The King clasps my jaw. My heartbeat flutters under his fingertips, frantic, like a trapped hummingbird.
“You don’t know me, Lei-zhi,” he sneers. “You’re not as clever as you think. None of your kind are. No matter how hard you fight, it will be in vain. Paper can never triumph over Steel and Moon—you are too easily broken. You are weak, and we… I am strong. You will see. I will burn all your hopes and dreams to ashes, Lei-zhi—along with everything you so proudly, foolishly love.”
He spits the word like venom.
The palanquin has come to a stop. The curtains open, a breeze riffling the hairs on my neck where they’re standing on end.
Abruptly, the King lets me go. He leaves the carriage, that same unseen force pulling me in his wake.
We’re in a part of the palace I’ve only passed through a couple of times and never visited. A small collection of single-story buildings and manicured grounds are encircled in the distance by the shimmering loop of the river that winds through the Inner Courts. It’s quieter here than back at the King’s fortress, and the hush feels reverent, like at a temple. The River of Infinity was designed to attract luck from the gods. The King’s palace sits within the upper loop; this place is within its lower one. I’d always wondered what it’s home to. Due to its auspicious placement, it must be important.
Wind murmurs through the trees, thumbing loose petals and leaves through the air. One catches in my hair. It’s a gingko leaf, warm green. A painful yearning spikes through me, the color reminding me of Nitta’s and Bo’s eyes. Then the King’s voice whisks the sentiment away.
“Bring that with you. It will make a good offering.”
Offering. The word hums with its unspoken shadow.
Sacrifice.
Even if I didn’t have a personal reason to detest the word, I wouldn’t be easy sensing it now. We head to the central building. A ring of trees encircle it like a wall. As we pass between their close-knit trunks, I make out the shadowed figures of guards positioned under the trees and the house’s red-painted eaves.
“Heavenly Master. Eight thousand blessings on this sacred night.”
Two female demons are bowed low, one to each side of a short flight of steps up to a veranda ringing the house. The door at the top is open, waiting.
My heart was already beating with trepidation, suspicious as to where we are. It grows stronger as the King sweeps up the steps and through the doorway. I stumble behind him, not sure whether magic or compulsion makes me follow. The air inside is thick with incense: smoky lavender and pine. Relaxing scents that do nothing to calm me.
The King crosses the elegant living space, sliding open the paper door on the far side of the room. Warm light gleams within. I walk dazedly toward it. Below the incense, my nose picks up another scent, both familiar and not at all. There is musk and earthiness, laced through with sweet, rosy notes.
I hear her before I see her.
“Heavenly Master. This is a surprise.”
Her voice is nothing like how I’d imagined. The bull demons I’ve known have been men or soldiers, all roped muscles and thundering hooves and horns as long as my arm.
The Demon Queen’s voice is light. Musical.
Then the King moves aside and I see her. I’m struck first by her beauty—then by the blazing look she gives me as she realizes who I am.
She rears back, clutching her sheets to her chin. The lamplight beside her bed accentuates the pretty chestnut shade of the fur that envelops her body, gleaming with russet-red accents. Dark, long-lashed eyes flick between me and the King. “What is she doing here?”
The Queen’s head is dipped. Her horns—not as long as the King’s but grooved in identical patterns decorated with gold—point accusatorily at me. The strap of her nightgown has slipped from one shoulder, and she sweeps it back into place, chest heaving.
“I thought it was time the two of you meet,” the King says. “Gods know you have a lot in common.”
He doesn’t say it kindly. But something in the Demon Queen’s stare shifts and a kindred current of understanding passes between us.
A critique from him is a compliment for us.
“And,” the King continues, “I thought I’d show her the good news in person. As my fortune-tellers have reminded me, it is thanks to the Moonchosen the gods have finally blessed us with what I’ve waited so patiently for all this time, so it seems only fair for Lei-zhi to see the results her luck has brought me.”
Despite the warmth of the room, my blood chills.
It can’t be. Surely, not that.
As the King turns his attention to me, something flashes in the Queen’s deep-brown eyes, her expression shifting. A warning of some kind.
With an impatient growl, the King drags me forward. “The offering,” he snaps.
Up close, the Queen is even more beautiful. She looks quite a bit older than the King, but perhaps it’s the intensity in her expression, the way she seems to carry the heft of a hundred of years upon her slender shoulders. I wonder if I look like that. If anyone ever looks into my eyes and sees the things that have been done to me, senses the weight of the horrors I have endured.
Like all Moon castes, the Queen’s features are a blend of animal and human. On her, the mix is sublime. Her face is slim like the King’s, nose more delicate than the usual bull demon’s, with deep, wide-set eyes framed by heavy lashes. Reddish-bronze hair wraps her body, with pale patches at the base of her neck and circling her left horn, as if those spots have been painted by a brush dipped in moonlight. No doubt the royal diviners read auspicious signs in them when they chose her for the King, the same way humans and demons for so long have wondered at my golden eyes.
The Queen doesn’t smile, but her expression is not unwelcoming as she watches me take her in.
“The offering, Lei-zhi!” the King barks.
The Queen adjusts her position, sitting straighter where she’s leaning against the bed’s headboard—and that’s when I notice it.
The low swell of her belly.
It is small but unmistakable. Her sheets stretch neatly over it like a cocoon.
The results her luck has brought me.
My eyes flick back to the Queen’s face, my own stomach turning. Feeling stupid and slow, I thrust my right palm out. “It’s—it’s—” I can barely speak.
“A gingko leaf,” she finishes. “Thank you.” She reaches for it, but the King stops her.
“It is not for you.”
Both of us hesitate. Then my eyes go back to the bump the Queen is cradling protectively with one hand.
“Give it to him,” the King commands.