Page 22 of The Dragon Wakes with Thunder (The Dragon Spirit Duology #2)

I shook my head.

She laughed again, a self-deprecating sound. “They’re quite silly, superstitions, you know—”

“I’d love to hear them.”

She wavered, glancing back at me. I waited, making no effort to fill the silence. At last, watching the flickering amber, she said:

“Long, long ago, in a time before ours, spirits and men walked the earth together.

They say it was an era of chaos and instability, because the spirits were capricious and fickle, and the emperor a weak and corrupt man.

But one day, as the people cried out for change, the Mandate of Heaven shone upon a worthy man called the Red Sword, who took the throne only to rule for eighty-eight days.

When a spiteful monkey spirit kidnapped his youngest son, he pursued the spirit up the mountains to present-day First Crossing, where he battled the monkey and overpowered him with his great life force.

But as he ventured into the caves to retrieve his son, he found the young prince at the brink of death, for the monkey had stolen his heart.

And so the emperor removed his own heart and gave it to his son, and the Mandate of Heaven passed on to him.

“Unable to carry his father, the son buried him in the Red Mountains, weeping all the while. The earth grew wet and pliant with his tears, so that the following day, the buried body reemerged from the soil. Only, the emperor’s bones had fossilized into amber, and just as the father had once shared qi with his son, now this amber could be used to bridge qi from person to person.

Understanding his father’s last gift to him, the prince gave the amber to his people.

Together, they joined hands and shared their qi across the land, and thus with their great numbers the first veil between spirits and men was formed. ”

Interesting, how these old legends diverged and shifted with every retelling. For I had heard a different version of this tale, like a warped mirror reflection. Regardless, it was impossible to tell fact from fiction now.

“Do you believe it?” I asked, watching her expression.

She flushed. “Of—of course not,” she said. “I guess I just like the old stories, although they’re quite silly, are they not?”

She was the consort to the Imperial Commander—young, pretty, and powerful—yet she tiptoed through conversations like she was walking on glass, voicing every statement as if it were a question, downplaying even her most remarkable talents.

Had I too been like this once?

“I believe it,” I said.

She glanced sharply at me. “In—in the stories?” she stammered. “In magic?”

“I’ve never been able to resist a good story,” I admitted. “And to be honest, it would be harder for me to believe that a world as wondrous as ours is entirely without magic.”

She smiled. “I’m prone to belief as well,” she said, as if confiding a secret.

“I know everyone seems fearful of spirits these days, but I remember tales of kind ones too, and even beautiful ones. In the stories of old, spirits were as varied as men, each with their own personality and inclination.”

I, who knew only one spirit, said nothing.

As we passed into the next room, a collection of ink and wash paintings, I asked, “Can we find your work here, Consort Caihong?”

“Mine?” Her eyes went round. “Of course not, Lady Hai. I would never dream…”

“And why not?” I asked, thinking of the way her art had made me feel. “I would love to be able to admire your work here, and I’m sure your future children would agree.”

“Lady Hai, you may have forgotten, given your unique circumstances, but only men are allowed to display their work in the Imperial Art Pavilion.”

“And why is that the case?” I asked. Against the black-and-white paintings, her youthful complexion appeared even brighter, as if all the light in the room favored her.

“The palace is a place of rules, and those rules are dictated by the throne…”

My pulse quickening, I said: “I want to change the rules.”

The air around us seemed to thicken as Caihong’s eyes darted around frantically. But this section of the gallery was deserted. Lotus had made it so.

“Come with me,” I said, guiding her to the edge of the rushing stream, which the open-air gallery overlooked. I had learned this trick from Winter: using ambient sound to mask private conversations, rather than seeking silence.

By the water, I said, “Only Prince Keyan stands in my way to the throne. If you help me take him down, I will help you in return.”

“I—what?”

“I know he’s sleeping with you,” I said, “and I know you don’t want it.”

It had been a wild guess, but her expression confirmed it.

For what woman would risk her very life for an illicit affair that offered no loyalty, protection, or hope for future happiness?

At best, she might wish to become another consort, no higher than she stood now, should Prince Keyan ascend the throne. At worst, it would cost her everything.

Perhaps at one time she had been infatuated with the crown prince, loved him even, but after being chosen as consort for the Imperial Commander, I was certain she would have prioritized her survival over any notions of romance.

For Prince Keyan, however, the calculus would have looked very different.

His life had never been at risk. Longing to return to simpler times, especially with a wife as shrewd as Yifeng, he could have wheedled, pressured, or even coerced his childhood love into maintaining their illicit relationship, no matter the danger it posed to her.

It was not fair, but when had life ever been fair?

“Lady Hai,” she said, taking a strained breath. “I don’t know what you speak of, but—”

“I can offer you a way out,” I said, “if that’s what you want. I can help you”—I could see the growing interest in her eyes—“if only you confess that Prince Keyan has been coercing you.”

