Descendant of the Crane(101)

But that would have been her greatest lie of all.



Later that night, her page visited her sitting room. “I found your former representative’s cell number, dianxia.”

“I didn’t—” I didn’t ask for it.

But she had. She remembered now. In the twilight hours, after spending a whole night with dusty tomes that revealed no answers, drunk on hopelessness and helplessness, Hesina had buckled. She had asked.

Tell me, she wanted to blurt out. She would visit Akira. She would explain everything to him. But she wouldn’t be able to free him. Seeing him would reignite her agony, and whatever they had between them would decay, just as it had with her and her father.

It was time she learned to let go.

“I don’t want to know,” she gritted out, then crossed into the corridors even though she had nowhere to go, no place to be.

Except one.



Like last time, the doors to Caiyan’s rooms were unlocked.

“Caiyan?”

His bedchamber was empty, but a flame twitched in the oil lamp on his study desk, and a lynx-fur brush, still wet with ink, had been left propped against a porcelain rest.

Hesina could wait. She sat on his bed and brushed a hand over the pillow logs, the same ones she’d leaned upon after the Silver Iris’s death.

Promise me you won’t jeopardize your rule.

She had done worse than jeopardize her rule. She had jeopardized her life. Lilian was dead as a result. Mei too. The blood of shame rushed to Hesina’s cheeks, and the urge to bolt stiffened her legs. She wanted to escape this chamber and every reminder of the brother she’d failed so badly.

But she forced herself to stay. The night deepened. The lamp burned out. In the dark she sat, ears pricked for the sound of his return, a sound that never came.



“Dianxia. Dianxia.”

Hesina had no sense of place or time. The blinds were uniformly dark, and she could barely make out the face of her page.

She rose, palming her eyes. “What’s the hour?” Her voice sounded frog-like.

Her page’s was oddly strained. “Just past the fifth, dianxia.”

“Then why am I awake?”

“The court is in session.”

“Court?”

“Yes, dianxia. Here, in the Eastern Palace.”

“I know where my own court is,” Hesina snapped, then regretted it. Her page had never done anything to earn her wrath, unlike the rest of the people in this palace. “Who called the session? Director Lang?”

“No—”

“Is she awake?” interrupted a rough voice from outside.

Hesina held up a hand before her page could answer for her, then rose and went to the doors. Caiyan’s doors, she realized, taking in the carved herons with a drop of the stomach. He hadn’t returned all night.

Five guards stood in the corridor outside. “What’s the meaning of this?” Hesina demanded.

“Viscount Yan Caiyan requests your presence at court.”

Her irritation died. “Did he say what it was for?”

“He only said that your presence is required.”

Her hair was a mess, and she was still in her underrobes. But Caiyan wouldn’t have called a court session at this time unless it was an emergency.

“Fetch me a gown and a pin,” she ordered her page.

He scurried and came back with an onyx pin and a sepia ruqun bordered in gold.

Hesina cross-wrapped the ruqun over her underrobes, stabbed the pin through a hasty up-twist, and followed the guards out of the inner palace without a second word. But as they neared the Hall of Everlasting Harmony, uncertainty crept into her step. She stopped halfway down the hall, mother-of-pearl pillars towering tall, much like the guards on either side of her.

“The court is waiting, dianxia,” prompted a guard from behind.

You’re tired. You’re paranoid. You’re not thinking clearly.

But once the doors creaked open, the guards seized her. They dragged her up the dais. They shoved her to the floor. And when Hesina finally managed to push onto her elbows, what she saw next hit like another blow.

Black-and-gold hanfu.

Hands clasped, right over left.

His shadow, waxing over the stairs as he descended from the imperial balcony. His voice, soft as if he were speaking to her and her alone.

“I, Yan Caiyan, first viscount and son of King Wen, accuse Yan Hesina of high treason.”





TWENTY-EIGHT





A MEANINGFUL LIFE IS LIVED FOR OTHERS.

ONE OF THE ELEVEN ON THE NATURAL ORDER


LIVE FOR YOURSELF IF YOU TRUST YOURSELF.

TWO OF THE ELEVEN ON THE NATURAL ORDER

Just like that winter nine years ago, Hesina was falling into freezing water. But this time, Caiyan wasn’t rapidly sinking, someone to rescue and protect. He was the one who had pushed her in.

She stumbled to her feet just as a minister spoke. “What is the offense?”

The woman was fighting a yawn. She wasn’t the only one. Hanfu were rumpled, broad-belts crooked, wusha caps tilted.

Caiyan’s next words woke them all up. “For colluding with a sooth.”

The court went still as new ice.

Then the full weight of the accusation landed, dragging Hesina under.