Chapter Text
It began with a conversation not meant to be heard, a door not meant to be listened at, a life not-yet-lived being decided for. We could begin there, with the sharp sting of a blood-betrayal, but this is a happy story, for the most part, so we can begin, instead, with a kiss. A warm day, spring slipping into summer. The air brushed coolly along the foothills of the mountains. He Tian’s leathers were sticking to his skin, wet with sweat and grime from training. His cheeks were gritty with dust from the training grounds, his sword strapped to his waist.
He needed to bathe, and oil his worn muscles—he had been training since dawn—but another desire won out, as it had done for most of his young life thus far. Namely, want. Namely, something as close to love as He Tian had ever known. But for now, let’s call it love. He ambled along familiar roads that led him from the palace’s training grounds and down to the blacksmith’s shop, keeping to the cool shadows of overhanging eaves and awnings, smiling at a handful of passersby, both familiar and not. The town was quiet; there would be a market later that evening, when the pollen from the forests and wildflower fields settled in the air. For now, in the North Kingdom of Moryo, most were sleeping away the mid-afternoon heat.
He Tian’s training finished at noon. He had been awake since dawn, and the sun was now reaching its zenith. In a few months, it would be higher, his people’s green-toned skin darkening beneath it to emerald and fern; the air would grow hotter and thick with dust and only cooled with a breeze from the mountains, but for now he was grateful for spring.
Guan Shan was there when he knocked, the rap of his knuckles loud over the rhythmic clanking of a hammer on hot metal. A wall of heat prickled at his skin as Guan Shan’s mother welcomed him inside, a bell singing above the door, hot sparks flickering in the room behind her from the furnace. He Tian bowed to her, apologised for the intrusion.
‘Never an intrusion,’ said Guan Shan’s mother, eyes soft at the corners. Her hand rested briefly on his arm, a tender, motherly touch of the kind that he had missed, and then fell away. She then bowed in return, the gesture proper. ‘He’s out the back,’ she told him, fingers cupped around the side of her mouth, as if she were telling him a secret.
‘Thank you, Auntie,’ he murmured, and she stepped aside to let him pass, smiling like she was laughing at him, only silently.
The room at the back of the shop was dark, lit only by one solitary north-facing window that was too low to receive much sunlight. Inside, the room smelled of metal and burning wood and ash; a thin black layer of the stuff coated every sparse surface. Guan Shan’s mother used to work in here, side by side with her husband, but now she stayed mostly at the front of the shop behind a small varnished table made of oak, where she interacted with customers and used the natural lighting to work on more delicate pieces of metalwork like jewellery and ornaments. Out of metal and flowers, Guan Shan’s mother had made He Tian’s mother’s funeral crown.
If Guan Shan had heard him come in, he didn’t show it. He was crouched beside the furnace on a low stool. In his hands, he worked at the long blade of a broadsword, a damp cloth wrapped around its hilt to protect Guan Shan’s hands, and He Tian admired the scene in silence. Guan Shan’s red hair was turned redder against the spitting glow of the furnace. Sometimes, He Tian feared it would catch, the long auburn length of it burnt to cinders, but he supposed he’d get used to it, after a while.
‘Is that my birthday present?’ he asked eventually.
Guan Shan, knowing he was there, didn’t jump. He settled down the hammer, tilted the blade back and forth. The metal glowed orange; this hot, it would sever He Tian in two and cauterise the wound. Satisfied with what he saw, Guan Shan lay down the sword, and twisted to look at him.
‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘It’d be a pretty expensive gift.’
He Tian lifted his chin. ‘Name your price.’
Guan Shan did, and He Tian, leaning down, was pleased to find he could pay it. The kiss was polite, chaste with newness. He Tian swallowed down the dark, salty taste of woodsmoke on Guan Shan’s lips. Years of pining, a scant month of reciprocation, and they were still testing the waters. Neither had surpassed the boundary into untethered passion, and it appeared as if both were waiting for the other to do so with a curious amount of self-consciousness.
Clearing their throats, they separated. Guan Shan was unaffected by the heat of the workshop, even in the midst of a long summer, but the pointed tips of his ears had turned a deeper shade of green.
‘That was nice,’ he said thickly. ‘But I can’t accept it.’
Equally polite: ‘It wasn’t to your liking?’
‘It’s already been paid for. It’s for Guard Qiu.’
