Chapter Text
The air in the Fire Lord’s private study tasted of jasmine and ink, a rare quiet in a palace that hummed with attendants and messengers even at dawn. Zuko sat behind a heavy stonewood desk, both hands flat against a scroll that refused to unroll itself. The edges curled, the paper old and stubborn, much like the men who had sent it. He had not lit the lamps yet. Sunlight crept through the carved screens in thin gold stripes, striping the floor, the scroll, the back of his left hand, where a small, pale scar ran from knuckle to wrist.
Mai had given him that scar when they were sixteen, a mishap with a throwing knife she had not meant to throw. They had been sparring in the gardens, or what passed for sparring between a firebender and a girl who could pin a fly to a wall at thirty paces. He had dodged wrong, she had thrown too quickly, and the blade had sliced a clean line before clattering to the stones. He remembered her face, how it had gone utterly blank the moment she saw the blood, the quick apology swallowed behind pressed lips. She had not fussed. She had ripped a strip from her own sleeve, wrapped his hand with fingers that did not tremble, and said, “You moved too slow.” He had laughed, the pain sharp but somehow good, because it was proof she was real, that she was there, that someone who felt nothing for the world felt enough for him to slip.
The memory tightened his chest and made his jaw ache, so he pushed it away and forced the scroll flat.
A marriage audit. The council had titled it with all the grace of a tax report. Thirty-seven names, each one accompanied by lineage, political advantages, health assessments, and a small charcoal likeness. He had read only the first three before he set the whole thing aside. The drawings blurred into the same careful smile, the same pinned-up hair, the same gaze that was looking at the Fire Lord instead of at him. None of them was her. They never were.
Zuko pulled a fresh sheet of paper from the drawer and dipped his brush, but no words came. The brush hovered, dripped, and left a black bloom near the corner. He set it down. Outside the window, the royal gardens were waking. Gardeners with wide-brimmed hats moved between the fire lilies, and somewhere a turtleduck called to its mate. The sound scraped at something raw inside him. He had not allowed himself to miss her. Not in the first year, when fury had propped him up and every morning felt like a battleground. Not in the second, when duty had swallowed every hour and left him too exhausted to feel anything at all. But the quiet mornings were traitors. The quiet mornings remembered her laugh, low and dry, the way she used to sit in that very window seat with a knife and a peach, not bothering to speak for hours while he worked. She had never needed to fill the silence. That was the miracle of her, the gift he had not recognized until it was gone.
He rose, joints cracking, and walked to the wall where the old portraits used to hang. Blank plaster, a shade lighter than the rest of the room, showed the ghosts of the frames. Sozin. Azulon. Ozai. He had ordered them taken down in his second year on the throne, not out of rage but out of a bone-deep weariness that had settled into him like cold water. The Fire Nation would carry its scars, but it would not bow to them anymore. Let the new walls stay bare until something worthy grows there. Something not stained by a hundred years of tyranny. Something that belonged to the future instead of the past.
His fingers brushed the empty wall, and he let them rest there a moment, feeling the cool plaster, the slight unevenness where the frames had hung for generations. He thought of his great-grandfather Sozin, who had started the war, and his grandfather Azulon, who had prolonged it, and his father Ozai, who had tried to burn the world to ash. All three had looked down from this wall, oil and canvas and cold judgment. Now there was only blankness. It was better this way. It was also lonelier.
The door slid open without a knock. Only one person in the palace had that nerve anymore.
“You missed breakfast again,” Azula said.
She leaned against the doorframe, arms loosely crossed. Her robe was a soft plum color, simple, and her hair was pinned back in a low knot, not the severe topknot of her youth. The sharp angles of her face had softened slightly with time and proper meals. She looked rested, and that still startled him even after two years of her recovery. The doctors at the institution in the outer islands had done their work patiently, and the family had done the rest, showing up week after week, sitting with her, listening even when she raged, staying even when she tried to push them away. She never shouted now. Her eyes, still sharp, still the piercing gold of their father, held something quieter, something like curiosity without the edge of hunger. She was not the sister he had grown up with, but she was becoming someone he could recognize.
“I wasn’t hungry,” Zuko said.
