The Candle Burns Red - Chapter 15

The bitter wind lashed my cheeks. Two soldiers hauled me up to the city wall. So much time in freezing water had left my legs unsteady. A hundred steps took me half an hour. At last the people waiting above grew impatient and ordered the soldiers to drag me the rest of the way.

They threw me to the ground, raising a cloud of dust. Yuwen Sheng looked down at me with disgust. He gripped my injured shoulder so hard I nearly cried out.

“I indulged you too much. Now you dare betray me.”

His bloodshot eyes were red, like those of a trapped beast driven to the end. I clenched my teeth against the pain and met his gaze without speaking.

He laughed coldly. “Does the little rabbit want to bite? Look who’s below the wall.”

He caught my hair and forced me against the parapet. A great army surged over the horizon like a dark tide. As it came nearer, I saw the man at its head, the one I had longed to see. Pei Xiuwen wore silver armor and sat straight in the saddle, his sword flashing in his hand. He had always been meant to stand like this.

He looked up at me, his gaze cool, but his fists tightened.

“Pei Xiuwen, you can’t even protect your own woman, yet you claim to act for heaven. How laughable!”

Yuwen Sheng tore open my collar, exposing skin covered in wounds. During my days in the dungeon, Baize had found every way he could to torment me.

Pei Xiuwen spoke in a low voice. “You traitors slaughtered the Jiang royal family. You angered heaven and brought this punishment upon us.”

Yuwen Sheng’s eyes held an almost mad certainty. “Five hundred exorcists foretold the punishment and gave us a way to end it: sacrifice one member of the royal family to heaven. This woman murdered them all for fame and gain, and so the punishment came. My father has already taken his own life as a sacrifice. Kill this witch as well, and it will surely stop.”

Why was he so sure? Were the drying rivers and raging mountain fires no accident at all? Had people caused them? Yuwen Sheng had used heaven’s punishment to kill the old emperor. By sacrificing me, he could also strip Pei Xiuwen’s campaign of its cause. Two gains with one move.

He shoved me over the wall. I clung desperately to the edge and stared at Pei Xiuwen.

“A-Yao!”

Through tears, I smiled. A tear slid down my face and fell beyond the wall. “Fool. My name is Qingluan. You gave it to me. Don’t you remember?”

That winter, I had pestered a boy in white to give me a name. He wrote the characters for *Qingluan*, wishing I might fly free like the mythical luan bird.

Pei Xiuwen stared at me, dazed, then urged his horse toward me.

I suddenly twisted around, grabbed Yuwen Sheng, and leapt from the wall with him. He screamed as we fell.

Heaven’s punishment would cease, but Pei Xiuwen had to be the one credited with stopping it. Only then could he hold the throne securely. So Yuwen Sheng and I both had to die.

When I woke, something soft lay beneath me. Bright palace lamps shone over richly furnished bed curtains. Was I in the palace?

A figure in imperial yellow hurried in from outside. Before he reached me, a hand came through the curtains and caught mine. Pei Xiuwen was thinner than I remembered, with strands of silver at his temples.

“When did you grow a beard?” I touched his cheek and could not help complaining. “It looks awful.” Had he been neglecting himself like this while ruling as emperor without me?

He looked wounded. “Didn’t you say you wouldn’t mind what I looked like?”

Remembering my old joke, I laughed. “Do you know how long you’ve been asleep?” he asked.

I shut my eyes. “Only long enough for one dream. We lived an ordinary life in the countryside, with two children, three dogs, and four geese.”

He leaned forward and kissed my brow. “Then let me make your dream come true.”

“I’ve only just woken up. Have you no decency?”

— The End —