‘Ah,’ said He Tian. He rocked back on the heels of his boots, rested a hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘Not sure I can compete there.’
They shared a long look, and Guan Shan was the first to smile, the lift at the corners of his mouth almost begrudging. Spurred by the gesture, He Tian leaned down again—and found he was stopped by the firm placement of a hand against this chest.
He Tian considered it with a look of surprise, and then cast his gaze back towards the front of the shop, questioning. Your mother?
‘She knows about us,’ said Guan Shan. ‘She thinks she’s always known.’ His words sounded unhappy, and He Tian told him this. ‘I don’t mind, it’s just—embarrassin’.’
He Tian straightened. ‘You’re embarrassed by me?’
A tsk. ‘Oh, yeah. The son of the emperor wants to fuck me. A real blow to my social standin’.’
‘I’d like to do more than fuck you,’ He Tian said, speaking lowly, but only a little. He didn’t particularly mind who was listening to this declaration, even if it was Guan Shan’s mother. ‘Or blow you, for that matter.’
‘Careful. Sounds like you might be developin’ feelings for me.’
‘Terrible, isn’t it.’
‘I’d bet your father might think so,’ Guan Shan said, reaching up to tap at the twisted vines of He Tian’s coronet. ‘Fallin’ for the blacksmith’s kid.’
‘We’ve known each other half our lives,’ He Tian replied, shrugging. ‘I don’t think he’d care. I’m not his heir. As far as he’s concerned, who I develop feelings for doesn’t affect the bloodline.’
‘Yeah, we’ll see about that.’
He Tian considered him. ‘I’ll announce it tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘You and me. At my centenary.’
‘Don’t do that.’
He Tian pulled away, smiling, feeling a slight sting. ‘You are embarrassed, Little Mo. I knew it. You’re embarrassed by me. Ha!’
‘Fuck off,’ Guan Shan muttered. ‘If I’m embarrassed by anyone, it’s me.’
Not understanding, He Tian said, ‘What are you talking about? You made me this.’ He touched the sword at his hip, imbued with Guan Shan’s magic, persistently warm to the touch. It had been Guan Shan’s qualifying piece some fifteen years ago while he apprenticed, earning him the title of Royal Smith, which granted his skill recognition in both the north and south kingdoms. Now, and for a thousand years, it would sing to them both.
He Tian continued: ‘You’re the most skilled blacksmith in the kingdom–after your mother, obviously. You’re beautiful.’ He tacked on the compliment not as a half-forgotten appeal, but as if to say, Do I even need to point out the obvious? Guan Shan wore the soft beauty of his mother, hardened only through masculinity and his father’s passing. His skin, smooth and forest-green; his hair, rare and flame-red, the same pigment flecked in his eyes.
He was a thing of the same woods that their people came from, closer to nature than anything else He Tian had held and beheld in ninety-nine years. He liked to imagine sometimes that nature had procured Guan Shan just for him, and then would remember that Guan Shan was a few months older than him—already one-hundred, already an adult—and that perhaps it was the other way around.
Given a chance, He Tian would’ve plucked him from the flowerbed of the blacksmith’s shop and transplanted him into a vase in the form of the palace’s closed-off rooms, his looks unseen, his voice unheard, the sight of him saved only for He Tian. As it was, the distinct privilege of being the emperor’s son did not extend to the possession of other people, and so he had grown steadily comfortable with the truth that Guan Shan had the freedom to roam freely among others, be seen freely by others, be touched freely—if he wanted—by others.
Sometimes, He Tian couldn’t breathe fully when he looked at him. Sometimes he wanted him so obsessively it was near-painful, grew mad not with the thought that someone else could have Guan Shan, but that Guan Shan would want them to have him, too. He Tian didn’t tell anyone this—not even Guan Shan—and he was working hard at trying to make the feelings less.
‘I don’t wanna talk about this right now,’ Guan Shan was saying. ‘Just—no announcements, alright? It’s your day.’
‘One of a millenia,’ He Tian agreed. ‘Do you blame me for wanting to spend each one with you?’
Another flush, and Guan Shan looked at him pointedly, refusing to acknowledge the question. ‘You fuckin’ reek,’ he said. ‘You need a bath. Why’d you bother comin’ here after training?’
‘I wanted to see you,’ said He Tian, sounding petulant. Training wasn’t real; the danger was minimal, but the spike in adrenaline while he parried with a sword, and when it was over, still made him want to fuck. Sighing, he took a step towards the front of the shop.
