Girls of Paper and Fire (Girls of Paper and Fire #1)(7)
In my village, the story of the Paper Girls is told in whispers behind closed doors. We lost too much in the raid seven years ago to want to share anything more with the court.
But perhaps the gods have forgotten us, or grown bored with our small corner of the kingdom. Because here I am, about to share the last thing I’d ever want to offer the King.
Myself.
For a long time, the General and I ride in silence. The carriage is luxuriously decorated, the bench adorned with perfumed cushions and silks, intricate carvings detailing the wooden walls. Scatters of light feel their way in through the shuttered windows. There’s a slight charge in the air, an electric quiver that, even with my limited experience of it, I recognize as magic. That must be what’s guiding the horses, what lends them their unnatural speed.
Another time and I would have been fascinated by it all—the mysticism of shaman work, the beauty of the carriage. But my vision is red-tinted, filtered through recent events, an unrelenting bombardment of one nightmarish image after another. Bao, speared through. Blood on my father’s brow. Tien’s scream when the General came for me. My home, our home, our lovely little shop-house shattered and broken, and farther from my reach with every sway and bump of the carriage.
And instead, drawing ever closer—the King’s palace.
A Paper Girl.
Me.
“Don’t look so sad, girl.”
General Yu’s rumbling voice makes me start. I press further against the side of the bench, but there’s no way to ignore the reek of him, the wet heat of his breath.
Is this what the King is like? The thought of touching—of being touched—by a demon like this sends a fresh wave of nausea into my throat.
“You have just been handed a fate girls across the kingdom can only dream of,” the General says. “Surely it would not pain you to smile?”
I swipe my tears away. “I dream of a different fate,” I reply with a sniff.
He laughs, smug. “What better life could a daughter of an herb-shop owner wish for?”
“Anything than being the concubine of the King.”
The words have barely left my lips when the General seizes my face with his brown-haired hand, pinching my cheeks so hard my jaw pops open. “You think you are special?” he growls. “That you’re above being a Paper Girl? You have no idea what the rest of the kingdom is like, foolish girl. All you country folk hiding here in your nowhere corner of your nowhere province, thinking only of your small, closed lives…” His nostrils flare, hot air hitting my face. “You think you are beyond the reach of the court. But you are wrong. The Demon King’s rule is all-powerful. You felt that power once seven years ago, and you feel it again today. How easy it was for me to take you from your home—like plucking a flower from a bed of weeds. Just as it happened with your whore of a mother.”
With a throaty rumble, he casts me aside. My cheekbone dashes into the wall. I can’t help but cry out, and I stuff my hand quickly over my mouth to smother it.
General Yu smirks. “That’s it, girl. From what I hear, the King enjoys it when his whores scream.”
Glowering, I sit back up, rubbing my cheek. “You know what happened to my mother,” I say through gritted teeth. “What those soldiers did to our village.”
“I might have heard something,” he replies with a shrug. “But I can’t be sure. Those kinds of things all merge into one another.”
My hands bunch into fists. “They destroyed our village. My family.”
The General’s voice is cool. “You’d best forget you ever had a family, girl. Because you won’t be coming back.”
“Yes, I will,” I whisper as he turns away, and the words feel like a promise on my lips.
A new thought comes to me then, so brittle I’m scared to let it take hold: Did Mama make a similar promise, too, once? Seven years ago, did she travel this same route that I’m on now, whispering a wish for the wind to carry to the kinder gods? Burumi perhaps, God of Lost Lovers? Or sweet, patient Ling-yi with her wings and blind eyes, Goddess of Impossible Dreams? Mama always held the gods closer than Baba and me. They might have listened to her. And if, and if…
I always imagined the soldiers would have taken Mama and the other women they captured to the royal palace—the very place General Yu his soldiers are bringing me.
I gaze out the window through glazed eyes, a warm kernel of hope working through me. Because as much as I don’t want to leave my home, this might be my chance to finally find out the truth about my mother.
And, just maybe, find her.
The horses ride on for hours, showing no sign of slowing. We sweep through the Xienzo countryside, a green-brown blur of fields and low mountains, flowering meadowland, and forests. I’ve never been this far from my village—not even more than a few hours’ walk home—but the scenery is recognizable so far, similar to the landscape around our village.
Until, suddenly, it isn’t.
We’re looping past a patch of scorched land. The horses keep their distance, but we ride close enough to smell ash in the air. The charred area is vast, a wound on the earth. Stumps of what must have once been buildings poke from the ground like broken teeth. Scarlet flags snap in the wind, stamped in obsidian with the silhouette of a bull skull.
The King’s symbol.
It takes me a few moments to recognize the ruins for what they are. “This… this was a village,” I murmur. I lick my lips, then say louder “What happened?”