“You say that every morning. Mother is starting to take it personally.” Azula’s mouth curved slightly, not quite a smile but no longer a smirk. “She sent me.”
“She sent you to drag me to breakfast?”
“She sent me because she knows you won’t argue with me the way you argue with Uncle.” Azula stepped into the room, her sandals making no sound on the polished floor. She glanced at the empty wall, then at the scroll on his desk, the little charcoal drawings still visible where it had curled open. “Marriage audit number four?”
“Three,” he corrected.
“They’re persistent. You would think after two years, they would realize you are stubborn enough to die alone.”
Zuko turned back to the window. “I am not dying alone. I am just not marrying a strategy.”
“Every Fire Lord marries a strategy,” Azula said, and there it was, the old sharpness beneath the surface, but it was not aimed to wound. It was simply the truth as she had been taught it. She had been raised to be the strategy, the weapon, the perfect daughter of a tyrant. She had been trained to see marriage as a chess move. “Ozai married Mother because the sages demanded a descendant of Roku. Sozin married his cousin to preserve the bloodline. Azulon married a general’s daughter to calm the army. Do you think any of them were in love?”
“I am not them.” He faced her fully, letting her see the intensity that still rose in him when she prodded at his choices. “I emptied this palace of their portraits. I emptied the prisons they filled. I am not going to fill a marriage bed just because tradition says so.”
Azula studied him for a long moment, and he felt the familiar unease of being read like a map she had memorized. The silence stretched. Then she shrugged, a small, elegant motion of her shoulders.
“Mai would hate being a political choice anyway.”
The name hung between them, delicate as smoke. He did not answer. He could not. His throat had closed around the word.
“I saw her once,” Azula said, her tone casual but her eyes watching him closely. “Before I came back to the palace. In Shu Jing. She was buying ink sticks. She looked well.”
Shu Jing. The city was a two-day ship journey, tucked along the eastern coast, where the cliffs were sharp and the sea cold. Mai had moved there after the breakup. He knew that much because a servant had told him, his voice hesitant, as if delivering news of a death. He had not allowed himself to know more. Knowing more was a door he could not afford to open, because if he opened it, he would walk through and never come back, and the Fire Lord could not simply abandon his throne for a woman who had every right to despise him.
“She looked well,” Azula repeated, as if testing the words. She paused, and then added, softer, “Not happy. But well.”
“Azula.”
“I am just telling you.” She straightened from the doorframe. “You can brood about it, or you can eat eggs. Mother’s eggs are very good.”
He almost laughed. Almost. The sound got caught somewhere in his throat, and what came out was a sharp exhale that might have been bitter or might have been grateful.
They walked to the private dining hall together, past the guards who no longer flinched when Azula passed. The halls were lighter now than in his childhood. The heavy crimson banners had been replaced by softer silks in shades of gold and cream. The torches that once flickered with an ominous, perpetual flame had been supplemented by wide windows that Ursa had insisted upon when she returned. She had walked through the great gates seven years ago, after years of hiding, years of a false identity, years of believing her children were lost to her. She had come with her second husband at her side and her young daughter clutching her hand, and the palace had exhaled a breath it had been holding for decades. Ikem was a quiet man, a woodcarver with a gentle face and hands that knew how to shape things instead of destroy them. He had never once tried to claim a title beyond husband and father. The nation had accepted him because they accepted Ursa, and they accepted Ursa because her blood held Roku’s fire, and that meant more to the old families than any crown.
The dining hall was warm with steam and morning light. Ursa sat at the head of the small table, not the grand one in the formal hall that could seat fifty, but the one in the family quarters where the chairs were cushioned, and the teapot was always full. She was still beautiful, his mother, her dark hair streaked now with gray at the temples, her face lined in ways that spoke of grief survived rather than bitterness harbored. Ikem was slicing fruit with a steady knife, the pieces arranged in a careful spiral. Kiyi, eleven years old and all elbows, was trying to teach a turtleduck figurine to stand on its head, her tongue poking out in concentration. Iroh sat at the other end of the table, serene behind a cup of ginseng, his round face peaceful. When he saw Zuko, his eyes crinkled.
“Ah, the Fire Lord graces us.”