‘We’ll see each other tomorrow,’ Guan Shan reminded him. A gesture to the sword. ‘I’ve gotta finish this.’
He Tian leered. ‘You want to tend to Brother Qiu’s sword more than mine?’
Quickly ducking out to the shopfront, he heard the loud clang of something being thrown and missing its target. His departing laughter rang out as clearly as the bell above the door.
***
He passed by his brother’s chambers before heading to his own for a bath. Despite the quietness of the town, the innards of the palace were busy like a hive, completing preparations for He Tian’s centenary tomorrow night. The smell of cooking wafted from the kitchens, and everywhere was the pungent smell of flowers plucked at the perfect stage of bloom. High elves from the South Kingdom had been summoned for their charmwork, but the rest of the night’s magic had been left entirely to the softly cupped hands of nature.
One hundred years old, He Tian thought, and then said it without speaking, just shaping his mouth around the words. A tenth of his lifetime that had been and gone, as if he’d slept through most of it and was only now waking for some new beginning. From tomorrow, there would be newer duties, heavier responsibilities. Nothing to match his brother’s, upon whose shoulders the suffocating weight of being an heir pressed down and forced him into hardness.
Still, with some resentment, He Tian sought his company and his approval, if only to be thankful that he wasn’t his brother. He Cheng’s rooms were in the east corner of the palace, where morning light would filter through the windows and bathe the dark wood furnishings in startling brightness. He Tian went there with his footsteps light, detouring only briefly to snag an apple from the kitchens, pink and mildly sweet, and inclined his head politely to the courtiers and attendants who roamed the varnished halls.
The door to his brother’s apartment was ajar when he arrived, revealing a sparse chamber that branched off to a bedroom, private bathing room, and his dressing room, the entrance to each partition set behind huge ornate folding screens that took the strength of three servants to move. He Tian’s own room was near-identical, but had the markings of a space that was lived-in and enjoyed: large tomes along the walls, maps rolled up and peering from beneath his bed frame, a gifted assortment of teas that from an Axle diplomat on a side table, a pencilled sketch of Guan Shan kept framed and well-dusted on the dresser. In He Cheng’s rooms, cherry red columns stretched from floor to ceiling, and there was a low-set table in the middle of the room, surrounded by cushions and upon which a glass pot of tea leaves was stewing. Two cups had been set aside, left abandoned.
Beside the window that overlooked the grounds and met the sun in the morning, He Cheng and the Emperor were standing close. He Tian paused in the doorway.
‘He deserves to know,’ He Cheng was saying in a low voice. ‘It’s his life.’
‘His life is mine,’ their father replied. ‘As mine was my father’s. As yours is mine, until I’m dead. We do what is best.’
‘I wouldn’t make my son do this.’
‘Then it is a good thing you’re not emperor yet.’
He Tian reared from his father’s words, felt the sting of them even from across the room and behind a partially closed door. He Cheng, whose expression was hard as flint, did not flinch.
Deserves to know what? He Tian thought. The apple in his palm, half-eaten, felt heavy. The flesh was turning brown.
‘Does the Drow princess know?’ He Cheng asked their father. ‘Or is this a matter of parents deciding what is best for their children?’
‘Don’t be bitter, He Cheng,’ Emperor He reprimanded. ‘It’s unsavoury. What the Drow king tells his daughter is his concern. Whether she knows now or on their wedding day—she will fall in line.’
‘They’re not soldiers,’ He Cheng said. ‘This isn’t a war, Father.’
‘Even peace is a war.’
He Tian held his breath. Peace? Between the Drow and the North Kingdom? The thought had been impossible for centuries. No woodland elf alive could recall a time where the Drow had willingly crawled out from beneath the mountains and made a gesture of peace towards He Tian’s people, or vice versa. He pictured it: a Drow girl, obsidian-skinned and white-eyed, standing beside someone like him. A half-breed child.
Revulsion stirred in his belly. Who would his father make suffer such a fate?
‘Peace,’ his brother said. ‘You want to unite with the Drow—for what reason? We’ll gain nothing from a union with them. If anything, we’ll lose the South Kingdom as an ally. They resent the Drow even more than we do.’
‘Then we’ll lose them. There are greater things to gain.’
