“What happened to the two captured Xia warriors?” I ask.
“No one knows. Maybe they never gave anything away under torture, so the King had them executed. That’s what I believe, anyway. But some people think they managed to escape. Others that they turned and ended up fighting alongside the King in the Night War, and that’s what enabled him to win.”
A shudder runs down my spine at the thought. Might and magic. It would have been a bloodbath.
“Once he captured the eight provinces and established his court,” Wren continues, anger still skating the edges of her words, “the King turned his attention to destroying the Xia. He knew it was unlikely he could defeat them in battle. They’d fought against some of his armies during the Night War—those included some of the battles he lost. So he planned surprise attacks. Ambushes. He even had them attacked on prayer days, when he knew their warriors wouldn’t fight back. The Xia were not a large clan. After years of these constant attacks, they were all but destroyed. The few Xia who were left went into hiding in the mountains of eastern Rain.”
“And one of those survivors was you,” I breathe.
Wren nods. “When I was born, I became the twenty-third member of the decimated Xia clan.” She swallows. “And its last. I was just a baby, too young to remember much of that final attack. Ketai Hanno found me afterward, when the fires that had ripped through our home had burned themselves out. He managed to piece together a rough idea of what happened. Somehow, our location was betrayed to the Demon King, who sent an army in the middle of the night. My people put up a valiant fight. The snow was said to have been red with the blood of his soldiers. But there were just twenty-three of us, half of us children. We were hopelessly outnumbered. By the time the sun rose the following morning, the Xia had been destroyed.” She turns away, lips pressed into a bloodless line, before drawing a faltering inhale. “My mother, my father, my five-year-old sister… all dead. I was the only one left.”
The paper leaves of the tree rustle around us. Lacing my arms round her back, I pull Wren close, drawing her so tight I shift with every rise and drop of her shallow, shaky breaths. The day my mother was taken is so clear to me in this moment, so close, like a imprint burnt on my heart. I know what it’s like to lose your family.
To lose your hope.
Wren draws back. “There’s something I want to show you.”
She pulls me to my feet. Reaching up into the boughs of the tree for the branch with her sister’s name, she brushes aside a few of the other leaves to reveal another glowing paper leaf beside her sister’s.
My throat closes when I see the name written across it.
Soraya.
My mother.
I turn to her, barely able to speak. “You did this?”
“This is the Temple of the Hidden,” Wren explains. “It’s for the dead we are unable to grieve for. For me, that’s my Xia family. The family I’m not allowed to grieve for publicly, because I can’t reveal they ever existed. I have a shrine for my parents in one of the other rooms, but this tree is for hidden women only, so I come here to pray for my sister’s spirit.” She hesitates. “After what you told me about your mother, I thought you might like a place to come to pray for her, too.”
I’m silent for so long that her face drops. “I shouldn’t have,” she mumbles. “I overstepped—”
“No.” I take her hands, our palms pressing together. “I needed this, Wren. You knew, even before I did.”
Tears course down my face, but I ignore them, my breathing jagged. Because it’s all so clear. Of course it is. I’ve been trying to convince myself, clinging onto the hope that my instincts are wrong. That the absence of my mother’s name from the Night Houses lists was a mistake, or maybe she found a way to escape on her own, because she was my Mama and brilliant and of course she could find a way to escape from an inescapable fortress.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” I choke out. “My mother is… dead.”
The word is as ugly-tasting as it sounds, a solid slab of weight on my tongue.
It’s the first time I have ever said it out loud. Ever admitted it to myself. I’ve thought it, felt the admission taking shape at the edges of my mind, but every time I wrestled it down. Now the truth hits me the way thunder strikes the earth—hard and fast, and with a flash that tears the sky apart.
It wrenches a rasping sound from my throat. Wren grabs me as I double over, holding me in silence as the gentle air of the temple courtyard fills with my cries.
You would think seven years would have dulled my wounds. But still they burn inside me, a fire too bright to extinguish.
TWENTY-THREE
A LONG WHILE LATER WE SETTLE back against the tree for Wren to finish her story. This time we sit closer, curled together like two puzzle pieces, her arms circling me from behind. Her breath is warm by my ear. The names of her sister and my mother flutter in the branches above our heads like protective charms, our own precious gods watching over us.
“I don’t know how I survived the attack,” Wren says, “let alone how I stayed alive for days afterward with no food or water, no shelter. Perhaps it was my Xia blood, or some last protective dao one of my family wove for me with the last of their breath. The mountainside was covered in bodies. I was hidden among them, the only living thing for miles. That’s what my father says drew him to me—my adoptive father, that is, Ketai Hanno. He came to Rain after hearing about the massacre, hoping to find survivors. He’s always believed the stories of the Xia. He wanted to learn from them, try to rebuild their presence in Ikhara.”
My brow furrows. “But I thought the Hannos are one of the Demon King’s biggest supporters.”
“Yes,” Wren says. “They are.”
I wait for her to explain further. “Oh,” I say eventually. “Another thing you can’t tell me about.”
She lowers her lips to my head, so I feel her warm breath mussing my hair. “I’m sorry, Lei. I want to tell you everything. The whole truth. But it would be too dangerous.”
I’m stiff in her arms. “You still don’t trust me,” I murmur.
“Of course I do. I mean that it would be dangerous for you.”
We sit in silence, the courtyard hushed with the rustle of the paper leaves, their faint chiming hum.
“So,” I say, hugging her arms closer to me. “Ketai Hanno found you and took you back to Ang-Khen?”
“Exactly. Bhali—Ketai’s wife, my adoptive mother—was sick. She hadn’t been seen in public for two years, which fit perfectly with my arrival. They announced my birth late, saying that they were waiting for her recovery before sharing the news. No one questioned it. Maybe if I’d been a boy, it would have been different. But I was just a new daughter for the Demon King to eventually claim. My existence wouldn’t have much consequence. And so I began my new life in the Hannos’ palace, and grew up to love a new family.”
“Do you?” I ask gently. “Love them?”
Wren replies after a beat. “As much as I can. I guess it’s strange I should feel so connected to the Xia, seeing that I was just a baby when they were killed. But I can’t help but think of them as my true family. Sometimes I’ll catch scent of something that reminds me of them, of the mountains, and it strikes me so vividly then—the loss. The loneliness of being the only one left.”