Chapter 21

Ying meandered aimlessly down the long galleries of the Qianlei Palace, the fresh coat of lacquer from the crimson pillars tickling her nose. The itch to sneeze provided a welcome distraction to the wild thoughts running through her mind.

She stopped, looking around at her surroundings. Where was she?

She had emerged onto an expansive courtyard in front of an austere building with double eaves and a gracefully sloping roof, mythical stone creatures arranged in neat lines along the ridges of the roof corners. But Ying paid no attention to the intricate, majestic design of the building. Her gaze had been drawn directly to the fountain that was constructed in the center of the courtyard—a stone dragon with its jaw raised to the skies, spouting a torrent of water into the night.

A dragon.

Ying stepped forward gingerly, her eyes tracing the curvature of the beast's serpentine body, from its thrashing tail toward its savage jawline. The warmth of the hetian jade pressing against her chest seemed to grow into the flicker of a flame, searing against her skin.

Something growled.

A beast emerged from the shadows behind the fountain, eyes like the hollow pits of hell, baring its metallic teeth. A guard dog inched its way toward Ying, a menacing snarl still rumbling from its silver lips.

Another chimera.

Ying backed away slowly, her eyes still fixed upon the approaching creature.

It seemed to be guarding something, something important.

"Who's there?" a gruff voice barked through the darkness. A guard dressed in black brigandine armor stepped out from the building, hand resting threateningly on the hilt of his sword as he marched over. The mirror plate on his chest and metallic pauldrons reflected the moonlight, and as he approached, Ying noticed a suspicious black pendant suspended from a cord at his waist.

The hound snarled in reply, its rear arched and ready to pounce.

Then someone grabbed her by the wrist, and a pair of broad shoulders blocked her view of the advancing guard.

"Beile-ye," the guard greeted, bringing his fist across his chest in salute. He grabbed on to the hound's leash, stopping the creature from dashing forward.

"Go back to your station, nothing is the matter here," Ye-yang said.

Ying craned her neck to get a better glimpse of the guard's pendant, but the man had already turned and headed back toward the building.

Ye-yang spun around and looked at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable, then he dragged her back down the long gallery. It wasn't until they left the stone fountain far behind that he finally slowed his pace and came to a stop. He let go of her hand.

"You're not supposed to be wandering around the palace on your own. If I had arrived a moment later, you would have been torn apart by that guard dog," he said, voice lowered as if he was afraid that someone would overhear.

"I don't need rescuing," Ying retorted. "I didn't ask for you to trouble yourself with saving me." Seeing Ye-yang made her simmering resentment boil over. That he appeared so calm and composed despite everything that had transpired in the banquet hall only infuriated her further.

"Why are you throwing a tantrum?"

"I'm not. I just don't think an insignificant person like myself is worth your time and energy, that's all, Beile-ye." Ying bobbed her head patronizingly, then swiveled on her heel to leave.

Ye-yang reached out and took hold of her hand, and the warmth of his fingers against her palm sent a shiver up her spine.

"Aihui Ying, I haven't given you permission to leave."

Ying felt a lump rise up her throat. She let the fourth beile spin her around like one of those stiff wooden dolls they sold in the markets.

"Look at me," he said.

She refused, tilting her head away. She didn't know what she would do if she looked at his face now, if she could do enough to stop the tears from spilling from her eyes.

"Ying," he said, pressing her hand against his chest, "you know what my circumstances are like. I couldn't reject the edict. Doing so in front of all those officials and the Qirin ambassador would have been a direct affront to the High Commander. Did you think about the consequences? Not just for me, but also for you. Remember what you're here for. Don't you want to prove that you deserve a place in the guild? We have committed treason by hiding your identity and sending you into the guild's trial. If you are exposed now, we will have achieved nothing!"

"I don't need the reminder," Ying replied stiffly. The anger inside her subsided as quickly as it had risen, leaving behind a bitter aftertaste of resignation. She had been upset, but not enough for it to cloud her reason. Ye-yang's words were true. A man like the High Commander would not have allowed his pride to be trampled upon at a setting like that, in front of so many pairs of watchful eyes. He had not asked Ye-yang a question—he had issued an order.

Even without the marriage edict, your paths do not belong together. If he chooses you, he will lose everything.