‘Father,’ He Cheng began, almost stern, but their father held up a hand, mouth perpetually downturned at the edges. He would hear nothing more. There was no use in trying. The trait had been inherited by both sons: stubbornness, like a stallion pushed too hard in the heat and holding its ground. ‘I won’t tell him,’ said He Cheng, in a quieter voice.
The Emperor’s lip curled. ‘Don’t be a coward.’
He Cheng refused to yield. ‘If his life is yours, Father, then so is the task of telling him. I won’t be responsible for it.’
Through the gap, He Tian stared. He heard his brother’s words for what they were: an act of defiance. More than anything–more than thought of a union with the Drow–this carved out a pit in his stomach like some collapsed dwarf mine, all shrapnel and screaming, the echoing shouts of men suffocating beneath the rubble. His brother had never gone against their father’s orders, publicly or privately; that was He Tian’s unruly prerogative.
The emperor clicked his tongue, and looked with dissatisfaction through the window. ‘It doesn’t matter who tells him. He Tian will marry the girl whether he wants to or not. He has no choice.’
It was not He Tian’s insides that had collapsed on him, but the whole floor of the palace. He was at once broken and crumpled on the ground, three floors below, and rooted entirely to the spot. His vision swam. He pressed a hand to the wall beside him and heaved.
He Tian will marry the girl.
Him. He was the Drow’s groom. He was his father’s plaything, his pawn. He Cheng’s xiangqi board might have been empty, but his father had long stopped using any pieces.
The dynamic played out before him now struck him like a punch to the face: stubbornness, a refusal to yield. He Tian sucked in a breath through his teeth. It was his birthday tomorrow, and his father was selling him off as if the day were a cattle market. He couldn’t—he wouldn’t. He was a day from achieving majority. He was, at any given moment, a scant few syllables away from asking Guan Shan for his hand.
The apple rolled from his palm: a wet, bruising thud against the varnished floorboards. Two pairs of eyes snapped to where he stood.
He Cheng’s lips parted; their father’s nose flared in anger.
‘He Tian.’ A hand, outstretched and reaching, lingering between a beseeching plea and the tight curl of a fist, and moments from either.
But it was too late. He Tian wouldn’t know which it became: he had started running.
***
An alarm blared from the palace, shaking the boundary walls and shrieking through the town. He Tian felt the ground shaking beneath him, the heavy boots of the Royal Guard already in eager pursuit like a pack of hunting dogs. He knew the palace and the surrounding miles of the town as if the map were tattooed neatly into his green skin, but if anyone were to stop him and ask him where he was going, he couldn’t begin to answer. He couldn’t stay near the palace; he couldn’t go to Guan Shan. Anywhere obvious, any indulgent moment to catch his breath, and the Royal Guard would find him in minutes. He had to go somewhere else; he had to not think.
Fuck, fuck, fuck—
It took ten minutes to lose them; hostile voices drowning to nothingness behind him, the only frantic thump of footsteps his own. His lungs strained against his ribs, which pressed against the underside of his skin, grown stifling and sore beneath his leathers. The town snapped past him in a blur: the eave of a red pagoda, a shop window open to the spring breeze, a calico cat darting beneath his feet, settling watchfully beneath the tarpaulin of a market stall not yet open.
There was no time for admiration, no thought that these snatched glimpses might be his last for some time. There was only this: his legs pumping beneath him, his eyes set determinately forward, the sword growing heavy with each bruising thump against his hip.
He knew the uneven pattern of cobblestones down to the town and the sharp corners of the hidden dirt-trodden paths and, further out, the gravelled slope of the bridleways that took him west and away from the palace. He knew the hidden pathways into the edges of the forest, where thickets of hazel and varnish trees crowded close. People from the town might have seen the dark streak of him through the streets, but they’d had no rain in a few days, and the breeze was travelling in his favour. Soon, even to the best of his father’s trackers, his trail would be lost.
Fifteen minutes, and he allowed himself to slow. Trilliums and lavender stems broke beneath the heavy tread of his boot. There were no paths here, no marked routes back to the palace. The further west he went into the forest, the sooner he would reach the cliffs at the edge of the kingdom that shuddered a mile down towards the grey sea.
He Tian walked until the sweat coolled on his skin. Overhead, the boughs fractured sunlight onto the forest floor, richly verdant, the blue sky hidden from view. He moved without aim, keeping the sun to his left. It had been years since he’d been this far into the forest, running with his brother as a boy, with members of the Guard during training, once on a search for a young girl from the town who had gone astray. But never this deep.
