Page 108 of Empire's Curse

In seconds, his boots appeared in front of her. She sobbed softly, her body wracking with pain. He didn’t say anything and it wasn’t until he kneeled and touched her shoulder gently that she raised her head to meet his dark, dark gaze. He was wearing a sapphire dragon mask today, matching her own dress.

The door rattled with every punch Muyang threw at it, but for whatever reason, it didn’t cave in. Not even when she sensed the heaviness of his magic behind her. It practically seeped through the cracks, but there seemed to be a barrier barring him and his magic from entering.

“Feiyu, please,” she whispered, her voice broken, “please take me away from here.”

He silently brushed a tear away, their surroundings already blurring away.

“As you wish.”

37

Daiyu couldn’t stop crying uncontrollably.The torrent of tears just wouldn’t stop, even when they were warped outside, the night chilling her down to her bones. It lashed against her and ripped her hair from its intricate updo that had taken the servants forever to do. Feiyu didn’t say a word the whole time; he only stood there a few feet from her, watching her.

“You probably think I’m a fool.” Daiyu fell to her knees, her face buried in her hands, and her tears streaming down her cheeks and puddling onto her palms. “A stupid, stupid fool.”

The wind howled above her again, drying her cheeks and stinging her eyes. Feiyu didn’t move, his long, midnight hair streaming behind him with every powerful gust.

“Daiyu, what happened?” he asked quietly, his voice almost lost to the night.

Her throat tightened. The humiliation she had felt just moments ago reared its head again, making her want to fall into fits of tears once more. She could still see the throngs of people staring at her, laughing as she stood there, awestruck and completely blindsided when Muyang had chosen Yanlin to light the lantern. She could imagine the whispers and gossips thatwould come to light by the morning. Her stomach clenched together again.

She squeezed her eyes shut as if that was enough to eliminate the images from her mind. As if it was enough to make her forget Yanlin’s cruel smile when she placed her hand in Muyang’s.

“He embarrassed me in front of everyone.” Her voice cracked and she raised her chin to stare at Feiyu. The trees swayed all around him, their limber, long branches appearing like black tendrils in the night. She could make out the lights of the capital far, far in the distance. “He chose her, Wang Yanlin, to light the lantern for the Autumn Festival. It should have beenme. And now everyone believesshe’sthe rightful empress.”

“Daiyu …”

“I hate them all!” She grasped the ends of her hairpins and tore them from her hair. She tossed them on the ground at his feet and continued ripping the rest of the jewelry from her hair. Her chest heaved with every strangled sob. “I was never going to fit in with the rest of everyone! I was never going to be a proper empress! He told me that he would make me his empress, so why would he betray me like that? Why would he chooseher, of all people?! Did he really care so little for me that he would humiliate me in such a manner? Do you know what the people looked like when they realized he chose Yanlin?” Daiyu angrily tossed the last of her gold hairpin. It bounced against the rocks and pebbles and disappeared into a thicket of weeds. “They laughed at me.”

Her hair whipped around her face, some strands sticking against her damp cheeks. She wiped her face vigorously before sinking down to her knees again. When she was too tired of crying and screaming, she finally succumbed to the numbing cold. It dried her face and froze every ounce of rage within her until she was an empty shell of nothing.

Feiyu tilted his head and the dragon-mask looked even more frightening here, with the night canopying them and the rough, mountainous terrain. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Daiyu’s lower lip trembled. “No.”

“All right.” He dropped down a foot away from her into a sitting position. “Then I’ll just wait until you’re ready to go back.”

“I don’t want to go back.” She curled into a ball and tucked her chin against her knees. “I don’t want to go there and have everyone laugh at me again. They think I’m nothing more than a farm girl. Someone who doesn’t belong. I can tell they’re all laughing at me every time they see me.”

“Is that what they told you?”

“No, but I have eyes and ears and I’m not dumb.” More tears threatened to spill and she blinked them away. “Do you know that even the servants don’t treat me like a proper lady? They never talk to me, they look at me coldly, and they act as if everything I ask of them is a nuisance. Like … like they’re attending to someone who’s supposed to be working with them.”

“Ah, is that so?”

“Yes. It is.” She frowned. “You must know what I’m talking about. I’m not crazy and it’s not all in my head.”

“I believe you. I know what it’s like to not belong.” His voice carried a soft, sad tune that she turned her head toward almost immediately. He was staring at the horizon. “I know what it’s like to have people whisper behind your back. To have everyone think you’re beneath them. To be abused. To be … treated like you’re less than.”

“Feiyu …” She thought back to the serpent and moon mark she had seen on his forearm, but she couldn’t find the words to ask him what it meant. What it must have been like to grow up as a royal and to have everything ripped from him when Muyang took the throne.

So she instead followed his gaze. They were on the mountains, she realized a second later. The city lights were just as bright as they were when she was on the palace rooftop, but they twinkled in a way that reminded her of a dying star, slowly fading as some people retired for the night.

“Where are we?” she whispered.

“The mountains outside the capital. I like to come here when I want to clear my thoughts.”

“Oh.”

---