Page 52 of A Song to Drown Rivers
I did not even realize what I’d said until he jerked back as if he’d been slapped. He was still breathing hard, his lips swollen, but his eyes were wide, disbelieving. “What did you just say?”
“I—I didn’t—” Hysteria surged inside me.Explain.I needed to explain, to make this all right again, but my head had gone completely blank. I could only hear a low buzzing sound in my ears. My heart crashed against my chest. “I—”
“You said the name Fanli,” he said. There was still a raw note to his tone, like he wanted me to correct him. “Fanli. That’s the military advisor of Yue.”
If I didn’t feel like fainting, I might have laughed. Sometimes Fuchai was so careless that he called his own ministers by the wrong name, and often addressed people directly as “you” insteadof a proper title—yetthisparticular name, he recalled now without any difficulty.
“It was a slip of the tongue,” I said, forcing my voice to remain level. I willed any trace of guilt away from my face. “I didn’t mean it. It’s just because…” I scrambled for some excuse. Anything. “It’s only because we were talking about Wu Zixu earlier. And I—I was wondering who holds a similar position in the Yue court.”
His expression was indecipherable. Even with the fire roaring, the room felt colder than ever. “While you were kissing me?”
For all my training, I could not help flushing slightly. “I… My mind wandered only for a second. That’s all. It means nothing.”
But his face was turned to the fire, his gaze distant, hands clasped behind his back, his whole body held rigid. It was a stupid thing to think at this time, especially when he had been so vulnerable only moments ago, his mouth grazing my throat like any excited, lovestruck boy, but he looked—like a king. Someone with the power to execute hundreds with a single command. Fear shot through me. “Perhaps Zixu was right after all,” he murmured to himself.
It was as if someone had swung a heavy mallet to my lungs. My breathing stopped. Everything stopped. I was afraid I would shatter to the floor in pieces. This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t have made such a terrible blunder, after all my planning and preparing. Yes, Zhengdan had been impulsive on the training grounds today, but I was meant to be the careful one. “Right… about what?”
He said nothing. His face was cold, unreachable. With a swish of his sleeves, he strode out the door. I heard the startled greetings of the maids planted outside, saw the flicker of lanterns as he passed, and felt a different kind of dread: By tomorrow, the gossip would spread about how the king had left my chambers before anything could have happened. They would all speculate over whatI’d done to enrage him, but I doubted anybody would come close to the truth. That my heart had betrayed my tongue. That for just a moment, I had been greedy and imagined somebody else’s lips on my own.
Trembling, I sank to my knees, alone in that hollow room of shimmering jewels.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ispent the following weeks waiting for somepunishment to fall upon me. I almost wished the king had gone ahead and punished me that very night, instead of leaving my imagination to torment me. It was like holding your neck out for an execution, not knowing exactly when the axe head would fall, only that it would. Yet all was eerily calm. He made no mention of the event again, and still came to visit my chambers whenever he could. He was not cruel or cold or even petty. He admired me when I danced, listened when I sang. He smiled and teased just as easily as before, and made sure I lived in extravagant comfort. Every now and then when we were together, I would catch some shadow flickering over his face, but it was always so subtle I didn’t know if it was conjured by my own paranoia, a ghost of my own guilt.
Five days passed, and all was quiet.
Another five days passed, and still all was quiet.
Just when I was starting to hope he had really forgotten about the incident, the axe swung down.
I had been summoned to the court.
There was no explanation, no information for me to glean. I could only obey. When I entered through the bronze-arched doors, everyone inside was silent, their heads bowed. A cold feeling prickled down my spine like ice water. Something was amiss. Fuchai sat high on his throne, his eyes finding mine at once. “You’re here. Good.”
My throat tightened. Whatever came next, I doubted it could be good.
He smiled at me, though there was an oddness to it, a stiffness. Only his skin moved, while the flesh and muscle beneath it was still as stone. His long fingers trembled slightly on the armrests. If I didn’t know any better, I would say he was… nervous. But why? “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
“Who is it, Your Majesty?” I asked. My voice sounded so small in those grand halls, swallowed by all that dark space. I had not felt this uncertain, this powerless, since the very first day I entered the Wu palace.
Fuchai merely patted the spot next to his throne, summoning me forth. As soon as I’d taken my position beside him, he flicked his sleeve. “Bring him in,” he called.
I turned, and everything inside me froze.
He entered from the far side of the hall, the sunlight flooding in from behind him, so all I could see was shadow at first, an outline. But I recognized him immediately. Even in dreams, in mist, in darkness, across the Yellow Springs, he would be as familiar to me as my own memories. His smooth stride, his straight shoulders, the proud tilt of his chin. His footsteps were silent over the well-trodden stone, his movements controlled and sleek as a predator in its own territory. My heart pounded in my throat. He drewcloser, close enough for me to see his face. In all the time since we were last together, his ink-black hair had grown longer, and the marble planes of his face seemed to have been chiseled by a ruthless knife, hollowing out what little softness there’d once been. His eyes were the pitch-black of the dead, utterly unfeeling. Yet for the briefest moment, as if against his will, they swung to me, and my breath caught.
Fanli.
Flesh of my heart, light of my sun. He was here, in the enemy kingdom.
A wild storm of emotions brewed in my stomach, one nearly indecipherable from the other. If you asked me if I was happy, seeing him, I would have said yes. I felt a joy so radiant it could have transformed even those cold palace halls into a heaven, and me into a god. But in the very same instant I felt a pain worse than anything I’d endured before, sharper and hotter than when the arrowhead had impaled my shoulder, blistering and wrenching and merciless. And of course there was the dread, that cold shiver crawling down the back of my neck, all the way to my toes.
It was then that I became aware of someone watching me. No, more than one person. As Fanli moved forward, both Fuchai and Wu Zixu were studying my expression, as if determining something…
To determine whether you feel anything for him. Whether your heart is true.The answer came like a thunderclap. I pressed my horror down, forced my expression to remain pleasant, neutral. To look down at Fanli as if he were only an old acquaintance, nothing more.
My suspicions were confirmed when Fuchai made another lazy, halfhearted motion with his sleeve, and all the maids and ministers who’d been lining the sides of the court left, closing the widedoors behind them. All except Wu Zixu, who remained at the foot of the throne like a hound sniffing for blood.
