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“You gave me an order and I chose to ignore it. We have witnesses who heard me flout your authority, which means that whatever happens to me is not your fault.” Lan looked deeply satisfied with herself as the Commander struggled to respond, and Bao hid a smile.
Commander Wei turned to Lady Yen in frustration. “Help me persuade them to stay here with you. I can’t have them running around when war is about to break out.”
“Well, I can’t exactly persuade them to stay here,” Lady Yen said calmly, “because I’m not staying here, either. I’m going with all of you.” Her face was pale and her lips trembled, and Bao saw how much effort it took her to be brave. She lifted her chin with near-perfect composure. “I plan to tell Lord Nguyen tonight that although I deeply respect and esteem him, he will no longer be my betrothed. I will give my heart and my hand to someone else.”
Bao, Lan, and Wren all looked at one another in mingled shock andamusement as the Commander’s face turned white, then scarlet, then purple. His fists clenched and unclenched as he paced.
“What you propose is impossible. And now that I’ve met Lord Nguyen, I know he does not deserve your desertion,” he said with forced calm, but his tone quickly rose in volume when he saw the determined set of her jaw. “Do you know the consequences of breaking such an alliance and betraying a powerful man like Lord Nguyen?”
Lady Yen shrugged. “I go where you go, and there’s nothing you can say about it.”
“You exasperating woman!” Commander Wei cried. “You cannot—”
“Wei, you should know better than to tell a woman what she can and cannot do,” Wren broke in loudly. “We don’t have time to argue about this. I think weallought to leave tonight. Lan and Bao will ride ahead, and everyone else will follow behind. If Vy’s guards make trouble and try to do anything other than escort the young people, we will intercept them before they get to Lord Nguyen and dispatch them before meeting our forces at the Gray City.”
“No, you can’t attack the honor guard,” Bao said, panicking. “If anything happens to them, my mother will close the city to me. I’ll never be free of this spell.”
“Youwillbe free of it,” Lan told him fiercely, slipping her hand into his. “She won’t have time to worry about the honor guard with the armies of three kingdoms descending upon her. And she told you herself, she wants her family reunited. She wants you there.”
Wren looked at the Commander, who gave a short nod. “Then it’s decided,” she said.
The sound of frantic feet running down the corridor put an end to their discussion. “Sir,” said a red-faced Imperial soldier, “they’re here.The men from the Gray City are waiting outside the gates. Their leader demanded to speak to you and His Lordship.”
He had barely finished speaking before Wren and Commander Wei ran out of the room, their faces grim and intent. Lady Yen rose, pressing a hand to her heart as she turned to Bao. “Your mother said they wouldn’t be here until the morning, didn’t she?”
Bao’s heart sank. “It isn’t the first time she’s lied to me,” he said, torn between punching a wall and being sick to his stomach. He settled for resting his head in his hands again and breathing deeply, trying to keep the panic at bay. “She must have sent them early this morning, long before she spoke to me or even knew I was with Commander Wei. She always planned to ambush the Commander and Lord Nguyen here.”
“Then she can’t hurt them, can she?” Lan asked. “She wouldn’t risk hurting you, too.”
“I don’t know what she would or wouldn’t risk.” Bao ran his hands over his face. “I don’t know anything about her at all, except that she’s good at lying and she will never back down. I have to go out there. I have to speak to her guards and try to get them to stand down.”
Lady Yen nodded, her face white as a funeral sheet. “I’ll go out there, too. I have to make sure that Wei... and I have to tell Lord Nguyen... I...” Without another word, she hurried out of the room in the direction that the Commander and Wren had gone.
Bao got up from his seat and looked into Lan’s desperate, worried face. “Listen to me,” he said, taking her hands. “I don’t want you to come with me. I can’t ask you to do any more than you already have. The Gray City is going to be the most dangerous place on Feng Lu. I can’t risk anything else happening to you.”
“No,” she agreed softly. “You can’t ask me to do any more than I already have.”
He could already feel the sensation of hands around his throat, depriving him of air. Though it was what he had wanted to hear, Lan’s words stabbed at him like knives. He nodded, his eyes on their joined hands. “I’m sure Lord Nguyen will provide you an escort home...”
“You misunderstand me, Bao,” she said gently. “You can’t ask me because I am going with you no matter what you say. Your life is at stake. This spell will choke us to death if we are apart, but even if it didn’t exist, I would still go.” She removed her hands and put them on either side of his face, just as she had that day in the village. Her eyes locked onto his, wide and beautiful and honest. “I go where you go.”
A tear burned down Bao’s cold face as he heard in her words the ghost of Lady Yen’s promise to Commander Wei. He looked at Lan in a maelstrom of overwhelming joy and fear and disbelief. “But why?” he whispered, wanting to hear her say it.Needingto hear her say it.
“Don’t you know by now?” Lan asked tenderly. She stood on her toes, still holding his face, and brought her lips closer to his.
And then the shouting began.
Dazed, inches from the kiss he had dreamed of for years, Bao barely registered Lan pulling away. And then they were running, hand in hand, down Lord Nguyen’s exquisitely decorated corridors and carved mahogany walkways and out to the courtyard. The servants, Lord Nguyen, and Lady Yen were standing on the cobblestones, looking out in terror at the black metal gate where a group of twenty mounted men waited, wielding swords and torches. The moon was bright in the heavens, an orb of pure gold just short of being a perfect sphere.
Once, Bao thought, the moon had been his conspirator, dappling the river with its loving light as he played the flute for Lan. Soon it would be his enemy. A shard of ice formed in his core and the cold seeped through his body as he wrapped the Commander’s cloak more tightly aroundhimself. His hand found the bamboo flute, which he had removed from his sack and tucked into a pocket.
“I have to go out there,” he said resolutely. “Mistress Vy is my mother, and I have to make this right. I will tell them to take me to the Gray City.”
“But this is my estate,” Lord Nguyen said firmly, “and it is my blood Mistress Vy wants. I will be the one to greet these criminals and to send them on their way.”
“Neither of you are going out there alone,” Commander Wei said, standing beside his war horse. Behind him, Wren and all of the Imperial soldiers were already on horseback, their weapons held at the ready. Bao noticed that they all wore the protective cloth masks hanging around their necks, ready to use at a moment’s notice. “You’ll each get on horseback behind one of my men. None of Vy’s guards will have a clear shot at you, and if they attack, you’ll be safer that way.”
“They won’t have a chance to attack,” the nobleman said, smirking. Bao noticed he was carrying something in a sack over his shoulder. “But we’ll do as you think best, Commander.”
