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“May I be allowed to end my own life instead?”
My words dropped like stones into a still pool. He had no reason to deny me. Whether or not I wished to live, the decision had been made for me. The Emperor of the Northern Empire had run out of his borrowed time and now the bill had come due, along with interest.
“… Of course.” There was something horribly like pity in General Xue’s eyes as he slowly untied the sword from his waist and laid it in my shaking hands. It felt unnaturally heavy, the sheath cold against my skin.
I rose to my feet, snow crunching under my steps as I turned away from him.
The palace sat in such a way that I could practically see the entirety of the city below us, spread at the feet of the palace. It was nothing like the glittering skyline of my past life, all cold glamour and sheer façades. But it felt just as distant as those skyscrapers. It had been built and defended by people who had believed in the Northern Empire. Xie Chungui’s dedication, the loyalty of that man at the Altar of the Heavens…
I was surrounded by the fallen, whether they knew they were dead men or not. I was one of them. My fate had been decided the moment I opened my eyes as the Emperor of the Northern Empire. No matter how much meddling I did, I was destined to fail the empire whose welfare fell to my hands. Ultimately I failed. Failed to protect them, failed to bring peace. Failed to keep them alive.
I knelt once more, kowtowing to the city beyond. My eyes were squeezed shut, warm breath huffing past my numb lips. The sword felt far too heavy in my hands as I held it out towards that distant skyline. With each bow, my knees sank deeper into the snow. The chill spread up my legs and I could no longer feel my fingers. I had been a thin-blooded southerner once, I had hated the cold. Yet I had kneeled without hesitation to beg the invading Southern Yan army to spare my city, my people.
And now I knelt once more, not in supplication but in penance.
I had bargained for their lives when Southern Yan had lain before my city’s gates, not truly knowing the devastation they would bring within those walls no matter my interference. Yet I had still betrayed my people—my people, my responsibility—in the worst possible way.
I did this to atone for my sins—and to ensure Yan Heqing lived on to unite the world. A lifetime ago I had believed that his steps were preordained, that he would be unable to fail in his goals. But I had not accounted for myself. I was the knife held against his throat and I could not live with myself if I caused him suffering.
If word was spread that the Emperor of the Northern Empire had been executed, the people still loyal to the fallen empire would rise up against the tyrannical rule of the Southern Yan usurper.
But if it was told that he had taken his own life…
I had killed myself once before, plummeting to my death from a hospital window. I had had nothing to live for at that point, with my days numbered as they were and no one who would miss me.
Yet I had changed so much from that pitiful existence. A domineering CEO who had striven to keep together his company as so many others went under and slowly succumbing to the numbness of the world. And now I had so much to live for, to protect. It was easy to say you would live for someone, but I had never felt I could say with truth that I would die for anyone. Not until now.
I rose to my feet, stumbling as the numbness crept up my legs. My hands felt like lumps of ice and the wind was sharp with snowfall. I could no longer feel my face, so it was all the worse to feel fire streak down my cheeks. Whatever I was, half of everything and not truly a part of other, was not enough for this world. It was all or nothing and I was being torn in two.
“General Xue.” My voice was wrecked, stripped from the icy air slivering down my throat. “There is something I wish for you to tell Yan Heqing for me.”
Xue Yan’s weary eyes had not moved from me. “Speak.”
There was a muffled disturbance behind us, the sound of running but I was no longer seeing my surroundings. I was seeing myself as I had been in my past life, a sickly child with a dead mother, a bitter brother. And again I saw myself, now as Zhou Yu, Emperor of the Northern Empire, a careless naïve fool wandering lost amid a garden of vipers. No one had wished to see me as I was, in this life or the last. Except for Yan Heqing.
My eyes fluttered shut, a bittersweet smile on my lips as I rested the icy edge of the sword against my throat. “Tell him that he must live well for the rest of his life. I want to see… I want to see what the prosperous, peaceful, flourishing country, his country, would look like.” I dragged in another shuddering breath, the frigid wind sheering through my lungs and scouring me clean.
I had given everything I had and had gained nothing in return.
But at least here I could choose the manner of my dying.
And I would do so as Xiao Yuan.