Page 79 of Forest of a Thousand Lanterns

Wei watched her struggle, shaking his head slowly at her silence. “What did you imagine, Xifeng? That you’d be safe and warm with him and I’d linger on, watching you from afar and writing you lovesick notes? How cruel and selfish you are. How vain.”

She put a hand on either side of his anguished face. “You know me better than anyone in this world,” she pleaded. “You know me better than even Guma and you still love me. I will never find anyone like you again in my whole life. I can’t let you go, Wei. You belong with me.”

“You say this to me,” he whispered, “but do you believe it? When the time comes, will you even remember? How long before you forget me?”

“I would never forget you.”

Tears slipped, one after the other, onto his unyielding face. “But you wouldn’t choose me, either. I’ve been a fool, setting my heart on something I could never have. I would have given you anything, done anything if only you had loved me.” Her hands were still on his face, and he placed his over them. “We’ve played this game long enough, my love. Let it end.” He removed her hands gently and walked away, his breath a ghost of fog on the air.

Every muscle in Xifeng’s body was tensed to run after him, to fall at his feet, to beg. He had always been a constant in her life. However much she’d hurt him, Wei had always been there—he would always come back. So she resisted the urge to go to him. Any second now, he would turn around and take her in his arms again. Any second now, he would come back and tell her he hadn’t meant anything he’d said.

Any second now,she told herself as his back disappeared into the wintry night.

She waited in the frosted silence.

But he did not come back.

The morning of the envoy’s departure dawned bright. Xifeng blinked against the sunlight reflecting off the snow, watching the soldiers mount their horses. Empress Lihua was not present, having passed a difficult night, and neither was her husband, who was preoccupied with military matters. Xifeng was glad for it, so she could focus the whole of her attention on Wei.

He stood securing his belongings to his horse, his jaw set and his eyes determinedly averted from her. And though he was still there, she felt his loss as keenly as if she’d been scraped raw from the inside. While she had been flirting and sipping tea with Jun, Wei had been suffering, gathering the courage to say what he had to. The memory of the tears streaming down his face threatened to break her. Though it still angered her, she felt the truth of everything he had said—that she was cruel and selfish and vain—in her very blood and marrow.

Shiro approached, pulling his horse alongside the railing where shestood. “I’m off to the mountains,” he said with forced cheer. “Pray for our safe return.”

Xifeng tried to remember her manners. “How is Akira?”

“She’s going to have a child,” Shiro said with a half smile, and Xifeng felt another stab of pain. Love and life came so easily to everyone else. If she had married Wei, she might be expecting his child now, too, and he wouldn’t be leaving her. “Only a few months more, but it’s been hard for her. She hasn’t been well. I hate to go, but I have no choice in the matter.”

“His Majesty won’t let you stay with your pregnant wife?”

The dwarf gave her that half smile again. “We don’t all have your influence with him.”

Xifeng had the grace to blush. “I’ll send someone to visit Akira every week while you’re gone. She will be cared for, I promise.”

“And you?” he asked gently. “Will you be cared for?”

She blinked away tears. “Not in the way I’m used to. Not anymore.”

He waited, but Xifeng couldn’t go on. She knew if she kept talking, she would cry, and she couldn’t do that to Wei. What could she say, anyway?I loved him and I threw happiness away with both hands.

But in his quiet way, Shiro seemed to know what she couldn’t express. He touched her hand, and the comforting warmth of his fingers gave her some illusion of solace. “Goodbye, my dear,” he said kindly, and when he turned away, she met Wei’s eyes for one blinding moment. She thought she would collapse under the finality of that gaze.

The envoy turned and left the palace gates, and with them rode the man who had deserved her heart more than anyone. She imagined them returning with one fewer rider—imagined watching for Wei’s familiar form, but not seeing him. Never seeing him again.

She clenched a fist against her mouth, willing him to turn his head.My heart is yours,she would tell him with only her eyes, so he would see, so he would understand how difficult it had been for her, too.My heart has always been yours.

But he faced forward until they disappeared. And she knew the boy who had loved her, who had woven wildflowers in her long inky hair, had gone from her forever.

•••

Lady Sun lived on.

She certainlylookedlike she did. Something in the water of the hot springs had ensured the preservation of her body, which was as fresh as the day Xifeng had put it there three months ago. Her face was pale and peaceful in its halo of charred-wood hair, like she had simply fallen asleep in the water, her lips parted slightly as though awaiting a kiss.

Xifeng half expected her to open her eyes any moment. She found herself returning to the cavern again and again to see if the woman would finally awaken. She roused herself from sleep in a cold sweat most mornings, imagining it had happened overnight and Lady Sun’s body would be gone the next time she came, off to tell the truth of what had happened the night she vanished.

“I’m not surprised you’ve chosen to haunt me this way,” she told the concubine. “It’s a common theme in my life, you know.”

There was the pain of Wei’s desertion, always lurking in the back of her mind. There was her own elusive destiny, which seemed more tenuous every day instead of becoming clearer. Empress Lihua might be ill and weak, but she still lived. The one most likely to be Xifeng’s greatest threat—the queen favored by thetengaru,the Fool—still lived.

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