Descendant of the Crane(112)

So tell me, what will you do? Advise her to go away? You can try, but she won’t listen.

She’ll want a trial. I’ll give her that trial.

He went on to explain what he intended to do, aware of the queen’s keen gaze. Few had seen this side of him before.

If it comes down to it, will you help me? he’d asked. Will you ask her to leave when she’s at her most vulnerable?

The queen didn’t say no, which was her way of saying yes.

I wonder, she mused as he bowed and excused himself. I wonder, Yan Caiyan, if you will go down as a villain or a hero.

He couldn’t be bothered with such trivialities. He was just a means to an end.



In the end, the trial was born out of her own will. He’d simply helped it along. He’d found her the sooth—the Silver Iris was just one of many he knew in the city. He’d encouraged that the trial go on. And when the pressure mounted, he checked her impulses, kept her from jeopardizing her rule. If all went as orchestrated, she would abdicate peacefully, and he would assume the burden of ending an era, reinstalling her when the worst of the bloodshed had passed.

But he wasn’t perfect. For every hundred predictions he got right, there was always one he got wrong.

This time, it was her brother.

He’d known that Yan Sanjing sometimes acted out of heart. He hadn’t predicted the strength of his heart until the sooths were already in the dungeons and the explosion was going off and it was too late. It was all too late.

He’d meant to break her will, not ruin her. She was never supposed to face the choice that she had, forced into throwing away her ideals because the kingdom demanded it. That was always supposed to be his role. His hands were supposed to be the ones wielding the knife.

It was never supposed to end with his twin.

It was supposed to end with her—with those russet eyes staring at him now.

She yanks at the restraints on her arms and legs as he takes a seat by the bed. “What do you want?” she hurls at him. Her raven hair is out of its signature braid, half of it lost to the fire. The rest of her is covered in bandages, the white of them a stark contrast to her usual black.

He almost lost his arm rescuing her.

But he never fails what he starts.

“I went through great lengths to save you,” he says calmly. “Now I want you to heal.”

She pulls on the ropes and they chafe her wrists. Any harder, and she’ll bleed and burn this lacquered room down.

He leans close so that she can see his face, see that he can—and will—do everything he says next. “If you can’t bring yourself to cooperate, I’ll have a medicinal candle lit in this room from dawn to dawn, dusk to dusk. You will heal nicely in your sleep.”

“Why? Why are you doing any of this?”

“I need the general to do my bidding.”

“I won’t be your chess piece.”

“Do you have a choice?”

“He’ll never believe you! He thinks I’m dead!”

He leans back. “People believe what they want to believe.”

He saw this moment coming. The moment when she cracks. When she cries. The sobs rack her chest. The motions are not conducive to healing. He should make good on his word and light the medicinal candle. But he lets her have her grief. Without her, both his queen and the general would be lost. If not blown to pieces, then burned in the resulting firestorm.

Heat, however, is just concentrated light. She used her affinity for the shadows to move the blast into a diminished, future state. She saved them.

She can consider this as his token of gratitude.



He has the newest crop of examinee talent, who will help him transform the literature.

He has control over the city guard, who will maintain order in the turbulent days to come.

He has the throne as long as the general stays at the front. He has the means of keeping him there.

But most importantly, he has her out of this city, away from the assassination threats bound to come from sooths and humans alike. Because people detest change. They fight it tooth and nail.

But he will usher it in whether they want it or not.

He will welcome his people back home.

He will restore them as human beings.

There are institutions to end, people to kill. He keeps the Minister of Rites alive simply because that man and his cronies have their uses. But they will not live for long. He will end them himself. They will be the first of many he must end.

So he goes to his twin while he’s still the brother she knew. He kneels before her resting spot, her final words to him echoing in his head.

Let me protect my people.

He’d unleashed rationale unto her. They weren’t her people. She couldn’t share that identity when her blood didn’t flame. Because even though they’d both been borne from the same womb, at the same time, the power never manifested in her. She could have chosen the life of an ordinary person, a safe life. She didn’t have to stay by him. But she had, all nineteen years. And now she was saying goodbye.

He’d given up on rationale; he’d begged.

She’d simply touched his cheek. Stone-head. You can’t protect everyone.

He can.

He will.

When that day arrives, he will bring his queen back.

But until he has everything he ever wanted, he has only this: a tree that might not even survive to spring, the joss stacked high before it, the horrible candied berries his twin liked so much scattered in place of peach blossom petals.