He Tian’s boot struck something hard, and he stopped. He took stock of his surroundings, and blinked twice. Ahead, a dead tree stood in the middle of a small clearing, the branches empty of leaves. There was the smell of wet, of rotting wood. The trunk of the tree was damp, a layer of bark torn away to reveal a rotten core the colour of amber like honeycomb.
Strange mounds had formed around the tree and, moving closer, He Tian could see that they were chunks of stone grown over with moss and bramble. Something had stood here once. Once, the tree might have borne fruit. He Tian lifted a hand to press against the trunk, and pulled it away.
Touch me.
He Tian started. Here, the sky was empty of birds. There was little wind, a faint rustle of leaves like the unravelling of a scroll. The words were too clear to have been heard in error.
‘Who’s there?’ He Tian called out.
No answer came. Somewhere, the coo of an iora bird.
He Tian turned back to the ruins.
Who else?
‘I’m armed,’ He Tian said loudly, feeling ridiculous.
So am I.
He Tian spun, bracken and dying leaves crackling beneath his boots. His father’s betrayal had turned him delirious. He knew there was old magic in the forest, inaccessible to most woodland elves, and everyone knew of the wellspring of power lying untapped behind the borders around the mountains, warded off millenia ago by the dragons and unchecked since. But this…
‘Who are you?’ he called out. ‘Where are you?’
I am everywhere, and nowhere. I am where I have always been.
He Tian bit down on the inside of his cheek. The voice: in his head, and in the trees. Both male and female and neither. He Tian’s skull throbbed. If he turned his head, it was as if he could catch a glimpse of them, something just over his shoulder, just out of sight.
‘I have no time for riddles, creature.’
Impatient, they replied. And you believe yourself so different from He Jun. A shameful trait.
He Tian’s face fell. ‘What do you know about my father?’
Enough for one who has lived this long.
‘How long is that?’
The silence smiled.
Slowly, He Tian said, ‘My mother used to tell me of a sorcerer bound to these woods for their crimes. Millennia ago, before the dragons moved south. The sorcerer plagued the North Kingdom and brought despair to hundreds.’
Hundreds, was it? Their voice was quiet, a half-murmur. He Tian’s eardrums tingled with the words, like a breath blown into his ear. His head felt hot. He resisted the urge to scratch at his temple. The number truly has been augmented over the centuries... It wasn’t the North Kingdom then. There was only Moryo, a united land, home to the dragons. There were no emperors, or their precocious sons.
‘I’m right?’
Do you want to be?
He Tian opened his mouth, fully intending to give an answer, when voices began to rise from the west. He froze, mouth agape. His ears pricked. A jangle of armour, the hollow bark of a dog. He’d been too confident—he hadn’t gone far enough: the Guard had found his trail.
‘Shit.’
You cannot run forever, little prince.
‘I can try,’ He Tian muttered, head whipping around him, feeling trapped. South? How far could he go on his own before they caught him, before he even caught a whiff of the crossing into the South Kingdom? North and he’d come to the boundary that warded off the Dragon Mountain; any further west and he’d reach the cliffs, trapped between death and the Guard, who would bring him back to face his father’s cruel mouth and crueler hand. The cliffs, for a hesitant moment, beckoned.
The cliffs, said the voice. Go to the cliffs. I still exist there.
‘I’ll be a sitting duck,’ He Tian said, a little strangled. The sounds of the Guard were coming closer. ‘They’ll corner me the second they get there.’
I know of a way down. Run–I’ll show you.
He Tian bit down on his tongue. ‘How can I trust you?’
Do you have a better option?
He Tian swore. His own thoughts were panicked and senseless, but he ran. His legs protested at the spurt of movement, and he resisted the urge to unbuckle the sword at his hip and leave it like a javelin in the earth, as if marking his own grave for Guan Shan to find.
You’ll need it, the voice told him while he ran.
‘Get out of my head!’ he cried, but didn’t stop. Trees whipped past him; a bramble caught in his leathers, nicked at the fabric, at the skin of his cheek. It stung. His shoulders burned from the morning’s training session, the muscles now tightly bunched in fear. Thick ropes of exposed roots tried to trip him; near its edge, the forest floor was dense with stinging nettles and great natural craters that would fill with water in the autumn. Eventually, the trees began to thin out, the taunting blue spreading out further across the sky. Above his own heavy breathing, he heard the caw of a gull, its wings caught in the coastal breeze.
