Reunite with Wren.
I put out the lamp beside my bed and slip under the covers.
As usual, rest doesn’t come easily.
But the nightmares do.
I’m submerged deep, mired in blood and screams while the shadow of a monstrous demon looms over me, when something stirs me awake. In the gloomy echo of the dream, I’m disorientated—because something from my nightmare is here.
A monstrous demon, in this room. Leaning over me.
The King presses a finger to my lips. “Shh,” he whispers. His smile is a cut of jagged white in the darkness. “Let’s not wake the others.”
Shock locks me in place. I want to alert the other girls. We’ve got to run! Fight! Grab something, anything—the King is here, alone, unguarded. This is our chance! Yet my lips remain sealed. I only move when the King jerks down my rumpled sheets and seizes my forearm, yanking me out of bed.
His grip is painfully tight. He pulls me with him, the tips of his gold-inlaid horns almost touching the ceiling. A frisson of magic blankets us, and I realize this is what must be muffling his hoof-fall and keeping the other girls asleep. I could scream as loud as I want and they’d still not wake.
Maybe the King told me to stay quiet just to see if I’m still afraid of what he’ll do if I don’t.
Loathing boils within me—because I am. Especially now after Caen’s awful death and Aoki’s damaged arm. Yet like my voice, my anger is bottled, stoppered by my fear.
I grasp at my mantra. Fire in, fear out.
Ever since I saw the obsidian rock of the palace walls through the window of the carriage Naja and I shared on the way back from the southern deserts, I’d anticipated the moment I’d finally be alone with the King. Yet night after night passed, and the call never came. I’d felt powerful. Believed him too afraid to be alone with me.
Now, horror shimmers in my veins. Because what if, just like when I was his Paper Girl, he was only biding his time? Giving me a false sense of security to make it all the more awful when he finally tears it away?
On our way to the door, we pass the corner where Chenna, Aoki, and the twins lie in a huddle. The King pauses. Aoki’s fists are pressed between her mouth and the wall, as if she, too, is holding in a cry. She stirs, and I can’t help but glance up to see the King’s expression.
He’s smiling, but his eyes are cold.
“They’re so much more beautiful in their sleep, don’t you agree? If only they could be this silent and sweet all the time. But you never were silent and sweet, even in your sleep, were you, Lei-zhi? You have always been haunted.” He jerks me closer. His wicked grin cuts wide. “You live your nightmares, every moment of your life. You, Lei-zhi, will never be free.”
Then he leads us out the room, and it’s only then that I let myself breathe.
He marches me down the deserted, starlit halls of the palace. Dao-woven silence swallows our footsteps. I note with relief the direction we’re heading in doesn’t lead to the King’s bedchambers. Though we don’t cross anyone, I catch glimpses of moving shadows at the corners of my vision. The tail end of swishing robes. Glints of light that might be eyes. Shamans? Guards?
Probably both. The court wouldn’t let the King walk around alone with the girl who once stole his eye and drove a knife into his throat.
When we emerge through the fortress’s vaulted entranceway, the night is startling, fresh-aired and moon-glazed. Starlight glints off the royal palanquin waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
The usual four ox demons that carry it are absent. As we approach, the velvet curtain draped over its sides flaps open of its own accord. The King lets go of me to step inside. Before I can bolt, invisible hands wrap around my waist and legs, pushing me up after him.
I land inside the carriage sprawled on my front. It rises, gliding into movement.
“Sit,” the King demands from the bench. His eye slides to where my thin nightdress has ridden up, exposing my thighs.
I fumble to pull it down, even though there’s no desire in his look. Only derision. And something else, that same leashed fear that’s dogged his interactions with me ever since my return—the King doesn’t want me near him.
The knowledge emboldens me.
I climb onto the seat. We ride in silence, both of us watching the moonlit grounds glide by. The streets and courtyards lie still. Even the flowers seem frozen, hard, lifeless things silvered by the night. Before I tried to kill him at the Moon Ball, the King called me a beautiful lie. That’s how I see the palace. It would be so lovely, did I not know the darkness lurking under it. The cruel, numb heart beating malice through its veins.
“Are you happy to have them back?”
The King’s chafing voice breaks the quiet.
There’s a challenge in his words. I reply monotonously, “Yes, my King.”
“Wondering why I sent them back to you, perhaps?”
“Yes, my King.”
“Don’t worry. You will find out soon enough.” His tone is gloating, as it is anytime he holds a secret he knows I won’t enjoy learning.
Without warning, the King wrenches my hand into the air, the bracelet digging into my wrist.
“Clever, hmm?” he says. “It was Naja’s idea. She must have been inspired after losing her own arm to you. But it was my idea to make a twin. I know you, Lei-zhi. I know you fight harder for those you love than you do for yourself.” He makes a disparaging noise. “Such a naive way to live. Any smart demon knows love makes you weak. It’s the easiest emotion to exploit.”
“I disagree,” I say.
“Oh?”
“The easiest emotion to exploit is fear.” I go on, bolstered by the recklessness the King’s presence has always brought out in me. “The girls told me you stopped Aoki’s bracelet from cutting off her hand. At least they guessed it was you.”
He considers me. “Is that what you heard.”
“They were surprised. But I wasn’t. Because whatever you say, I know Aoki means something to you. Maybe not her herself, but her loyalty. Her adoration. No one else gives you what she does. Naja, perhaps, but that’s different. She doesn’t get to see the vulnerable side of you the way we do.” My words spill out in a bitter stream. “Aoki could’ve been just like the rest of us, disgusted anytime you touch us. Instead, she showed you kindness. Affection. True, selfless affection. And it threw you—just as much as my rejection of you. And you’re scared that if you really hurt her, she’d turn against you. Even if it was my fault it happened, it was you who ordered the punishment, and she knows it, and that terrifies you, you’re petrified to lose her love—”
“ENOUGH!”
The back of my head smacks against the wall as the King pins me there. The palanquin has tipped with the force of his movement. It takes a second for our invisible carriers to right it.