“Who’s not toilet trained? Lei?”
Baba and I laugh. We lead little Kuih onto the veranda, our beautiful garden spreading out before me. Afternoon sun beams down on the overgrown grass and herb plot. The old fig tree is heavy with fruit.
“The girls are going to love her,” I say, tickling a spot behind Kuih’s ear, one Bao used to love, too.
“Shala and Aoki already do,” Baba says.
I hesitate. “Are they doing all right?”
“As well as you could expect,” he replies. He smiles. “I’m glad you decided to come home, Lei.”
Home.
Though I smile back at him, an ache rises in my chest, remembering what I understood that last day in the palace. I am home—and it feels even more special to have the girls with me. But I’m also far from another home.
Once more, after all this time fighting to get back to each other, I am half a world away from Wren.
Life in my house has never been noisier.
Even outside shop hours, when the front room bustles with people clamoring to get a look at me, the Moonchosen, the girl who slayed the King, our once-quiet walls are filled with activity. Tien pretends to hate it, while not-so-secretly thriving at the opportunity to boss so many new people about. Baba is renewed, more energetic than I’ve ever seen him since Mama’s death. Though he told me it almost killed him and Tien not to join the battle at the palace, they stayed at the camp like I’d asked, and they’ve been making up for it by being as useful as possible ever since. Still, Tien eventually declared she’d had enough of kowtowing to clan lords and ladies who clearly didn’t appreciate her cooking enough, so she and Baba came back here to reopen the shop. Baba made me promise I’d join them soon.
I wasn’t surprised when Shala and Aoki decided to leave with them.
Shala told me she wanted a more peaceful place to give birth, though I sense it also had to do with getting away from the political hub the Jade Fort had become. I think she was afraid someone would try and hurt her baby once it was born. After the battle, Wren and I decided to keep Shala’s identity quiet for the same reason—as well as to protect her from questions and knowing stares. And even if many suspected who she might be, no one dared ask.
As for Aoki, I know it pained her each moment she stayed at the Hannos’ home. Wren told her about her family a couple of days before we left the Free Palace, so she could choose whether to come to the Jade Fort with us and the other girls. Aoki was inconsolable at the news. The thought of the pain she was in broke my heart. I wanted to go to her so badly, but we still hadn’t spoken since the night before the battle.
In the end, I think Aoki only agreed to come with us to the Jade Fort because Zhen, Zhin, and Blue were going, and she was scared to be apart from them.
At the Jade Fort, Wren made sure the Hannos’ best doctors and maids tended to Aoki. For their part, the other girls didn’t harbor what had happened too strongly against Wren. It wasn’t as though they were overly friendly to her, but when they saw us together in the hallways or grounds they’d stop to talk, and though their expressions were a little hard, I could tell they were trying.
We were all trying.
It was all we could do.
Then we received news of the twins’ family. Their parents and their brother, Allum, had thankfully escaped the battle Wren led at Marazi unharmed, but they’d lost their home. Though it had been destroyed by a stray cannon from Marazi’s side, Zhen and Zhin’s parents refused to have anything to do with the Hannos. They’d fled Marazi after the Hanno occupation, fearful of repercussions for having close ties with the court. They came to the Jade Fort to collect the twins, planning to relocate to the Black Port where they had distant family connections.
But the twins refused to leave Aoki until she was fully healed, and confessed they didn’t like the thought of leaving Blue alone, either, who was also without a home now, much less a family—or rather, her family had become us. That’s when the twins suggested we might all stay together for a while. Just until… well, none of us were sure of what until really meant, but we were sure it wasn’t here yet.
I knew without needing to ask that my father and Tien would love having the girls stay. So after sending a messenger ahead to alert them to our arrival, the four of us set out a month later, once the Hannos’ doctors were satisfied with Aoki’s recovery.
And at the last minute, four became five. Lill’s family had stayed on at the Free Palace to work; Wren declared that any palace residents who wanted to remain were welcome to, in whatever capacity they chose. I’d given Lill an open invitation to visit me, and her parents seemed happy to let Lill take some time to be a child for perhaps the first true time in her life. Just a normal young demon on a trip to her Paper friend’s home.
There was one condition to her coming: she could not call me Mistress ever again.
FORTY-THREE
WREN
WREN SIGHED, SWEEPING BACK HER sweat-slicked hair, half still draping her shoulders in dark waves. She padded down the hallway to her bedroom. The last rays of light—nights were drawing in earlier with autumn’s arrival—slanted in through the latticed windows. Wren rolled her shoulders, pushed out a breath against the pain in her hip.
Another long day of meetings. They were always draining, but today’s were particularly difficult. Each province had appointed a temporary governor after the war, but it was getting into the gritty decisions of how best to choose the official representatives. Some clans who’d initially agreed to their restructuring weren’t so sure anymore. It had led to some heated meetings.
Wren couldn’t tell if she was managing everything well. She was the youngest member of the New Council—the term was official now—but she was Wren Xia Hanno, and she had her father’s legacy to uphold, and it was she who sat in his place at the head of the table. Kenzo assured her often she was doing a good job. But that was Kenzo. He’d always reassure her.
Wren wanted the truth.
She wanted Lei.
She paused outside her door. For three precious months, she and Lei had shared Wren’s room. No matter how tough a day she’d had, she knew how each one would end: with Lei in her bed, her lithe body curling into her, Wren pressing her nose into the long reams of her hair, the two of them falling asleep—or not.
She wished so deeply she’d find Lei behind her door now.
Instead, she found someone else.
“Evening, honey.”
Lova was perched on the windowsill, the sunset gleaming through the shutters at her back, painting tiger stripes on her blond lion’s coat.
Wren moved to the table in the corner where maids had set out tea and snacks. “You should be careful,” she said, pouring two glasses. “Surprising a girl like that could end in serious injury.”
Lova winked. “Sounds like my kind of foreplay.”
“Lo,” Wren said. “Please, not now.”