“Uncle,” Zuko said, and sat. The plate Ursa set before him had eggs, rice, pickled plums, and a slice of smoked fish. He picked up his chopsticks because she was watching, and because it was easier than explaining why his stomach was a closed fist.
“The council sent another scroll this morning,” Ursa said. Her voice was calm, the kind that comes from years of practice hiding storms beneath a smooth surface. But the look she gave him was not calm. It was the look of a mother who had waited long enough. “You have not opened it.”
“I opened it.”
“You opened it and set it aside. That is not the same as reading it.”
“Mother.”
“Zuko.” She set down her teacup with a precise little click. “I am not telling you to marry a stranger. I am not my mother-in-law’s generation, arranging matches for political gain. I am asking you to face the reality of your position. The nation needs a clear line of succession. There are old men on the council who still remember the war and still fear instability. You have done so much, my love. You have rebuilt roads, reopened schools, and freed prisoners. This is the last piece they need to feel safe.”
“The last piece they need is an heir,” Zuko said, and his voice came out harder than he intended. “And to get an heir, I would need a wife. And the only woman I have ever wanted as my wife walked out of this palace two years ago because I broke her trust. So unless the council has a way to undo the past, the scroll is useless.”
Silence settled over the table. Kiyi stopped fidgeting with her figurine. Ikem put down the knife, his gentle eyes flicking to Ursa and then away. Iroh looked into his tea as if it held the secrets of the universe, which maybe it did. He had always said tea was a form of meditation.
“You still love her,” Ursa said. It was not a question. It was a statement of fact, like saying the sun would rise.
“I never stopped.”
Azula reached for a plum from the bowl in the center of the table. “He has been moping for two years. I could have told you that.”
“Azula,” Ursa said, a gentle warning.
“What? It is true. He walks around like a tragic hero from one of those Earth Kingdom plays Uncle likes. All he needs is a rainstorm and a sad poem.”
“The poems are an important cultural tradition,” Iroh murmured, but his eyes were on Zuko, and there was something deeper in them than humor. “Nephew, may I speak with you after breakfast?”
It was not a request. Zuko nodded and finished his eggs, chewing mechanically, tasting nothing.
They walked in the garden, where the fire lilies were beginning to open, their red petals curling back like flames frozen in silk. The morning had warmed, the sun climbing higher, and the turtleduck pond glittered with reflected light. Iroh walked slowly, hands clasped behind his back, his round body comfortable in the heat. He had aged visibly in the last few years, but age had only softened him, like well-worn leather. His beard was mostly gray now, his step a little slower, but his voice still carried the deep calm of a man who had made peace with every ghost he owned.
“The council is afraid,” Iroh said without preamble. “They fear that without an heir, the old factions will stir. Ozai still has supporters. Quiet ones, who whisper that your mercy is weakness, that your reforms are an insult to the nation’s glory. A child, a clear future, would quiet them. It would say to the world that your line continues, that the new Fire Nation is not a single generation’s rebellion but a dynasty reborn.”
“I know what they fear.”
“But you do not act. You do not even negotiate. You refuse every candidate without a hearing.” Iroh paused beside a stone lantern, its flame flickering gently inside the carved lattice. “That is not like you, Zuko. You are a man who listens, even to those who anger him. You listened to me when I was a grieving old man who only wanted to drink tea and forget the war. You listened to Aang when the world needed a different kind of fire. Why will you not listen to the council on this?”
Zuko stopped beside the turtleduck pond. A mother and her chicks paddled in lazy circles, the water glinting, the smallest chick struggling to keep up. “What do you want me to do, Uncle? Sit in a room and listen while they offer me women like livestock? I cannot. Every time I try, I see her face. The way she looked at me when she found the letter. She said I did not trust her. She said I went to the one person who had done nothing but poison my life, and I asked him for advice, as if her opinion meant nothing. She was right.”
Iroh said nothing, only waited. He had always known the power of silence.
Zuko’s voice dropped, rough as stone. “I went to Ozai because I was scared. The throne was new. The council was pressing me from every side. I had spent three years as a banished prince, and then I was suddenly the Fire Lord, and everyone wanted something. Decisions. Judgments. And I thought, for one stupid moment, that he would have answers. I thought, deep down, he was still my father, and some part of me wanted that to mean something. I did not tell Mai. I did not tell anyone. I went to that cell alone, and I sat across from the man who burned half my face off, and I asked him how to rule.” His voice cracked on the last word. “And when she found the letter, I saw her whole face close. I broke something I cannot fix.”
