Yes. I’m sick. Sick of all this.
But instead I shake my head, forcing the nausea down. After a while I’m able to continue on, but as we walk, I jam my knuckles into my belly. There’s a pain there, deep in the pit of me. A hard core, like a stone. It feels as though I’ve lost something. That I left something of mine behind in the Night Houses.
Something that was keeping me alive.
Something like hope.
TWENTY
THE KING’S KOYO CELEBRATIONS ARE BEING held in the Inner Courts, on a section of the river that follows a long, lazy curve, its bank bounded on one side by the feathered tops of trees and a paved pathway on the other. When our carriages pull up, I look out onto a sea of color. The river is crisscrossed with walkways, linked with little open-topped boats with candles lining their decks, and the roofs of pagodas and pavilions along the riverfront dance with hanging lanterns. More lights shine up at the trees across the water, showing off their autumn colors against the dark backdrop of the night. Music spirals through the air, carrying with it the laughter and chatter of the guests.
Everything is radiant and glittering. It’s beautiful—maybe the most beautiful setting I’ve seen in the palace yet. But even as my eyes sweep over the scene, my head remains full of the rows and rows of names that weren’t Mama’s, the black brushstrokes clotting my vision.
“What’s wrong?” Aoki asks, interrupting my thoughts as she comes to my side.
I blink. We’re standing by the palanquins, a couple of servants hovering nearby, waiting for us.
“Lei?” she presses. “Did something happen in Zelle’s lesson?”
I clear my throat. “I guess it just brought back everything that happened with the King,” I say. I give her a smile, though it feels insincere. “But I’m fine. Honestly.”
We amble toward the river. The rest of the girls are already ahead, Madam Himura ushering them to one of the larger platforms on the water, which has been set up as a tearoom. Lantern light glimmers over scattered velvet cushions and low tables.
“I keep wondering if it had something to do with what I said to you,” Aoki admits quietly as we walk. She clasps her hands in front of her, lashes low. “You remember, the day after my first night with him. I was worried I scared you. That it was my fault you tried to escape.”
“It wasn’t,” I tell her quickly. “Of course not. But… I hated seeing you like that. Has it… has it been any better since?” I ask, shooting her a sideways glance.
To my surprise, she nods.
The words tumble out of her in a rush then, an odd gleam on her face as she looks up at me. “I think I was just so scared that first night, Lei. I didn’t know what to expect. I’d hardly spent any time with the King before, and straight after it happened, he sent me away. Like I’d done something wrong. And then with Blue and Mariko, you know, their teasing… but it’s not actually been so bad since then.”
I stare at her. “Really?”
She nods. “A lot of the time we just talk. The King tells me about what’s going on in the kingdom—politics, all his trips and the people and things he’s seen. He asks for my opinions. He shares his hopes for the kingdom. Even his fears.” She bites her lip and looks down. “He… he makes me feel special.”
Something chilled trickles down my spine.
“You can’t mean that.”
Aoki winces at the roughness in my voice. Her sweet face darkens. Avoiding my eyes, she licks her lips and goes on, “He asks about you sometimes. I know he doesn’t show it, but it’s not easy for him, dealing with everything. Having to look after an entire kingdom. And despite what you think, he really does want us to be happy.” I snort at this, and she throws me a strange look, a stiff slant to her mouth. “Lei,” she says, “he told me he’s going to call for you soon.”
The night is already cold. But at Aoki’s words the air grows even colder. Stormy autumn winds spin around us, icy against my skin, and I clutch the fur shawl tighter around my neck.
I look ahead to where the other girls are sitting. The King is there, in his usual gold-and-black robes, throwing back his head to laugh at something Blue is saying to him. The sound is like a thunderclap, electric, cutting right through the air and into my bones. But the sight of him… laughing like that.
I stop. Aoki turns to me, forehead furrowed.
“I can’t do it,” I tell her, staring ahead at the King. My words are edged. Knifepoints.
The servants to either side of us keep their distance as they wait for us to continue, and the noise from the party is enough to hide our conversation. But I still keep my voice down, half whispering, half spitting, “I won’t let him touch me again.”
I don’t realize it until I speak it. And it’s different from the times I’ve said it before, or the way I’ve hoped it, as if dreaming something enough could birth it into being. I know it now with a certainty that has fitted into the lost core at the heart of me, as hard and angular as my hope was soft and shimmering.
The King will not have me.
Aoki’s eyes are as wide as moons. “You’re going to deny him again? This is your job, Lei. It’s not so bad—”
I whirl round. “Not so bad? Remember how you felt the first time?”
“But I told you, it’s gotten better. I think—I think I’m starting to enjoy being with him. To have the King’s whole attention…” A glaze enters her eyes, something feverish in her glow. “How many people in the kingdom get to experience that?”
“The hundreds of girls he’s bedded,” I reply coolly, and pink spots her cheeks.
“You could at least be grateful for what the King has given you.”
I goggle at her. “What he’s given me? Aoki, he took us from our homes!”
“At least we were given a new one! The Hidden Palace, Lei! So many girls are forced into prostitution, or married off to some horrible man—”
“That sounds familiar.”
We fall silent, glaring at each other. The sounds of the party drift around us like colored rain.
Aoki’s the first to break it. “I’m sorry,” she says. “That wasn’t fair.”
I grab her hands, offering a smile. “I’m sorry, too. Look, if you really want to be with the King, and he’s as good to you as you say he is, then I’m happy for you. At least you can enjoy being here. But I don’t.”
“Maybe if you get to know him…”
“It’s not enough.”
After a glance to check the servants haven’t come any closer, Aoki asks in a whisper, “Is there someone else?”
Wren’s face flashes into my mind: her beautiful, dimpled smile, those smart, feline eyes.
“No,” I lie. “Of course not.”
Aoki looks relieved. “I don’t know why I needed to ask. Where would you have found a man in Women’s Court?”
Because it isn’t a man. For some reason, a trill of annoyance runs through me. Everyone’s assumption is for women and men to be together, and yet here we are, human girls, the Demon King’s concubines. Surely love between two women wouldn’t be so strange?