Page 121 of Empire's Curse

She tried to step forward to investigate further, but she found that she couldn’t walk more than two feet around herself. It was as if there was an invisible barrier barring her from exploring. She was a bystander, she realized, and there must have been something she was supposed to see.

She watched the hallways for anything amiss. For any clue topiece together who Feiyu was. But there were only servants milling about. Nothing was abnormal?—

A little boy with shoulder-length hair walked down the hallway holding a serving tray with four silver-veined teacups balanced atop it. His face was a blob of darkness. As if someone had painted over the memory, overriding it with a shadowy rendition of itself.

That … must have been Feiyu?

Right? It washismemories, after all.

A maidservant stayed close behind him. She opened her mouth and said a name, but no matter how much Daiyu strained her ears or tried to read the woman’s lips, she was unable to.

“You’ll have to go to His Royal Highness’s room next,” the woman said, her voice ringing out clearly now.

The boy’s shoulders stiffened. “But … I don’t like?—”

“Shh.” The woman’s tone sharpened and she looked around herself in the hallway, but nobody else was paying attention to them. All the servants were focused on their own tasks. “The prince requestedyouto bring him his afternoon tea.”

“But, Mother, he?—”

“I know.” The woman’s face tightened with emotions Daiyu could read very well. It was an expression she had witnessed many times on her own mother’s face whenever her siblings or herself were about to dive headfirst into trouble. The same expression Mother had worn when Daiyu announced she would go into the palace and rescue Lanfen herself.

The scenery began to shift again and Daiyu was whisked away into another memory. This time, the boy with the shadowy face was in a closed room with his mother holding his hand and a larger man poking his forearm with a sharpened bone. The boy screamed and cried, trying to yank his arm away, but his mother held him firmly, even though she looked like she wanted to cry just as much as he did.

“Please, make it stop! Mother, make himstop!”

His mother’s lips trembled. She was still dressed like amaidservant, her hair pulled back simply with a silver ribbon, and her faded green and white robes appearing too simple. “I know, my sweet boy, but you must bear with the pain.”

“No,no!” He thrust his head one way, then the other. “I’m not a prince! I’mnota prince!”

The man with the bone continued to whittle into the young boy’s flesh, tapping in ink and magic and tattooing the royal symbol into his forearm. The boy’s pained screams continued to echo against the walls.

“Listen—” The man formed words, likely the boy’s name, but once again, Daiyu was unable to hear it, nor was she able to decipher his lips. “His Majesty has claimed you as his. Neither of us can refute it. I understand it’s painful, but it’s either this or your mother is flogged. Which would you rather have?”

“It’s not her fault?—”

“I understand she didn’t do anything, but she’syourmother, and ifyoumisbehave,shewill be punished for it.” He pointed the sharpened, bloodied end of the bone to the woman and gave the boy a stern look. “So what will it be? Will you make this more difficult than it has to be?”

The boy sniffed and his body went slack. He seemed to have accepted his fate. “No.”

“Good.” The man went back to piercing his skin and the boy cried silently. The woman holding him eased her iron-like grip on her son, but the tenseness of her shoulders didn’t go away. She wiped the little boy’s face with trembling hands.

“How much longer?” she whispered.

“Another hour.”

The boy made a choking sound. “B-But?—”

The man gave him another stern look and the boy shrank back.

“It’s not fair,” he said after a moment, his breaths coming in short inhales as he sniffled and held his cries in. “I’m not a prince?—”

“You are,” his mother said firmly. “And yourfather has finally accepted you. Don’t anger him by saying otherwise. You’ve heard the rumors your whole life, haven’t you? This should be a joyous occasion.”

“And besides,” the tattooist said, “if you didn’t have MuRong blood, this magicked ink would have killed you. So youarea prince, Your Highness.”

The memory was changing again and Daiyu was once again carried away to a different section of the palace. The little boy was older now, maybe twelve, and he was on the ground in the palace, his body curled up into a ball as an older teenager kicked him in the stomach. The young man laughed, kicking him harder and harder, while a group of well-dressed youth watched with amusement.

“You think you’re on the same level as me?” The young man laughed, high and grating, and kicked the shadow-faced boy with a grunt. “You. Are.Nothing.”

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