“You were twenty-three,” Iroh said gently. “You were trying to navigate a role no one had prepared you for. Your father had tried to kill you, banish you, scar you, and still you hoped. That is not a weakness. That is the deepest kind of wound, the kind that does not heal cleanly.”
“It does not matter what it was. It broke her trust. Mai does not easily give her trust. She gave it to me once, and I threw it at Ozai’s feet.” The words scraped his throat raw. “She left the city. She did not tell me where. I found out from a servant that she had gone to Shu Jing. She did not even say goodbye.”
“And you have not tried to see her since.”
“What would I say?” Zuko demanded, turning to face his uncle. “I am sorry I chose a monster over you? Sorry, I made you feel like you were second to a man who should have been dead to me? She made her choice. She walked away.”
Iroh placed a hand on Zuko’s shoulder. The weight was familiar, grounding, the same hand that had steadied him through exile and war and the impossible early years of the crown. “She walked away from the Fire Lord. But did she walk away from Zuko?”
Zuko stared at him, something shifting behind his eyes, a crack in a wall he had built very carefully.
“You wear the crown in every room, nephew. Even in your own heart. Perhaps she needed to see the boy she fell in love with, not the throne she could never compete with.”
Before Zuko could answer, a steward appeared at the garden gate, bowing low. The man was young, nervous, and his voice wavered slightly. “Fire Lord, the council requests your presence in the war chamber. They say it is urgent.”
Zuko straightened, the old name jangling in his ears. The war chamber. He had renamed it the council hall three years ago, but the old name clung like smoke to old curtains. Some things were harder to change than banners and portraits. “Urgent how?”
“They did not say, my lord. Only that they have a matter to present that cannot be delayed.”
“The marriage audit,” Zuko said, bitterness rising in his throat. “They are going to force my hand.”
“Then go,” Iroh said calmly. “Listen to them. You are the Fire Lord. You can listen without agreeing. And afterward, you can decide what Zuko wants to do.”
The council hall had not changed much despite the new name. The great oval table was the same, carved from a single slab of dark wood, polished by a century of elbows and scrolls. The high windows threw sharp rectangles of light onto the floor, and the air was still, heavy with the smell of old paper and heated stone. Zuko took his place at the head of the table, and the five councilors rose, then sat when he gestured.
Councilor Fen was the eldest, a thin man with a long gray beard and the careful manner of someone who had survived three regimes by saying just enough and never more. His robes were immaculate, his fingers ink-stained from decades of documents. Beside him sat Councilor Risa, a severe woman with hair pulled so tight the skin at her temples gleamed. She represented the noble houses of the outer islands and had a voice like a honed blade. The others were Minister Lio, young and ambitious, who had been appointed only two years ago and still seemed eager to prove himself; General Huan, solid and scarred, a veteran of the war who had changed sides when Zuko took the throne; and High Sage Moro, who smelled of incense and spoke as if every sentence were a benediction.
“Fire Lord,” Fen began, “we thank you for coming. We are aware that you have been reluctant to discuss your marriage. We have, however, completed a thorough evaluation of every eligible noblewoman in the Fire Nation, taking into account lineage, political standing, personal character, and the unique requirements of the royal bloodline.”
“The audit,” Zuko said flatly. “I received it.”
“And we understand you have not reviewed it fully,” Risa said, her voice cool. “We therefore requested this session to present our findings directly. The council believes there is only one candidate suitable for the Fire Lord’s consort.”
Zuko’s heart began to beat in a slow, heavy rhythm. He forced his face to stillness, but beneath the table, his hands gripped his knees. “One?”
“One,” Fen confirmed. He unrolled a scroll, the parchment crackling in the quiet room. “After extensive deliberation, we have concluded that the most appropriate, indeed the only appropriate, match is Lady Mai of the House of Ukano.”
The name hit Zuko like a stone to the chest. He felt the air leave his lungs in a rush and had to work to keep his expression neutral. “Mai.”
