After some sips, Aoki’s head slumps. “The… the King.” Her eyes open wider. She tries to sit up, then winces. Her hands skim across the reams of bandages covering the lower half of her torso. “Where is he? We were—I was just with him…”
Blue and I exchange a pointed look.
“Aoki,” I say carefully, “we’re not in the palace anymore. We escaped. Don’t you remember? There was going to be… the King had planned…”
I fumble for words. The demon you love ordered your execution doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
Aoki’s forehead furrows. “He wanted to see me…”
In a flash, Blue leans over Aoki, their noses almost touching. “The King wanted to kill you, Aoki,” she growls with revulsion. “He was going to kill all of us, except precious Nine. We only just managed to escape—apart from Chenna. Madam Himura broke her neck right in front of our eyes.”
“Blue!” I cry.
She spins to face me, her dark azure hair catching the lantern light as it swings across her face. “She isn’t a child, Nine. Stop treating her like one. Aoki can handle the truth. She needs to.” She turns back to Aoki, who is looking between us with round eyes, her lips trembling. “There’s going to be an attack on the palace the day after tomorrow,” Blue says. “The Hannos and their allies are organizing it. Lei’s been helping them this whole time. She would have murdered the King long before now if that stupid thing on your wrist hadn’t held her back.”
Tears streak Aoki’s reddening cheeks. She gapes at us, then turns away, grimacing at the effort. “You should have let him k-kill me,” she whispers.
I draw back, her words a slap.
She takes another juddering inhale. “It w-would be better than this.”
Waves of contempt flow off Blue, as powerful as Wren’s magic. “You care about that bastard, even now?”
“Blue,” I warn.
She ignores me. “He didn’t care if you were dead or alive, Aoki! You meant nothing to him. None of us did. Why do you think he even kept us around after the Moon Ball, instead of executing us like all the others with a connection to Nine? He used you for information about her, and then he saved us for bait. He knew we were the only thing stopping Nine from attacking him again. And when he no longer needed us, he arranged to have us murdered—”
“Blue!” I yell. “That’s enough!”
As Aoki’s sobs rack the air, Blue climbs to her feet. “For once, Nine,” she says icily, “I agree with you.”
She glares down at Aoki, a strange yet familiar expression contorting her face: a mixture of pity and resentment and deep disappointment. I recognize it as the exact look her father wore when his daughter arrived for her own execution.
“Enough of this,” Blue orders Aoki. “The King doesn’t care about you. He never has. The sooner you understand that, the better. Don’t waste your tears on a man like him.” Then she tosses the curtain aside and disappears.
“Ignore her,” I say. “She’s… going through some things. None of that was about you. You know that, right?” When Aoki doesn’t answer, I go on tentatively, “Do you think you can sleep a bit more? You need to rest.”
Aoki watches me, her eyes shining. Though her voice cracks, she pushes the words out. “Are you really going back there to try and kill him again?”
I nod, even though it hurts. “We’re storming the palace the day after tomorrow. It should be the end of the war. One way or another.”
Aoki takes a small breath. “The end,” she murmurs.
The end of us being Paper Girls.
The end of her relationship with the King.
The end of Ikhara as we know it.
Whatever happens tomorrow, it will be an end—though that means there will also be a beginning. A future, no matter how changed.
“Not the end, Aoki,” I amend, reaching for something soothing to give her. “An end. There’s so, so much more for you to come. I know you think the King is your whole world, but he’s not. You have an entire future without him, waiting for you to take it.”
Her reply is scathing. “Is that what you’d say if this was about Wren? You’re not the only one who’s ever been in love, Lei. No matter how much you act like it.”
There was a moment once when I thought I’d lost Aoki forever—when I first understood she truly loved the King, or at least believed she did. And really, what is the difference? Like faith, or hope, love isn’t a substance we can take in our hands and hold out to someone and say, Look, I told you it was real. It exists purely within our own hearts. If anything, that makes it all the more powerful. If we could measure it, set it out on a platter for weighing, it would make so many things easier.
If only I could offer Aoki my love. It would barely fit in my arms; its brightness would be blinding. And she would see that in comparison the King’s was never anything more than a hard, empty husk.
I was wrong when I thought I’d lost Aoki that time—even all the moments since I’ve been back in the palace, sure of her hatred of me. This, here, is the final break in our tether. Her words a slice of a knife, sure and devastating.
“Leave me alone!” she cries, and I do as she says, stumbling away before she hears the sob that escapes my throat.
The second I find a quiet corner, I fall to my knees and weep.
I don’t know how long I cry. I must be well hidden, because no one disturbs me. My sobs have faded to a silent stream, my neck and the collar of my top soaked. It’s only at the growing sound of hoof-fall that I uncurl from my crouch.
Hooves, approaching fast. Far more than I heard leaving earlier. The sound stokes a drum of dread. In an instant, I’m ten years old again, screaming for Mama as her hands slip from mine in a throng of panicked villagers.
“You aren’t a child,” I tell myself, loosening the knife at my waist. “You have fought the King and his demons. You will not cower anymore.”
All around come frantic footsteps and shouts as the camp bursts into action. I join the fray, passing Kenzo, who doubles back when he sees me. He towers over the mostly Paper crowd, gray fur glinting in the lantern light and the flash of weapons being readied.
“Lei!” he shouts. “Have you seen Wren?”
“No…?”
“I’d hoped you were together.”
My heart flutters. “You haven’t seen her? She’s not here?”
He shakes his head. “Neither is Lova.”
For one absurd moment, I imagine the two of them have gone off to create a life for themselves. It makes no sense, and I know it’s only a cruel burst of jealousy on my part, but the image burns in my mind. Wren and Lova, the beautiful young clan leaders, spurring their horses on, faces thrown back in laughter.