The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(47)

“So, what now?” the Ashina boy demanded. “She can’t stay here. Somebody—either a patient or the Wangs—is going to notice we have a mysterious houseguest who happens to match the age and description of a missing princess.”

Lu bristled. This isn’t any of your business, she wanted to tell him. “I’ll stay hidden,” she said instead.

“Please. Keeping you inside is like keeping a tiger in a cage—”

“Oh, now you know me so well all of a sudden!” she scoffed, cutting him short.

Omair closed his eyes as though the two of them were making it very difficult for him to exist.

“Stop yelling!” Nokhai snapped.

“I’m not yelling!” Lu hissed.

The boy rolled his eyes. “Well now you’re not, but you’ve already made enough noise to bring the entire imperial army down upon us—”

“The army,” Lu cut him off. “An army. I need an army. An army to dethrone Set.”

Omair opened his eyes.

“An army?” the Ashina boy repeated incredulously. “To rival that of the empire? Do you know how many men that is?”

“It wouldn’t have to be as big,” Lu countered, mind whirling now. She set her sword on the table and began pacing the narrow span of the room. “Smaller is better, so we can move covertly, maintain the element of surprise.”

“It could be enough,” Omair mused, dark eyes brightening. “If you were able to infiltrate the capital with them.”

“Yes,” Lu said, galvanized. “The royal guard is bound to come over to my side. Most of them are from Hu families, and they know me. They’ve watched me grow up. Set is an interloper—a stranger to them.”

“That’s all well and good,” countered Nokhai. “But where do you propose to find an army in the first place? I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Princess, but the empire is vast, and it—we— all belong to the emperor. Set. Not you—you’re just a pariah now. And you could travel for weeks in any direction and not reach a land where the empire doesn’t have soldiers and subjects.”

“Not any direction,” she said, scarcely realizing the truth of it before the words left her mouth. “Not north.”

“North?” the boy repeated. “Need I remind you again that you killed everyone up north?”

How many times do I have to tell him that wasn’t me? she wondered. Aloud though, she said, “Not the slipsk—not the Gifted Kith. Farther north.”

“Farther . . . Yunians?” He had the gall to laugh now. “Even if those sightings were real, I doubt they’d be happy to see you. You slaughtered them and razed their city years ago.”

“Not me,” she said, her heart quickening as the idea blossomed. “The empire did. And I’m a pariah now. But a pariah with a better claim to the throne than Set. And if the Yunians were to help me reclaim my rightful throne, I could facilitate very generous terms in their favor—especially if I warn them of Set’s interest in them.”

“It might work,” Omair murmured. “The Yunian force can’t be very strong. They would certainly welcome an opportunity to preempt a long, bloody fight.”

“Yes, exactly!” she said. “It will work.”

“Have you both lost your minds? Omair,” the Ashina boy pleaded. “This is crazy. You must see it’s crazy.”

“It has to be crazy,” Lu countered. “What’s happened to me is crazy. Extraordinary. And it will take extraordinary measures to set things right.”

“You know that expression ‘fighting fire with fire’?” the boy said sarcastically. “I don’t think it’s meant to be taken as advice.”

“When can we leave for Yunis?” Lu said, turning back to Omair.

“We?” the boy repeated. “No way,” he said flatly, rounding on Omair. “She can do whatever she likes, but there’s no way we’re helping her with whatever crazy plan she comes up with.”

Lu frowned. The old man did look unsteady now, but she suspected there was more to him than met the eye. “It’s his decision,” she told the Ashina boy. “If he wants to join me, it’s his choice.”

“Stay out of it,” the boy bit back.

“This concerns me as much as it does you,” Lu objected, struggling to keep her patience. “More so, even. The fate of thousands could rest upon this. Do you think your life will be better with my cousin on the throne?”

“It won’t make an ounce of difference to me. Both of you are imperial swine.”

The words stung more than they had any right to. “You met my cousin when he was just a boy. You know what a monster he was—is. Imagine that same monster with command over armies. You’re not seeing the big picture.”

The boy whirled on her. “And that’s all you see, isn’t it! Winning your damned throne. Not the people whose lives you’ll ruin or end to get there.”

It was too much. Her cousin’s betrayal—the betrayal of inner court officials her father had trusted, who had known her since infancy. Exile. And now this wrathful boy, this specter from her past whom she could not seem to quite reconcile to the present, insisted on standing in the way of the one solution she had to any of her problems.