“Daughter of Ukano, former governor of New Ozai, and Michi, of the Hino clan. High nobility, impeccable lineage. Her family’s loyalty during the war’s end was noted and valued. She herself served as a companion to Princess Azula and later as a defender of the Fire Lord during the fall of the Phoenix King.” Fen read from the scroll, his voice steady. “Her character is known to be steady, intelligent, and unswayed by frivolity.”
“I am aware of her character,” Zuko said, and his voice was low, dangerous. “I am also aware she left the capital two years ago.”
“She resides currently in Shu Jing,” Risa said, as if that were a minor detail, the kind of thing a clerk might note in a margin. “Her father has been in correspondence with the council. The family is open to discussions.”
Zuko stood so abruptly his chair scraped back against the stone floor. The sound echoed in the high-ceilinged room. “You contacted her family? Without my consent?”
“Fire Lord,” Fen said calmly, raising a placating hand, “we have not contacted the lady herself. We have merely inquired, through her father, whether the family would be amenable to a formal proposal should the Fire Lord choose to pursue it. This is standard procedure. It is the same inquiry we make for every candidate on the audit.”
“It is not standard to treat a woman I loved, a woman whose trust I broke, like a treaty to be negotiated.” Zuko’s voice rose, and he saw General Huan shift uncomfortably in his seat. Young Minister Lio looked down at his hands. Only Risa and Fen held their composure, their faces carefully blank.
High Sage Moro spoke next, his voice carrying the practiced calm of a man who had soothed a thousand arguments in temple courtyards and royal chambers alike. “Fire Lord Zuko, we do not mean disrespect. We are your council. Our duty is to the nation, and to you. The bloodline of Avatar Roku runs through your mother and through you. That bloodline is sacred. The people believe it brings balance, protection, and a connection to the spirit of the world itself. To continue that line, to secure it with a legitimate heir, is not a matter of politics alone. It is a spiritual necessity.”
“I know my own bloodline,” Zuko said.
“Then you know the urgency,” Risa said, sharper now. “You are twenty-six, my lord. You have no wife, no heir. The Fire Nation has been without a clear succession for too long. There are whispers. There are those who remember the old line, who speak of Ozai in hushed tones. Should something befall you, the throne could be contested. A child of your blood, borne by a woman of suitable station, would silence those whispers.”
“And?”
“Lady Mai is the only suitable candidate,” Fen said, and for the first time, Zuko heard something beyond careful diplomacy in his voice. Something almost like sympathy. “We reviewed every noble house. We considered the daughters of the great families, the generals’ children, even the merchants’ daughters who have risen since the war. In every case, there was a flaw. Political entanglements, questions of loyalty, insufficient rank, or a temperament unsuited to the weight of the crown. Mai alone possesses the birth, the training, and the strength to be your consort. And she possesses something more.”
“What?”
“Your heart and soul,” Fen said quietly. The words landed softly, intimately. “She knew you before the crown. She loved you before the crown. The nation remembers that. They remember the girl who stood beside you when you were a banished prince, who defied princess Azula to save you at the Boiling Rock. There would be no whispers of ambition, no rumors of calculating families. There would only be a reunion, a restoration. The people would rejoice.”
Zuko’s throat was tight. The sun outside the window had shifted, the light now hard and white, and the shadows under the councilors’ eyes deepened. He thought of Mai in Shu Jing, buying ink sticks, not happy but well. He thought of her face when she had found the letter, the careful way she had folded it, set it down, and told him in three quiet sentences that she would not be his consolation prize, that she would not be the woman he turned to only after the monster had given his blessing.
“You do not understand,” Zuko said, and his voice shook slightly.
Fen leaned forward, his old eyes earnest. “We are telling you, Fire Lord, that there is no one else. If you will not marry, the council will eventually be forced to consider other paths. A named heir from a cadet branch. A regency. These are dangerous precedents. They would destabilize everything you have built. We are not your enemies, my lord. We are giving you the truth. The woman you still love is the woman the nation needs. Choose her or doom us to years of uncertainty.”
