She closed her eyes. Her fingers brushed her temple.
Brother . . . what have you done?
When her lashes fluttered open, Haorán was no longer standing. He had fallen to his knees before her—forehead pressed to the stone floor, fingertips touching reverently in front of him in the gesture reserved for royalty.
“May the heavens watch over your steps, and the nine winds carry your name. A thousand years of peace and glory to Her Highness, High Princess Xûen JingYi.”
Her breath hitched. She stared at him, the title hanging heavy between them. “HighPrincess?”
Haorán didn’t lift his head. “You are the emperor’s Omega sister, by blood and by rank. Second only to his mother, the Dowager herself. From this moment, youarethe High Princess of Xûen-Sarai.”
The words seemed foreign, unreal, as though they were being said about someone else. The supplication, even more so.
She was silent for a long beat before asking, “Did you know?”
He didn’t answer at first, but she saw him stiffen.
A strange quiet rose inside her. She didn’t feel like weeping or raging. The late emperor might’ve contributed the seed that bore her into existence, but he was no more a father than any man who’d whipped her for delivering medicine too late.
Still, her thoughts scattered like spilled rice on a lacquered floor, impossible to gather.
She asked again, voice trembling, “Did you know he planned to kill the emperor?”
Haorán lifted his head, but his eyes were on the floor. “The kingdom was unravelling, Your Highness. Famine. Sickness. Southern floods had wiped out the spring planting, and the people were dying of starvation, if not dysentery. And still, the late emperor continued to spend lavishly while entire provinces suffered. I believe the prince made his move to avoid civil uprising, ending bloodshed before it could begin.”
Her throat closed.
“My father destroyed my mother. He tried to destroy me,” she rasped. “And now, my brother has destroyed him.”
She looked around her. “Xûen-Sarai is a kingdom of ghosts.”
No one seemed to know what to say to her. Alexander held out a tiny piece of folded parchment.
“JingYi,” he said gently. “There is another message. Addressed to you.”
She took it from Alexander’s hand. She unfolded the thin slip of paper with trembling fingers. Her eyes skimmed the words once, then again.
The first line read:
Sho Meisha.
Her insides startled. The literal meaning was ‘cherished younger sister,’ a common enough address in a family of nobles, but not one she’d ever been addressed with.
She continued reading.
Sho Meisha,
You may come home.
The Imperial Palace that awaits you is unlike the one you left behind.
—ShunLi
She stared at the characters. Read them in her mind, then let them echo in her chest until their syllables jumbled and became unrecognizable. She held the parchment tightly, as if it were the only thread that tethered her to a past that had finally, violently, been burned clean.
And yet . . .
Even now, part of her reached for a reason to believe that ShunLi—a brother who had grown behind walls she was never allowed to enter—might mean what he wrote. That the palace she’d once called a prison could become something else.
