Descendant of the Crane(56)

Yet unlike Sanjing, Caiyan had done his best to bridge their differences. “The bones will heal in four to six weeks,” he said as he packed away his supplies. “She’s out from the pain right now but will come around in an hour or two.”

“If she doesn’t—” started Sanjing.

“Then you know where to find me.” Caiyan rose, tucking the chest under his arm. “Lilian, step away from the general.”

“But—”

“Please.”

With one last glare, Lilian obliged.

Sanjing didn’t move. Not immediately. His black eyes fixed on Caiyan, and for an absurd second, Hesina thought he might express a word of thanks.

Instead he said, “My sister might not blame you, but I do.”

“Jing.”

“While she was away, you were here,” continued her brother, unremitting. “You were supposed to stand sentry over this palace in her place. You failed her.”

“Jing, that is enough.”

Sanjing held Caiyan’s gaze a heartbeat longer. Then he went to Mei’s side, sinking to a crouch beside her. With a knuckle, he cleared her forehead of sweat-dampened hair.

As much as Hesina wanted to stay angry, she couldn’t. Her composure came untethered, and her voice splintered when she said, “Leave us for a moment.”

Quietly, Caiyan bowed and filed out. Akira followed, draping his cloak over her shoulders.

Lilian left last, giving Hesina a squeeze of the hand.

The doors shut, and Hesina swayed. But she didn’t deserve to buckle. She had to bear her own weight, be there for Sanjing when he rose and faced her.

“Prove her innocent.”

He spoke as if she were a soldier under his command, not a sister, not a queen.

At least she was still someone to him. “We will. But understand this: Xia Zhong wouldn’t frame her without reason. Akira will need to know everything you can provide on Mei’s background.”

“You trust him completely?”

Hesina hesitated. Did she? She didn’t know his past. Didn’t know what crimes he’d committed. She wouldn’t be awfully surprised if she didn’t even know his real name. But he’d fought for her, taken poison for her. He’d seen her at her cowardly worst and believed in her all the same.

“I do,” she said. “Will you meet with him?”

Sanjing nodded, but the wariness didn’t melt from his face. “Don’t let them hurt her,” he said as they left the cell, and Hesina understood very well that his distrust wasn’t just meant for the dungeon guards they passed. She’d failed to foresee Xia Zhong’s counterattack. She’d lost this match.

She wouldn’t lose the next.



Hesina woke, neck stiff, cheek on an edict, and immediately jerked upright. Then she sagged even though the throne wasn’t made for sagging and rubbed a hand over her face.

She’d come to the throne hall after visiting Mei, determined to defeat the paperwork that had accumulated in her absence. The stacks on the ivory kang were particularly imposing with the civil service examinations nearly upon them. Erected by the Eleven to replace nepotism, and hosted in the imperial city, the exams were the reason why Caiyan, with no noble blood to his name, was a court official at all. He’d already volunteered to oversee them—from the appointment of registration officers in provinces as far as Anmu to the regulation of roads as the returning militia overlapped with traveling hopefuls.

But each action required ten edicts, which—considering how she’d dozed off—induced sleep more efficiently than medicinal candles. Now a migraine pounded behind her eyes as she stared at the edict she’d used for a pillow. The words were smudged, but the fact that there were words at all, when she didn’t remember writing them, had Hesina frowning and leaning in.

The edict was filled out. The necessary revisions and signature—her signature, in her hand—were in place. So was the edict beneath it. So were all the others. The mountain of paperwork was still a mountain, but they required only the stamp of her insignia.

Had she signed them in her sleep? If so, that was a useful talent to have as a queen.

But on closer inspection, Hesina realized the handwriting wasn’t hers; it was better. It had her weight, her style, but lacked all the little imperfections that drove her calligraphy tutors mad. This was especially apparent in the three characters of her name.

You never form your “si” correctly, sounded Caiyan’s voice in her head. The tail of the third stroke doesn’t quite wrap around the first.

As children, he would guide her hand through the strokes. Now she pulled out a fresh piece of paper, lifted her brush, and wrote her name. She stared at it, side by side with one of Caiyan’s renditions, and crumpled up hers.

He was better at this than she’d ever be.

Thoroughly defeated, Hesina left the throne hall for her chambers, where she let Ming’er help her out of her wrinkled ruqun and run a bath she arguably didn’t have time for. To hell with ruling. Why even try? But when Ming’er removed the pins from her hair, Hesina remembered everything she’d already sacrificed, and when she looked into the mirror, she saw her mother’s face.

You can bring this kingdom to its knees, for all I care.

Gooseflesh tickled her skin. “Leave me.”

“But the bath—”