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“We are going to die!”

“These bones are not made for running! If they want to kill me, they will! If the Lans plan on attacking, then I am going home! I will not fight! I will surrender, because I am not leaving!”

She handed me one of the scallion pancakes she had already made, and the coins I had given her earlier. “Take this. I will make more food,” she said, her voice unsteady and her eyes misty. “When Lan’s army comes, they will see that I am useful and make good food. They will let me live. You go now, child. Take care.”

I watched her. She didn’t look like the sort of woman who would change her mind, and I wasn’t a saint. I couldn’t save everyone I came across. Especially those who didn’t believe me.

“Let the village know—”

“This is my home, girl. I have watched half the people in this village grow up and get married and grow old. Do you know how many flags we have seen in that time? Regardless of who rules over us, thisis our home. We will not fight if the enemy comes. And if they want to kill us, then we will die where we were born. We are nobodies in this world, and when asked to choose between tyrants, we will always choose whoever is winning.”

“Lan is not winning.”Lan can’t win.Because if Lan won, what would happen to Siwang?

“I will pass the message on to those who might want to flee if Lan’s army does come. Now go, girl. Go home. It is almost the New Year; don’t you want to see your family?”

So I did as she told me.

I clutched the pancake and ran as fast as I could through the market, until I reached the end of the village and the quiet, icy forest where snow piled up to my thighs. I ran as fast as I could. I slipped and got back up and then slipped again and still I didn’t stop. Even as a trail of red bloomed in my wake.

And I imagine you are not the only one who wants answers for being…different?Prince Yexue had uttered in that amber-lit cave.I had looked for the stargazer when I arrived in the capital, but I never found her….

I headed east.

I headed home.

21

Every night, I was forced to watch those I loved die.

That night, I dreamt of my father’s throat slit over a military map of the continent, his blood soaking through the parchment as Lan’s army swallowed the land.

22

Home was almost a week’s journey on horseback. I waited for more visions of bloodshed, but none came. I waited for news of Lan’s attack on Duhuan but heard nothing.

Perhaps the old lady was right. Perhaps by surrendering, they had spared bloodshed. Or had Lan’s soldiers killed everyone so that there were no survivors left to tell the story?

The thought nauseated me.

Demons, Lan Yexue raised an army of demons, stolen from the eighteenth level of hell,people on the road said.

How I wished I had let Lan Yexue die a quiet death a year ago.

Before I entered my village, I rebandaged the wound on my leg to make sure the gauze was tight and that no blood seeped through. A small injury from my many falls in Duhuan.

My parents already hated the idea of me traveling the lands alone in times like these, though the game I hunted helped defray the rising costs caused by the war.

After everything my stubbornness had cost us, they didn’t want to take me from one cage to lock me in another. Still, if Mother saw that I was injured, she would never let me leave the house again.

Since our exile, my family had enough to worry about.

The problem with small villages where everyone knew everyone was that when unfamiliar faces appeared, they were often treated warily. We had tried our best to settle in. Father now taught at the school, though it didn’t pay much. Mother sold her embroidery and food in the market with Fangyun to make up for the shortfall.

Despite neighbors who greeted us with polite smiles, we felt like outcasts. Life here was a far cry from our lives in the capital, where everyone from court officials to famed merchants groveled for my family’s attention, all hoping to have the future empress as an ally.

When I thought of Father’s weathered face, Mother’s failing eyes, and Fangyun’s hands, now hardened by manual labor, my heart ached.

I got what I wanted, but at what cost?