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“She flew at her like a cat... ruined that girl’s face...”
“Did you hear she threatened to leave him again?”
“He’ll grow tired of these games, mark my words...”
Xifeng summoned all of her strength and pushed through them, running out of the concubine’s apartments and into the rain. She stopped to empty her stomach into a flower bush, choking on her bile, still hearing the sound of her skin splitting beneath Lady Sun’s nails. There was blood, so much blood drying on her fingers and her clothes. She sank to her hands and knees, crawling through the downpour to the stream. Raindrops marred the surface, but it was enough to see the mess of ripped skin and blood on her face.
She tipped her head to the sky, opened her mouth, and let out a savage scream, devastating in its despair. Not even in Guma’s most terrible fits of temper had sheeverdestroyed Xifeng’s face this way. She pressed her damaged cheek into the dirt, body heaving with sobs. The cool mud against her burning skin calmed her a bit. The ground stopped tilting and her heart slowed.
Cry not, for your tears are no more than rain upon your enemy’s face.
It was a line from a poem she had once been forced to memorize. If only Guma had known how Xifeng would need that advice. What would she say if she were here?
Lady Sun thinks she’s playing a game with no opponent. She trusts the Emperor will never put her aside for someone younger, brighter, more beautiful.
That was what Guma would tell her. And it was true—that was a king’s privilege in a man’s world. If the concubine didn’t understand that, she was dangerously overplaying her hand.
Hideki had compared the court to a sand pit. Xifeng imagined Lady Sun clawing for the edge, her greedy grip only pushing it farther away, the soft sand tumbling down the sides to the bottom. Somehow, there would be a way to make sure she fell straight down.
And Xifeng would be there when she did.
The eunuchs burst into her chamber late that night. Xifeng blinked as they stood over her bed with a glaring lantern. “Search her and all of her things,” Master Yu commanded.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Xifeng sputtered, slapping their hands away. She leaned on her pillow, hoping they wouldn’t reach beneath it and find her mother’s treasures. But they didn’t need to, for one of the eunuchs pawing through her clothing on the chair gave a shout of triumph.
“You said it was a gold ornament, Master Yu?” he asked smugly. From the tunic she’d worn all day, he had pulled an exquisite gold hair comb in the shape of a crescent moon.
“That’s it,” Master Yu said. “Take her.”
Dandan and Mei sat up in their beds, their eyes round as the eunuchs grasped Xifeng none too gently and propelled her toward the door.
“Let me go! I haven’t done anything!” she shouted.
Master Yu slapped her soundly across the face, and a stabbing pain shot across the still-raw, ruined half. “Don’t you dare speak to me, you vile little peasant,” he spat. “You need to learn some manners.” He led them out into the courtyard. Several ladies-in-waiting and eunuchs trailed after in their nightclothes, drowsy eyes growing alert at the sign of trouble.
Though it had stopped raining, the ground was still wet. The eunuchs pushed Xifeng down, the damp stone tiles scraping her bare legs. The moon shone upon the long, evil-looking whip Master Yu held in his hand. She struggled, but the eunuchs tightened their grip, and she searched desperately for a friendly face. She only saw a lovely, moon-pale face that made her cheek sting again, this time in memory: Lady Sun, staring placidly back at her.
The destruction of Xifeng’s beauty had not been enough. She must have had someone—Dandan or Mei?—plant the comb on Xifeng while she was sleeping. Xifeng’s head swiveled left and right, but Kang was not there. She had not a single friend to save her from this humiliation.
“Strip her,” Master Yu ordered, and the eunuchs tore her tunic from her. She knelt, naked and hopeless, hugging her thin arms across her breasts as they pushed her face into the ground. Every muscle in her body shook as she closed her eyes in despair at Guma’s betrayal, at the spirits of magic who had lied to her and made false promises to bring her to this torture.
She gave one last, hopeless wrench in the eunuchs’ grasp. They each gripped a shoulder and stretched her back bare for the whip.
“One hundred stripes ought to do it, Master Yu,” Lady Sun commanded.
The eunuch’s reply held a note of shock. “One hundred, my lady? I assumed...”
“You dare to question me? One hundred.”
I’m going to die tonight,Xifeng thought. She would be nothing but a puddle of blood and shredded skin on the cobblestones. She squeezed her eyes shut, fiery tears rolling down her cheek.Help me,she begged the creature, her only ally,please help me.
Master Yu stepped behind her. She heard his whip dragging behind him and the swish of his arm as he raised it, bringing it down with tremendous force.
Searing, fire-hot pain lashed across her tender skin. Xifeng had thought she’d known pain,truepain, but Guma’s cane had been nothing compared with this. She screamed and squeezed her eyes shut, struggling with all of her strength against the eunuchs forcibly holding her in place. The whip whistled as it moved up in the air again, then sliced into her body. The world spun around her as she shook from the excruciating agony of it.
How ironic that she would die tonight in such a cruel, familiar manner.
The whip cracked again, a sharp, blistering sound as it rose into the air to descend upon her yet again. Xifeng braced herself for the blow, hoping this one would make her lose consciousness. She could already feel the stripe of heat before it was even etched into her skin...