Qorchi's words suddenly floated back to mind. He had not been explicit, but she knew what the steward had implied. She had become Ye-yang's weakness, and her presence in his life, in his heart, would become his liability.

Whatever was between them, this irrational, unfathomable connection, had to end somewhere.

She took a deep breath, letting her own thoughts sediment inside her mind.

After a long silence, she said, "You are right, Beile-ye. I should not have forgotten what I came here for." She pressed her palms against his shoulders and pushed him away, still keeping her gaze directed at the floor. Tears were already misting up her eyes. "I am here for only two reasons, to seek my father's killer and to finish his work in the guild. That is all. We should never have gotten entangled in all this. Our paths were never meant to cross. Perhaps we should keep it that way."

Ye-yang's brows knitted together in a frown. "Do you mean that? Do I really mean nothing to you?" he questioned. "Give me some time, Ying. Trust me, I have my plans."

"I owe you a debt of gratitude for helping me get this far, Beile-ye, and I will do whatever is within my means to repay you for it."

The light in Ye-yang's eyes seemed to fade.

"And you will not bat an eyelid when I bow before Abka Han together with your sister and take her as my wife?" he challenged.

But she was done with this fight. What did he expect her to say? Did he expect her to say that she would wait for him indefinitely, when she had no inkling of those "plans" he claimed he had? She did not think she had it in her to sit quietly and wait for someone else to dictate her future. That was not who Aihui Ying was.

Ying dropped to her knees, prostrating against the cold stone floor. Her tears stained the slate a darker shade of gray. She prayed he wouldn't see.

"Nian is a good girl and she will run your household as best as she can," she said. "Please treat her well, Beile-ye."

Each word that left her lips was like an icy dagger stabbing at her heart, and she bit down hard on her lip so the metallic taste of blood would keep her mind sober.

Ye-yang flexed his fingers, repeatedly clenching and unclenching his fists. The creases across his forehead deepened, marring his usual composure.

"Fine," he said, "if that is what you want. Forget everything that happened. I apologize for my impulsiveness. It was ill-considered." He turned and walked away, curt footsteps clipping against the stone floor until they faded into the silence.

Ying was alone once again.

She lifted her head, staring vacantly at the empty corridor. The tears spilled from her eyes like a wretched waterfall, reminding her of how she had betrayed her own heart.

Even after the night winds had dried the streaks from her face and her reservoir of tears had been drained, the painful throbbing inside her chest remained. Ying didn't know how long she had been squatting along that gallery. Was the banquet already over?

She slowly dragged herself back to her feet, trudging one step at a time.

"This is for the best," she murmured. "You did what you had to do."

Her heart was still unconvinced.

She had wanted so much to run up to Ye-yang as he walked away from her, to cling to his arm and tell him that she didn't mean a single word she had said, that she didn't want him to marry anyone else—but she didn't. She couldn't. Just as he understood her circumstances and recognized what she was striving toward, she did likewise.

Ye-yang was in the eye of a treacherous political storm, with dozens of arrows pointing toward his back. One wrong step could destroy him entirely, as it had his older brother. As an Aogiya, there was no brotherhood to speak of, and it would always be ruler and subject before father and son. Ye-yang had his ambitions. She had seen the determination in his eyes when he had chosen to lead the march on Fu-li despite his injuries. He had carefully calculated each move like the shrewd weiqi player that he was, and he could win—she knew him well enough to know that.

She could not let herself become that pebble in his path, that obstacle that made all his efforts go to waste. If he defied his father's wishes, he would lose the succession battle.

And then there was Nian. Dear, sweet Nian, whom she would gladly have given the world to. How could she bear to break Nian's heart?

"Aihui Yi—Min!"

Ying turned to find Ye-kan walking toward her with large strides, a merry glimmer in his eyes. Unlike the drab gray robes she was used to seeing him in, the fourteenth prince was decked in a dignified outfit of forest-green silk with silver embroidery, much like the other beiles. She was surprised at how striking he appeared, the clothes fitting his broad shoulders and tall frame in a highly flattering manner. Behind him trailed two skinny attendants, scurrying along to keep up with the prince's footsteps.

She forced out a stiff smile. "Didn't expect to see you here," she said. "Almost mistook you for a grown man, with you dressed like that."

"I am a grown man!" Ye-kan retorted, thumping his chest confidently.

