Page 111 of Empire's Curse

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When Daiyustumbled home that night, nobody questioned why she was there or what had happened. They even seemed to believe her pathetic lie that she just came to visit. Nobody batted an eyelash at her red and swollen eyes, her unkept hair, or her messy dress. They didn’t even say anything a week later, when she continued living home as if nothing had happened. She didn’t have the gall to tell them what had actually happened and news of her embarrassment hadn’t reached the village yet.

Even though she was home and back into the rhythm of things—milk the goats next door, take out the chickens’ eggs from the broken coop, harvest vegetables from their garden for breakfast, visit the partially destroyed rice paddies in the afternoon—she was numb down to her core. This was what she had wanted all along. To be back home. To wear her scratchy, worn dresses. To slip into her dried-grass sandals and walk through the village. To eat dinner with her family.

But she felt empty. Like someone had scooped out everything that made her who she was and tossed it aside. She was just falling into the motion of things but not really thinking.

And it was made worse when, after eight days of being back on the farm, Muyang’s men never came for her. She had thought Muyang would drag her back to the palace and punish her for fleeing from him again, but nothing happened.

She was already forgotten, it seemed.

On the eighth day, when she was kneeling on the ground in their home garden, with the barely repaired bamboo fence stretching above her, and her hands buried deep in the soil as she rummaged for beets, Lanfen finally spoke up.

“What happened?” her younger sister asked from beside her. She had her own grass-woven basket on the ground next to Daiyu’s, but hers was filled with sweet potatoes instead of beets. “Everyone’s worried about you, but you won’t say anything.”

“Nothing happened.” She pulled out a cluster of beets with dried dirt clumped at the spindly roots.

“Really?” Lanfen stared at her in disbelief. “Then why are you home? Aren’t you supposed to be in the palace?”

“I told you, I’m visiting?—”

“Daiyu, tell me the truth.”

“Lanfen—”

“I know you’re lying. You’ve got everyone worried.”

Daiyu placed the beets in the basket and busied her hands by digging through the dirt once more. Guilt formed in the pit of her stomach. She had married Muyang for her family’s sake, and now she was forsaking them again, all because she had made a rash decision to leave. It was for the best, she had told herself, but at the same time … all of their hopes of wealth and status would be dashed once she revealed the truth.

How was she going to tell them all that Muyang had humiliated her in front of the entire empire and instead of bearing with it, she had escaped back home and nobody had even come back to fetch her? How was she going to tell them that she was actually unimportant to Muyang? That she had naïvely thought she could handle being his wife?

Was it better to leave this village? For them to pack their bags and make a run for it? Even though Muyang’s men hadn’t come back for her?

“Daiyu?” Lanfen touched her hand, forcing her back to reality. Her sister’s kind, soft-brown eyes seemed to plead with her as she scanned her face. “What happened? Really?”

Her throat tightened. “Nothing?—”

“Daiyu.”

“Okay,fine.” She plopped another beet into the basket, this one smaller than the rest. Her voice wobbled and she wiped the dirt from her shaky hands. “On the last day of the festival, Muyang chose Wang Yanlin to light the lantern instead of me. You know what the lantern lighting symbolizes, don’t you? Whoever lights the first lantern is the emperor’s favored woman, or favored family, and it shows how important she is to the whole empire. Instead of choosing his new bride to do it, he chose the woman who ruined everything for me!”

Lanfen’s brows pulled together. “Oh.”

“Everyone was laughing at me.” Her cheeks warmed as the memory of the noblewomen snickering behind their hand fans resurfaced. She wanted to duck her head into the coil, silty soil and forget about it all. “They don’t think I’m meant to be the empress. And why should I be? What qualifications do I have? I don’t know how to read, or write, or recite poetry. I wasn’t born into a wealthy, influential family. I don’t have any connections. I don’t know any social etiquette. I’m just … just Yin Daiyu.”

“Oh, Daiyu, I’m so sorry.” Unshed tears glistened in her eyes.

“Why are you crying?” Daiyu laughed softly, though her own eyes stung. “It’s over now. I’m back here and … and it seems like I’m forgotten anyway.”

Lanfen quickly wiped her face. “So what happened afterward? Did the mage bring you here?”

“He did.”

“And … well, did you talk to His Majesty?”

“About what?”

Lanfen gave her a strange look. She lowered the lumpy sweet potato into her own basket. “Well, about what happened at the festival. Did you talk to him about it? What did he say?”

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