Almost there, they said. Straight west through the fields.
He Tian nodded, trying to draw more breath into his lungs. He reached the edge of the forest, and here the light was blinding, nothing but blue sky and a mile-long field the colour of wheat that sloped downwards. The long, thin-stemmed flowers and bushels of barley came to his knees, crackling beneath his boots as it snapped, and his throat grew scratchy from pollen and lack of water.
He was exhausted. He wanted to stop. He wanted to fall to his knees and let the land swallow him whole. For the first time, he questioned himself: what did it matter if he let himself be escorted back to the palace? What did it matter if he married the Drow girl, took her hand, filled her with child? His sister-in-law didn’t mind that He Cheng also promised himself to Guard Qiu most nights; this was common knowledge in the palace. Perhaps Guan Shan would—
Another mile, and the field gave way to empty furrows of stony earth, crunching beneath him. Sweat ran in rivulets down his face, thick with grime and dust, and here the wind blew blessedly on his face.
‘Where?’ He Tian demanded, voice scratchy and hoarse. He squinted against the bright sun, peered ahead to the blue-grey sea that whorled where the land ended. ‘Where’s the way down?’
A little further. Straight to the edge. You’ll see it.
He Tian swallowed his fear. Behind him, the bark of a dog carried along the wind, and He Tian swore. They were getting closer; they were faster than him, and the adrenaline could only propel him so far. The thought of climbing his way down the cliffside now drained him.
His feet skidded on the gravel, and he shuddered to a stop, breathing hard. He pressed his hands to his knees, spat a globule of dust-thick spit onto the ground. His throat clicked when he swallowed. He was so thirsty.
‘I don’t fucking see it,’ he said, and felt like he could cry. ‘You said I’d see it.’
You’re standing on it.
He Tian stared down. There was only the chalky ground, and the edge of the cliff that lingered barely an inch from the toe of his boots. Was it hidden? Was this some magic he couldn’t access? The He’s were notoriously powerless, a lineage of impotent rulers that, somehow, still ruled. He Tian envied Guan Shan’s magic only sometimes. Now, he hated him for it.
‘I can’t,’ He Tian said. ‘I don’t have the power.’
You don’t need it, said the voice. Jump.
He Tian stared at the sea for a moment, sunlight glinting brightly off the cresting waves, and then turned. He could see the dark shapes of the Guards moving their way through the field. He Tian had already made them a path. His heart thudded achingly in his chest.
‘You tricked me,’ he breathed. ‘You said there was a way.’
I didn’t lie: this is the way. Jump. I will catch you.
‘You son of a bitch,’ He Tian whispered, the wind snatching his words, whipping sweat-slicked strands of hair about his face, black as ink. ‘You were out to kill me from the beginning.’
You won’t die, little prince. Quickly now, they said, and something about their words shimmered, as if frustrated—or scared. You must jump.
There was a cry lodged in He Tian’s throat. The sea at his back; his father’s Guard making their way too fast through the field. They were nearly at its edge, and the dogs would be snapping at his ankles soon. Would they drag him back, or give him the decency of letting him walk, untied and unmarked? He couldn’t be sure what his father’s orders were. He couldn’t be sure about anything.
Jump. Jump. Jump.
He closed his eyes and thought of Guan Shan, his head bowed over a sword, hands moving across the blade with a whetstone. His flame-red hair.
He Tian took a step back, which landed on nothing, and fell.
***
He felt the water first, a grey weight in his lungs, the cold bite of it along his skin. Everything was wet and damp, and each breath stuck thickly in his throat. Shadows fractured on the back of his eyelids, bursts of light that came and quickly went. He tried to feel for himself: his arms, his legs, the soreness of his lips as he ran his tongue across them.
There was something gritty and rough between his fingertips—a bed of sand and shingle, pressing sharply into his palms, threatening to cut. He lifted his right hand; felt the damp of his leathers, coated in residue from the sea.
The sea.
He Tian’s eyes peeled open. He coughed, spluttered, made himself sit—and froze.
