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“Thank the gods I set those bowls down before I interrupted you,” I joked.

Fangyun shoved me away. For a second, I thought she was going to hit me. “Do you know how worried we were?”

I laughed. “I’m sorry, I forgot.” A half-truth.

“Don’t be sorry to me! Be sorry to Ma! And Ba! They have been worried sick! Do you know how white her hair is now because of you? Even Father’s hair is beginning to gray!”

“Fangyun, I’m sorry.”

“What were we thinking, letting you leave? Do you know how dangerous things are right now? There is a war going on, Fei! You’ve heard the stories of the Lan dynasty’s demons, right?”

I had. Everyone on the continent had heard of the war between Lan and Rong, and the ghost stories that drifted from the battlefield.

Twelve months was all it had taken for Yexue to transform the Lan Empire from a crumbling nation at Rong’s mercy to a semblance of its former glory, capable of rivaling the once-feared Rong Empire.

“How did Lan Yexue end up as Rong’s hostage for two whole years if he was capable of raising demons from hell?” I joked, more for her than myself. Yexue had already brought Rong to its knees. If the world found out about the magic he was capable of, it would bring our people’s morale to an all-time low.

When the war began, the emperor had promised that Rong’s sons would be home before summer. However almost a whole year had passed; our situation looked worse by the day. Lan continued to claim town after town, city after city, pushing our soldiers and villagers northward toward the capital.

Already I had heard too many stories of frontline deserters who would rather face the wrath of Rong than to stand face to face with Lan’s army.

“Demons don’t exist!” someone from the table next to us hissed.

I thought he was talking to us, until the man who sat across from him groaned. “My uncle knows someone who saw them with his own eyes! The Prince of Lan raises them from the dead! They are impossibly fast, stronger than ten bulls, and feed on the blood of mortals! At this rate, if Rong’s armies don’t turn the table soon, they will reach Yong’An by summer.”

“What about us? Do you think they will attack small villages likeus?”

The louder of the two men went quiet. “I don’t know.” He set down the bun he was picking at.

“I don’t believe in demons.”

“I don’t want to believe in demons, either….”

“Why don’t we ask Lu Bao? He just came back from the front lines!”

The second man grimaced. “What’s the point, even if he can tell us whether the rumors are true? What can we do? People say the Prince Regent of Lan made a deal with demons to punish the Rong emperor for the humiliation he’d suffered as a ward. But this war isn’t hurtingthe emperor; it’s hurting men like us.”

“I’ve heard that this war isn’t about his time as a ward; it’s about the empress of all empresses,” the other man whispered, his eyes wide as if he were sharing some unfathomable rumor. Too bad it was the same rumor half the empire had already heard. “They say no one has seen the empress of all empresses for almost a year. Apparently she is sick, but the people in the palace think she has run away, and the prince regent is waging the war to find her.”

“Selfish harlot. All this for a stupid woman? I’ve told you: that empress of all empresses is a bad omen. How many nations have tried toinvade us because of her? Now all the freshly claimed borderlands are rebelling because they think the crown prince will no longer become the emperor of all emperors.”

My sister pulled my arm. “Don’t listen to them.”

I smiled. “I’ve heard worse.”

“Are the rumors true?” my sister quietly asked.

“That I’m a selfish harlot?” I teased, and she scowled at me. “The stuff about demons sounds like propaganda from Lan to scare us into surrender or from Rong to scare us into fighting harder—I can’t be certain. However I can confirm that Yexue is…different.”

Fangyun’s face dropped at this, her eyes no longer looking at me. She then changed the subject: “Have you seen any beautiful scenery in the past few months?”

I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I’ve seen. What matters is what I’ve brought home.” I handed her my pouch of gold coins, then patted the bag over my shoulders. “A snow fox’s pelt, to make Mother a scarf, and leather to make shoes for Father. I’ve made enough money these past few months that we don’t have to worry about food anymore. You don’t have to come here every day and—”

My sister’s hand covered mine. “I don’t care about the money, Fei. I just want you to be alive and safe. If this is the reason you keep disappearing for months at the time, then don’t. We—”

“I know.”

“Don’t leave again, sister. I’m scared that the war is going to reach our doorsteps soon. When it does, I don’t want to spend every day wondering where you are and whether you are safe.”