. “You will see, my son, that I do indeed care for your desires.” She turns to address the rest of the crowd gathered before us. “My loyal subjects! We have fought hard, and we have made sacrifices—but not without rewards.
“The heir to the Kingdom of Rivers is dead!”
