Chapter Thirty-Six: The Crown

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

THE CROWN

The day of my Match Crowning, I wake before sunrise, untangling myself from Yizhi’s warmth.

It’s strange, knowing I’m heading off to be paired for life to someone who’s not him. I don’t plan on stopping our relationship, even after we go back to the Great Wall, yet I kiss him with a doomed urgency, running my hands all over the inked skin I’ve gotten so used to.

I’m late when I get to the dressing rooms.

My mother is there. As I expected, Gao Qiu happily flew my family in. A little too happily, but who else could I have turned to?

After the production crew helps me bathe, my mother insists on sitting me down in front of an open window and conducting a pre-wedding hair combing ceremony, because she still thinks this is a wedding. I can’t help but smile as she raves about the wonderful city things she’s experienced in just two days.

However, more than anything, she’s overjoyed about my “marriage.” I haven’t seen her this happy…ever. I don’t know if it’s more sad or harrowing that she’s been crushed into dust by marriage, yet is ecstatic to see the same hammer swing toward me.

As my mother runs a sandalwood comb through my hair several times, a blessing for a long life and long marriage, Xiuying’s and Qieluo’s differing words clash inside my head. But when I think about how they are as people, it comes clear to me: I don’t want to be bitter and broken like Qieluo. I want to be at least halfway happy, like Xiuying.

And I want my mother and grandmother to be that way too.

What’s holding them back is that they don’t believe there’s any way for a woman to live a meaningful life other than by rearing a family. I’ll show them; I’ll prove to them that it’s not true. We can live for more. We can live for justice. Change. Vengeance. Power.

He slithered past the moral ambiguity of throwing two killers such a lavish ceremony by staging it as an army fundraiser. Seats were auctioned off in the name of the war effort. Chief Strategist Zhuge Liang himself flew in from the Great Wall to officiate at the event. I convinced Central Command to belatedly grant Shimin the King of Pilots title that he’s been deprived of for the past two years. It’s the perfect excuse to finally give him a pilot crown. He has to relinquish the cash prizes meant for the winner’s family, but we’ll be earning way more money for Gao Qiu from livestreams of this ceremony anyway.

During Chief Strategist Zhuge’s opening speech about my and Shimin’s power and potential, Shimin stands behind a secondary stage curtain, ready to be revealed first. Yizhi, Sima Yi, and I wait in the dim wings. With how elaborate my crowning look is, I’m barely managing to sit in a chair, clutching the heavy cloak I’m wearing to hide everything until the reveal. Yizhi carries the crown on a gold-embroidered cushion; a cut of red silk covers it. Sima Yi…Sima Yi just wanted to be here.

When the curtains open, and honey-golden lights break over Shimin, an uproar of cheers surges from Huaxia’s richest. Dressed in expensive designer robes, they rise around the eighty-eight tables scattered around the glistening marble banquet hall. Red tablecloths and paper fans surround every plate, looking like an autumn carnage of fallen leaves. This is a noticeably warmer reception than the one we got when we first arrived in Chang’an. We may still be controversial, but we’re stars now. These people don’t care about Yang Guang or Shimin’s murdered family; they care about being able to brag forever about getting a seat at this event.

As for the viewers at home…well, even if they’re checking this out to further hate on us, they’re boosting our profits.

The applause drowns out the clinking of Shimin’s armor as he marches up to Chief Strategist Zhuge. A gauzy, gold-dusted red sash wreathes around his neck to cheekily hide his army collar, trailing down between his wings. Two more sashes stream from the poofy metal feathers of his shoulder guards, whispering over the polished stage.

“Li Shimin,” Chief Strategist Zhuge says. “For your unrivaled contributions to the war effort, the Human Liberation Army shall now recognize you as the King of Pilots of the years 219 and 220 of unified Huaxia!”

Yizhi and I exchange a quick smile. Yizhi strides into the light with the crown cushion, drawing another wave of hoots and applause. He flicks off the red silk covering while crossing the stage, revealing the crown. A low murmur goes through the audience. They’re underwhelmed. Two weeks of hype, just for a standard double circlet with some feathers at the front?

I smirk.

Just you wait.

On cue, Shimin makes an offended face and raises an armored finger. Yizhi sputters to a stop.

Peering down in theatrical disgust, Shimin touches his finger to the crown. He closes his kohl-lined eyes. Red qi sweeps from the spinal brace of his armor and into the crown.

The feathers flutter alive.

Spirit metal from Shimin’s armor streams into the crown in the form of new feathers, pushing them along like a conveyor belt. Wings wiggle and flare out of the crown, as if a bird shaking off a downpour. The banquet attendees gasp in glee.

The wings flap larger and wider, four of them at the sides of the crown, gigantic and epic in a way only a King-class pilot could handle. The double circlets morph into a twisting and winding flame pattern. Crimson spikes jut up like crystals across the top of the crown, between the wings.

The audience lives for it. Gags for it. An already intoxicated Yang Jian at a table full of famous pilots snaps his fingers through the air while screaming “Yeeeeees!” Qieluo glares at him in the next seat over, but doesn’t stop him.

Chief Strategist Zhuge picks up the crown, fingers straining at the weight. Spirit metal is heavier than lead if you’re not connected to it.

“Welcome to the Hall of Fame, my King.” He smiles while placing the crown on Shimin’s head. Shimin has to bend quite low to let it happen.

When Shimin straightens again and opens his eyes, he lights up with not only Fire qi, but his secondary Earth qi as well. Meridians like passages of lava and gold pattern the skin on his face and neck. His irises beam with both colors, a ring of shining yellow around a ring of vicious red. Radiant gusts of qi stir into his armor and crown, making them look alive with fire.

At last, he looks complete. Like a true pilot.

