A Magic Steeped in Poison, page 17
“I’ve never heard that story.” I’m enthralled by the idea of standing in a place once visited by the gods. I peer down at the water to see if there is any magic hidden in its depths, but I see only stillness.
“You can try the water for yourself,” he says, teasing. “See if it tastes like the legend says.”
I raise my eyebrow. “I’m guessing you sampled the sacred waters many times as a boy?”
He laughs, putting his hand to his chest in mock affront. “Your words draw blood. Will you shame me in front of the gods?”
“Show me the way, before we are struck down for our disrespect.” I can’t help but chuckle.
Kang quickly scales the side of the boulder without hesitation. He moves unencumbered by his armor, like someone who has worn it all his life.
“There’s not enough room up here for both of us,” he calls out from the top. “I’ll wait for you on the other side.”
I acknowledge him while my hands run over the stone, searching for fingerholds. I find dips and cracks, use my toes to find leverage, then pull myself up, discovering imperfections in the rock to hook on to in the process. I’m slower and more careful than Kang, but it doesn’t take long before I pull myself over the top and onto the ledge above.
It’s even more beautiful up here. On a stretch of pebbled beach down below, Kang looks up at me with a grin. Handsome and tousled and wild.
Until his expression changes.
“Ning…,” he tells me, quiet and fearful. “Beside you…”
“What?” I swallow whatever I was about to say and follow his gaze to my left.
A green-and-yellow snake lifts its head at me, hissing. Its small black eyes are focused on me, a threat.
Moving slowly, I get onto my hands and knees, sliding my foot back until I can find a place to hold my weight.
“I’m not going to harm you,” I tell it, keeping my voice low. “I’m just going to—”
The snake darts forward, snapping at my arm, and I snatch my hand back, out of reach of its fangs. But the movement throws me too far in the other direction, and my foot slips.
I fall backward into emptiness.
The last thing I see is Kang’s shocked face, his hand reaching out for me. Then I break the surface of the blessed waters and sink into their cold depths.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The water quickly soaks into my sleeves and my skirts, weighing them down. I struggle to take a breath, and the water rushes into my nose and open mouth, choking me. By the time I regain my senses enough to move my arms and kick my legs, I’m already hopelessly tangled in fabric.
Fire ignites in my chest, even as the cold grips my limbs and seeps into my bones. Pain, like nothing I have ever felt, burns through me.
The water is sweet on my lips and tongue as it drowns me, the lightest sense of bubbles on the back of the throat. So, I think, on the verge of hysterics, The legend of the First Emperor is true.
Bursts of light pop before me, one after another. A sea of stars, streaming through the night sky. The current calling me into the promise of warmth, into letting go. But then I see Shu’s face through the dark, the way she said to me, I believe in you, and I know I cannot let the water take me.
Something grabs on to my arms through the warmth. I fight against the pleasant stream, allowing the pull to carry me away. We ascend, leaving the stars behind us, until I am thrown onto my back, the world in smears of color above me. My vision wavers, clears, and a face emerges.
I think I hear my name. Rough hands grab my shoulders and roll me onto my side. Forceful strikes hit my back. I expel water onto the ground, suddenly able to breathe again, taking in great big gasps of air. I struggle to push myself up with one elbow, and a garment settles around my body. I didn’t know how much I wanted the warmth until it’s there, and my teeth chatter against one another.
I sit up with his help, still sputtering.
“Are you all right?” Kang hovers, attentive. Something flickers inside me, like tinder struggling to light.
“You saved my life,” I manage to gasp out, my throat still hoarse from coughing.
“I waited,” he says apologetically. “I waited and waited for you to surface, then when you didn’t, I thought I went in too late.”
“I don’t know how to swim,” I admit, drawing the garment tighter around me, then I realize what I’m wearing: his outer tunic. Pieces of his armor are scattered around us. Chest plate, helmet, leg pieces. Tossed aside in his haste to jump in after me.
I start to shake, remembering the pull of that current. How if it wasn’t for Shu, my bond with my sister still waiting for me back home, it would have been so easy to give in. Strands of hair slide down in front of my eyes, making it difficult to see. I try to swipe them away, but my hands continue to tremble.
“I’m sorry,” he says. He reaches up and gently brushes the hair out of my eyes, the movement slow and deliberate. His touch slides against the curve of my forehead and my cheek, brushing against the tip of my ear.
“What…” My breath catches. “What are you sorry for?”
“For not reaching you sooner,” he whispers. His touch stops at the soft place under my jaw, where I am certain he can feel the frantic beat of my pulse. His eyes are pools of darkness, even deeper than the one I fell into. I can see myself reflected inside, a speck of light in the dark.
Kang’s concern draws me in, his touch a promise. He’s waiting for my answer, and I give in to the pull, leaning forward to close the distance between us. The lightest brush of my lips against his. He tips my head up and deepens the kiss, until it is a different sort of drowning, until we are forced to draw breath. The tunic falls from my shoulders as he pulls me closer, enveloping me in the warmth of his body.
