Page 56 of The Nightblood Prince
“To this day, I don’t know what exactly was said,” Yexue continued.
“But it drove my mother to end her own life because she couldn’t stand the monster she’d shepherded into this world.
I guess I’m lucky that my father was a coward, too soft to do what should have been done.
He had tried his hardest to love me, but love is fragile, not nearly enough to overshadow something as primal as fear.
That prophecy is the reason my uncle sent me to Rong as a prisoner after my father became ill.
” His gaze fell on me again. “When I left, my uncle told me that if I knew what was good for me, I’d die in Rong.
And when I couldn’t find the stargazer or any of the answers I was looking for…
that became what I wanted, too. Because if I couldn’t change my prophecy, the world would be a better place without me. ”
In the dying amber light, Lan Yexue was a sculpture of ivory. His pale skin seemed to glow. In his eyes, as they gazed upon me, I saw a reverence rapt as the devotion that holy believers reserved for gods.
His eyes were haunting. Something inside me rattled harder like a chord struck, refusing to be silenced even as I pushed it down.
Once, years ago, when I was a child barely taller than a tea table, I had snuck into the stargazer’s tower and watched her stand among moving platforms of metal and wood, decorated with ornaments that were supposed to represent the stars in the sky.
The spellbound focus she had then was the same that Yexue held for me in this moment.
My cheeks burned, and I tore my eyes from his to stare at the city beneath us, at its people and the lanterns that were slowly beginning to glow. I looked at anything and everything that was not Lan Yexue.
His cold fingers caressed my chin, ever so delicately.
“I never intended to make it out of those mountains, Fei,” he continued.
“I thought if I were to die, I would die by my own hand, when I wanted and how I wanted. But…then I met a girl who saw me as a life that deserved to be saved, not an abomination who had no right to exist.” He laughed.
“Even if she did drive a dagger through my chest, she had also risked her life to protect me.”
I turned to face him then. “That day in the mountains, you were planning to…” I couldn’t finish the thought; my heart was beating so hard in my chest I thought it might break as more words welled up to my lips.
No sound came from them.
What kind of life had Lan Yexue lived, to make him want to leave this world so young? And what was the prophecy that was bestowed upon him, to make his own family fear him so?
“Fei…” My name from his lips was a chilling brush of satin against the nape of my neck.
I didn’t think when I saved you from the tiger, I wanted to tell him. Whatever he felt for me, I could not reciprocate. I wasn’t worthy of the way he looked at me, with the vehemence of the very stars that marred our destinies.
“Once, I believed destiny was a thing dictated by gods, written in the stars. But that was before I met you. The girl who didn’t care about prophecies and what the world expected of her?
The girl who was brave enough to venture into the winter mountains and hunt the mighty Beiying tiger for a mere chance at freedom?
Before you, I had never thought it possible to defy my destiny.
Now it is all I think about. To defy the gods who think themselves worthy of dictating my life.
” Gingerly, his fingers touched my hairline, brushing away the stray strands that danced with the evening breeze.
“Whatever happened to the girl I met in the mountains? The girl who knew what she wanted and would stop at nothing to get it?”
“Perhaps she’s changed.”
“Because she finally fell in love with her prince?” There was an edge to Yexue’s tone.
“Because she grew up and learned responsibility,” I replied. “If you are looking for the girl who was reckless enough to send her entire family into exile, then I am not her anymore. I have learned that being selfish has consequences. Perhaps you should, too.”
“I liked the selfish you,” he whispered.
“That makes one of us.”
“Tell me what you want, Fei. And don’t say peace.”
His question caught me off guard. “I do want peace,” I whispered. “ But …I also want to know the truth. Of destinies, and what it means.”
He broke into a wide, double-dimpled grin, as if he had been waiting for this moment. “Then we will find you answers. 解铃还须系铃人 . To untie the bell, we must find the person who had tied it in the first place. Mine is no longer of this world, but I believe I know how we might find yours.”
I stumbled back. “You know where the stargazer is?”
“No, I don’t. But I do have one last lead—same as your last lead, perhaps. The location of her favorite student. Xiangxi is not far from here. We will be there in a day or so if we pick the right horses.”
“We are going together? What about your city?”
“I have excellent generals and captains. They can still do their jobs while I take care of more pressing matters.”
“Such as reclaiming your destiny?”
Yexue smiled. “Such as corrupting you.”
I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did. And beneath that laughter was an echo of something he had said earlier: A dragon will die without a head.
An empire without its leader would crumble faster than spring’s scattered seeds of hope.