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She makes a beautiful Empress, he must say.
With eyes gone cold, like long-dead embers, she sits on the throne beside him. Beneath the opulence of the gowns she wears, it is impossible to see the ropes that bind her to it. Shan Yu enjoys seeing her in gold and silk, more really than he enjoys wearing the trappings of an Emperor himself.
She sits, rigid-backed, eyes staring forward. Like a statue, perhaps, sculpted and painted to be displayed, with only the soft rise and fall of her chest where she breathes to show that she is actually alive. Her lips remain set in a cold line, painted in red and gold, to match the golden flower pins that sparkle in her hair. It is growing longer now, with more for the maids to work with, and Shan Yu likes their work. Enough to let most of them live, and even to wave off his men when they are in their most animal phases.
Hachin, they called her, and sniggered, and she did not deign to look upon them. Not that she knew what it meant, not that she knew that Shan Yu had beaten out of his men any desire to bring any cruder name to bear upon her. But it was no insult to call her strange, and there was a note of fear in them because they knew what she almost wrought upon them.
Sometimes he sees her hands clench into fists. Her nails, long now, sometimes tipped in gold, cut into her skin and leave rivulets of blood running across the throne. Sometimes he sees the muscles tense in her neck, not because of the weight of the headdress that she wears, and for a moment he will think that perhaps there is fire in her eyes again. But then it dulls, and the moment passes, and she remains still and silent at his side as the peasants cower at his feet. And it is difficult for him to know which of them is more feared.
The sky darkens, and he releases the rope from her arms, handing her over to the guards to be taken to her chambers. For a moment she stands before him, so small, and he thinks that perhaps he could crush her in his great hands like a fledging. And yet she lives.
For a moment her eyes flare.
One day I will kill you, she silently promises. One day, soon.
And his gaze mocks her, knowing what she thinks. Because it is all that she has thought since the blade that took her tongue stopped her from screaming it. And each time the sun sets, it becomes a little more muted, a little more hopeless.
Shan Yu watches his Hachin go, his Empress, and smiles darkly to himself. Arrayed in gold, head held high, she does not pay attention to the guards who walk on either side of her with drawn swords.
So beautiful.