“All I want to be is a good Emperor like Father was.”
“And you shall,” she tells him, believing every word.
“Then I need to stay alive. I need power.” He takes her hand. Squeezes it. “We aren’t children anymore, Ying-er. An alliance can be made so that you will always be close to me.” She tenses, and he says quickly, “We do not need to share a bed—it is your blade that I need. You are the only one I trust.”
For a moment, she is tempted. This isn’t the first time he has tried to broach the subject. But she knows his ambition. Blood will be shed, and her hand will be the culprit. She looks at him sadly. “I will not be your weapon. But I can be your friend.”
“Is that your final word?”
“Yes.”
His expression hardens, and he turns away. “Then I no longer have a friend.”
Snow blankets the ground with icy crystals. Her footsteps leave tracks as she paces, twirling her twin swords out of habit. She doesn’t know if the mysterious fox-faced young man will return to the forest today. But she waits anyway. They didn’t get to speak much after she killed the Revenant. Four left suddenly, his features scrunched in pain as he clutched the black silk around his neck. She was worried, but she let him go. And now she wishes she hadn’t.
She feels a presence behind her.
“There you are,” she says playfully.
Four’s long silvery-white hair is tied in a low ponytail, a stark contrast to his black and pewter robes. “How did you know I would return?” he asks. He appears shy, but there’s a mischievous air about him.
“I didn’t, but I decided to wait anyway. I’m glad you have proven I am not a fool,” she teases.
His eyes light up with delight as he smiles. And she thinks she might drown in this new emotion swirling inside her.
Four has been silent since she started rambling about cultivation and spirit cores and the exorcism of Revenants. “You must be bored,” she says, embarrassed, wondering if she should’ve brought him to a better establishment. His regal manner seems so out of place in this ramshackle teahouse. Yet she senses he isn’t a nobleman, but something else altogether.
“I am hardly bored at all. The tea is fragrant, and the company is splendid. And I would gladly listen to anything you choose to speak of. In fact, I would listen to you speak every day, from moonrise to sunset to moonrise again if that is what you wish,” Four gushes, flinging his arms out and startling a waiter nearby.
She can’t help but laugh.
Color spreads across his face as he tries to compose himself. “Please believe that my words are sincere.”
His dark eyes are piercing as he gazes at her, and it feels like they are the only ones in the busy teahouse. Like they are the only two people to exist in the world. Cheeks warming, she looks away, tucking her hair behind her ear. She has met him twice, but he already has her heart.
“Humans fear what they do not understand, and magic is unknown to most. When people feel helpless, they need someone to blame.”
“Then why do you still risk your life to protect them?” Four asks her.
Because I shouldn’t be alive, she thinks.Because people have died because of me. Because my power is not a gift but a terror upon humanity, and this is the only way I can redeem myself.
Smiling gently at her lover, she says out loud, “Because it is the right thing to do.”
She knows Four is worried about the summons from Burning Flame, that even though Four is a god, he has learned to be afraid of men.
“His general will escort me. I must go to the gates. If I do not, it will make things difficult for Shifu and the cultivators.”
“My love—” Four chokes out. It is causing him pain to linger.
She rests her hand gently on his cheek. “We will meet again.”
She is on her knees. Her hands and feet are bound. She isn’t frightened, though she knows she should be.
The boy from the Summer Palace has become a man. Dressed in robes of gold, he approaches, the veil of glittering beads that hang from his crown obscuring his face.
“The people have spoken,” he says without emotion. “We both know what you are. You are chaos. You are danger. You have brought the Revenants to us.”
He hands her a sword. The implication is clear.