I hear a sniffle beside me.

I gape. “Strategist Sima, are you…crying?”

To my surprise, he doesn’t deny it.

“I still remember when we fetched him out of that prison camp. It took six days to get him to speak a word.” Sima Yi wipes his eyes with his knuckles, then swats my shoulder. “Anyway, go.”

Giving a half-hearted grunt, I rise from the chair with his help. My armor gives me the strength to stand in spite of my healing wound. Cautiously, I shuffle onto the stage behind yet another expanse of curtains. My heartbeat picks up when I settle at center stage, behind Chief Strategist Zhuge’s silhouette. He talks about how Balanced Matches can help each other grow, planting the first seed of a redemption arc for me and Shimin.

“There’s nothing that rocks people to the soul more than a genuinely good redemption story,” Gao Qiu said to us a few days ago. “After you return victorious, preferably with a self-sacrificing move in the climactic battle, even your worst critics won’t know if they have the moral high ground to keep hating you. The ambiguity of your characters will spark conversations for years to come.”

The blood thrumming in my ears almost makes me miss my introduction.

“And now, the girl who has done the impossible—Wu Zetian!”

The curtains wheel apart. Lights stab my eyes. I decide last-second to close my eyelids altogether. Only after several seconds of the cheering do I open them, slowly, tauntingly.

Yizhi and Chief Strategist Zhuge back away into the wings. I step up beside Shimin without looking at him, heavy cloak dragging over the stage. The banquet attendees lean forward in their seats, squinting, as if trying to X-ray what I’m wearing beneath.

I milk the moment, sweeping a cool gaze over them.

Then I unfasten my cloak from the inside and throw it off with a hurl of my armor wings.

The audience explodes with delight. Yang Jian forgets he’s holding a goblet and spills half his drink over Qieluo while pumping his arms.

I like him a lot better than his distant cousin who I killed.

My crowning look is honestly not that complex, but it is grand. Red, gauzy silk billows under the phoenix-like tails of my armor skirts, so voluminous that I’m now nearly as wide as I am tall. I’ll have to crush all this down in a second for Shimin to reach my head. A storm of golden feathers spirals out of the red gauze near the bottom. Rubies on gold string dribble over the rest of my armor. The same gold-dusted sashes as Shimin’s dangle from my shoulder guards.

As I turn and look up at him, I try not to sway under the weight of my elaborate hairstyle, made possible by wrapping my hair around several wig bundles. Bejeweled gold pins stick up around it like sun rays. The style barely leaves enough room around my forehead for the crown.

“Wu Zetian.” Shimin speaks, the sound conducted through the banquet hall by a hidden microphone. I can practically feel the audience hold a collective breath, because this is the first time they’re hearing his low, rumbling voice. “May our hearts beat in sync, and may our Chrysalis vanquish the Hunduns.”

Carefully, he lifts the top circlet of his crown off his brow. Two of the four wings come with it.

My composure almost cracks as I meet his pained gaze. He must be the only pilot to crown a Match who doesn’t belong to him.

Then again, I don’t belong to anybody, and I never will.

I peer past him to Yizhi in the shadows of the stage wings, who smiles and flashes a thumbs-up.

Releasing a slow breath from my nose, I bow my head.

There’s only the slightest shake in Shimin’s voice as he continues. “Under witness of Heaven, Earth, and our ancestors, I hereby declare you my One True Match.”

He places the magnificent crown on my head. In the same instant, I mentally slither a line of spirit metal up the back of my neck to connect with it. Its boggling weight vanishes at once, becoming part of me.

Air shudders out from my rouged lips. Emotions war inside me when I think of the little girls who must be swooning across Huaxia right now, learning all the wrong lessons, wrong aspirations, and wrong dreams from this. Such is the price we’re paying for survival: allowing this terrible system to use us as bait.

My real redemption can only come from overhauling the pilot system before those girls get old enough to enlist. I don’t know how yet, but I will surely have power I can leverage after coming back glorious from the counterattack.

I lift my head with the same dramatic blaze of qi through my irises, meridians, and armor as Shimin. They shine Metal white first, then Fire red joins in with a slight delay. When I first began pilot training, my secondary qi fluctuated between Water and Fire. Sima Yi said it was really weird, because people usually lean one way or the other, but he has since taught me how to coax out Fire over Water. That’s the type best for defeating the Metal-type Emperor dwelling in Zhou.

Hand in hand, Shimin and I bat our wings and lift off the stage. The winds of our wingbeats lash around us. The audience bursts into screams and applause yet again. Their chairs screech back in unison, echoing through the hall, as they rise to their feet.

We turn to them in sync, the King and Queen of Pilots peering down at these wealthy, sheltered weaklings who must rely on our strength. In the days before Qin Zheng’s death, they would’ve dropped to the floor and kowtowed to us. Now, we’re only transient entertainment. We stay in character to keep their interest, looking not much more than bored (him) or smug (me).

Until my attention snags on a particular table in the back.

As if hunted beasts herded into a gilded pen, a few Sui-Tang strategists are here. An Lushan is among them, begrudgingly clapping along.

I squeeze Shimin’s hand tighter. It takes all my restraint not to break character. My body twitches with the urge to fly over and stab a hairpin into An Lushan’s jugular.

Yet a flood of awe surges under the blinding red in my mind. Gao Qiu has done it. He has not only pacified our most pressing enemy, but made him one of our party guests.

I glance at Gao Qiu’s table through the corner of my eyes. He stares straight back, smirk at the ready, as if awaiting this exact moment.

Hate boils alongside my awe, but I swallow them both down. This is not the time to fixate on him. I have to focus on pulling off the counterattack that’s definitely happening now. Or I’ll be dooming two whole provinces.