My father did not answer immediately. This alone made your uncle fume. My father stood there, staring at the two of us. At our linked hands, my missing eye, your scarred face.
It is strange, seeing your own features in someone else. I’ve never thought that I looked much like him. But in that moment, my father wrinkled his nose, and Needlenose Shefali stared back at me.
“Your Imperial Majesty,” he said, “it is not illegal.”
“What?” said your uncle.
“By the letter of the law, it is not. The Heavenly Mandates make no specifications about who may enter a marriage, only that they must occur before any woman gives birth,” he said. “The Mandates tell us how a marriage is to be performed; they do not define it.”
I thought he smiled at me. It may have been a trick of the light, but I choose to believe it was real.
“If a priest has performed the proper rites, then, yes, Majesty, they are married,” he said.
A thorny ball in my throat. Was he going to bring up consummation?
The moment passed. He did not. I stared at the man in front of me, who owed me nothing, who had testified in our behalf.
My father.
The Emperor gnashed his teeth. For a long while, he said nothing and sulked on his throne. One of his wives, the eldest one, whispered something in his ear. But his lovely dark Surian wife clapped.
“Congratulations!” she said in accented Hokkaran. “In Sur-Shar, this would be a marriage most blessed! No silly old law in the way. Loudly, I would sing for your wedding march!”
Despite your wound, your smiling face was bright as dawn. “Thank you, Aunt,” you said.
“Do not thank her,” snapped the Emperor. “You think you are clever, Shizuka. You have lived a spoiled life. You are so accustomed to getting your way, you would flout tradition and integrity both. Lying with a savage. Your parents, if they lived, would be ashamed of you.”
At this your face changed. You sneered, baring your teeth in the process. The angry red slash across your nose was like a tiger’s stripe. “My parents,” you said, “would be happy we married for love, the way they did. You’d do well to remember that Burqila Alshara was my mother’s dearest friend. Did you not know your own sister-in-law, Uncle?”
He huffed. “We did,” he said. “And we know how concerned she’d be for your safety. Very well. If you want to sully your bed with a savage, you may. But it must face the consequences of its actions. A man is dead, torn apart; ink flows where blood should be. Do not think to proceed free from judgment because it is now an Imperial.”
Oh.
So long as it was not death. I could do anything, so long as it was not death. My thoughts turned to my horse. What would I do if they killed Alsha? That, too, was unthinkable for me. I’ve been riding her since my mother strapped me into the saddle when I was three. She was my horse, my Earth-Mare, given to me by the Grandfather himself.
So long as it was not death. So long as they did not kill my horse, or kill me, I told myself, I could face anything with my head held high. I was your wife. Somehow we were married and you had not lost your throne.
What was the worst your fool uncle could do?
“For the crime of killing Nozawa Kagemori, for perpetrating the massacre at Imakane Village, for the corruption of its blood and the danger it represents, we sentence the prisoner to exile. It is to leave our kingdom at once.”
Laughter. I whirled, snarling, trying to see who would dare laugh at me in such a moment. Only the demons. All the humans in the room covered their mouths in shock.
And there was you. Your jaw hung open, your eyes slick with unshed tears.
“You … you can’t,” you said to your uncle, your fire leaving you.
“We can,” he said. “Because she is of our blood, we must provide a condition for her return. But we may exile her, and we have decided that is the most just course of action.”
Exile.
True exile.
Already I could not speak to my own clan, already I was doomed to wander as a lone Qorin if I returned to the steppes. But if I could not stay in Hokkaro with you, what did I have?
I’d taken a spear to the chest. I clung to you with shaking hands. I had to leave immediately, he said, I could not spend the night with you, I could not worship you as you’d dreamed.
Shaking.
A life without you, without being able to hold you in my arms. A life waking to the rising sun; a pale imitation of you. An empty bed, a hollow in my chest. Silence where your laughter should be; cold where you once kept me warm.
Life without you.
It was happening so fast, Shizuka, I could not wrap my mind around it, I could not process it all. I’d had you. For one glorious hour, you were my wife, and everyone knew, and nothing could hurt us, but …
I wish he would’ve just killed me instead.
“Uncle,” you said, “she was protecting me. The man she killed was a demon—”
“We have heard you say this,” the Emperor said, “and it does not change our mind. The prisoner is exiled, until the day it returns with a phoenix feather. That is our condition. Men, take it away.”
Guards took me by the shoulders. Two, three, four, all pulling me back.
You reached for me. Your small hands took fistfuls of my robes. Tears streaked down your face, contorted in agony. “Shefali!”
“Shizuka!”
Fight? Should I fight against them? I could kill them, all of them, I could scoop you up in my arms and we could run away together and …
And you’d give up everything you ever knew. Your throne, Hokkaro, the lavish life you’ve grown so accustomed to.
Oh, Shizuka, my light, my sun, my wife! How it pained me in that moment, as we pulled farther and farther away. You kept reaching for me. You screamed at the top of your lungs for the guards to stop, but they would not listen, they did not care.
“Shefali!” you shouted. “Shefali, we have to be together again!”
“I’ll find the feather!” I promised. What other choice did I have? Oh, no one had seen a live phoenix in a hundred years, but I’d find one. If it meant getting back to you, I’d track down the gods themselves. “Wait for me, Shizuka, and we’ll be two pine needles! I love you—!”
Just as the doors shut, I saw you fall.
“Until the stars go out,” you said, “I’ll love you!”
That was the last I saw of you.
*
THE REST OF it floats in a haze. Guards took me to my rooms and allowed me to gather my things. I took one of your robes and claimed it was mine just so I’d have something of yours to keep. They took me to the stables, set me on my horse, and began the ride.
Three months I rode with them. For three months, I said not a word. Everything I did had to be supervised. Making water? One of them stood next to me and watched. When they ate, they insisted I did, too; when I refused, they forced open my mouth and made me swallow. My nighttime rides became a thing of memory. One of them was always awake, always watching.
I wept, Shizuka. I wept for you every night. So what if I’d lost an eye? An eye is not an essential thing. I was born with two; I can live with one.