The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(23)

“I just wanted to say that today, that my sister—”

“Embarrassed me in front of the whole court?” Set suggested. “Made me look a complete fool? Perhaps reminded everyone of the weak-willed failure, the degenerate drug-addled child I used to be?” He smirked around the words, but there was no humor to it—only something cruel and loathing barely kept at bay, straining against his politesse. Min sensed a single wrong word might topple the dam, send it flooding forth.

She winced. She’d brought this on. Why was she so stupid? “No, of course you’re not those—things,” she said quickly. “How Lu treated you. It was . . . unkind. You’re not a drug-addled . . . you’re not those things.”

And he hadn’t been—at least, not while he was at court the last time. She’d been little, but she still remembered first laying eyes on him. He’d ridden through the palace gates upon a gray stallion, proud and tall, the sun gleaming off his long, black plait. Looking back, he had been scarcely more than a child. Younger than she was now. At the time, though, he had seemed so grown up to her. So handsome and new.

There had even been a time when she’d dared to hope she might wed him in place of Lu. After all, she’d reasoned, her sister clearly wanted nothing to do with him, and she couldn’t have imagined at that age that anyone—even their father and mother—could make Lu do anything she didn’t want. Min cringed thinking of it now. She’d been such a stupid child.

Of course, that had all been before. Before the trip to the North, before Lu had—

“Do you know why I began taking the poppy tears?” he asked abruptly.

Min blinked. “I . . . it is said—that is, they gave you them to treat the pain. After my s-sister broke your teeth in the desert.”

Her cousin smiled bitterly. “That is what they say, isn’t it? You were there on that trip North. What do you recall?”

“I was there,” she conceded, “but I didn’t see the fight. I’d gone to bed right after dinner.” It stung a bit that he so little remembered her, but then, it had been a long time ago. Besides, Min had been so young—what interest could Set have had in a dumb girl like her?

“Of course,” he said. “Well, the story your sister spread isn’t quite the full truth. She tends to leave out the bit where she and that Ashina boy she took such a liking to ganged up on me, two against one, doesn’t she?”

Min’s lips opened and closed. It was true; she had never heard that part before. Would Lu really do something so cowardly? She’d always been adamant about fighting her own battles, but still . . . her sister did have a fierce temper. It wasn’t so impossible to imagine her taking advantage of the opportunity to teach Set a lesson.

“Can I tell you a secret, Min?”

She stared. No one had ever entrusted her with a secret before. She’d hear her nunas whisper to one another about crushes on page boys and the sons of officials late at night when they thought she’d gone to sleep, but they’d never shared them with her. They thought she was too stupid, too uninteresting to fully appreciate them.

“Yes,” she heard herself say eagerly. “You can. Tell me a secret. I’d never—I’d keep it safe.”

Set looked at her with appraising eyes. “Of course you would. You’re Hana, like me. We’re kin; bound by blood. We want the same things, don’t we?”

He didn’t wait for her answer. “Your sister caused some damage with her fists and her little wooden sword in the desert that night, it’s true. But nothing lasting. Your mother wanted me to stay with your family. The court physicians were traveling with us—they could treat me. But your father . . . well.” He moved toward the edge of the walkway, smiling wryly out onto the dark, rain-heavy garden. “Lu had shown she could not bear to have me around, and your father can’t refuse her anything, can he?”

Min’s lips parted, but she did not know what to say.

“I had come to the capital for grooming,” he continued. “I left my family’s home in glory—the future emperor in all but name. But when I returned North, I returned in failure. My father is a man who does not tolerate failure.”

Min nodded uncertainly. She had never met Set’s father—her mother’s older brother. He was Hana, and wealthy, like the rest of that side of her family. That was all she knew.

“Do you know what he did to welcome me back, my father?” Set continued, oblivious to her ignorance. “He called me into the main hall of our manor. It was empty, save for him and his personal guards. I will never forget his exact words. They were: ‘I would not have raised a hand to the future emperor. But you’ve failed, and now you are nothing. You are not even my son.’ Right there in the hall of my childhood home, he ordered his guards to beat me within an inch of my life.”

Her cousin disdainfully flicked a cluster of wisteria hanging by his shoulder. Rainwater and white petals showered to the ground. He shook the damp from his hand.

“Bei Province is cold,” he murmured. “It is not a proper home for us Hana, the people of the First Flame. The Hu exiled our most powerful families up there following Kangmun’s conquest. Far enough away that we couldn’t cause any trouble. It does something to men, I think, to be torn from their lands.”

He sighed. “Exiled from our rightful center of power, we have grown dull, listless. We drink to endure the fog, smoke poppy tar to stave off the boredom. My father in particular is fond of spirits. Spirits can make the best of men mean and ill-tempered. My father was never the best of men.”