Descendant of the Crane(99)

“And what is your wish?” asked Hesina, to her own surprise.

Her mother blinked. “Forget your silly ideals, and leave with me. You have no one left. What is the point of clinging to a world that has abandoned you?”

“It may abandon me, but I can’t abandon it.”

She waited for her mother to call her a fool. Instead, the dowager queen stared at her, dead silent.

Then she threw her head back and laughed. That was more like the mother Hesina knew. “Stay, leave, what do I care? Tomorrow, I return to the mountains. Don’t bother seeing me off.”

Hesina rushed to rise with her mother. “I’ll have the servants ready your chambers—”

“Spare me.” Her mother swept to the doors.

“Wait.” Hesina drew a deep breath. She wanted an answer to one last question.

Did you ever love me? But that was too bloated with hope, too painful to ask, so instead she asked, “Why do you hate me?”

Deny it. Say you came back and asked me to leave because you want to protect me. Say—

“For the same reason I hate this palace.” The words were like metal, the blade of them wicked sharp. “For the same reason I hate that book,” continued her mother, even though Hesina had heard enough. “For the same reason I hate looking in the mirror with a face that belongs to a person I can never be again.”



Akira was gone, but the smoke stain on the ceiling of his room remained. The dark patch gazed upon Hesina like a bruised eye as she entered. She remembered that night with the fire and his face, a breath away. The memory tasted sweet. It made her throat ache.

She went to the bed. Reclined. She stared at the beams overhead and wondered what thoughts flitted across Akira’s mind as he did the same. He had suspected many things. What would he think now if she shared what her mother had said to her, asked of her? Would he advise her to leave or stay?

Hesina imagined his voice. Leaving doesn’t sound bad.

It didn’t sound bad at all. If she stayed, she could end up like her mother. Cold, sardonic, and embittered by reminders of the person she used to be.

Sighing, Hesina rolled onto her side and buried her face in the pillow. It didn’t smell like Akira. It occurred to her that he probably didn’t sleep on the bed at all.

She laid herself down on the floor and thought of sitting on the throne, standing on the terraces, thought about how it all felt and how it couldn’t compare to the ground. This was where she truly belonged.

For the first time in days, her sleep was sound.



She took her cup of tea on the infirmary patio the next morning, watching the rain pour off the upturned awning and melt the snow.

If she left with her mother for the mountains, this peace could be her reality. She wouldn’t have to worry about the kingdom. Caiyan could rule in Sanjing’s absence. But the image of his blood-flecked knuckles reared again, and a tremor shot through Hesina. Hot tea sloshed onto her hand. Her grip flinched open.

The teacup fell.

The sounds of rainfall quieted as she stared at the shattered pieces. Once, she’d done the same. Stared at her mother’s spilled concoction, the heat of humiliation in her cheeks, and begged for her blessing. She was no longer so stupid.

No longer so brave.

“I don’t see your things,” said her mother when Hesina met her by the northern gate. The dowager queen’s carriage was plain and her attendants few. No one would know that she’d come and gone, or that Hesina, like a coward, had considered going too.

“I’m staying.”

Rain pattered off their paper parasols.

Hesina waited for her mother to persuade her, but with a shrug and a turn, the dowager queen allowed her attendants to help her into the carriage. “Suit yourself.”

A familiar emptiness yawned in Hesina as she watched the carriage rattle off. She no longer had a father to take her to the persimmon grove, or a sister to drag her to the textile workshops, where they would dye bolts of white silk into pinks and turquoises and violets until Hesina forgot all about the dowager queen.

Except that she didn’t want to forget about her mother this time. Hesina had always been so singularly focused on what she might have done to make the dowager queen hate her. She’d never bothered to see it wasn’t about her. It’d never been about her. Not all stories were hers to tell.

Alone, she returned to the Eastern Palace and readied herself for court.



The rain didn’t let up the next day. Under a weeping sky, hundreds turned out for Lilian’s cremation. Their impatience smoked the air when the firewood didn’t; the first few attempts at lighting the pyre guttered under the lashing winds, and Hesina had to order the guards to douse the bed of branches with oil before flame finally caught. As black smoke billowed in choking clouds, she left the dry safety of her palanquin to stand under the downpour, letting the rain be the tears she couldn’t shed.

The rain turned to ice overnight, and the streets glittered as Hesina rode out to the pavilion once more at dawn. This time it was to see a vigilante leader hang. Crowds again flocked as the guards marched the young man to the gallows.

“The maggots are hatching!” he cried as they put his neck to the rope. “I may die today, but you will all die tom—”

The trapdoor gave; the rope jerked taut. Hesina looked away. When the thrashing and kicking stilled, she ordered that the body be left to hang one night and one day as a warning.