Page 78 of The Nightblood Prince

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Whispers rumbled through the camp. The stench of fear always spread fast among soldiers.

It was near twilight when Siwang’s meeting finally ended. Heavy footsteps departed the war room to the north of camp. I searched the men’s despondent faces for clues, or any form of hope to cling to.

And found nothing.

I went to find Siwang at nightfall. His guards were used to me by now and let me enter and leave as I pleased.

My prince was slumped against his fur-covered seat, staring at the swirling incense placed on a stand before a golden statue depicting a menacing god of war. An offering.

Siwang was not superstitious.

There were dark circles under his eyes, and a lingering trace of redness. Had he been crying?

“You can’t win a war on an empty stomach,” I told him, and set down the lamb-bone broth I’d asked the cooks to make for him.

He always forgot his body’s mortal needs for things like food, water, and even sleep when other things occupied his mind. I wouldn’t have been surprised if this was his first meal of the day.

Everybody in that war room had their own agendas, their own points of view. Some would press Siwang subtly, while others would push their visions like fists at his throat. Everybody wanted to make decisions through him, forgetting that Siwang was just one man—barely. He was just nineteen. Too young to carry the burden of a nation.

Yet here he was.

When he failed to respond, I silently dipped one of the silver needles into the broth for him, to check for poison. When the silver came away untarnished, I scooped the broth into a bowl, set it at his side, and rose to leave.

“Don’t go,” he whispered. “Don’t go, Fei.”

He asked, so I didn’t. I pulled up a chair to sit beside him, then placed the bowl in his hands. Strong and callused, his hands no longer felt like the soft silk I remembered from the palace.

Up close, I saw that his eyes were as red as I’d imagined, and tears still clung to his lashes.

Something twisted in my chest. I wished there were something I could do for him. A way to command Fate and force her to show me a way to win this war for Siwang—something I had tried, more than once. Every night, I prayed for her to divulge some heavenly secret to me. And every night, I dreamt the same nightmares and bloodshed. Always the same blood-soaked ending.

I was no strategist or scholar. I could offer him nothing except my shoulder to lean on and my ears for his worries.

???????—having no talent is a virtue for a woman.A saying repeated too many times by the scholars who were supposed to teach me, the father who was supposed to love and believe in me, and especially the emperor, who saw my yearning to learn as a threat against his son. It was only after excessive begging that I had been allowed to study with the rest of the noble children.

Though, as with all girls, our education was limited.

War and strategy were subjects I was banned from. This didn’t stop me from hunting them down in the imperial library. I devoured as much power as I could from their pages despite knowing that the simple act of reading these books would not equate to being taught by the greatest minds of our time, as Siwang was.

Now I wished I had been more stubborn, made Siwang teach me these things even if the world forbade him to.

I knew my power over him; I would have been able to convince him if I had tried. Perhaps in another lifetime, I would. And in that lifetime Siwang would have a girl who could help carry his burdens with intellect instead of silence.

I wished I was capable of more. Just as I wished the world believed I was capable of more.

But I wasn’t. So I placed my hand over his and squeezed tight.

“What did you argue about today?” I tried to keep my tone light, humorous. He didn’t laugh. So I added, “I heard you’re preparing an attack for tomorrow.”

Siwang let his head fall back, eyelids fluttering closed. “If we don’t win tomorrow, if silver fails to make a dent in Lan Yexue’s monsters, it might be the end of Rong as we know it.”

I didn’t want to think about the bleak future that awaited our continent if we couldn’t put an end to Lan Yexue’s reign.

My eyes fell on the unfurled map in the center of the room, and the formations of enemies that stood between us and the city of Changchun, where Caikun’s father and thousands of civilians were trapped.

“Pray to the gods that the attack goes well tomorrow,” Siwang whispered.

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