Chapter Nineteen: My Polar Star

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MY POLAR STAR

He can’t be real.

He can’t be here.

Did I black out and dream him up?

“Skies, Zetian—” He rushes beside me on the bed. His hands find my face.

My labored breaths come hysterically fast. I can’t tell if I’m hallucinating. A real-seeming ache throbs where my cheek bashed into the wall, but when am I not in pain? I trace the delicate angles of his features, shaking so hard I can barely make contact. Redness blooms around the eye he was covering, yet there’s no denying the spirit in his thick-lashed gaze, shimmering with love and terror in equal ferocity.

I throw myself against his chest and shatter into hoarse sobs, digging my nails into his robes.

“I’m so sorry.” He clutches my back as if I’d vanish if he didn’t hold on. “I should’ve slipped out sooner. I knew it was suspicious when Li Shimin got an opening to do something that drastic, and no one stopped him.”

As I blubber and cough, my head spins with the implications. I seize Yizhi’s hands to secure a hold on reality. The soup spill on Sima Yi…the fight…the pilots provoking Li Shimin…

How much of this was connected? Deliberate?

“Everyone wants me dead,” I force out of my ruined throat. Nausea rises from my belly. My shoulders refuse to stop shivering, as if my soul has had enough and is trying to worm out of this useless mortal vessel for good.

“I should’ve petitioned for them to post soldiers at your door.” Yizhi unsashes his robe coat and drapes it around me. Our hair stirs in the breeze it creates. The scent of ink, leaves, and springtime spins through the dim bunker, chasing away the wraith of liquor haunting the stony air.

I draw the robe coat tighter around myself and rasp, “How are you even here?”

“I flexed some connections. Slipped into an ongoing strategist class.”

“Why?” I push him away, though immediately ache for his warmth and solidity. “Look at…” I graze the edges of the hot, rapidly swelling skin around his eye.

“I had to come.” He brushes away the wetness at my lashes with his thumb. His throat bobs through a difficult gulp. “The moment I saw you coming out of the Nine-Tailed Fox alive, I knew I had to come help you in whatever way I can. I found out you were assigned to Li Shimin, but I had faith that if anyone could survive the impossible, it was you. And you did.” He breaks into a wide smile. Tears slip from his eyes, shining in the grimy light from the caged ceiling bulb.

“Why didn’t you tell me somehow?”

His smile wavers, though he wrenches it back. “You’re Li Shimin’s partner now. It wouldn’t have been fair to you to let you know I was around.”

He’s right. How am I ever supposed to think about that murderous drunkard again while Yizhi’s here?

“You should go,” I mean to say with conviction, yet my hands run down his torso, unable to keep from touching him. “I told you to let go of me. I denounced you.”

“Nothing wrong with that when I deserved it.” He curls his hand around mine and shifts it over his heartbeat. It thrums unabashedly fast. “Sometimes, I find it hard to stop prying for what I want from people. Not you, though. You always keep me in check. You made me realize I did a terrible thing, showing up to your house and putting you on the spot like that. I—I tried to buy you, for skies’ sake. I even timed it so I knocked on your door just before the hovercraft came, to catch you with your last-minute regrets. I’m sorry.”

I frown a little at how deep his plan went. But he’s apologizing now, isn’t he? “I’m glad you realize why it was wrong,” I mumble with my head low. The front loops of my hair dangle in the sides of my vision.

“Yeah.” He runs his knuckles along my cheek. “When you cherish someone for how amazing they are, you don’t pluck them from their roots just to watch them wither in your hands. You help them bloom into the incredible thing they’re really meant to be. And no, I’m not expecting anything back from you, so don’t feel pressured. This is simply what I want to do.”

My composure wobbles close to breaking again. “But your dream was to be a doctor.”

Yizhi scoffs. “Zetian, I’m young and rich. I could go back to that any time. But, you?” He lifts my chin with the side of one finger. Warmth flutters through me like the air-rippling heat from a fire. “You’re not something I could ever come across again.”

