Page 59 of The Nightblood Prince

I was flying, high in the sky as dawn bled fast across the land until everything was scorched into a shade of bloodstained gold.

Rong’s soldiers in their crimson uniforms were changing shifts when blurs of deep blue materialized on the horizon.

Lan’s soldiers in their uniforms of indigo, dark as midnight, crossed no-man’s-land—human soldiers, not vampire soldiers. Blades drawn.

Behind them were cannons and archers. The formation of an army ready for battle.

But they did not charge as I had expected. They hovered on the horizon.

A golden scripture passed from trembling hand to trembling hand until it landed on Siwang’s desk. He opened it, glanced inside, and huffed. He grabbed his sword, and the furious tempo of war drums rang through camp.

My stomach twisted as the comrades I had trained with, the comrades who were not ready for battle, picked up their swords.

The sun rose higher, and higher.

Two armies, one red and one blue, meeting from opposite sides of a crimson-stained field that should be green and blooming with wildflowers this time of year. Instead, it was trampled by horses’ hooves and wheel marks.

When Siwang looked across the field and saw human soldiers, he smiled and rode forward alone, leaving his army behind.

He and Yexue stopped a hundred yards apart. Close enough to hear each other, far enough that they had time to run if one army suddenly advanced.

“I knew you had spies in my camp, but I didn’t think you’d be this stupid,” Siwang mused aloud.

“Let her go,” said Yexue, his voice stern and cold. The tone of a man whose patience was on its last thread.

“Or what? Or you will attack?” Siwang cast a glance behind Yexue. “You are nothing without your hellish creatures.” He raised his hands, and the army behind him shifted into their battle formation.

Yexue’s lips tightened into a scowl. “I don’t want to kill you.

She would never forgive me if I did. This is your last chance.

We can end this the easy way, or the hard way.

But be warned: if we do it the hard way, I will take everything from you.

Your name, your honor, your empire, and all that rotten pride.

The only thing I’ll leave you with will be a pitiful life in chains, as a dog at my feet. Is that what you want?”

Siwang laughed at this. “I am not going to be the one who loses everything.” Then, at a wave of his hand, his men charged.

Yexue grimaced but drew his sword when Siwang drew his.

“You should have listened to her,” Yexue whispered, and I braced for the vision to shift into a clash of swords, the spray of blood, and that never-ending symphony of bone-splintering screams, a sound that haunted me long after I woke from the nightmares.

It never came, because before the two armies could clash, Yexue threw his sword across the field, and it pierced straight through Siwang’s throat. So fast that no one had the chance to scream before Siwang’s headless body fell off his horse with a stomach-turning thud.

“No!” I jerked awake, panting and covered in sweat.

Outside the inn, golden hues of dawn poured over the land. Magic tingled on my skin.

That was one of the most vivid dreams I’d ever had.

I didn’t know what ultimatum they were talking about, but if the treaty was real, then Siwang had to sign it, as soon as possible.

I grabbed my robes and slipped on shoes before I charged out of the room.

By the time I came downstairs, I realized there was something missing—the guests of this supposedly fully booked inn.

The only people downstairs were three of Yexue’s five guards, who were sipping congees and laughing about something.

Yexue was nowhere in sight.

“That bastard.”

I ran upstairs and kicked open every door and, as expected, all the rooms were empty until I came across one that wasn’t and found a half-dressed Yexue inside, in the middle of tying his robe.

“Here to seduce me again?”

“You didn’t sleep downstairs?”

“Of course I didn’t. I am also not the ward you met in Yong’An anymore. Did you honestly expect me to sleep in that drafty hall? If this inn had actually been full, I would have made the innkeeper kick everyone out.”

“You told the innkeeper to lie about this place being full and there being only one room left?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“What can I say, I am simply a too-kind and generous man. You wanted to seduce me, and I wanted to give you the opportunity. If you want this inn to be full so that we will be forced to share one room and one bed again for real, I can make that happen, too.” He was laughing, but after the dream I’d just had, I was in no mood to laugh.

“Get dressed. I want to find the stargazer’s disciple, then get out of here and away from you as soon as possible.”

“I found her months ago. She is with the general who governs thiscity.”

“What?”

