Chapter Text
She woke up sometimes, in the blue sea of darkness, tangled in gossamer sheets and screaming. Sweat plastered long tendrils of hair to her neck, and she wanted to rip the silk from her skin for all it scratched, and her throat would be hoarse by the time her maids, now used to her terrors, hurried in with a lit candle and a hot cup of tea to soothe her nerves.
“Shhhh , Princess, it’s okay. It’s all over now; you’re safe, you’re back in Nanjing, the Emperor has driven back the Mongols.”
It wasn't the Mongols she feared.
No, that’s not it. It’s not the Mongols she feared anymore , for there was a time still when they plagued her dreams: chafed wrists, gritty porridge, and the words, “Your father will pay for what he’s stolen.” She was never sure if they’d meant the Toghon Temur’s sister or the empire. Either, both, it didn’t really matter anymore, except that she was princess of mountains and streams she no longer felt a princess of.
What she feared now was waking up––it was those long moments between real and unreal that she held to, where in her dreams, Yeo-sol was still alive and by her side, his long hair, wild and unbound, surging like a banner in the desert wind. There were moments then where it almost seemed like all she had to do was reach out a hand to grasp the light in his eyes, the way he appraised her, like he wasn’t sure what to make of her but was glad she was there to be made. Two moments longer and then it wouldn’t matter how much she reached, how hard she tried to grab him, he would always fade away.
It had been months, but the memories still haunted her like they had the day after he died. The day after they all died. The day she, too, had died. Sometime during the fires, the Princess Lin’an had gone up in flame. In her ashes stood Furong, a girl who wished her father had never risen from obscurity to take the throne of an empire that was too large for her to see the end of.
She closed her eyes and she accepted the tea.
Furong had been so sure once. So sure that the Heavens had meant her to be princess, had meant all the people of the world to be in her service, for why else would she have been princess when her father was born lower than a dog? Before she had seen everyone die for her, before she had seen them die for her cowardice, she was sure that she deserved their loyalty. She was sure that she loved Yeo-sol. She was sure her father would come and rescue them.
At some point through her long night of mourning all the sureties had faded to ash, and she could only be haunted by hypotheticals. And when the morning had come, as morning inevitably did, even when she had prayed with all her heart to delay it, she looked down at the cold bodies of the men who had gone to their deaths for a stupid girl who wanted to taste freedom again, and she helped bury them.