“Oh, shit.” My voice teeters toward an edge, high-pitched and airy. “You really do love me.”

Yizhi gapes at me. Then a disbelieving laugh rolls out of him. “All right, let me make this clear: Wu Zetian, you inspire me. Whenever I lose hope that the world can change, I remember you. I remember how you fight for what you want, no matter what anyone says, no matter what stands in your way.” He draws me into his arms and murmurs into my hair. “You’re my polar star. I’ll go wherever you guide me.”

My heart bursts open. Out spills everything it’s been holding back for the past two weeks in various prisons. I crumple against him and descend into another fit of wretched sobs, my tears staining the white fabric of his inner robes.

“When should I contact Strategist Sima?” His whisper makes a small yet irrevocable tear in the serenity.

My awareness lifts out of the haze it was drifting in. Everything sharpens painfully. Cold tingles numb my face. The pockmarks on the walls stare at me like a hundred accusing eyes.

If the army has any way to find out the exact time Xing Tian attacked me, we’ll have to tell someone soon, or the discrepancy will be suspicious.

Then, afterward, I’ll have to go back to spending my every waking moment with Li Shimin. The army cannot discover that Yizhi and I know each other. Who knows how they’ll twist it to control me?

Doom pounds in me like a funeral drum, but I straighten myself and steel my nerves. I have to make best use of this time.

I ask Yizhi to fill me in on everything I haven’t been allowed to know about my notoriety. How the public has really reacted to me, what exactly they’ve seen.

He shows me some reactions on the message boards. I’ve been a consistently trending topic for the past two weeks, despite the Sages’ initial efforts to censor mentions of me. It’s mostly speculation on what I am; people seem determined to believe I’m either possessed or not human at all. They can’t fathom the idea that “some random girl” could be so powerful, even though Yang Guang, Li Shimin, and Qin Zheng were all “random boys” before their enlistments. The pictures from today are turning the conversation to Li Shimin’s and my looks, though. Curiosity makes me scroll to the actual shots, but upon the first glimpse of his arm around me, a surge of discomfort hits me.

I cannot look at these while Yizhi is here.

You know this was fake, right?I want to say, but that would sound too defensive, which would make everything worse.

Instead, I change the topic, asking if he can research whether there have been any other Iron Widows. He says he can try, but the army keeps records of previous pilots on tight lockdown.

No matter what, I refuse to believe there is anything inherently natural about the army’s arrangement.

“How could they refuse to let girls have their own Chrysalises?” I say through clenched teeth. “It would be such a help to the war!”

Yizhi’s eyes darken. “What family would let their son enlist if there’s a realistic possibility that he’d be killed by a girl? I bet Xing Tian didn’t try to murder you just because of Yang Guang. He and the other pilots must also be terrified of you. You could kill any of them by dragging them into a Chrysalis, something that has given them nothing but power up until now. They have no idea how to handle that.”

I release a sigh that seems to go on for a thousand years. “I’m so tired of being a girl.”

“Yeah. If you were a boy, you’d be ruling the world by now.”

“Oh, I don’t know if it’s that simple. I’d still have to be the right kind of boy. That’s probably something you have to watch out for if you’re getting a wish granted by some spirit. ‘Make me a boy!’ Bam. I get turned into a big, buff Rongdi. Everyone’s so scared of me that they’d rather chase me to the wilds. I can’t get anything done.”

“That’s not untrue.” Yizhi quirks his brows in thought. His eyes slide aside before slowly sliding back. “You’re saying that because of Li Shimin, aren’t you?”

I stiffen. “I…”

“What’s he like?” Yizhi’s expression stays tame with what I can tell is active effort. “Does he treat you well?”

“I—I don’t know. It’s only been a day.”

“Does he drink a lot?” Yizhi sniffs the air. “It smells like a distillery in here.”

I tug open the drawer under the bed. The herd of flasks glimmers into view.

Yizhi’s eyes jump wide, then narrow stiffly. “This isn’t good. He needs to get sober. He’ll never pilot with full control unless he’s sober.”

