Descendant of the Crane(51)

Hesina’s throat closed, preparing for the deluge. But there was still her nose. Her ears. Doors to a granary, about to be filled. Her terror blazed anew, and she screamed. She didn’t want to die. Not like this, not by being buried alive. She’d rather drown. Burn. Hang.

She’d rather be shot.

The second she had the thought, something silver streaked through the air. An arrow, released from behind.

It struck the sooth in the breast.

The sand stopped. The girl looked down. Her mouth rounded to an “o.” Her hands fluttered to the shaft as if to pull it out, and Hesina’s vision went glassy. For that fraction of a moment, before the girl folded forward like a paper screen, they were the same. Powerless and helpless. Trying and failing.

But in the girl’s case, no brother had come to rescue her.

“I’d prefer if you didn’t bury my sister alive,” rang Sanjing’s voice as Yan banners crested the dunes. Cavalry dismounted and closed in, yet all Hesina could see was the blood trickling out from beneath the body, smoking like a fuse in the sand.

Sanjing had shot the girl.

He’d had no choice.

Neither had the sooth, nor any of the sooths working for Kendi’a.

Hesina suddenly wished she had been buried alive.

But the act wasn’t over yet. As Sanjing’s men and women helped her out of the sand, Hesina gathered her fragmented wits and, in her best imitation of authority, ordered them to retrieve the salt from the tent.

Then she faced the Crown Prince. Sand streamed from the folds of her cloak, leaving Lilian’s ruqun exposed. The headless dragons drew the prince’s eye.

“The barrels of water I promised will be delivered to your markets before the gibbous moon wanes.” Her voice broke like the rest of her. She was back to being Yan Hesina, not strong enough, not smart enough, a heart full of secrets and a bellyful of contradictions. “Accept them, and I’ll take it as a sign that you remember what we discussed.”

The Crown Prince cocked his head to the side. For a fraught second, Hesina swore he saw through her to the impostor of a queen she was. The smile he flashed—nowhere near as rakish as before—didn’t put her at ease. “I will remember.”



If only a prince and his smiles were all that troubled Hesina for the rest of that long, long day.

Instead, the moment they made it back to the encampment, Akira started vomiting blood.

“Just an adverse reaction,” he gurgled, raising a red-smeared hand as if to hold their concern at bay. Hesina shouted for the guard who’d apprenticed as a healer, and Sanjing’s people pressed in to help, but Akira waved them all off. “Water…will do.”

If water was the cure, Hesina would bring an ocean to him. But there were no oceans, or rivers, or streams. There weren’t even any full waterskins; it took combining three to fill one. By the time she ran to Akira with it, he had already started a fire at the pit and was reducing sticks to charcoal. Calmly, as if his hands weren’t shaking, he tipped the charcoal into the waterskin. Hesina watched, chest locked, as he drank. She waited, breath held, as he frowned at his bloodstained hanfu skirt. She blinked, pulse slowing, as Akira proceeded to use the rest of his lifesaving concoction to rinse the cloth out.

Hesina lost it. “Why did you do it?” she snapped as Akira wrung his hanfu. She snatched the cloth from his hands when he didn’t reply. “You could have died!”

Her throat stung, and she wasn’t even the one who’d eaten sand. Akira blinked. She’d startled him for a change, and he looked…young, with his eyes wide, the spread of his pupils black as ink.

Then his face closed. “Unlikely.”

She shook her head. “Who are you?”

He rose and tugged his hanfu free. “Someone queens shouldn’t get close to.”

He made for the horses, and only the pain in Hesina’s side stopped her from throwing her hands into the air. Princes. Brothers. Ex-convicts. Everyone was utterly maddening. She glared at Akira’s back when they started to ride, a detail that didn’t escape Sanjing’s attention.

“I see you’ve expanded your entourage,” said her brother as he pulled up beside her. “At least this one has a spine.”

The not-so-subtle jab at Caiyan might have gotten to Hesina if this day hadn’t already. “His name is Akira,” she said coolly, then paused. Sanjing was returning to the imperial city so that they could make a joint announcement on the cessation of Yan-Kendi’an aggressions. She wouldn’t be able to hide the trial from him there. “And he’s my representative.”

She summarized the last two months, her hands clenched around the reins. She braced herself when she finished, but Sanjing was uncharacteristically silent.

“So the people think the Kendi’ans killed our father,” he finally said.

“And sooths,” Hesina added quietly. “Because of the vanishing villages. And, well…because of your scout.”

“My scout.”

“Yes. He came to my coronation and said the soothsayers were working with the Kendi’ans.” And he hadn’t been lying. They were—against their will as slaves.

“Where is he now?” asked Sanjing.

Hesina didn’t answer.

Sanjing wheeled his stallion in front of hers. For the first time since their reunion, she saw the chips and cracks in his bone laminar. “Where is he, Sina?”