“You are not the only person looking for answers, Fei.” He gave me a look that said I should have expected this from him. And in all honesty, I should have expected this. Lan Yexue did not seem like the sort of man who did things halfway.

“Then why did you insist on coming to get the information yourself? You could just have sent a letter.”

He shrugged. “The same reason this prince regent would rather sleep in a dusty inn than a beautiful manor for the night. The things I do to 搏红颜一笑 .” The things I do to make the beautiful girl smile.

“I am not smiling.”

“Well, I tried. Would Siwang travel so far just to spend some quality time and make memories with you?”

I didn’t tell him that Siwang didn’t need to do all of this. He wasn’t this pathetic.

I turned around and walked out. “Let’s get going. I assume there is breakfast at the general’s manor?”

The general’s manor was a small house with a walled courtyard and a constant patrol of guards, sitting at the east of the city.

“This is his temporary residence,” Yexue explained. “The previous governor of the city burned his house down when the people surrendered.”

“The people surrendered, but not the governor?”

“Greedy men like to hold on to power when they can, regardless of the good of the people. And from what the people of this city have told us, their governor was not a good man. If he hadn’t ended his life on his own terms, he would have spent the rest of his life in prison, paying for the crimes he had committed against his people. ”

This shouldn’t have surprised me. Regardless of the banners they flew, regardless of how righteous they saw themselves, power corrupted everyone who possessed it.

The guards bowed when they saw Yexue dismounting his horse and opened the double red doors of the manor before we reached the front steps. The guards we had come with followed us in, but trailing at a distance.

The interior was organized. If Yexue hadn’t already told me the occupier was a general, I would have guessed.

Despite the decorations and the swallow-tailed roofs with their intricate carvings, the manor looked more like an army’s training field than a respectable home.

Rows and rows of weapons were lined up neatly along the walls, and the center of the courtyard was cleared to make space for sparring.

For all its beautiful structure, the manor was not well kept. The paint was peeling from the brown beams, which could have been red a long time ago, and the stone tiles beneath our feet looked like they had not been washed in years.

“Is this the biggest house you could steal?”

“It was the biggest empty house. Unlike your prince, I do not have the habit of stealing homes and kicking their inhabitants out.” Yexue grimaced. “Once the war is over, I will make sure these borderlands never suffer again. I will bring them the peace and stability that they deserve.”

“You and Siwang both say that.”

“Unlike your prince, I mean what I say and I don’t go back on my promises.”

I bit back the urge to remind Yexue that every man on the continent believed they would be the just ruler this land needed, but everyone who had tried to unite these Warring States had failed.

How long would Lan remain as a revered power, and how long until they eventually crumbled like all the mighty empires before?

The empress of all empresses… Could I change things, put us on a new path where the people could finally see peace?

As we walked through the manor, a young man in plain black robes came to greet us. He was tall but lean, with the posture of a soldier. “Your Highness.”

“Peizhi.” Yexue greeted him with a nod. “Is your father still at the training camp?”

“He is. Your visit is so sudden, he—”

“No need to call him back; we will leave tonight at the latest. Where is the seer?”

“Right this way, Your Highness.”

The young man, Peizhi, brought us to what seemed to be the library of the house. At the center of the room was a young woman kneeling at a table covered with plain white paper, with her eyes closed. Except there was something peculiar about how her eyelids seemed to sink into her—

I gasped.

“The Rong emperor tried to kill her with poison,” Yexue explained in a quiet voice as we entered the room.

“When they discarded her body, they took her eyes and cut off her tongue as a precaution. But Ping’s teacher knew this would happen when she left the palace, and gave her an antidote that would cure ten thousand poisons, the same one you had used to save me.

She was able to escape the capital with her life, but there’s no way to replace what the emperor took from her.

She can still hear you, so if you have questions, ask away. ”

Yexue gestured at the seat across from Ping. I sat down across from her. From here, I could see that she was still young. Late twenties, perhaps, and beautiful. “You are the disciple of the stargazer who foretold my fate?”

Ping nodded.

“Where is your teacher?”

She fled, Ping wrote on the paper placed before her.

“Do you know where?”

She shook her head.

“The prophecy, do you know…is it real?”