Page 6

Last night’s nightmare flashed behind my eyes.

Fire.

Screams.

Yong’An in flames.

My sister, running, running, running. Her robes were torn and she was crying and—

I blinked it away.

“Fei, are you all right?”

You don’t know the things I’ve seen, sister,I desperately wanted to tell her.You don’t know what I know.“Just a little cold from the hunt.”

My sister’s demeanor immediately softened. “The Beiying tigers arepredators.Great hunters have died for their pelts. What makes you think the pampered prince’s bride who is raised in the palace by servants and protected by guards can accomplish the impossible? Even if you succeed, can you be sure the emperor will grant your wish?”

“????????,” I replied.What is said cannot be unsaid, the words of an honorable man cannot be chased down by the fastest of horses.“If an emperor goes back on one promise, then all his promises will become worthless.”

“But your prophecy is not a fast horse. It is the promise of uniting the continent for his son.”

My lips thinned. She was right; I didn’t know if the emperor would honor his promise. However, I could not sit idle and wait for death and destruction to sweep Yong’An. A prophecy was just words, strung together. If my fate was written in the stars, then I would fly up to heaven and rewrite it.

When Siwang had taught me combat, I could predict his every move through my visions, and if I moved accordingly, I could change the outcome, every time. A swipe of his feet that would knock me off balance in my visions would be met with nothing, because I knew to move out of the way. What if the stargazer’s visions worked the same?

I could not turn back time and keep the prophecy from being spoken. However, I did have command over the present that controlled what would happen tomorrow. Time was a river that flowed endless. And with persistence, water could break stones. If I tried hard enough, I could change the future and save my city from ruin.

“The imperial hunt is too sacred, and the tradition of granting whoever catches the first Beiying tiger of the hunt a wish of their choice has been around for hundreds of years. The emperor can go back on his words; he cannot go back on tradition.”

The imperial hunt was held in the days leading up to the winter solstice, to honor Rong’s northern roots. It was a way to pay respect to the ancestors who had survived through hunting and gathering for hundreds of years when Rong was still a small tribute state to the larger, wealthier empires of the south.

As our society develops, and our empire prospers, we must not forget where we came from. The austere times when the only way to fill our bellies was by the mercy of the land or by killing with our bare hands…were words the emperor uttered at each hunt. So that both the Rong dynasty and its people would never forget how lucky we were, to live in a time of plenty, when agriculture and farming filled our bowls with rice and vegetables and all the meat we could pray for.

During the Century of Great Winter, the Rong dynasty’s ancestral lands froze over and they were surrounded on all sides. Its people had to bow to the neighboring nations and assimilate to their ways to survive; they’d lost so much in that time.

Their culture.

Their names.

Their language.

So what little they had left of their ancestors, they clung to with both hands.

The hunt wasn’t just a way to honor their ancestors’ struggles, though. It was an important military exercise for the empire’s top soldiers. This was a place for men to show off their martial skills, for warriors to????.To stand out among their peers and rise above their stations overnight.

If you could impress the emperor on the hunting ground, it didn’t matter which family you descended from, which region you hailed from, whether you were of noble blood or a serf.

The emperor valued true talent above inconsequential things such as name and status and family. If one could prove their worth to the emperor, they’d be rewarded. And nothing impressed the emperor more than the king of these snowy mountains. The legendary Beiying tiger: the most coveted prize of every hunt. Many had died for its pelt,and as long as the world had desperate souls who wished for more, many would continue to die.

Last winter was the first time in almost three years that someone had killed a Beiying tiger at the hunt.

The hero who’d slain it? None other than the empire’s favorite prince.

And Siwang, that fool, had wasted the wish on flattery.I wish for the continued expansion and prosperity of Rong. So that one day our continent might finally know peace, as our ancestors had always dreamt.

Words that had moved the emperor to tears.

Save the wish for something else, my son,the emperor replied.Something more selfish, something you want not for our mighty empire, but for yourself. It doesn’t matter what it is. Anything under heaven, I will give to you. Even if you ask for the blood of the gods, I will give it to you.