The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(126)

“We need to keep moving,” Nasan said, walking up beside them.

Lu drew a shuddering breath. She would be glad to be away from this place.

Jin held up his hands and called for the Yunians to gather. They did, with the halting, distant air of sleepwalkers. People who believed they were already half-dead. People who were sure there was nothing left to live for.

“We have suffered tremendous loss,” Jin told them. “But our fallen fathers and mothers, our sisters and brothers, and indeed, my sister Vrea, my brother Shen—they would all want us to endure. And we will. Together, Princess Lu and I will lead you to safety. Those among us able and willing shall reclaim what has been taken from us by the old emperors, and by the false Emperor Set. Together, we will build a new homeland, one governed by wisdom and justice.”

He took Lu’s good hand in his own, then raised it overhead.

“All hail my future wife, Princess Lu, rightful ruler of the empire, and queen of Yunis!”

Looking past Prince Jin and his watery, sanguine smile, Lu saw little enthusiasm among the Yunians. They clapped dutifully through their weariness and suspicion.

Your title, your station—your very existence—is built on the subjugation, on the suffering of others.

A few of the Yunians, though, met her eyes and nodded, as though communicating that they would give her a chance. To hope against hope.

What other choice did they have?

Lu tried to speak to those few as she addressed them. “I know you do not love me as your own yet. I understand. I hope that I will have the opportunity to win your trust and your respect in the days to come.”

An anxious, fragile silence followed.

Then Nasan shouted, “All hail the Girl King!”

The crowd murmured amused assent, and Nasan flashed her a wry grin.

Behind the Ashina girl stood a Yunian orphan child, not more than five years old. Her black eyes were two dark pits of mistrust. Lu looked away, tried not to take it for a portent of what was to come. What they were about to face allowed no room for uncertainty.

“All hail the Girl King!” shouted the crowd.

Lu straightened her shoulders, hiding the lingering stiffness in the left. She forced herself to smile, closed-lipped and benevolent and appropriately, faintly mournful. Ready to assume the role for which she had been born—all that she was ever intended for.





EPILOGUE


Awake

The fog is too dense. Nok can barely breathe. Even his limbs seem inhibited by it; his movements indolent, disobedient. He keeps on, forcing one foot in front of the other, feels himself move forward. When had he started walking? When did he get here? How?

Someone is just ahead of him. As he closes in, he recognizes her. She moves like mist, slow, there but not quite. Distant as a star. But he recognizes her in spite of it. Perhaps because of it. Perhaps that vagueness of body, that inbetweeness is as much a part of her as the cool eyes, the close-shorn hair.

The wolf huffs at his side. Nok strokes the creature, fond and absent. His hand passes through it like water. The wolf is not of the Inbetween, but it too has some inbetweeness in its nature. Neither here nor there, not quite spirit, not quite flesh.

And what of me? What am I made of?

There is no answer. He walks.

Vrea seems to sense him trailing behind her. There’s something almost amused to the set of her shoulders—he can imagine the quirk of a smile upon her wide mouth.

They’re silent for a time, and then he asks: “Where are we?”

“Nowhere at all, I fear.” She stops walking, turns and waits until he and the wolf are at her side. “We are in the remains of the Inbetween.”

“I thought it had been destroyed? Isn’t that what happened?” Odd; he can’t remember.

“That which was Inbetween is gone, but the space holds,” Vrea tells him. “It has simply been . . . emptied. Remade. Wherever there are two, there must be something dividing them.”

Are you one, or two? He asked that to someone, something, once.

“Not the Ana and Aba,” he says. “They are both.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “They are both one and two. They are harmony. But we are not.”

He’s silent at that, and she lets him think. He feels he could think for a lifetime, for the span of kingdoms, long enough for stars to blaze into creation and collapse in upon themselves, and still she would wait.

Maybe he will. He feels . . . unhurried. He would feel nothing at all were it not for the nagging in his heart. A finger worrying some loose thread there. He’s forgotten.

He remembers. Not everything, but it’s something.

“Are we dead?” The thought makes him sad—but only vaguely. From an arm’s length.

“Not quite dead,” Vrea says. “Not yet.”

He thinks on that, his hand stroking through the wolf’s there-and-gone-again fur. He looks down and sees the path has disappeared. They’re standing on stone. No, rocks. The shore of a lake. That seems familiar, somehow. “Not dead,” he repeats to himself.

Vrea toes off her sandals and sits. “Do you want to be?”

He thinks about that, too, as he sits. “No. I thought—but, no.”

She nods seriously. “A good choice for you.”

The wolf lies down next to him, pressing warmly against his thigh. He feels a relaxed sigh shudder through it, no different from a sleeping dog. “Do we get to choose?”