The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(106)

“Patience,” Brother told Set, his eyes still trained eagerly on Min. “Give her time to gain a sense of this place. She is untrained, but I trust it will speak to her yet.” He licked his lips.

Min looked down, watching the water lap benignly at the shore. Once more, she saw Lu, diving into the unknown deep of that other silvery lake years ago. Swimming away from her.

She’d wanted to follow, Min remembered suddenly. How had she forgotten that? But she hadn’t followed; she’d been too afraid. Of the void under the mirrored surface of the water, of the punishment that would await when they returned.

And in that moment, she’d hated her sister for not being afraid, for believing there was something in that unknown beyond, something that she deserved to discover. Her sister . . .

Liar. She felt the presence then, the other, the something else—someone else—flare in her blood. And she knew.

Lu is not my sister, Min realized—admitted—at last. Not fully. Not truly.

The thought should have made her sad. Instead, she felt an odd sort of relief. It all made sense now. They no longer belonged to one another, and they never had. Lu owed her nothing, and she owed nothing in return. They were two tangled strings that had finally come unknotted. She was free—and she could be who she wanted, who she was meant to be all along. She would no longer be defined in relief with a sister. She would be defined only by herself.

Min shivered and closed her eyes. Forced herself to burrow down into the seat of her rage, where that seed was planted. To follow its ravenous growth, radiant and consuming as fire, all through her bones. To the tips of her fingers, the ends of her hair. The whole of her hummed with it. Energy seeking release. Absently, her hand went again to her chest, clutching the crystal pendant that rested there. It felt hot to the touch, warmer than flesh.

“It may help for you visualize the gate,” Brother was saying. “Just look, wait for it to come to you—don’t be afraid.”

“I am not afraid,” Min said sharply, dropping the crystal back down to her chest. Her eyes were open. There was no need to visualize the gate. She could see it now, shimmering at the water’s edge. A rupture in the air. A gesture at all the unknown energy—the opportunity—that lay beyond.

She raised her hands and pulled the energy toward her. It hit with the force of a boulder, a wall of blinding light made solid and also not—something beyond materiality. Pure sensation. Hot and cold all at once. Her blood was afire, her veins were starlight. She felt it enter her, an ocean surging through the flesh of her palms and flooding deep down into her core. It filled her to brimming and overflowed back out a hundredfold.

The stones beneath their feet blew like dead leaves. The air twisted around them in a suffocating tornado. Behind her, the horses reared. Someone screamed, and perhaps it was she, or perhaps it was all of them.

Through the pandemonium she heard Set’s voice, so clear it seemed to be right in her ear. “Gods, what has she done?”

She did not flinch. She did not lower her hands. As ever, the voice inside was both hers and not, but it belonged to her all the same.

What has she done?

What I was born to do.





CHAPTER 33


The Blue

Lu dismissed her Yunian handmaidens at the door of the apartments she’d been sharing with Nasan. The women left as commanded, but Lu couldn’t quite shake the feeling they’d have preferred to stay and watch over her. The Yunians had all been consummately polite—there was no question whether she was their guest or their prisoner—but she could sense that they did not quite trust her.

Fair enough, she thought, not without some bitterness. Between them, Nasan, and everyone from there to Yulan City, she was growing accustomed to the feeling. Seeing the damage her father and his father before him had wrought, she could hardly blame them. It was exhausting, though, this constant scrutiny.

She watched the handmaidens disappear down the corridor before closing the large wooden doors behind them. She sighed and stepped into a large common room, spacious and clean, its cream-colored marble floors and stone walls softened by a cozily lit fire pit at the center. Crowded around it were tuffets and heaps of shaggy carpets.

Beyond the fire pit stood a long stone table, laden with trays of rice and dumplings and cakes, unfamiliar fruits, and an array of colored liquids in crystal decanters. They never saw who brought the food or who took it away. It simply appeared around mealtimes, then vanished while they were asleep. Nasan found it spooky. Lu thought it not so different from the silent manner in which the servants would bring her dinner at home.

No wonder Nasan didn’t trust her. No wonder Nokhai didn’t trust her. She inhabited a different world than they did, one where plenty was so ubiquitous as to be invisible.

Or perhaps there was something ill in her. Something inherently untrustworthy. Nasan seemed to think so. Certainly, Prince Shen and Priestess Vrea had done nothing to assuage that feeling today.

As for Prince Jin, was he as stalwart an ally as he let on? Could he be as na?ve and well intentioned as he seemed? Had the Triarch schemed together to produce the outcome he’d offered her? Or did he have a deeper, private scheme at play?

Maybe he’s just sick of all the gray here.

Behind her, the doors opened with a groan.

“Princess! You shouldn’t have gone through all this trouble!” Nasan said, waving toward the food.