Fullepub 
Chapter Thirty-Two: Despite their Best Efforts
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
DESPITE THEIR BEST EFFORTS
After getting an ecstatic response from Gao Qiu to the Match Crowning idea, I voice-call Sima Yi about convincing Central Command to let it happen, arguing that it’d be contradictory to keep depriving us of honors while at the same time saying we should be trusted to risk the counterattack. Sima Yi promises to do his best to arrange it.
Relieved by the sense that things are finally moving away from certain doom, I wait in Yizhi’s chambers for him to come back.
Motor beeps, human clamor, and smoky air drift up the mountain and through the balcony from the valley of earthbound stars that is Chang’an. Pale lanterns with dark wood frames dangle above an absurdly large bed. Yizhi’s room is bigger than our entire suite at the Wall. I first explored it while drunk out of my mind from Gao Qiu’s liquor the night before. There’s a whole side room dedicated to luxury silk robes that I could not stop rubbing against my burning face. A dedicated skin-care fridge that I made fun of for at least ten minutes. A glittering washroom that blew my mind with its carved crystal tub and hot water that could run at any hour. Another side room is filled with glass shelves lined with Chrysalis figures, which Yizhi sheepishly admitted he never told me about out of a fear of offending me.
He shouldn’t have worried. I have nothing against Chrysalises themselves. It’s not like I wouldn’t want humans to annihilate the Hunduns and end this nightmare at the root. What I hate is the pilot system that insists girls are an unavoidable sacrifice in the process.
My wandering gaze lingers on an ink brush painting that spans the wall behind the bed, depicting Chrysalises and Hunduns charging at each other. In the clouds above them, gods with robes like colored mist are plucking guqin lutes.
A scene that could exist only in fantasy. In reality, no one knows what the gods look like, and no one’s been physically helped by them in battle. We know they’re up there; Big Sister and I used to watch for the twinkling speck of the Heavenly Court as it orbited over our skies every few months. And we’ve all heard some of their legends: Nüwa the Snake Goddess molding the first humans out of clay, Chiyou the God of War commanding ghosts and demons into battle, Zhurong the God of Fire fighting Gonggong the God of Water, and so on. But if the stories are true, it begs the eternal question—why don’t they use their incredible powers to help us against the Hunduns? No matter how sincerely we pray to them, they’re as aloof as cats, and don’t seem to care too much about us. All they do is drop cryptic schematics of technology and knowledge for our scholars to figure out, once we offer enough tribute—mostly spirit metal. It’s so strange and ironic that only the spirit metal from Hundun husks can be crafted into sturdy constructions. Whenever we try making anything from the raw granules from the ground, they always tarnish within days. They’re only good for being burnt as fuel for trains and hovercraft. And judging by the gods’ incredible demand of Hundun husks, even they can’t mimic how Hunduns stabilize these granules when they replicate. Funny that this isn’t even the Hunduns’ world, yet they can use this resource in a way we can’t.
No one knows what the gods are doing with so much spirit metal, but we know better than to ask questions. We just keep hauling Hundun husks to designated offering sites a little way outside the Great Wall, along with lumber, soil, seeds, various animals, and girls. Girls left in chains and then never heard from again, a fate eerier than becoming a concubine-pilot, since the gods never appear when we can see them, or even when there’s a single camera drone in range.
Gao Qiu was right about one thing: there’s not a stratum of the world that doesn’t need girls. Maybe we’re devalued precisely because we’re so valuable. The world is too afraid of not being able to obtain and control us to respect our true worth.
The door to Yizhi’s chambers unlocks.
I glance over my shoulder. Yizhi steps into the moonlit room, eyes brightening at the sight of me.
Anticipation rising, I drive my wheelchair to him. When I stayed with him last night, we traded kisses again, the first time we’ve done so since I became determined to improve my partnership with Shimin. Yizhi insisted that I was too drunk to do anything beyond that, though.
Well. I’m not drunk tonight.
When the distance between us closes, I pull Yizhi into a soft kiss. His mouth moves naturally against mine, a comforting familiarity by now.
“You know, I had a dream like this once,” he says against my lips, fingers grazing my neck.
“A dream?” I inhale his scent, clean and warm like something grown on a sunny plain.