He was on a small jut of sand that seemed to cling to the very edge of the cliffside. The spot would be invisible from the top of the cliff—perhaps disappeared entirely at high tide. It was late in the day now, the sky pinkish with sunset, wispy tendrils of cloud turned lilac, and the sea was dark. All around the small grove where He Tian sat, men moved across the sand, wearing the insignia of the Royal Guard.
They can’t see you—I’ve made sure of it.
He Tian breathed in shakily. ‘Can—’
But they can hear you. It’s a glamour. Try to keep still until they move on.
He Tian breathed out with equal care. Tentatively, he thought, Hello?
Hello, little prince.
He Tian’s lips twitched. Carefully, he inclined his head back, staring upwards to the top of the cliff. It seemed to fill the sky. He shouldn’t have survived that.
Am I dead? he thought. Am I haunting the cliff?
He thought he could hear them snort. I saved your life, and now I keep you hidden. Don’t insult my abilities.
He Tian almost shrugged, and then stopped. He watched the Guard move about the sand, prodding at seaweed and bracken, at large crabs drawn into their shells. Along the way, a huge piece of driftwood the length of three men had been washed ashore, bleached white by the sun.
‘We should turn back, Guard Qiu.’
The voice startled He Tian: a female guard, standing inches from He Tian’s side. She was talking to another guard further up, a tall figure crouched low, his fingertips pressed to the shingle. He Tian couldn’t see his face, but he recognised the crop of white hair, and the name.
Water lapped at the edge of the sand, and eventually the guard stood.
‘Are you eager to bring the news to the emperor?’ Qiu asked the woman, turning. The corners of his mouth were downturned, dimples forming in his cheeks. ‘We should keep looking.’
‘Sir,’ the woman started. She had a hand on the hilt of her sword. ‘If his body comes ashore, it could be miles away. The tide will be coming in soon.’
Qiu shook his head. His gaze roamed the stretch of grey sea, passing along He Tian–pausing–and drifting straight past him. A shiver went through He Tian. The feeling of being seen and not-seen filled him with a sticky sense of dread. A small part of him—the same part that thought of turning back at the cliffedge—wanted to say, I’m right here! You thought I’d die so easily? Ha!
But instead, he stayed silent, waited and watched as Qiu shook his head for the second time and called off the search. As one, they began to walk along the coastline, boots squelching in the wet sand until they reached a curve in the cliffside—and disappeared.
‘Fuck,’ He Tian murmured. He pushed himself to his feet, groaning in protest with his body. No matter what the sorcerer told him—dead or alive—he knew which one he felt like. ‘Where now?’
We should talk, you and I, before I help you further.
He Tian, brushing sand down from his breeches, paused. He straightened, and said to the sea, ‘What do you mean?’
Gulls circled noisily above, swooping down the cliffside and nosing at the crest waves. He Tian watched them search for the last catch of the day before the sky darkened entirely. There were no fishing boats this close to the cliffs or the rocks that jutted through the shallow seas a little further out. Here, the search for food was a challenge.
I can only go so far with you, said the sorcerer, and I have already done much. Without me, you would be dead—or taken back to whatever it is you are running from. There are things you can do for me in return.
He Tian narrowed his eyes, then he laughed. ‘You sound like my father. He—’ He Tian paused. A strange tightness had started to build in his throat, as if he’d swallowed a bout of water and forgotten to cough it up. ‘What the—?’ And then there were no words. Fluid filled his lungs, snatched sound from his voice, choked off his airways.
I don’t jest, little prince. Do we have a deal?
He Tian’s eyes bulged, and he scratched desperately at his throat. Stop! he cried. I can’t fucking breathe!
A reprieve, only for a second—a gasp of air he could draw in just enough to let him say, ‘You made me jump! You made me run from those fucking woods! You—!’
He Tian crashed to his knees, a hand clawing into the sand, grit under his fingernails. It didn’t build slowly. There was air, and then there was not. This was dark magic, older and different than the Drow, who practiced their sacrilegious rites beneath ground, and against whom He Tian had some natural defence. Against this, he had nothing.
Please, he begged. Forgive me.
Do we have a deal, little prince? they said coldly. You give me your word? I could snap your neck now, if I wanted to.
Then do it, He Tian nearly thought, and the impulse was there—so strongly, enough that they’d hear it, probably. Better that than the life his father would force him to comply with, led through life like a horse with a bit in its mouth, and how else could he prove the sorcerer’s power? The water in his lungs wasn’t real—a broken neck was. His death would be a test. Would they find his body after? Would Guan Shan mourn him long before he gave himself to another?
