I felt too much.
Grief and rage and exhaustion and terror all churning together into something too large to name. It pressed against my ribs, filled my throat, made my hands shake where I’d clasped them together.
But I couldn’t show it, couldn’t let it out.
Because emperors didn’t break down.
Emperors stood steady while the world burned around them.
So I stood.
Beside me, Mother made soft sounds, not crying, just breathing wrong, as though every exhale hurt, as though her body was rejecting the air because Kioshi no longer needed it.
Grandmother’s hand tightened on my arm, anchoring me, keeping me from floating away on the smoke.
“We commit these souls to flame, that they may rise pure into the Heavens,” the High Priest said, his voice cutting through the chanting.
He handed me the ceremonial torch. Somehow, my hands didn’t shake as I took it. There was some mercy in that, some small grace that my body knew how to perform this function even while my mind screamed.
I approached Father’s pyre first, looked at him one final time. Even in death, even with the poison’s subtle marks, he looked like an emperor, a god. I’d never really known him, not as a father, only as a force of nature, an Imperial presence that shaped my life without ever truly seeing me.
“I’ll try, Father,” I whispered, quiet enough that only he could hear. “I’ll try to be what you need me to be.”
I touched the torch to the base of the pyre, and the sacred oils caught, flames racing up the carefully stacked wood with a sound like angry wind. Heat washed over me, sudden and fierce. I stepped back, still holding the torch.
Then I turned to Kioshi’s pyre.
My brother, my best friend—the Crown Prince who’d been everything I wasn’t—confident, certain, prepared.
He was the one who’d been groomed from birth to rule while I’d been left to find my own way, who’d never been unkind to me, who’d protected me since the moment I’d drawn my first breath.
Now he was dead.
Now I stood where he should have stood.
Now I carried the torch that should have been his.
“I’m so sorry,” I told him, and my voice finally cracked. “I’m sorry it’s you lying there and it’s not me. You would have been better at this, better at everything.”
I started to touch the torch to his pyre.
But I couldn’t.
My hand froze.
The torch wavered.
Smoke stung my eyes, or maybe it was tears. I couldn’t tell anymore. All I knew was that once I lit the pyre, once I burned my brother, it was real. It was all real.
Final and irreversible.
Kioshi would be gone.
And I would be alone.
“Little fish.” Grandmother’s voice, soft, her hand landing on my shoulder. “You must.”
I knew it. She was right. I knew I must.