We are both a little breathless when we let go of each other.
“Thank you,” I murmur, and try to self-correct: “I mean … for saving my life.”
“I’ll rescue you ten times over if I will be kissed like that every time,” he declares, making me laugh, chasing away my embarrassment.
“Ning…” His expression changes from amused to serious in an instant, and I know it is a practiced thing to have such control of his emotions. “You are the first girl who has ever greeted me with a swift kick to the shins. The first girl who has ever made me feel … normal.”
“That is decidedly abnormal,” I tell him after a pause, not knowing how else to respond.
“You asked me before … about Lǜzhou.” He touches his chest. “They marked us with a traitor’s brand. When I first arrived, I tried to hide it, but it made me look odd, wearing a tunic when everyone else was bare-chested. Then I realized they all recognized me anyway, so it was easier to stop hiding. It was a long time before they accepted me.”
I think he understands, as I do. How it feels not to belong.
Kang leans away from me, running pebbles through his fingers, not meeting my eyes. “They respected my father, because he fought against the raiders from the mountains. He defended their homeland, and my mother … she was descended from their clans. She was to be betrothed to the emperor, did you know that? When my father stopped the raiders, he brought her to the capital to be wed to the emperor at my grandmother’s request, but the marriage never happened.”
“The general claimed her as his own,” I say, repeating what was taught to me in the history lessons. One of the many crimes the Prince of Dài was accused of. Forcing a political marriage for his own gain, driving a wedge between brothers—
“No!” he says sharply. “They grew close on the journey from Lǜzhou to Jia, and she refused to have another. The dowager empress acquiesced, in time … but history will always remember my father as the one who stole another’s intended.”
I am beginning to understand that history is never so simple. Not the story of my parents, not the story of Kang’s parents, or the two of us … I quickly bury the thought, knowing it is something dangerous, something I do not dare to imagine.
I realize I can turn this into an opportunity to find out more of what the princess has asked me to uncover, even as the guilt gnaws at me in turn. “Do you hate him? The emperor?”
“I … I don’t know,” he says hesitantly. “He did everything in his power to destroy my family, but he was also a capable ruler in some aspects. He could have executed us all, but instead he sent us into exile, against the recommendations of his own advisers.”
I’m not sure I would have been able to say something so reasonable about someone who threatened the people I love.
“I wanted to meet him and see for myself the type of man my uncle was after all these years.” He shakes his head. “Now I will never get the chance.”
“The people at court … the ones you said were still loyal to your father…” I venture forth with more questions. “Did they tell you how the emperor died?”
Kang’s head swerves back to look at me, his gaze suddenly sharp. “Why does it matter?”
Careful, Ning …
“There have been rumors he was poisoned by the Shadow.”
He waits expectantly, and I decide to tell him, in the hopes it will chase away his obvious suspicion. “My mother was one of the victims of the poisoned tea bricks,” I explain. “That is why I am here. Why I need to win the favor of the princess.”
He considers this, frowning deeply. Finally he says, “My sympathies. I know the sharpness of that pain. My birth mother passed giving birth to me. My birth father was a commander with the Kăiláng battalion, who died on the battlefield. My adopted mother took me in, ensured that I knew I was wanted. Protected me even when there were those in her own household who were offended at my presence. When I lost her … a part of me died as well.”
He draws me closer again, this time offering only an embrace for warmth and comfort. I rest my head on his shoulder, even though I know I shouldn’t be grateful for this fleeting moment.
“But…,” he says after a pause. “You say your mother’s death is related to the favor you want to ask of the princess. Are you looking for vengeance?”
“I would ask for the head of the Shadow if I could,” I snap, and the vehemence in my voice reminds me of the anger that continues to simmer under the surface. I close my eyes and turn my face away. He has seen too much of my frustrations and my failures.
To his credit, Kang does not react to my outburst. He only plays with my hair, running the strands through his fingers.
“Did you know,” he says, his breath stirring my hair, “the women of the Emerald Isles are a fierce lot? They know how to fish with a spear and dive for pearls as well as the men. They are just as adept at spear-fighting. I doubt my father could have forced my mother into anything. It was said she challenged him to a duel for her hand in marriage.”
“Really?” I’m grateful he’s sharing a part of himself, offering a distraction from my sadness. I imagine a proud woman, one who is able to bear arms to defend her homeland from invaders. Who willingly uprooted her life to marry a man she had never met, but who found another instead. “She dared to challenge the general to combat?”
Laughter makes his shoulders shake. “She challenged him to see who could stay underwater the longest. He lost.”
I laugh, too. “I think she would have gotten along with my mother.”
“I know she would have.” He waits a breath before saying, “If she was anything like you.”
“Kang…” I straighten again, sitting in front of him so I can see his face. “I need you to tell me the truth. You once mentioned that the princess had a stone that can heal all illnesses … is there really such a thing?”
