Page 58 of Empire's Curse

Soon, she told herself, pressing her forehead against the windowpane, she would escape this place. Her plan was simple: when it became night, she would break this window—the only glass window that wasn’t barricaded with intricate metal designs—and climb down the five stories with the rope she made from the cloaks stuffed in the boxes. It was an incredibly stupid plan—she knew that—but she was desperate. There was no other way she could leave this guarded fortress without alerting Muyang. Once she was away from the fortress, she would run to the nearest village—a day’s walk away. She could do it. Shehadto.

As night descended, her eyelids grew heavy and before she knew it, she dozed against the window. It was only when a door clicked shut that her eyes flew open. She sat upright, her heart racing.He found out. He found out that I’m trying to escape and now everything is doomed?—

But Muyang wasn’t in the room, and nobody was tossing her into the dungeons, and she was still alone in the room. She rubbed the side of her face and noticed the blanket that had been draped over her shoulders. It was heavily embroidered with golden dragons and seemed to be stuffed with feathers with how light it was. Her hands skimmed over the deep purple shade. She recognized it from Muyang’s bedrooms, and all at once, guilt riddled her.

No.

She tossed the blanket on the floor. She wasn’t so weak as to be swayed by a freakingblanket. Was she so morally starved from affection that this small, small act was enough to keep her here?

No, she told herself as she stretched her legs and stood. She remembered all the times he had humiliated her and made her feel terrible. And then she recalled their conversation earlier that day.About how replaceable she was, and the fires of her wrath were stoked once more.

Judging by the black skyline, it was well into midnight, and her plan was still in motion. Daiyu wasted no time running to one of the crates, shoving the lid off, and retrieving the cloaks she had tied together. She opened five more crates to unveil the rest of the makeshift rope and tied the sections together tightly before securing them onto the biggest crate—which held the metal armor. She tugged at the crude rope and prayed it was enough to hold her weight.

If she ended up falling to her doom, at least she hadtriedto escape, she thought grimly. At least she didn’t weep and wallow in self-pity. At least she had tried to change her bleak fate.

It must have taken an hour to get all the cloak sections tied together and secure, and the only thing left was breaking the window. She had to break it in such a way that she wouldn’t cut herself on the way through it, but she also didn’t want to cut up her hands in the process. After much deliberation, she went back to the lid of one of the crates and chucked it as hard as she could at the window.

The glass shattered immediately on impact. Daiyu gasped sharply and stumbled back as pieces of it sprayed the room. The blood rushed to her ears and she couldn’t hear beyond the pounding of her own heart. She waited for the guards to swarm the room, her gaze glued to the jagged window, at the shiny, sharp shards of glass glistening silver in the moonlight. She continued to wait, but nobody charged into the room. Nobody shouted from down below—from outside the fortress walls. And it was only then that she realized she had to move to the next phase of her plan: actually getting out.

Daiyu licked her lips as she approached the window gingerly. She wadded her hands with Muyang’s blanket and carefully punched the serrated edge of the window until it was smoother. She winced as a shard of glass cut through the padding and sliced open her knuckle. Hissing, she dropped theblanket on the floor and grabbed her hand tightly. Blood welled instantly, slipping from the wound and spotting against the shimmery glass shavings below.

Tears blurred her vision and she breathed out shakily. She willed herself not to break down in sobs, even as her throat constricted. This was a stupid,stupidplan. She was going to end up killing herself at this rate. But what other choice did she have? She couldn’t stay here with Muyang—that was another death sentence, albeit a slow and torturous one.

It took a full fifteen minutes of crying, applying pressure to her cut knuckle, until she was ready to move along. She tossed the end of her cloak rope through the window and watched with bated breath as it fell down the fortress wall. She couldn’t tell if it reached all the way down to the ground, but she was almost certain that it did—it had to, after all. Or else …

Daiyu didn’t let herself think too hard about what it meant if she failed.

Flexing her hands and carefully brushing down the bits of broken glass on the windowsill with the blanket, she hauled herself onto it. A chilly night breeze ripped through her hair and she inhaled sharply against the cold, her breaths puffing out in front of her. She stared down at the ground, which seemed to loom farther and farther away, and swallowed down the fear gripping her.

You can do this. You don’t have a choice.

Breathing out shakily, she held on to the rope tighter. Her cut knuckle stung and protested, but she ignored it. She had to do this, she told herself. Muyang had driven her to a corner, and this was the only way she could attain freedom. The only way?—

Before she could change her mind, she jumped.

A scream almost escaped her lips as her hands slipped down the rope. Air whooshed over her face, ripping through her hair and freeing all the hairpins that had kept her hair in a low bun. She slid down the rope, the skin of her hands chafing raw and her legs dangling as she tried to get a grip. She was falling—fast.

The rough material of the cloaks shredded through her hands and a blind panic rushed over her as she continued to descend the rope—but not out of her own will. She tried to stop the breakneck speed in which she was falling, but she had no upper body strength that could hold her in place. Anytime she tried to flail her legs against the wall, her body slammed into it instead, and the wall scraped down her side painfully. She suppressed her own screams of panic and pain, and it wasn’t until she was a few feet from the end of the rope that she finally slowed.

She held on to the rope so tightly that she was sure her hands would detach from her body and the rest of her would spiral and splat on the ground. Her legs dangled and she finally dared to peek down below. She was at the end of the rope and was maybe five feet from the ground.

It was only then that her body gave out.

Daiyu screamed as she crashed down below. Her shoulder slammed into the hardened, packed earth and she rolled a few times, the rough terrain ripping through her clothes and scraping her skin. She finally rotated onto her back until she was staring at the star-speckled night sky. A tremor ran over her and she couldn’t stop from breathing heavily. Somehow, she was alive.

It took her several minutes to calm her breathing before she even attempted to sit up and assess her injuries. The adrenaline and shock kept the pain at bay, but she was in terrible condition. Her shoulder throbbed, the skin on her hands was completely ripped off and raw, and she had several cuts and gashes along her legs and torso.

But she was alive, and that was all that mattered.

She pushed herself to her feet and tightened the cloak around herself with numb, shaking hands. She headed straight for the woods—the same woods she had traversed with Atreus. The wind howled above her and her skin turned frigid against the wintry weather of Geru, but there was something exhilarating about it. She was free. Finallyfree.

Daiyu walked for hours,her legs throbbing with every step and the rest of her injuries aching excruciatingly. Now that the adrenaline and rush of escaping had left her, she was sore, in pain, exhausted, andfreezing.

Her hair whipped around her with the wind and she turned her numb and frozen face away from the worst of it. She kept walking and walking until she wasn’t even sure where she was headed anymore. The sun rose and continued to dance along the skyline for hours. Hunger and thirst took hold of her, and every little noise—the rustling of leaves and barren branches, the scurry of wild animals—had her on edge and thinking that Muyang’s men had caught up to her.

It wasn’t until the afternoon that she finally stumbled upon a village. She wanted to burst in tears at the first sight of smoke streaming out of a chimney. When she reached the streets, she almost keeled over and collapsed from exhaustion. But she pushed herself forward.

People ignored her—with how bedraggled and torn her clothing had turned out during her escape, she couldn’t fault them. At best, she probably looked like a weary traveler, and at worst … she didn’t want to think about it. Did she look like a runaway, abused wife? Or a beggar? But one thing was clear: nobody wanted to involve themselves with her.

---