CHAPTER FIVE
I didn’t remember collapsing in the middle of the Autumn Palace, but I woke in chambers that were not my own.
A cushion supported my head, and my eyes were so dry it hurt to blink. When my vision focused, the sight of Emperor Khanujin standing before me made me leap out of bed.
He greeted me in a menacing tone. “You’ve slept the day away, Tamarin. Unfortunate, given it may have been your last.”
My heart skipped with panic. Had he seen my eyes turn red? Had the shansen?
No. I’d be in the dungeon if he had. Not in one of Lady Sarnai’s rooms.
“That outburst of yours last night will not happen again.”
My voice came out hoarse. Raw. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. It was the truth.
“They’re saying you’ve gone mad over Lord Xina’s imprisonment,” he said. Still fuming, he regarded me. “You will resume your masquerade tonight. You will eat and celebrate in silence. Should the shansen grow suspicious, you will do everything in your power to reassure him. Lives hang in the balance, Tamarin.”
He spoke as if he cared about A’landi’s well-being. As if this wedding truly mattered to him. That surprised me, but I hated him too much to believe his words.
“Why not kill him?” I asked, scarcely recognizing my words as I spoke them. “Why not poison the shansen? Or have an assassin murder him in the middle of the night?”
Khanujin scoffed. “I don’t expect you, a peasant, to understand the intricacies of court.”
“I’m not a peasant—”
“You are what I say you are,” he interrupted. “I am the emperor, and I am trying to prevent a war, not start a new one. If you want your country to survive, I suggest you put on the damned dress and finish this wedding.” He pivoted for the door. “Fail me tonight, and I will have your father and brother hanged while you watch.”
I bit back a stinging retort. How dare you threaten my family! I wanted to scream at him. But instead I knelt, glowering mutinously at the floor as I did. For all his palaces and his armies and his threats, the emperor was just a man. I was beginning to believe the shansen, however, might be more.
I waited for the rustle of the emperor’s clothing to become silence, for the guards’ footsteps to fade into the sound of the distant wedding music, before I moved again.
It took me some time to stand. My knees wobbled, and my skull pounded with echoes of the voices I had heard last night.
Sentur’na, the ghosts had called me.
Simply remembering the name brought a shiver racing down my spine. I didn’t know what that meant. Nor did I know how long I had left before my transformation. Once it happened, I’d never see my face in the mirror again. I’d never hear my name being called again.
Never see my family again. Or Edan.
From the back of Lady Sarnai’s chambers, a whimper broke the chilled silence.
I called out, “Lady Sarnai?”
I went to her. Her eyes were shut tight, dark metallic veins blistering across her neck and chest. There was a stack of folded towels on the table next to her, and I dipped one into the bowl of water and pressed it on her forehead.
Guilt swept over me. It was because of my dress that she’d become disfigured like this. Kneeling by her side, I prayed to whichever gods might listen.
“Please allow Lady Sarnai to recover,” I whispered. “For the sake of A’landi.”
Jun and Zaini were there already, preparing the moon-embroidered gown for me to wear tonight. From their cowed silence, I knew Emperor Khanujin had threatened them the same way he’d threatened me. Their lives depended on my success with the shansen.
“My father sought to unleash their powers on Emperor Khanujin,” Lady Sarnai had said, “but…one does not bargain with demons without paying a steep price.”
What had that price been? I wondered. Did it have something to do with the tiger demon I’d seen in the shansen’s place last night when the ghosts came to me?
“I can dress myself,” I said, dismissing Jun and Zaini.
When they left, I lifted the dress of the moon. It was the most serene of the three gowns I had made, its silvery brocade casting a soft sheen over my skin like moonlight shimmering on a quiet pond. Whereas the dress of the sun’s skirt flared like a bell, this one was sleek. The skirt cascaded from my hips in a slim line, like a flute, and the hem brushed against my heels, soft and light as the feathers of a swan.
I took out my magical scissors and cut a deep slit into the skirt. Invisible threads stitched themselves in place as I fashioned a pocket within the inner folds of the skirt.
Then, before I could change my mind, I reached for the dagger I kept hidden against my spine and raised it to my lips.
“Jinn,” I whispered. The secret word that unlocked the power in the dagger. One of Edan’s first names.
I unsheathed the weapon, fingers trembling, and caught my reflection in the gleaming iron blade. But it was the other side of the dagger that I watched.
How harmless it looked. Like gray, unpolished stone—at least to the unknowing eye.
But I knew it wasn’t stone. It was meteorite. The dust of the stars.
I’d seen firsthand what it could do to demons and ghosts. A mere graze of the blade had burned Bandur’s flesh into plumes of smoke.
Holding my breath, I splayed my fingers above the meteorite, hovering there until I gathered enough courage to touch it.
Now, I told myself, lowering my fingers to brush the blade. A silent gasp jumped from my lips as the blade stung my skin. Just a sting. The touch had not burned.
My flesh was still mine. Still human. For now.
As I set the dagger down, slowly the weapon’s glow died away. Then I sheathed the blade and tucked it into the pocket I’d created.
I’d been wearing the dagger because I valued it and didn’t trust leaving it in my room for the emperor’s men to find. But now, if the shansen was not all he seemed, I had a feeling I would actually need it.
I prayed I was wrong.
CHAPTER SIX
Three enormous incense burners blazed in front of the Grand Temple. On this last day of the imperial wedding, the emperor and Lady Sarnai were to make an offering—to ask the gods to bless their union. Monks chanted in ancient A’landan.
“Bow three times to the South,” the priest instructed us, “for the Immortals of the Water and Wind to bless this royal marriage and welcome Her Highness, the Lady Sarnai, as Empress of A’landi, Daughter of Heaven.”