She recoiled, all her prior interest vanishing like a snuffed match.

“He’d kill me,” she said adamantly. “You don’t understand him, Lady Hai.

The Imperial Commander is…unforgiving. He’s executed other consorts for far less.

” As she spoke, she fidgeted with the collar of her robes.

Beneath, I caught the edge of a trailing green bruise.

Bile rose in my throat. “Let me protect you,” I said. “I swear it—upon my life.”

“No one can protect me now,” she whispered, close to tears. “And I am resigned to my fate. My mother used to tell me that beauty is the wisdom of women, but she was wrong. It is our curse .”

I thought of her sketchbook, that drawing of a forlorn figure at the edge of a cliff. In its raw desperation, its helpless melancholy, I felt as though I understood her.

“The woman at the cliff’s edge,” I said, “that was you, wasn’t it?”

Her face bone-white, she nodded. “I am resigned to my fate,” she said again, as if to convince herself.

It would be so easy to use lixia in this moment.

If I only compelled her, in a moment it would be over.

I could sense her will, and it was fragile as glass.

I need only speak her name, hold her gaze, and she could become mine.

She would agree to act as my pawn, and I could use her to take down Keyan.

But Lei’s warning echoed in my mind: You know who will be punished worse.

A knot formed in my chest. Caihong had suffered enough. And I would not become another bully in her long line of tormentors, threatening and forcing her against her will.

“Besides,” Caihong added, in an attempt at lightness, “Keyan hasn’t come to me in weeks. I think he’s being cautious, biding his time until his father names him as heir.”

It was not loyalty holding her back. It was fear.

Palace politics were all about signaling, I’d learned. If you could find a way to signal that you were destined to win, then you would actually win. Everyone wanted to back the winning side, but no one knew where to place their bets.

“You believe in the stories of old, don’t you?” I asked.

Her face had not regained its former color. “What do you mean?”

“What if I told you they weren’t merely stories?” I said. “What if I told you I could harness the power of the old spirits?”

“I…I don’t understand.”

I reached out a hand and the stream seemed to pause in its course, before droplets of water rose in the air, reshaping themselves into a slender vase in the Sun Dynasty fashion.

Caihong gasped, and I could see in her eyes her rapt admiration for beauty.

I transformed the vase into flowers, meaning to make them blossom, but I was stymied by the frailty of my qi, which was so weak it no longer felt like my own.

If before my power had been balanced, like yin and yang, now it felt more and more like the waning moon, gradually consumed by the sun.

I dropped my hand; water sprayed everywhere. Sweat dripped down my temples, but Consort Caihong did not seem to notice.

“That was—incredible,” she said, peering into the trickling stream below. “Could you offer me the same power?”

The question flustered me; not for a second had I expected it.

“The things I could create,” she went on, “if I were not constrained by mere brush and ink.”

What had I created with my power? I knew there must be some good, but in that moment, all I could remember was the fear. The way my victims looked at me with horror in their eyes.

“Caihong,” I said, dropping honorifics. “You said beauty was a curse. I will tell you…power is one too.”

Her shoulders sagged with disappointment, but she nodded in quiet understanding. I could almost see her mind racing as she looked from me to the stream to the paintings around us, austere and solemn in their black-and-white depictions.

A decision took shape in her eyes. “I want to leave the Forbidden City,” she whispered. “Do you know—in all my life, in twenty-eight years, I’ve never left even once?” She laughed, a hint of embarrassment in her voice, as if she expected judgment on my part. But I could not judge her.

I had once harbored the same dream.

“I can promise it,” I said. “If you help me, I will do everything in my power to ensure you go free.”

“Is it wondrous out there?” she asked, a shy vulnerability entering her voice. “Is it as wondrous as they say?”

“It is,” I agreed, after some hesitation. “Wondrous, and terrible.”

Lotus and I were walking back through the palace when I overheard a familiar voice drifting through the bamboo leaves.

“She won’t talk to me,” Sky was saying. “Brother, I don’t know what to do. She’s clearly sick but refuses to see a physician—”

“I thought you said she agreed to see one before the Spring Festival,” said Winter. I peered through the leaves, spotting Sky and Winter in the rock garden.

“That’s still a week away!” said Sky. “She’s overexerting herself, and she won’t listen to reason—”

I was seconds away from barging in when Winter said, “Why don’t you let her do what she wants?”

Sky stopped pacing, turning toward his brother. I felt my lip curl; Sky had always listened to his older brother in a way he never did to me.

“Maybe she’s afraid of confiding in you because she knows you’ll derail her plans—and prescribe her bed rest.”

“Yes, but if that’s what she needs—”

My irritation curdled and I turned away, knowing if I remained, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from picking a fight.

Sky would thank me later, I told myself—after I had carried out the dirty work for both of us. As always, I would have to act alone. Since he was so unwilling to get his hands dirty.

As for me, my hands were already stained black.