The word doom echoed in the quiet. Zuko looked at each of them in turn. Fen, old and wary, who had served Azulon and Ozai and now him, and had learned to speak carefully or not at all. Risa, sharp but not cruel, was a woman who had clawed her way into a council that had no women before her. Lio, who had been a child during the war and wore his loyalty like a badge he was still polishing. Huan, who had fought against the Earth Kingdom and now helped rebuild it, his hands stained with mortar as often as ink. Moro, who believed in the spirits and the sacred fire, who had wept when Zuko ordered the old portraits taken down, not from grief but from relief.
They were not his enemies. They were afraid and trusted him to fix it.
He straightened his spine. “I will consider it. But you will not contact her family again. You will not send envoys. You will not draft treaties. You will not treat Mai as a piece on a political board. Is that understood?”
A ripple of nods moved around the table. “Yes, Fire Lord.”
He left the chamber and did not stop walking until he reached the royal apartments. The corridors blurred past him, guards straightening as he passed, servants pressing themselves against the walls. His rooms were quiet when he finally closed the door behind him. The bed was made, the cushions smooth, the windows open to the afternoon breeze. He stood in the center of the room and tried to breathe.
She had not said goodbye.
The memory played behind his eyes with terrible clarity. He had come back from the prison tower, the cold of Ozai’s cell still clinging to his skin. She had been waiting in his study, not in the window seat but standing, a letter in her hand. Not her letter. His. The one Ozai had sent back with him, full of sharp, poisonous advice about how to rule, how to control the council, how to break his enemies. She had read it. He could tell by the way she held it, the way her fingers gripped the paper without trembling.
“You asked him,” she had said. Not a question. “You went to that cell, and you asked him for advice on how to be Fire Lord, and you did not tell me.”
He had tried to explain. He had said it was only once, only a moment of weakness, that he had been overwhelmed and desperate and had not known where else to turn. But her eyes had gone flat and distant, the way they used to when Azula gave orders she hated but could not refuse. He had seen that look a hundred times when they were children, and he had promised himself he would never be the one to put it on her face.
“You broke my trust,” she had said. “Once again Zuko.”
And then she had walked out. The door had clicked shut, a small, final sound. He had stood there for a long time, the letter trembling in his hand, the room suddenly too large and too quiet.
Two years. Two years of council meetings, trade negotiations, and rebuilding villages flattened by a hundred years of war. Two years of pretending he was fine, that the ache in his ribs was just exhaustion, that he did not look for her face in every crowd. Two years, and now the council was telling him what he had known all along, that there was only her. That there had always been only her.
He crossed to the small chest at the foot of his bed, the one he never opened when anyone could see. It was plain, unadorned, the kind of box a soldier might use for personal belongings. Inside were a few mementos, the kind of things a man kept when he could not keep the woman herself. A single throwing knife, the one she had left behind inadvertently, was still sharp. A scrap of silk from a festival dress, deep crimson, the color of fire lilies. A small, folded note, the only letter she had ever written him. It was from before the war ended, before the crown, before everything went wrong. The ink was faded, the paper soft from being unfolded and refolded too many times. The words were brief and utterly Mai.
“Don’t do anything stupid. Come back.”
He had come back. He had survived the war, taken the throne, and done everything the world asked of him. And then he had done something far more stupid than any battlefield risk. He had gone to Ozai.
Zuko folded the note again, carefully, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his tunic. The paper was light, but he felt its weight against his heart. Then he went to find his mother.
Ursa was in the private gardens with Ikem and Kiyi. The late-afternoon light had turned golden, filtering through the cherry trees' leaves. Kiyi was chasing fireflies, even though it was still too early and the fireflies were asleep. Her laughter rang out, high and free, the sound of a child who had never known the terror of a palace under Ozai. Ikem was carving a small bird from a block of driftwood, his knife steady, curls of pale wood falling onto the grass. Ursa sat on a stone bench, a book of poetry open in her lap, but she was not reading. Her eyes were on her daughter, and her expression was distant, thoughtful. When Zuko approached, she looked up and saw his face, and closed the book.
“What did they say?” she asked.
“They said there is only one candidate. Mai.”
Ursa’s expression did not change, but something in her eyes brightened. It was a careful kind of hope, the kind that had learned not to bloom too quickly. “I see.”
