Page 43 of A Song to Drown Rivers
I had used it deliberately to provoke her, to assess her reaction. “I do,” I said, calm. “He asked me to.”
The sour look was back. “How sweet.”
“Tell me something: Do you truly love him?”
She blinked. I had surprised her. “Love,” she repeated slowly, in a tone veering toward contempt. “Girls like me are not made for love; we are made to be wanted.” Then she cast me a careful, sidelong look from under her heavy lids, and amended: “Girls like us.”
The familiar words stung my throat. Briefly, against my will, I remembered Fanli’s fading figure, the blue-white mist rising up around him, the canal waters lapping against the boat as it floated farther and farther away.Stop, I instructed myself, before my heart could fracture again.Do what’s useful.
“Of course, there are things I love,” she went on, “if power counts as one of them. And pretty things. Maybe that makes me vain, but isn’t it natural to be drawn toward what’s beautiful?” She stroked one of the budding flowers, then touched the gold bracelets jangling around her delicate wrists, the inlaid gems luminous under the sun’s light. Finally, she glanced back up at me. “Is that response satisfactory enough?”
I drifted forward through all that lush greenery and stopped by the fountain, lowering myself to the ledge. The stone was cold against my skin. I patted the empty spot next to me. “Tell me more.”
“What is there to tell?”
I waited until she was seated—with all the reluctance of one coming to sit beside a leopard—before continuing. “I’m just trying to understand you. Poison is a rather dire tactic, don’t you think? Messy, as well. You must have been desperate.”
Confusion flickered over her features. Dryly, she said, “You don’t sound too angry about it, for someone who could have died.”
“Oh, I am angry,” I reassured her. “Furious, in fact.” A beat. “But at more than just you.” These were the rules that shaped our lives from when we were born:Be beautiful, be charming, be the mostcoveted girl in the room, or else you will be nothing.For men, it was so easy; the path to power was so direct. But we had to manipulate and maneuver and claw our way to gain half of what they did.
Lady Yu’s brows furrowed, the only crease to be seen in her smooth, petal-like face. When she spoke again, her voice was lower, softly bitter. “You wouldn’t understand. My father commands a portion of the royal guard. Whenever my position in the palace slips, his falls as well. All the servants have been talking about it; how His Majesty used to frequent my chambers as if it hurt to be separated from me for more than a day… and how he doesn’t even seem to remember me now.”
My heart leaped.The royal guard.I had come here in search of an ally, but I had found something even better. “How about we make a deal?”
She eyed me warily. “A deal?”
“I can ask Fuchai to visit you more often, and remind him of everything that’s good about you, and kindly omit your personal defects, such as your occasional impulse to poison the people around you. It will be enough to stop the servants from whispering, and anyone with eyes shall be convinced of your worth to him. Your father’s rank will be secured, and your family’s power will only grow from here on.”
“What, you don’t mind sharing?” Her tone was still dry, barbed with mockery, but I could see the fresh glow of interest spreading over her face, the apt attention in her gaze. She was right, after all. Neither of us were in this for something so trivial as love.
I shook my head.
“And what’s the catch?”
I could not disclose my plans with her, not yet. So I only said, “Remember this favor. What I’ve done for you, and what I’ve forgiven. When I need you and your father, I’ll provide you with more details.”
She scoffed, but it was a sound without much malice. “You are different from how I imagined, you know.”
I smiled slightly. “Aren’t we all?”
There was a silence. A strong, abrupt wind blew through the azaleas, a torrent of flushed petals picking up and swirling around us, some landing in the fountain waters, so light they barely made a ripple. My robes fluttered out like bird wings, my hair tickling my cheeks, wisps flying loose from their elaborate knots. Yet I remained motionless, my breath held tight, while Lady Yu rearranged the gauze covering her shoulders. Her eyes were contemplative.
“So? Do we have a deal?” I prompted, holding out a hand.
She stared down at it for the longest time, then nodded, curling her thin fingers around mine. Her bracelets sang softly as we shook, gleaming in the light.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Winter crept in slowly.
The flowers in the gardens wilted and withered, their rose blushes fading into dry browns. Sheets of ice hardened over the palace’s curving artificial creeks. Flimsy gauze dresses were swapped for thick, luxurious coats made of silver-white fox fur and wolfskin. The maids busied themselves filling and refilling buckets of boiling water and wheeling in carts of fresh firewood. Whenever I went outside, my breath trembled in the cold, pale air, and my fingertips quickly lost all feeling. My shoulder healed, but the pain in my chest sharpened, though I could not tell if it was from the bone-deep chill or my old illness or something else. Throughout everything, I could feel time trickling away from me. Back in the Yue Kingdom, they would already be preparing for the next step of the plan, training their soldiers, forging new swords, mapping out the lines of battle with what information they had… and waiting for me to do my part too.
It was snowing when I arrived outside the king’s court. The white shone starkly against the dark emerald roofs and crimson ledges,the frost glistening like fine crystals. The palace looked more remote than ever in the falling snow, a place made for ghosts instead of mortals, its cold stillness like the silence between breaths. All the marble steps had been swept clean by maids at hourly intervals, with salt spread over them to melt the ice and prevent anyone from slipping. From both sides, a silent row of guards waited, their halberds raised to head height, their eyes staring straight ahead. I tightened my grip on the tray of wine and made my way carefully up, my cheeks pink from the cold.
The court was empty, with only Fuchai spread out on his throne, head dipped back, one leg dangling over the gilded armrest. Locks of crow-black hair tumbled past his brows, and the black fox fur draped around his neck made him resemble a deity of devastation and destruction.
Then he saw me, and he snapped instantly into a sitting position, a smile blooming at the corners of his lips. There were times when he gazed at me with such pure sincerity, such boyish eagerness, that I almost forgot how much I loathed him.