“Okay, you go ahead and tell him that.” I heave the drawer shut. “Right after he comes out of solitary confinement for beating two armored pilots to a pulp with his bare hands.”

“Good plan.” Yizhi nods. “Now that you know I’m here, I might as well help you directly.”

“Wait, no, I was being sarcastic.”

“I know. But it’s fine. I will need to explain why I happened to be the one who rescued you. And, honestly, I kind of want to meet him.”

My mouth opens and closes. “Why?”

Yizhi sucks in a sharp breath. “Okay, this is going to sound really weird, but I’ve spent the past week digging up info on him, and he’s not who the media made him out to be. Did he tell you he was enrolled in the Longxi Phoenix High School? That’s one of the best in the Tang province!”

“High school?” I’d assumed he went to middle school at best. Anything more is overkill for anyone not aiming to be a scholar-bureaucrat under the Sages, and the bureaucrat exams are so rigged that it’s virtually impossible to pass unless your family is noble or rich.

“Yeah, and he was top of his class!” With animated gestures, Yizhi tells me about his research journey tracking down people from Li Shimin’s life. An old teacher, Wei Zheng, said that Li Shimin would always show up to class with fresh bruises on his hands and face, and he’d sit in the very back and never speak to anyone, but he’d ace every exam and assignment. His grades were so good that they couldn’t bear to expel him. He was bringing up the whole class’ grade point average.

As to how he, a boy from a family of construction workers, could afford high school, a club bouncer named Yuchi Jingde had the answer. Turns out, Li Shimin fought in this exclusive fight ring where rich people go to watch Rongdi beat each other up. The story from that end is that he would always be studying between matches, no matter how dim the lighting was. His eyes got really, really bad, but he was still one of their best fighters. Everyone found it mystifying.

“It is mystifying!” I splutter. “He makes no sense as a person!”

“Oh, wait until you see his art. Especially his calligraphy. I know I make fun of art students a lot, but check this out.” Yizhi takes his tablet out of his robes and swipes to a photo of a poem written on paper, something not commonly used nowadays due to the need to preserve forests in Huaxia territory.

I go to remind him that I’m a frontier peasant girl who knows nothing about calligraphy—I can’t even read the poem, with how stylized the characters are—but something about Li Shimin’s script makes me fall stunned. The strokes and lines exude a layer of abstract meaning, like tone made visual. A tone of grace and power.

I have to pry my eyes away.

“Anyway, it’s kind of sad.” Yizhi gazes at the poem with heavy-lidded eyes. “I think he was genuinely trying to make a life for himself before…you know. And they tried him as an adult, for some reason. Even though he was only sixteen.”

My heart clenches. I didn’t need to hear this. “Are we exonerating murderers because of their pretty writing now?”

Yizhi lifts his head in alarm. “Since when were you bothered by the murder of non-innocents?”

“The stuff with his family—that’s not the murders I’m talking about.”

“Oh. Um…”

“I just think—okay, the only reason you’re giving him these huge concessions is because your opinion of him started at rock bottom. The moment you found out he’s not the total monster you expected, you had no choice but to think better of him. Way better than he deserves.” I wince, pushing away the reminder of how Yang Guang caught me off guard. “But imagine if you were one of his classmates or neighbors, and you knew about this scholar stuff he did, and then you found out he murdered his family and became the Iron Demon. Wouldn’t you have the opposite reaction? Wouldn’t you stay far, far away from him forever? But it’s the same information, just given in a different order.”

“I mean…” Yizhi grimaces, then sighs. “I should still at least try to talk to him. Think about it: if I could find some opportunity to befriend him, it would be the perfect excuse to stick around you two. Then I could step in and help at any time without looking suspicious.”

My jaw falls. Yizhi, pretending to befriend Li Shimin so he can stay at my side?

I want to reject this idea immediately—I should reject it, because it’s begging to go wrong—but after what happened tonight, I can’t find it in me to push him away yet again.

“Okay. Fine.” I draw his robe coat closer around myself, praying this collision won’t end in disaster.