When he doesn’t reply, I grab hold of his hands, so he can feel for himself, through the connection that quivers there between us. A pressure builds in my head, like water against a dam. All my hopes, balanced precariously on the answer.
“I have to know.”
He seems taken aback at the force exerted through my grip. “I’ve heard rumors,” he says. “But…” He slowly extracts his hands from mine and places them on my shoulders instead. “If such a stone exists, don’t you think the emperor would have used it to save his empress or the dowager empress? That my father would not have stolen it to save my mother’s life? That the princess would not have used it to save her father? Do you think all those people would have died, if such a thing exists?”
I hear his words, but also do not. I cannot acknowledge such a terrible truth, that the foolish hope that keeps me in the palace—even through the mockery, the threats, the embarrassments—is a lie. That even if I won each round and finally emerged victorious, Shu may still die in spite of it.
“Who is it?” He regards me with those eyes that continue to see too much. “Who do you want to save?”
“My sister,” I whisper. “My sister is dying.”
My life with her has always been so entwined, waking and sleeping in the same room. One of my earliest memories was holding her after she was born, and now she may die at my hands.
Like our mother before her.
The pressure is too much, and it breaks me, unleashing the tears in a torrent. I sob in his arms. A broken, pathetic thing, ruining everything I touch.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Kang says nothing as he gathers me into his arms, holding me tight. More tears than I imagined I could contain leave me, spilling through my fingers.
“If my sister dies, I’ll have nothing left,” I tell him through sputtering sobs. “My father is already half gone to his grief, and I don’t think I can save him if Shu dies, too.”
He uses his thumbs to carefully brush the tears off my cheeks, but I push him away. I don’t deserve to be comforted by him, and I don’t want his pity.
“How can it be your fault,” he asks, “if it was the tea that poisoned her? You didn’t know.”
“Because I was the one who poured the tea.” I drag my sleeve furiously across my eyes. “I should have known to look for the poison. I should have seen the signs.”
He scoffs at that, and I press my mouth into a thin, burning line.
“Ning…” He pulls me back, that earnest expression returning again. “Listen, how long does it take to become a shénnóng-shī? Ten years? How many years could you have been training? Two? Three?”
Not even. Here and there, when Mother forced me to sit down during our shared lessons. But I don’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that.
“We trust the emperor to provide. We believe the Court of Officials will protect us.”
“What are you talking about?” I choke out.
“I’m saying it’s not your fault,” he says. “The emperor, the ruler of Dàxī, surrounded by all his guards, could not prevent his own death at the hands of someone who wished him ill. You could not have known about the poison. Even your mother, a trained shénnóng-shī, did not detect it before she drank it.”
“But…,” I say, uncertain. I should have read the signs …
“Someone is killing the people of Dàxī with the intent to spread unrest,” he continues insistently. “If you want to blame someone, then blame those who distributed the poison. Blame the officials, blame the ministries. But don’t blame yourself.”
I regard this boy, with his assurances, shattering my excuses with the confidence with which he uttered those words. Words that border on treason. And he also revealed something else: He knows the emperor died from something other than illness. But did the Banished Prince arrange for his death? Or is someone else responsible?
I know the princess wants me to ask the delicate questions, to coax the truth out of him. But I’ve never been that sort of person, able to hide behind smiles and flirtations.
“Are you here to put your father on the throne?” I ask him. Dangerous questions and dangerous games.
Kang blinks, surprised. “Not even my father’s loyal officials would dare to ask me that.”
“I don’t have any loyalties within the court.” I shrug, keeping my voice light, even though inside, my heart hammers, desperate for an answer to bring back to the princess, mindful of her threat against my family.
He regards me for a moment, then gives me a wry smile. “No, you are not like them.” With a set to his jaw, he continues, “There’s a darkness descending on the empire. The poison, yes, but also floods and earthquakes. My father believes a new dawn is coming for the dragon throne, but I still remember the girl I grew up with in the palace. Our grandmother would not have raised a fool, and I wanted to see for myself if there is still a chance for peace with Zhen.”
The sound of the bell reverberates through the cavern, signifying the change of day. I realize I have to return to the palace for the evening meal, or I will be missed.
“We should go,” he says, but he looks out at the water, shadows under his eyes.
I do the only thing I can think of. I lean over and cup his face, kissing him with gratitude. For holding me while I cried, for saving me from drowning, and for chasing those shadows of guilt away. The bell rings above our heads again and when we finally separate, he looks dazed, but he is smiling.
We return to the palace, the taste of him still lingering on my lips. Yet his answers conjure more questions that worm their way through my mind.
Just like the palace itself, tunnels upon tunnels, leading nowhere, and no exit in sight.
* * *
I worry Lian may be waiting in our residence, wondering where I am, but there are only the two maidservants. They make no mention of my damp clothes as they assist me with drawing a bath. While I’m drying my hair, Lian strolls in with grass in her braid and her glowing skin a shade darker, grinning from ear to ear.