“Well, more like an ongoing fantasy.” He lets out a small laugh. He curls a lock of my hair, his gaze mellow, wistful. “I wish I could come home to you every night and wake up beside you every morning. Not here, though. Somewhere quieter, like a cabin in the untamed mountains. With no one to bother us.”
The image is so painfully wonderful that the tenderness inside me arches to a peak. Then it shatters, plunging me into the coldness of reality.
“There would always be people who’d come hunting us down.” I pull away from him, hair unraveling from his fingers. My voice wavers on the verge of cracking. “We can’t just run. Your father would—”
“I know,” Yizhi cuts me off gently. “That’s why it’s just a fantasy.”
The warmth between us wanes, chilled by a new tension. Guilt weighs down on me like frost, but we don’t have time for fantasies. Especially fantasies of simplicity.
That’s a quality our lives will never have again.
“Listen, Yizhi, you know I can’t promise you anything,” I say in a quiet but firm tone. “Shimin and I are Chrysalis partners. I don’t know what we’ll have to do to pilot well together, and I can’t have any reservations when so much is on the line. So, be honest: does it hurt you, seeing me and him together?”
A flash of conflicting emotions passes over Yizhi’s face, but pacifies quickly. With a soft sigh, he sits down on the pale silk sheets of his massive bed. “Instinctively, yes. I wish I was him. I wish I was your Chrysalis partner. I wish I had his strength to protect you.”
My stomach twists into a knot. “Then I think it’s better that we don’t—”
“But then I remind myself that there’s no real reason to be jealous.” Yizhi’s gaze brightens again, clear as truth. The distant lights of Chang’an glimmer in his eyes. “Where does jealousy come from, if not an insecurity that I’ll lose you because of him? But that’s not how it works, no matter how many people believe it so. You’re not something to be kept or taken, and love isn’t some scarce resource to battle over. Love can be infinite, as much as your heart can open. I mean, when you think about it, love is fueled mostly by compatibility. Whether two people make each other happy by being close. So it’d be pointless of me to resent Shimin. However compatible you are with him, it doesn’t have anything to do with how compatible you are with me.”
I turn his words over in my head. “It’s just…compatibility?”
“That’s what I believe, at least. True love comes from synergy and trust, not merely chemistry.” He gulps, the groove of his throat bobbing in the moonlight pouring between us. “Growing up around here, I’ve seen too many people try desperately to control others to hold on to them. I never saw strength or dominance in it. Just a sad, sad insecurity.”
“Yeah,” I grunt, thinking of my father’s muffled screams through the walls, accusing my mother of glancing too often at Old Wang next door. I finger the layers of collars in Yizhi’s robes, revealing a peek of his tattoos. “That’s not what I’m worried about with you, though. I know you’ll never get that way. I just don’t want to trap you in pain.”
My eyes widen, vision splintering with tears. My mouth slackens in wonder.
Yes, there is. There will always be a place for him. And this is why. This is why.
“My fifth son is not the type to fall in love.” Gao Qiu’s words intrude into my thoughts, but I scatter them like dust. Yizhi met me when I was a powerless frontier girl. What ulterior motive could he have possibly carried for this long?
I have never been ashamed of loving him, even when my family would’ve drowned me for it, and I’m not about to start.
We don’t turn the lights on.
Yizhi doesn’t have Shimin’s strength to carry me effortlessly, but that’s okay. He helps me climb onto the bed, gentle as ever. Even the pain of cracked ribs is bearable with his hands on my smashed-up body, keeping me whole. I kiss him like only the air that has cycled through his lungs is safe to breathe. An automatic wave of nagging, terrorizing voices spikes in my head, shouting insults—whore, slut, cheater—but they melt in the heat building inside me.
I’m rising, rising above that collective bullshit. So many attempts to stop me from existing comfortably in my own skin, yet here I am, doing what I want with a boy nobody appointed to me. And it’s not dirtying me. It will not ruin me. It is not obscene, filthy, or shameful.
Shame. That was their favorite tool. A tool to corrode me from the inside until I believed I could only accept whatever lot they threw at my bound feet.
It didn’t work.
Despite their best efforts, I find myself worthy of happiness.
Everything they’ve used to bind me, I will turn against them. My looks are an illusion to snag their attention. My decadence is a bait to stir their outrage. My perfect partnership is a lie to keep them obsessing.
The very force of their judgment and hatred will make me unstoppable.