“They want me to go to Shu Jing. To bring her back.”
“And what do you want?”
Zuko sat beside her on the bench, his shoulders heavy. The stone was warm from the sun. “I want to see her. I want to explain. But I do not know if she will listen. I do not know if I deserve for her to listen.”
Ursa took his hand. Her fingers were cool, the skin soft from years of quiet after a lifetime of fear. He remembered those hands from his earliest childhood, tucking blankets around him, smoothing his hair back from his face. Then there had been the long years without her, the aching absence, the questions with no answers. And then her return, tentative and heartbroken, the slow rebuilding of what had been shattered.
“You are my son,” she said. “You have made mistakes, yes. So did I. So did every person in this family. I left you when you were a child. I made a terrible choice to protect you, and it cost us years. Years I can never get back. But I came back. We rebuilt. That is what my blood does, Zuko. Not the blood of Roku, not the blood of Sozin. The blood of people who fail, and hurt, and try again.”
“She might slam the door in my face.”
“She might,” Ursa agreed. “I know Mai, and if she slams a door, she does it after saying exactly what she feels. At least then you would know. At least then you would not be living in this limbo anymore.”
He almost smiled. It felt strange on his face, the muscles unused to the motion. “That sounds like her.”
“Go to her,” Ursa said, and her grip on his hand tightened. “Not as the Fire Lord. Not with guards, banners, and a formal proposal. Go as my son. Go as the boy who threw himself into danger a hundred times for the people he loved. If she still cares for you, she will see him.”
The evening came quickly after that. Zuko spent the intervening hours preparing, though there was not much to prepare. He wrote a sealed letter for the council, informing them that he would handle the marriage matter personally and that they were not to act in his absence. He left his formal robes folded on his bed, the heavy crimson silk and gold thread that marked him as Fire Lord. He changed into a simple tunic, dark gray, a traveler’s coat that had seen miles, and boots that were worn soft at the heels. No crown. No crest. The scarred side of his face was visible, but that face was known everywhere in the Fire Nation, and he would not hide it. He was Zuko, the disgraced prince, the banished boy, the firebender who had stood against his father and lived. He was all of those things, and he was a man going to the woman he loved.
He stopped by the kitchens and packed a small bag of provisions, ignoring the cooks' startled looks. Then he made his way to the shipyard, where the western docks were quiet in the gathering dusk.
Iroh found him there, examining a small vessel with a single mast and a minimal crew requirement. The old man carried a lantern, its flame casting dancing shadows across the wooden dock. His shadow swung long and distorted behind him.
“You are leaving tonight,” Iroh said. It was not a question.
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Yes. The crew is small, but I did not bring an escort. No banners, no guards.”
Iroh nodded slowly, as if he had expected nothing else. His face was calm, but his eyes glistened in the lantern light. “I have something for you.” He produced a small teapot from the folds of his robe, ceramic and glazed in a deep blue, no larger than a fist. The craftsmanship was exquisite, the kind of piece that might have come from a master potter in Ba Sing Se. “A gift. Not for her, but for the journey. Tea soothes a troubled mind. And I suspect your mind will be troubled.”
Zuko took the teapot, its weight solid and comforting in his palm. He turned it over, tracing the smooth glaze with his thumb. “Thank you, Uncle.”
“You are going as Zuko. That is wise.” Iroh paused, and his voice dropped into the tone he used when he was about to say something important, something Zuko would need to remember. “But remember, nephew, that Zuko is also the Fire Lord. You are not two separate men. You are one man who has been both humbled and exalted. Do not be ashamed of the crown when you see her. Just do not let it speak first.”
Zuko tucked the teapot into his travel bag, nestling it beside the wrapped provisions. “I know what to say.”
“Do you?”
“I am going to tell her the truth that I was an idiot. That I have been an idiot for two years. That I never stopped loving her. And that the council wants me to marry her, but I am not there because of the council. I am there because of that note she wrote me.” He touched his chest, where the folded paper rested. “Four words. ‘Don’t do anything stupid. Come back.’ I did something stupid. Now I am coming back.”
Iroh’s eyes glistened more brightly, but he did not weep. He placed his hand on Zuko’s shoulder one more time, the weight of it steady and warm. “Then go. The winds are favorable tonight.”
