Page 122 of Empire's Curse

Daiyu stepped forward, ready to stop the violence, but she was hit with an invisible shield again. She could only cringe as the young man—who wore a gold hair crown and whose rich red robes told her he was royalty—continued to beat the younger boy.

The memory was evolving again, the grass disappearing and changing into polished wood, and the sky warping into walls. She was in a small room. The shadow-faced boy was a bit older, she would guess, by the deepness of his voice.

“Mother! Wh-What are youdoing?” He was standing by the doorway of the room, his body quaking in barely suppressed rage or horror—Daiyu wasn’t sure.

His mother was lying in bed, a blanket covering her naked body, and a similarly clad man beside her. She yelped something and pulled the sheets to cover her body. Clothes and a guard’s uniform were strewn on the floor haphazardly.

“G-Get out!” his mother whisper-shouted, pulling herself into a sitting position. She tried to protect her modesty, but it was clear what had happened. “You should knock before you enter a room. You know?—”

“Youget out,” he roared at the guard and then turned to his mother. “What are youthinking?”

The guard sheepishly jumped to his feet and began dressing. The shadowed boy turned around as the two adults quickly pulled their clothes on, grumbles on their tongues.

“You know what will happen oncehefinds out, don’t you?” the boy said, his voice tight and panicked. Daiyu didn’t need to see his expression to know he was terrified out of his mind.

“We don’t plan on staying here that long, kid,” the guard said with a low chuckle. “Or should I call you Your Highness?”

“Get out,” the young man snapped.

“We’re going to leave this place,” the woman said, smoothing down her skirts. “He won’t be able to find us?—”

“You don’t know that?—”

“That’s enough,” she said firmly. “I understand you’re worried and confused, but I’m an adult and I can make my own decisions. I also want to fall in love and have a relationship, but your father will never allow it since I’ve had his child. He may think that I belong to him, but Idon’t.”

“But, Mother—” His voice became more strained—more frightened.

“We’ll find a way to make it work. Sooner or later, we’ll leave this place.”

Daiyu shivered at the parallels in her own situation. How she had been taken by the emperor as well, but how things were vastly different between her and Muyang, and this woman and the emperor of this time period.

All at once, the background began to warp again. Daiyu was beginning to become accustomed to the discombobulating feeling of the whole world changing in the blink of an eye, and the dizzying effect it had on her for the first few seconds. But nothing could have prepared her for the next sight.

She inhaled sharply and fell backward. In the center of the room, the shadow-faced boy’s mother was tied to a wooden post. Daiyu recognized the throne room almost immediately, but shecould barely focus on that. Not when the woman was beaten and bloodied to a pulp, her hair missing in chunks as if someone had ripped it out, and her threadbare clothes barely hanging onto her thin frame. The room was crowded, the people speaking to one another casually while they sipped their drinks as if unaware of the battered woman in the center of the room.

The shadow-boy screamed and cried, held back by two guards who held a spear to his throat. But he was unaffected by the pain, not even when they stabbed his leg or kicked him down. On a dais at the end of the room, an emperor with silver streaks in his midnight hair sat on a throne, his entire body bedecked in glimmering gold and silver.

“Let me go! Let me go!” the young man screamed. “Mother!Mother!”

Daiyu covered her mouth at the brutality. At the twisted, awkward positions the woman’s limbs were bent in. At the blood splattering the floor around her. At the broken teeth by her feet. At the way the nobles chuckled and conversed so indifferently.

Her heart ached for the woman and again for the young man, whose cries fell on deaf ears.

Below the emperor, a young man was lounged on a velvet seat, watching the scene with an amused grin on his face. Daiyu recognized him as the man who had beaten the shadowy-faced boy in one of the earlier memories. He must have been a prince, judging by the way he was dressed and the arrogant attitude.

“She did this to herself.” The prince snickered, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Whore.”

“You—You—” The shadow-boy began shouting, but one of the guards slammed him to the floor, pinning his face down so he couldn’t speak coherently.

“Yan, don’t bother speaking to him,” the emperor said in a gravelly voice. He peered down at the young man with narrowed eyes. “He’s scum just as much as his mother, but he is still your brother.”

Prince Yan only sniggered. “Yes, Father.”

Daiyu turned away from the violence, her stomach twisting painfully. She had no idea why she was witnessing this, why Feiyu wanted to show her this gruesome, heartbreaking scene. But she had another clue to go off on—this cruel prince was Yan, who would later become Emperor Yan. He was Yat-sen’s father and the previous emperor in current times, she realized. But then who was the shadow-boy? She couldn’t remember anything about any younger brothers Emperor Yan had. They were all dead by the time he took the throne anyway.

The setting shifted again and Daiyu was more than happy for the change. She waited, with bated breath, for another piece of the puzzle to fall into place. But instead of finding a memory that was more pleasant than the previous one, her heart sank as another horrific scene took over.

This time, she was in a small cellar. The young shadow-faced boy was chained to the wall, his tunic ripped off to reveal a crisscross of scars along his pale body. Prince Yan stood a few feet away from him, a whip in his hand. He laughed and tortured the young man. Daiyu could barely watch, and it was only when the prince uncorked a small vial or red blood that Daiyu could look again.

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