Chapter 5
“You gave birth to this curse. Why haven’t you died to atone for it? Why should I, who had no choice, pay the price?”
“How dare you!”
My father, a fourth-rank General of Manifest Might, came striding over.
He had yet to remove his silver armor. Even the blade at his side carried the grim air of the training ground.
He raised his hand and began berating me.
“You’ve barely come home, and already the house is in chaos! Beating your elder brother, driving your elder sister to suicide, humiliating your own mother. Where are your manners? Where is your upbringing?”
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Didn’t you know? My parents are both dead. There was no one to teach me.”
His face changed.
“Are you cursing us?”
“No. Stating a fact.”
The words stung him into a towering rage.
“Today I’ll teach you our family rules. I’ll show you what discipline means.”
He drew his sword with a ring of steel and lunged straight at me.
Horrified, Yun Cimu shouted:
“Don’t hit Father!”
Too late.
As the blade brushed past the ends of my hair, I slipped aside and was behind Yun Zhan.
He wheeled around in alarm. Thud!
I drove a full-strength kick squarely into his chest.
The force traveled through his armor into his ribs.
The crack of breaking bones was perfectly audible.
The towering soldier crashed into a flower bed with a heavy thump and spat out a great pool of blood. It was some time before he could brace himself on his blade and stand.
Yun Cimu rushed to support him.
Lady Zhou stood deathly pale and stunned, as though she still hadn’t recovered from the shock.
Only Yun Hanzhang moved, shrinking deeper and deeper into Lady Zhou’s arms in horror.
But I was quicker. I caught her by the back of her collar and dragged her like a dead dog beneath my blade.
Its edge cut her fair throat. As the blood welled out, Lady Zhou’s and Yun Zhan’s eyes reddened.
Their crying, cursing, and scolding stopped dead.
“Don’t kill her. Whatever you want, I’ll give it to you.”
I tilted my head and looked down at Yun Hanzhang.
“Still want to die? They can’t protect you. I’ll make sure you get everything you wish for.”
She shook like a leaf.
“I… I was wrong. I don’t want to die!”
“What were you wrong about?”
She faltered.
I pressed the blade down a little farther.
It cut her flesh. She cried out in pain, her whole body shuddering, but her words came clearly.
“I shouldn’t have tried to put you in your place by deliberately poisoning our brother against you and threatening to die so everyone would turn on you.”
“What else?”
My shout made her flinch.
“I shouldn’t have resented you because people looked down on me, or schemed to drive you out of the general’s residence.
“I shouldn’t have taken your hairpin on purpose, or deliberately fallen down the steps and said you pushed me. I shouldn’t have gone crying to our brother to make him drive you away. And I shouldn’t have opened my window to the cold and used my fever to make them think you were cursing me, so they’d send you to the estate.”
“I was wrong. I don’t want to die. I’ll never do it again. Please spare me this once.”
The night breeze was still. I could hear every person’s breathing.
My gaze swept across their shock and disbelief as I said, word by word:
“I’m strong, and I hold grudges. Before you provoke me, work out how many blows you can survive—and how many lives you have for me to take revenge on.”
With those words,
clatter.
I dropped both the blade and the girl.
The entire courtyard fell silent with fear.
Even Yun Zhan’s lips merely trembled. He glanced at my utterly ordinary cloth shoes and swallowed the rubbish he had been about to spew on the strength of his seniority.
Only Lady Zhou stumbled forward, gathered Yun Hanzhang tightly into her arms, and wept with belated terror.
I turned to leave.
The matron who managed Grandmother’s courtyard appeared. She inclined her head slightly to me and announced:
“The old madam wishes to see you.”