The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(50)

He jerked away from her. “Don’t touch me!”

“Why did you lie to me in the forest?” Her voice was full of accusation and something that sounded remarkably like hurt.

They glared at each other in silence until at last he said, “I didn’t lie. That boy . . . he’s not me. Not anymore.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. “I liked him better than whoever you are now.”

“Then you shouldn’t have killed him,” he snapped.

Nok turned and left her standing there. For a moment he thought she might try to stop him, but for once she was quiet.





CHAPTER 17


New Day

It was perverse to wear her funerary whites to a wedding, Min thought. Her own wedding, no less. A real ceremony, with all its pomp and cheer, was forbidden: in the one hundred days following the death of an emperor, while everyone was garbed for mourning, there were to be no celebrations of any sort.

But the empire would have an emperor. And in this case, for Set to claim that title, he needed to marry a direct descendant to the Hu line, of which Min was the only remaining option. A quiet, efficient ceremony would have to suffice.

And so, she found herself kneeling alone in front of her embroidery easel within her locked and heavily guarded chambers, clad in snow white from head to toe. Waiting.

All around, it did not fit with any of her fantasies. She’d never known who she was to marry—the groom had ever been a vague tall, handsome specter, a role her cousin did fulfill, to his credit—but she had known the how and where. Had relied on those exquisite details—especially the vermillion bridal robes they would drape over her, drenching her in color and expectation. A scarlet peony on the cusp of plucking for the court to marvel at. But her emperor father was dead—passed like smoke from this world on to the next—and this was now her life.

Her father . . .

Her father had lied, and so her sister killed him in vengeance. That was what they had told Min. What they’d told everyone.

The emperor had never meant for her sister to rule. His empty promises had been a diversion, a father humoring his favorite daughter. And Lu, learning this, had poisoned him immediately prior to the hunt—murdered him in cold fury.

Then, during the hunt, she had isolated and attacked her cousin, who managed to fend her off until his soldiers came to his aid. Lu had fled, a coward in the end.

She was driven mad with her lust for power. That was the truth on everyone’s lips. That is what happens when you give a girl too much allowance, too much to believe in. This is what people said when they thought Min could not hear.

It was true. It had to be true.

Only her sister was many things, some good: loyal, quick-witted, vehement, almost violent in her loyalty and her affections. And some bad: arrogant, hot-headed, stubborn. But, Min could not stop the voice in her head from whispering, Lu was no coward. Never a coward. Not wise enough to be a coward, even when being a coward was the far better option. No, her sister burned fast and bright and golden, heedless of the consequences.

Lu did not sneak. She did not run.

And then, too, there was Min’s strange waking dream. The slim, black-eyed shamaness in white who had taken her hand and shown her a very different version of events. Her mother standing over her father, the empty vial relieved of its poison vanishing up her tailored sleeve.

Min’s heart trembled at the memory, and for a horrible moment the shamaness’s black eyes flashed in her mind, like moonlight skimming dark water.

Only a dream.

A vivid one, brought on by the slight fever that accompanied her woman’s blood, but not real. There was no such thing as ghosts, and there was no magic left in the world anymore. Only a dream, she told herself. Only . . .

Her father’s funeral emerged in her mind’s eye. Her mother had stood beside her, implacable and radiant. Min had studied her from the corner of her eye, determined to discover therein a tear, a tightness in the throat, some sign of distress.

But there had been nothing.

Good breeding; nothing sinister. Only a dream.

How would she even allow for it to be true? That her mother could murder her own husband, that she could exile Lu, her own child, was unthinkable.

And, whatever the cause, Min had lost a sister and a father.

Mother is all I have left. The thought made her stomach clench. Do I want to lose her as well?

The pocket doors of her room opened, and like magic, the empress was there. Min felt a jolt of guilt at the sight of her, as though her mother could hear her thoughts. Before Min could speak, though, Set entered the room behind her. Min’s heart leaped.

He was also draped head to toe in mourning whites, though Min thought it made him look ethereal and striking. But his jaw was clenched, and he had a distant, preoccupied look that made Min’s heart twinge with reflexive longing. She hated that look. Helplessly, she recalled how they had last spoken; he’d looked at her—no, seen her. It had felt unlike anything in the world, to be reflected by those gray eyes. Now, though, his gaze was not a mirror but a wall. Every bit of him cold and closed.

Be here, she willed. This is our wedding. Be here with me.

The empress, conversely, was beaming. It was, Min realized, the happiest her mother had ever looked. She looked years younger—almost like a girl. “Your cousin,” her mother said proudly, by way of greeting, “has drafted his first decree. He will present it in court tomorrow morning after your union is announced.”