The ship was modest, built for speed and quiet, the kind a merchant might use to transport goods between the islands. Its single mast stood tall against the darkening sky, and its hull was painted a deep blue that would blend with the sea. Zuko had chosen it deliberately. There were faster ships in the royal fleet, grander ones, but he did not want fanfare. He wanted to arrive in Shu Jing the way a traveler might, unnoticed and unannounced.
The crew was small and handpicked, men who had served with him during the final years of the war, who knew when to be silent and when to speak. The captain was a weathered woman named Joon, her face lined by salt and wind, her hair cropped short. She had ferried refugees during the war and had never asked for recognition. When Zuko came aboard, she saluted him with a nod, not a bow.
“Heading east, my lord. Shu Jing by dawn tomorrow, weather permitting.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
He stood at the bow as the ship slipped from the dock. The lines were cast off, the sails unfurled, and the vessel began to move through the dark water with a gentle, rocking rhythm. Behind him, the palace shrank. Its towers and red roofs grew smaller, the lights of the capital glittering along the coastline like scattered embers. The great caldera was dark against the stars, a sleeping giant. The water was black silk, the moon a thin claw overhead. Salt spray touched his face, cool and sharp.
Zuko did not look back. He kept his eyes on the eastern horizon, where the sea met the sky in a line of deeper darkness.
He thought of Mai. Not the Mai who had left, her face shuttered and her voice flat, but the Mai from before. The Mai who had sat in his window seat with a knife and a peach, saying nothing for hours. The Mai, who had defied Azula at the Boiling Rock, her voice steady as she said, “I love Zuko more than I fear you.” The Mai, who had thrown a knife at him by accident and then wrapped his hand with her own torn sleeve, her touch cool and precise. The Mai who had written four words on a scrap of paper, knowing he would carry it into battle.
He thought of her hands, how they had never trembled, even when she threw a knife. He thought of her voice, dry as autumn leaves, and the rare, startled laugh she had given only to him. He thought of the way she used to sit in his window, her presence a steady warmth at his back. He would be working, bent over some endless scroll, and she would be there, not demanding his attention, not filling the silence with chatter, just there. A companionable stillness. A wordless understanding.
He needed that stillness. He needed her.
The ship cut through the waves, the wind filling the sails and pushing them steadily eastward. The crew moved quietly around him, tending to ropes and rigging, their voices low. The stars turned slowly overhead, and Zuko stayed at the bow, watching the sea.
The night passed in that strange, suspended way that nights at sea always do. Time felt liquid, stretching and contracting. He did not sleep. He could not have slept if he had tried. His mind was too full, turning over old memories and imagined conversations. He rehearsed what he would say when he saw her, and then he discarded every version because none of them felt true. There was no script for this. There was only the truth.
He was still in love with her. He had always been in love with her. He had broken her trust in the worst way possible, by turning to the man who had made both their childhoods a misery. And now he was coming to ask for something he was not sure he deserved.
Dawn came slowly, a gray lightening in the east that gradually blushed into pink and gold. The stars faded one by one, and the sea changed from black to deep blue to silver. And then, rising from the water like a wall of stone, the cliffs of Shu Jing.
They were sharp and gray, streaked with darker lines where water had carved channels over centuries. At their base, the waves crashed in plumes of white foam. Above them, the city began, its buildings cascading down the cliffside in a jumble of red tile roofs and white plaster walls. Painted wooden signs swung in the morning breeze. The smell of salt and stone and something faintly herbal drifted across the water. It was an artisan’s city, a place of calligraphers and brushmakers, of scholars and poets. And somewhere in its winding streets, Mai was buying ink sticks and not being happy.
Zuko tightened his grip on the rail. The old note pressed against his chest, a small, soft weight.
He was coming back. Not as the Fire Lord, not with the weight of the council at his back, not to negotiate a treaty or fulfill a political obligation. He was coming back as the boy who had loved her since he was sixteen, who had lost her through his own foolishness, and who had not spent a single day since without wishing he could undo that one terrible choice.
He was coming back, and he was terrified, and he had never been more certain of anything in his life.
This time, he would not be stupid. This time, he would not let her go.