He Tian shut his eyes tightly. His chest was starting to burn. He nodded. You have my word. Whatever you want: I’ll help you.
Air flooded back to his lungs faster than he could breathe it in, and he choked on it, bucking over on his hands and knees, spitting into the sand. Nausea rolled through him until eventually he could draw in even, trembling breaths through his mouth.
‘What do you want from me?’ he whispered. For a brief moment, out the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the hem of dark robes, thick layers shifting in the seabreeze, feet hidden behind the cloth. When he looked again, there was nothing.
Your body, they said.
He Tian balked, then stifled a short bark of laughter. ‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ he managed to say. ‘That belongs to someone else.’
Don’t be perverse, they said irritably. You are a child. A male child.
He Tian sobered. ‘Things might have changed since you were around,’ he said, pulling back to sit on his haunches. ‘But you can lie with who you like these days. Men and other men.’
You think I am a man?
The question was asked with such startling clarity, each syllable enunciated with a careful edge, that He Tian was stunned into silence.
‘You’re a woman,’ he said.
I was, before I was killed and bound to the ruins by men.
He Tian digested this slowly, and then wiped his hands along his thighs, specks of dry sand catching in the wind. The sky had turned a dark purple now; on the other side of the land, the sun must have dipped below the horizon. He Tian shivered in his wet clothes, and blinked sand from his lashes as he looked up at the sky, studded with stars, pale jewells spilled out on a dark cloth, each one brighter than the last.
He asked, ‘Why do you want my body, sorceress?’
When a response didn’t come, He Tian thought for one delirious moment that he had imagined the whole thing, conjured some secondary being in his head to propel him into motion—to make his decisions where he failed. But then: I wish to leave this place, she said. My spirit is bound here. I can tether myself to you, and go wherever you go.
‘Until when? For how long?’
Until we are far, far away.
‘Does my father know of your existence?’
Of course. When your brother becomes emperor, he will know, too.
He Tian ran a hand over his face. His skin felt sore, as if burnt. The salt and late-spring sun had stripped his skin to rawness. ‘If my father doesn’t want to kill me now, he will when he knows I’ve freed you.’
You were running from him before you came upon me, she replied. What does it matter now?
He Tian grimaced. Perhaps she was right. He had already eavesdropped, already run, already evaded the Guard. And now he would be presumed dead, head dashed along the rocks, dismembered limbs floating out to sea where a fisherman would happen upon them if they weren’t already picked apart by some creature with a taste for elf blood.
Fuck, He Tian thought, peering around him. The sea was almost at his toes, seafoam skirting around his boots, bubbles pockmarking the sand while the tide receded like minute gasps for air.
It won’t be for long—only enough to get away from this place. After a pause, she added, You will have some of my power at your disposal, too. The occupation of a host body works both ways.
He Tian felt his ears twitch. The temptation was base; a man like his father would have grabbed it by the throat and squeezed it like crushing all the juice from a berry, hands stained red.
‘Magic doesn’t tempt me,’ he said. ‘If I let you in—do I still have control?’
If you wish. Some find being used as a host body discomforting. They relinquish control entirely.
‘No. I’ll suffer it.’ He Tian pressed his teeth together until his gums ached. He was hungry; he needed fresh water. He needed a way off this cove; he wasn’t sure he’d have the strength to swim once the tide swept in. ‘Do what you must. Get me away from here. I give you my consent.’
A sound, like laughter, or maybe it was only the gulls, and then—it was like being gutted with a sword. He Tian cried out, doubling over at the searing pain of it. He saw white, felt the tearing stretch of his bones and muscles and skin as if to accommodate a whole other person, one that was old and dark and had no mercy. And then, slowly, he straightened. His limbs felt weightless; he saw the cove and the placid sea and the cliffs at his back as if he were looking from behind himself, as if peering over his own shoulder.
It is done, she said. Her voice was clearer than anything He Tian had ever heard; more familiar than the sound of his own voice. He now caught the foreign lilt of her words, lightly accented from a place He Tian couldn’t name.
‘Where are we going?’ He Tian said, and his tongue felt heavy, and thick, like wading through mud. Was this the battle? Was this a war within himself to use what was already his—and now had become hers? He looked down: his twisted coronet was now in his hands.
East, she said. East and east and further east.