Page 64 of The Nightblood Prince

I knew something was wrong when Siwang’s guards greeted me with tight frowns and stern faces. When I jumped from my horse and approached the tent, their spears dropped in a cross formation to bar me from entering.

I clenched my jaw. If Yexue’s words had been lies, then Siwang would have run to me the moment he heard I was safe and alive, not barricaded himself behind his soldiers and their blades.

“Let me in,” I snapped. It took all my self-control not to grab the nearest guard and shove him out of the way, military rules be damned.

The men exchanged apprehensive glances. Thin lips and cautious eyes. The air was heavy with trepidation, like a fabric strained at the seams.

“He would want to know I’m alive,” I told them.

“Wait here,” the tallest guard said finally.

With a deep breath, he dipped into the tent. A composure of slow vigilance.

There was always a mindful diligence to the way Siwang’s men approached him. But Siwang wasn’t one to let his emotions influence the way he treated those around him. The loss of Changchun must have hit him hard.

Half a minute later—too long—the guard finally slipped out.

When the guard returned his attention to me, I prepared myself, hand ready to rip the headband from my mark. The stars knew I couldn’t win in a fair fight against these battle-trained soldiers. But I might if Fate helped me cheat.

In the end, none of us brandished our weapons. The guard gave a subtle nod of his head. “You can go in.”

I braced myself, then entered.

Watery daylight peered through the tent. Without any lit candles, every color inside was subdued to a subtle gray hue.

Siwang sat at his desk, his back to me. There was a calmness in his silhouette.

This was far from the reunion I’d painted for us in vivid, imagined colors. I’d thought there would be tears in his eyes when he heard I was alive.

Perhaps Yexue was right. Perhaps Siwang didn’t care so much for me after all. Perhaps my palace fears were true, that despite everything, I was just another pawn to him.

“Siwang.” I whispered his name, hoped the sound of my voice would bring him back to me.

When he finally turned, my breath caught in my throat, and a dull ache weighed heavy in my chest. Relief shone in Siwang’s shining eyes, tinged red in the sallow light. He had been crying, for a long time, it seemed.

Then he flashed the slightest of smiles. Not enough to ripple his stoic features, but enough to make my own eyes sting.

“Fei.” He said my name quietly. “You are back.” There was no emotion in his words. no joy, only emptiness. “Did he—”

“Yexue didn’t hurt me,” I replied before he could finish. “He was…kind, actually.”

Siwang merely nodded. “ 开门见山吧 .” Open the door and reveal the mountain. Let’s get to the point. “Yexue didn’t send you back out of the goodness of his heart, did he?”

I took the treaty from its folder and placed it on the table across from him.

“So you are choosing him?”

“There is nothing to choose, Siwang. You are right. You have lost the ability to see the forest for the trees. We are going to lose this war, and the sooner we agree to peace, the sooner we can send those innocent men and boys too young to even be here home. ”

A sob threatened to rise from my throat, causing my voice to crack.

The Siwang I knew, as flawed as he was, was a good man. I refused to believe he’d watch his people suffer in the name of pride.

“We won’t know if we don’t try,” he whispered.

“Even monsters can be killed. With fire. With silver. We can kill them. I have a plan.” His eyes burned with a fervor I didn’t recognize.

“We are so close to turning the tides, Fei. Lan Yexue attacked that night for a reason. He was trying to scare us into submission because he knew we had found his weakness. Silver is fatal to his beasts, and if we—”

“It’s not worth it.”

Siwang shook his head. “It will be. When we are victorious, every death and sacrifice will be worth it. Rong is not a tiny northern tribe bowing to the southerners anymore. We obey no laws and listen to no man who is not our own.”

Sentiments I had heard before, from the scriptures of the fallen dynasties. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Siwang had read the same books I had; if I remembered this, then so did he. Yet…

“War is not about land or power. It’s about protecting those who cannot protect themselves. Our ancestors would not want to see bloodbath after bloodbath over piles of dirt and dust when peace is offered to you. If you don’t sign this treaty, men will keep dying. Is that what you want?”

If you don’t sign the treaty, you will die, Siwang. I tried to reach for his hand from across the table, but he pulled away.

“We have not lost the war yet,” Siwang snarled. His eyes were blades, sharp enough to cut when he looked at me. This wasn’t the Siwang I knew. He felt like a whole other man.

“We have already lost. You just don’t want to admit it.” I closed my eyes, my breath shaky. “I am on your side, Siwang. And because I am on your side, I can’t let you do this.”

I pushed the treaty toward him, and he turned away. Stubborn, like a child. A side of him I had rarely seen.

“What did Lan Yexue say to you? Did he show you the cities that he conquered, full of people who sing his praises because that’s the only way they are allowed to live? Did he boast about how happy those people were, under his rule? How benevolent a regent he is?”

“His citizens looked happy,” I said, and it was the truth. I’d believed Yexue when he said he wasn’t the sort of conqueror who abandoned cities after he got his hands on them, as so many emperors did.

Siwang’s laugh was harsh. “Oh, I’m sure they looked happy.

A wonderful charade of smiles and sunshine, until night falls.

