The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(20)
“The empire does not have to endure such a fate. It cannot. We can still choose the best, the worthiest emperor to lead us toward the future. That is why I ask my cousin, my suitor, to dispense with the pretty gestures and symbolism and prove his worth against mine. Rather than assuming your superior wisdom, let us submit ourselves to the shins for tests of wit. Rather than slaying a caged domestic beast here in this courtyard—ride to the northern forest with me and let us see who can take down a real tusked stag! Rather than wearing a pretty sword at your waist, take it up and prove you can best me with it.”
She could sense her words working—stirring and rousing the gathered crowd. She could feel the thrum of their excitement in the air, as dense as humidity and the flat trill of cicadas during monsoon season. And so, without giving Set a chance to respond, Lu turned to her father.
“I trust,” she began, and for a moment, meeting her father’s eyes—dark, interested, but hesitant, undecided—her voice faltered, breath catching in her throat. She squared her shoulders, steeled her bones, breathed. She did not risk even a glance toward her mother. “I trust,” she repeated, “that my father, my emperor, leader of the great Empire of the First Flame, and the Lord of Ten Thousand Years, agrees with me.”
Aside from the constant crackle of the First Flame, the courtyard was deathly silent. Of the five hundred or so advisers and gentry privileged enough to have station within the inner court, some had been on their knees, foreheads pressed to the ground, some unabashedly gaping up at her, while others were poised in mid-bow, uncertain of what they ought to do. At that moment, though, as one, they all turned toward the emperor in anticipation.
Please, Lu thought, beseeching him with her eyes. Willing him to look at her, to truly see her. Be the man, the father, the king I know you to be.
The emperor swept his imperious gaze out over the court, at the thousands of burning, inquisitive eyes staring back at him. He cleared his throat. Lu felt each body in the courtyard lean inward, as if that would allow them to sooner hear his decision as the words fell from his mouth.
Bright and glorious as polished gold catching the sun, her father laughed.
He laughed longer and louder than she had ever heard him before. Until tears welled in his eyes. The crowd was beginning to stir, uncertain of how they should react, but eager to know.
Lu’s lips parted, as though her body were already preparing to rebut his rejection of her. With what words, though? None came to mind. This was all she had, and she had laid it at her father’s feet.
The emperor looked to her, and in his eyes she finally saw something solid. Something warm and fond and awed. She saw his love. Good.
He nodded, expectant. As though waiting for her to return the feeling.
She made to smile—then stopped. Instead, she turned her chin up coldly and flicked her eyes away before she could see what hurt she had inflicted. Let him be hurt, she thought with a small surge of satisfaction. Let him feel how I felt. In truth, her father was giving her nothing more than she had earned.
Lu turned back to Set. “The emperor has agreed, then,” she told him. Her cousin’s gray eyes were murderous. The blood in her veins felt molten and desperately close to the skin, as though all of her were about to burst into a shower of flame and sparks.
“You and me, cousin,” she said. “Let us see who the true emperor is.”
CHAPTER 7
Magic
The celebration that followed the Betrothal Ceremony was something Min had been looking forward to: a wine-soaked daylong feast that stretched into the night, with actors, gymnasts, singers, and jugglers providing entertainment. That had been before she’d received her first blood, and her sister had decided to turn the entire country upside down, though.
To make matters worse, the sky had darkened, forcing the festivities indoors. An inauspicious sign, several of her nunas murmured until Butterfly pointed out that it was monsoon season, after all. And, she’d added, considering how dry the summer had been thus far, rain wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Perhaps so, though Min found herself wishing the dry spell had continued a bit longer. The banquet hall was unbearably crowded and humid. Her robes, which had been cut for a body far less bloated and cramped than the one she now inhabited, squeezed at her middle. She found herself wishing for a different life, one in which she had never discovered how badly an operatic rendition of the folk song “Damned Be the False Lover, Damned Be the True Lover” could stoke a headache.
If only she could retreat to her apartments, close the curtains against the light, and sleep for the next week. Or at the very least, loosen the cinching, oppressive ties of her robes. She glanced at her mother, seated to her left, and decided neither of those options were viable at the moment.
Her mother looked ready to murder the singer performing before them. Instead, she cast her eyes away, as though repulsed, and seethed into her plate of pheasant. This, too, proved an unsatisfactory victim for her rage. A moment later she signaled for Amma Ruxin to help her down from the dais where they sat.
“Where are you going?” the emperor asked her.
“What concern is it of yours?” her mother snapped back.
Min watched her disappear, but she was distracted when the singing ended and a flush of servants arrived to clear their plates and dish up the next course.
She tried to recall which course they were on, but she had lost count somewhere between the braised ox fruit and the salad of exquisitely arranged edible flowers. Her stomach roiled at the sight of yet more food.