Chapter 14
Chapter 14
Until the banquet ended, Chen Dong did not look at me once. He sat straight as a sheathed sword. I drank heavily. Northern Qian’s wine was strong and made me feel weightless, like the kite of my childhood floating high above the palace, beautiful and light.
Chen Dong and I walked side by side on the way back. The night was damp with dew. There was no moon, but stars filled the sky like scattered diamonds.
“Who is he?” Chen Dong asked suddenly. A moment earlier, he had been guiding me around a puddle.
“Who?” I pretended not to understand.
“I kept wondering who planned the fire. He made Helan Zhiyan and the others obey him, swiftly took control of a hidden intelligence network inside my camp, freed the prisoners without losing one soldier, burned my tents, killed my guards, and made me a laughingstock. I suspected everyone except him, because he was only six.”
The sweet, tender lies between us were about to tear apart. Strangely, I felt calm. “Xiaoxi does not understand the general.”
“He is royal.”
I said nothing.
“Only a royal could command Southern Xu’s former ministers. He is the heir named Crown Prince Shanhe before his birth – Xia Wan. Correct?”
He lifted my chin. “Where is he?”
My gaze passed beyond his face to the stars. Their light was cold enough to chill my whole body.
“Kill me, General,” I whispered.
Of all the words I had ever spoken to him, only those were wholly sincere.
He had likely deduced the truth from He Sulong’s gaze at the banquet. Yet even now, he would not ask who I was.
Had he asked, I would have answered. And once I answered, I would have to die.
Let me die here as Xiaoxi – the first girl he had cared for at nineteen – not as Xihe, who had deceived him at every step.
“Of course you will die. After you bear my children, become my queen, live to eighty, and lie beside me in the same coffin, then I will let you die.” His voice hardened. “But not now.”
Firelight appeared behind him. Two men seized my arms. “Forgive us, madam.”
They dragged me to an interrogation chamber. For three days I endured torture. Perhaps it was not considered severe, but to me the pain was unbearable. At first it made me vomit. Later, with nothing left to bring up, I bit my lips bloody and shook with every breath.
Chen Dong visited once each day and asked one question.
“Where is Xia Wan?”
I looked at him through my trembling and finally understood: he was a politician capable of absolute ruthlessness.
On the third day, with barely a breath left, the adjutant who said I resembled his daughter came to persuade me. “The general has suffered migraines for three days because of you. He is your husband. Who beneath heaven could be closer? Don’t be foolish. Tell him, and you can live well together.”
I lay on the floor like torn cloth. My lips barely moved. “No…”
“Hang her from the city gate,” Chen Dong said coldly. “Let us see whether the Southern Xu she serves will send anyone to save her.”
At first light, they bound me above the gate. In both southern and northern speech, they announced that I would be beheaded at midnight.
I had not been afraid during torture. I knew I was merely enduring for the dignity of the royal house. Even if I spoke, they could not find Xia Wan. But now I was terrified.
I feared he would truly come.
He was Southern Xu’s final hope.
He was also my last family in this world.
The vicious sun burned me. With my remaining strength, I cried and begged. I knew Chen Dong was watching, but he never appeared. At last, I had no voice left and could only pray silently.
Helan Zhiyan, please. You must not let him come.
Dehydration brought visions. Southern Xu’s grand palace rose around me. Grandfather sat me on his knee, but I saw a kite beyond the window and wriggled free. I ran and ran until I found a woman in palace dress. Beneath the sunset, she glanced back with a beautiful smile and desolate tears.
“Xihe, forgive me for leaving you to live alone in such a world.”
She looked like Zhiqiu.
And like the mother I had never seen.
When I opened my eyes again, red light filled my vision. I thought it was blood, but it was sunset blazing across the sky. Tomorrow would surely be fine.
That was when Xia Wan came.
Dressed in white, he walked out of the radiant clouds, a red mark at his brow like a tiny bodhisattva.
I had imagined he might come with Southern Xu’s remaining soldiers and launch an ambush. But however uncanny his intelligence or brilliant his command, he could not defeat the northern army’s defenses.
Instead, he walked toward me alone.
I stared until he smiled quietly. “Southern Xu has few useful people left. I must preserve them for Aunt Xihe. So I came alone.”
He had come to die.
“How could they let you come… alone…” My voice was hoarse; my dry eyes could shed no tears.
Soldiers gathered but did not approach at once, wary of an ambush. Xia Wan had time to whisper one last sentence in my ear.
“I told them who my father was.”
He knew. He had always known.
In the palace where he grew up, everyone regarded northerners as beasts. Yet he had always known that their blood ran through him – that he was his father’s humiliation and his mother’s despair. Still, he had grown in silence into a child gentler than anyone.
I stared, my heart contracting until I could barely breathe.
Chen Dong descended from the wall and regarded him coldly.
“You truly came.”
“I came for my aunt.”
One wore black armor and carried the scent of iron and blood. The other stood in plain white cloth, clean as an evening breeze.
“Aren’t you afraid I will kill you?”
Xia Wan smiled. “Of course you will. Because if you do not, one day you will die by my hand.”
A distant temple bell rang through the mountains. Xia Wan looked away. “If the Buddha possesses any spirit, I offer all my future lives in exchange. After I die, let me become the clear wind and bright moon, forever beside Aunt Xihe, so she will no longer fear walking at night.”
At the last toll, three paces from me, Chen Dong’s sword passed through Xia Wan’s small body.
The air was so cold that the blood striking my face felt like ice.
I watched them drag Xia Wan away. I watched Chen Dong approach and unlock my shackles himself. Sunset and crescent moon became the roof of a bedchamber. The blackness of night spread through the room like ink.
The wind carried blood, iron, and fire – the smell of Northern Qian. Everything belonging to Southern Xu – books, incense, powder and rouge – had vanished. And now they had taken every last person I loved.
Maids bathed me, treated my injuries, and dressed me in clean clothes. When awareness returned, I stood outside Chen Dong’s room in a white northern robe, wrapped like a spotless gift. He worked beneath a single lamp. After a long while, he looked up.
“Come here.”
I crossed the room in a daze. He took my hand and pulled me onto his lap.
“Crown Prince Shanhe is dead. This is over.”
Without guilt, he calmly told me his plans. “Northern Qian will establish its capital at Nancheng. There is much to do. When spring comes, we will marry.”
I looked at him as though he were a monster. “Are you truly not afraid I will hate you?”
“Why?” His heavy brows drew together in genuine confusion. “The victor has the right to slaughter the defeated. And I did not kill you.”
In the candlelight, his brown eyes looked clean and candid, untouched by conflict. A hunting beast on the grasslands might possess the same innocence – an innocence cruel beyond measure.