"You should not be speaking to the prince in this impudent manner!" one of the attendants hollered, his thin mustache quivering with displeasure. "You shall address the prince as—"

Ye-kan smacked the man on the head. "I haven't even said anything, so what makes you think you have the right to give a lecture!" he berated. "Get out of here. I don't need the two of you leeches sticking around."

"But, Your Highness, palace decorum dictates that—"

"Are you questioning my orders?" he raised his voice. "If you say one more word, I'll have you dragged out and given twenty strokes."

The attendants blanched, then they bowed hurriedly and scrambled away like two terrified ants.

"You didn't need to be so hard on them," Ying said. "They were only trying to do their job."

"That's nothing. One of the perks of having a terrible reputation," the prince said dismissively. "They need to know their place in the pecking order. So, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at the Qinzheng Hall with the others?"

"I needed some air," she fibbed. "Not angry with me anymore?"

Ye-kan shot her a dirty look, his lips twisting into a scowl. "I'm an exceptionally magnanimous person. I don't bear grudges against lesser beings."

The duo continued walking until they emerged through a moon gate and entered what looked to be the palace gardens. The pebble-lined path was lit by candles that had been carefully placed in lanterns carved out of stone, gently illuminating the meticulously pruned blossom trees that sprinkled the garden. At the end of the path, a circular pavilion bordered a pond whose waters shimmered mysteriously under the moonlight.

"It's so tedious, isn't it? I hate those banquets. I skip nine out of ten of them, but my e-niye's called my bluff now," Ye-kan said. "Usually when I feign illness she lets me off the hook, but today she sent someone down to my manor to escort me here, insisting that recuperating in the palace would be better for me. It's a good thing I happened to be at the manor when her steward arrived and not at the guild, else my cover would have been blown!"

"Why don't you tell your mother that you want to enroll in the guild?"

Ye-kan shook his head vehemently. "She'll skin me alive if she finds out. She doesn't think engineering is a worthwhile pursuit. In her own words,‘princes are meant for bigger things,'and by bigger she means sitting on the High Commander's throne."

"Aren't you the least bit interested in it?"

"Should I be? If it's meant to be mine, it'll be mine. If it's not, then I'm not going to make my hair turn white over it. I've kept on fairly good terms with all my brothers for a reason—I'm not that naive, you know."

Ying smiled, impressed by the maturity that Ye-kan seemed to have when navigating his family's complex politics. "May you always be so enlightened," she mumbled.

She wondered if and when Ye-kan would be forced to grow up, to step out from under the shade of his mother's shadow and assume the burden of being an Aogiya, just like Ye-yang and the other princes had. She looked up at the full moon and prayed that the day would never come.

Then she remembered something.

"Ye-kan, do you know of a courtyard in the palace that has a fountain of a stone dragon?"

The prince tilted his head, blinking thoughtfully. He nodded, saying, "The courtyard in front of the Aogiya ancestral hall. How did you know? The ancestral hall and its surrounding courtyards are supposed to be out of bounds to anyone who doesn't belong to the clan. You could be flogged if anyone caught you there, that's if you don't meet the hellhounds first."

Ying shuddered at the reminder of the ferocious chimera and its gleaming teeth. One close encounter with the assassin's nine-tailed fox was enough for her—and she barely made it out of that one alive.

"But isn't the dragon a symbol of the emperor of the Great Jade Empire? I thought the Antarans weren't allowed to use it at all," Ying probed, grabbing on to Ye-kan's arm. There was something sitting uneasily at the back of her mind, shifting and lurching in the shadowy depths like a monster ready to pounce.

Ye-kan scoffed. "The Qirin emperor thinks he can impose his own superiority upon the nine isles, but who's ever going to know whether or not anyone else uses the dragon as a symbol? Besides, there's no reason for us to kowtow to the Empire. The armies of the nine isles are just as strong, if not stronger than theirs. If that weak and feeble emperor can declare himself a dragon, then my a-ma has every right to do the same. The High Command has been using the dragon insignia for a long time."

Ying dug inside the cross-folds of her robe and pulled out the jade pendant that was dangling off its cord. She held it out in front of Ye-kan's eyes. "Do you recognize this?" she asked, her words rolling into one another in a hasty jumble.