I don’t know how many vampires are in his battalion, but I assume it’s not a small number.

All those mouths…hungry for blood. Lan Yexue has to feed them somehow, right?

Fei, Yexue can weave a veil over your eyes, but not mine.

I know what he’s done to the people who refused to kneel for him.

” Siwang reached forward until his fingertips gently brushed over mine.

“Fei, surrendering sounds lovely from your lips, but do you know the true cost of kneeling for him?”

I thought of the young soldier who had died, then the vampires I had seen on the battlefield.

They looked terrifying from a distance, but when they spoke, they sounded human.

“His vampires are not demons from hell. I think they are humans, who are…not quite human anymore. But that doesn’t make them monsters—”

A half sneer made me stop midsentence, Siwang was shaking his head. “I should have known a girl would never understand the price of war.”

My heart broke. There and then.

Words I’d been hearing all my life from men, other men, but never thought I’d hear from Siwang.

“Well, this girl understands that we are outnumbered. This woman understands that a good emperor would never send his men out there to die for the sake of pride. Even if an emperor wins wars and conquers all the lands the four oceans have to offer, if he doesn’t love his people, put them first, then there’s nothing separating him from a tyrant.

Sign the treaty, Siwang. Save what’s left of your empire. ”

I pushed the treaty toward him again, and as I did, my finger brushed the scroll sitting at his right hand. The one he’d been reading before I entered the room.

Immediately, a blaze of vision burned across my eyes.

Fire. A whole city burning into the night, like the bloodiest of nightmares.

People screaming.

Men, women, and children, burning as they leaped from the city walls.

Fire swallowing everything it touched.

Humans and vampires, the flames did not discriminate.

Burning.

Burning.

Changchun.

I pulled my hand back, gasping.

No.

“You are going to burn down Changchun with everyone inside it.” I remembered the scorch marks in the other cities. This was not the first time he had tried to do this.

Siwang’s eyes went wide, and all his attention immediately fell on the scroll next to his hand. He snatched it from beneath my fingers, but I had already seen everything that would happen, felt the flames singeing my body as the city fell.

“How…?” Siwang couldn’t finish the sentence, his eyes flickering with shock and horror.

“You are going to kill all of them. Even your own people?”

“Fei…What did you see? You—” He grabbed my wrist. “What isthis?”

The red string that Yexue had tied around my wrist, which I had forgotten to take off. “It’s nothing.”

Siwang’s jaw went hard. “Tens of thousands of his army, both human and vampire, are inside Changchun right now. By burning the city to the ground, we will gain the upper hand again.”

“There are twenty thousand of your own people in that city!”

“They are collateral damage,” he murmured, turning away like a child who knew he had done something wrong but refused to admit it.

I laughed. It sounded more like choking. “You are just like Yexue. Like your father. Like every man who has tried to rule these lands!”

A pause as he slowly turned back to me, as if debating something.

“I should have done this a long time ago,” he said.

I waited for him to yell for his guards to take me away and lock me up, but he didn’t.

Instead, he set down a bronze token with his family seal.

“Take this and go home, Fei. You don’t belong here, and I never should have let you stay in harm’s way for this long. ”

“No,” I snapped. I wasn’t going to let him or anyone else decide what I could and could not do anymore.

I didn’t take his token. Instead, I grabbed the treaty and ran.

“Fei!” Siwang cried. “Catch her!”

I was out the door before his guards had time to react.

Outside, the camp was quiet; our numbers had dwindled in the time I’d been gone.

There was no way these men could survive a battle with Yexue and his monsters.

Even if Siwang’s plan succeeded and he killed a portion of Yexue’s vampires by setting fire to Changchun, it wouldn’t matter. Yexue could always make more.

“Fei!” Siwang cried. I could hear the shuffle of his guards after me as I bolted for the campfires where most of the soldiers would be at this time.

“Siwang is lying to you!” I shouted when I was within earshot of the fires. “Lan has offered us a peace treaty, but Siwang won’t take it! We have to stop! We are going to lose this war!”

A group of the soldiers turned to look at me with confused stares. “That’s Little Li.”

“I thought he had died…”

“Siwang is lying to you!” I bellowed as loudly as I could, holding the peace treaty as high as possible. “He is—”

Someone tackled me, knocking the air out of my lungs and sending me colliding against the field of mud and slush.

“Are you trying to cause hysteria in camp?” It took me a moment to realize that the person who had caught me was Caikun. He shoved my face into the mud until I couldn’t breathe, his hand firm on my neck, choking me. “Traitor! My father died for rats like you! My brothers died for rats like you!”

“Caikun, stop!” Siwang shouted in the background, but his voice was muffled and distorted.

Caikun pulled me up and punched me across the jaw, then again, finding the edge of my cheek this time, then again, and again, but his fists were no longer finding my flesh. He was pounding the mud beside my head. “You should have died! Cowards like you are the reason we are losing this war!”

By the time someone pushed Caikun off me, black spots were already filling my vision. I tried to stand, but I only fell deeper into darkness.

“Get him out of here,” I heard Siwang say in the background. “Li Fei has done enough for Rong. I hereby honorably discharge him. Send him home to his family.”