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She was born the color of faded bones.
She does not remember much of her hatching. Her time in the egg is only a dim recollection of stories spoken through her shell, and her first month a hazy dream of hunger and sleep; the event that separated them is faint in her mind.
She wonders who it was that first called her unlucky.
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When Prince Yongxing asked to be her companion, she snorted and laid her head on her five-taloned feet. “You do not want me,” she told him, letting her eyes close. It was afternoon, and the summer sun had kept her inside for most of the day; she longed for the cool touch of evening, when she would go into the garden. “I am cursed,” she added, as an afterthought. “Ghost white.”
His voice, when he spoke, vibrated with suppressed emotion. “You are Lung Tien Lien, and you are the color of a white lotus,” he said. “You are not cursed. Your companionship would honor me above all else on this earth.”
She opened her eyes.
He was the first human to call her by her proper name.
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She waited so long for his return. She wrote him an entire volume of poetry in his absence. He smiled when she presented it to him.
Now, like a blossom on a spring tree, he is lost to her, his brief beauty snatched away too quickly.
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If she is cursed, it does not matter now. The only man who ever loved her lies dead; there is nothing more to lose.
In the palace await more stares and whispers. With de Guignes, who can know? She is sure he means her to bond to this Napoleon, but she does not want another companion.
She wants only to ensure Yongxing is remembered.