"Where did you even get this? You're not supposed to have it." The young prince frowned, prying the pendant out of her fingers. He held it up toward the moonlight, flipping it back and forth.

"What do you mean by that? You know what this is, don't you?"

"Of course. How many times do I need to tell you that I'm not some ignorant child! This pendant belongs to the High Commander's personal guard. They're the most highly skilled division of the Cobra's Order, but you'll be hard-pressed to find any one of them in plain sight. They all carry one of these. How did you get it?"

Ying's stomach did a backflip as the monster lurking at the back of her mind reared its ugly head. She stumbled backward, almost tripping over a stray pebble hiding amid the grass.

"What's wrong?" Ye-kan caught her by the arm before she fell.

Reaching out, Ying pressed her palm against the gnarled trunk of the willow tree that stood watch over the picturesque pond, trying desperately to stop her own knees from buckling.

Everything was wrong. Her mind was rapidly slotting the puzzle pieces together, but the story it was painting wasn't the one that she had expected. The dragon wasn't just a symbol of the Qirin emperor—it was also a symbol of the Aogiya High Command. All this while she had been looking toward distant shores in search of her father's murderer, when the culprit had been standing right before her all along.

"But why?" she murmured. "Why would he do that?"

None of it made any sense.

The High Commander, Aogiya Lianzhe, was the most powerful man in all the nine isles. He commanded an army that brought all the other clan chieftains to their knees. He was a legend and a hero—touted as the leader who would help the Antaran territories soar to greater heights, who would help them break free from the oppression of the Empire.

Why would a man of that stature resort to doing something like that? And in secret—rather than out in the open?

"What are you going on about?" Ye-kan waved his hand in front of her eyes. "You don't look so good."

She certainly didn't feel so good. The revelation had struck her like a bolt out of the blue. Maybe she was mistaken. Maybe the High Commander had nothing to do with any of this. Maybe he had been hoodwinked by some corrupt officials who had authorized the assassination without his knowing?

Ye-kan tossed the pendant up and down on the palm of his hand a few times, then handed it back to her. "He gave it to you, didn't he?" he asked, arching his eyebrows.

"Who?"

"Who else? Number Eight, of course. You're not going to be stealing these off one of the guards, so someone gave it to you. That person can only be my dear brother, the chief of the High Commander's personal guard."

"The…what?"

But he said he didn't recognize this pendant.

Ye-yang lied.

And if he could lie about this, then what else had he been lying to her about?

Bile rose up Ying's throat. She bent over and retched, vomiting into the pond.

Ye-kan stared at the contaminated water in shock, his face twisting in horror. Then he abruptly lifted her off her feet and marched back toward the garden's entrance.

"Put me down," she said, taken aback by the prince's sudden action.

"And then what? Let you collapse in the middle of the palace gardens and wait for the guards to find you?" Ye-kan adjusted her weight in his arms, huffing as he continued striding on. "You should take a look at your own reflection in a mirror. With a face that pale, you'll probably end up scaring the wits off one of my father's concubines and then there'll be shaman rites and incense sticks polluting the gardens for the next month."

"Where are you taking me?" she asked.

"Back to the guild. I'll send word to Chang-en and the others to let them know you've gone ahead," the prince said. "It's just as well. I should slip out of the palace before the banquet ends and my e-niye returns. She always has a mountain of grouses about my brothers and I don't want to hear her grumbling till dawn."

Seeing that he had no intention of setting her back down, Ying sighed, giving in to his stubbornness. Strangely enough, Ye-kan's presence helped soothe her. Wen and Nian were here in the palace, closer to her than they had been for the past four months, yet she felt like they were only getting farther away, their paths diverging. Ye-kan helped to fill that gap in her heart where her siblings should have been.

"You're quite strong for a kid," she said.

The prince rolled his eyes to the backs of their sockets. "I've said a dozen times. Stop. Calling. Me. A. Kid."

"If you call me a-jie, I'll stop calling you a kid."

"A-jie. Happy now?"

"Good boy."

Ying obediently let Ye-kan help her into a carriage and set course for the guild, her mind rife with the latest revelations that had been forced upon her. She felt sick to the gut, but a physician would not solve anything. The only thing that could cure her discomfort was the truth—answers from someone who had asked her to place her trust in him on this same night.

And perhaps one who had been lying to her all along.