The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(73)

Afterward, the handmaidens gossiped and entertained themselves in the main rooms of her apartments, but Min retired to her bedchamber for a nap. She found herself increasingly exhausted of late, as though the panicked, helpless circles she was running in her mind were taking a toll on her body.

She collapsed across her bed, staring up at the ceiling. When they were little girls, Lu used to make up elaborate stories about the abstract shapes painted up there: great battles between the blue blobs and lavender swirls of smoke, or a doomed love between a red triangle and a green circle. But then Lu had grown out of that, and out of sharing a bed altogether, and Min found the stories she came up with on her own were never as entrancing. Now she was too old for them, too. And Lu . . .

Lu was gone. Disappeared. The whispered consensus was that she was lost somewhere deep in the Southwood, but she could just as easily be hunkered down in some farmer’s rice field or dead in a gutter in the Second Ring.

That final thought made Min’s stomach clench, but she told herself for the hundredth time it wasn’t possible. Her sister—but was she really her sister? she pushed the thought away—had always been invincible, a force of nature. Resolutely, defiantly bursting with life. And hadn’t she gone on hunting trips with their father and his men, even when they were little girls? Spent days tramping through the forest, flushing hideous boars out from the underbrush, drinking from streams with her own cupped hands?

Min wondered at that now, though. The occasional hunting trip aside, her sister—it was just a dream, just a dream— was raised much in the same manner Min had been, with a staff to prepare their meals, shins to schedule their days, nunas to wash and dress them—even cut and file their fingernails. For all her swordplay and athleticism, the life of a princess had prepared Lu for life outside the palace walls as little as it had for Min.

No. Her sister always just seemed to know how to do new things, or was quick to learn.

Lu is special. She’s always been special, she told herself, unable to keep the bitterness from pulling at the edges of the thought.

Hours later, when she emerged from her bedchamber to dress for supper, she found her nunas gone, and a note calling her to her mother’s apartments.

Her mother was waiting by her dressing table, comb in hand, when Min arrived.

“Where’s Butterfly? And Snowdrop?” Min blurted, unable to keep the wariness from her voice. The past few days had taught her that the unexpected usually meant something bad.

But her mother just smiled. “Amma Ruxin had some tasks for them. We’ve scarcely seen each other these past few days, so I thought I would help you dress, like I did when you were little. Won’t that be nice?”

What do you really want? Min wondered. That wasn’t the answer she was meant to give, though.

She took a seat at the vanity and allowed the empress to draw her comb through her long hair. It was as unkempt from her nap as it had ever been, but for once her mother did not chide her for it. Min tried not to flinch as the comb tugged at a snarl.

“You’re very quiet,” her mother murmured. “Are you unwell?”

Min thought of her father, dead, murdered. Of her sister—sister?—lost. She thought of a woman born of fire and spite. The curse within her body. The husband who scarcely saw her. The husband whom she’d seen kick a man half to death without hesitation. And her mother whom she had seen standing uncomplaining at his side. Her mother who had gone to her dying father and—

No, she told herself. You don’t know what you saw. Dreams. Only dreams.

“I’m fine,” she whispered, her voice still creaky with sleep. She cleared her throat.

“I never had the chance to ask, what exactly did that old monk say to you after your wedding?”

There it is, Min thought. She’d been right to be wary of this sudden, unannounced audience. Her mother never did anything loving without some underlying, calculated reason. Maybe no one ever did.

“I know girls your age tell their mothers everything, but you’re a married woman now, so can you keep this confidence for your husband? Even from her?”

Brother had said this to her after she’d doused the fire-thing with tea, after he and Set had consoled her tears. Min had nodded mutely, though at the time she had secretly wondered if she would have the strength to keep the truth from her mother, even if she wanted to.

She blinked rapidly, trying to keep her lies straight—so many lies, to so many people—too late remembering she did so when she was nervous. It was a tic her mother would be sure to notice.

“Min?” her mother prompted, the comb going still in her hair.

She’d been silent for too long. Beads of sweat sprang up along her hairline, the back of her neck. Say something, idiot!

“Brother? H-he taught me . . . some things,” she said weakly. “Prayers and rituals,” she added.

Her mother pursed her lips, but the comb resumed its brusque, artless sweep through her hair. “What sort of rituals? We have the water monks and nuns for that purpose. What does an empress need that they do not know?”

“It pleases Set for me to know them,” Min said. That was good—perhaps the mention of her cousin would serve as a bulwark against her mother’s disapproval.

It seemed to work. Her mother set down the comb and began plucking apart strands of hair to make a plait. Min resumed breathing, slow and even, trying to keep her relieved exhale from rushing out.