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She can’t get the smell of livestock dung out of her nose.
The masked person’s room is one with a low ceiling, the interior slinking with shadows and the smell of tea. The masked person is always drinking tea. There is a new cup every time Agula comes to the woman’s room for lessons; Agula wonders how she has so many. The scent of tea hangs between the eaves of the ceiling whenever Agula recites the Three Character Scripture.
Now, she can’t smell it at all.
“Your family is buried under livestock dung.” Those words chain her mind, tightening until she’s choking on the non-existent smell. “They lie dead with their eyes open.” The image of the livestock pen flashes through Agula’s mind and she fights the urge to throw up.
She wants revenge. She wants the people who invaded her home to die . She wants them to choke on their blood; she wants to see the fear in their eyes, bring them to their knees, sink her fingers into their skin. She wants them to suffer and suffer and die .
She is nine years old. She lost everything.
“Wipe your tears,” the masked person orders. Agula obeys woodenly, her mind piercing white with rage. The masked person’s voice snakes into her head, and the words wait for it, bear with it anchor themselves into Agula’s very core.
She will make them pay.
Agula doesn’t know what to do with grief.
She is a child of the grass plains, and whatever sadness she’d felt had always been swept away by the wind or wiped from her face by her mother’s thumb. What does she do when she has no horse to carry her and no mother to comfort her? How does she breathe when her chest feels so empty? The oxygen can’t fill the gaping space in her chest where her heart should be. And what about when she gets so sad it feels like the grief will leak out of her orifices? Does she cry?
The masked person doesn’t let her. “Wipe your tears,” is what she’d told Agula that day. “Wipe your tears,” is what she says again and again, harsher each time, until Agula learns that crying is a weakness. Weakness has no place in the plan for revenge. Weakness cannot help those frail arms of hers to pave a road of blood. Tears are a luxury she cannot afford.
(Ding You doesn’t know why Agula doesn’t cry. She should have, right? She should have cried her eyes out and wilted to become a hollow husk. How is she still waking up each morning? How does she get herself to breathe when dying would have been more merciful than this?
He watches those amber eyes get emptier and emptier with each passing day. Five years later, he doesn’t know if she’s still human.
“Qiyan Agula no longer exists in this world,” she says. Her back looks so, so small. “ Call me Qi Yan.”)
Furong used to make longevity noodles on both her and Xiao-Die’s birthdays. Qi Yan has always liked those noodles, the soup rich and full of love, the noodles soft as their mother’s caress. She tries to replicate that feeling of warmth, putting every fond memory she has of her family into the soup.
She sets one bowl in front of her and another opposite her. She smiles at the empty space and asks if her noodles taste like her mother’s.
When she eats the first bite, she knows she’s made a mistake. Every mouthful reminds her of Xiao-Die’s little hand in hers, Bayin’s loyal presence by her side, her mother’s kind smile, her father’s proud gaze.
She hasn’t cried in so long. So, so long. The masked person does not take kindly to tears, but now the cold woman isn’t here. Qi Yan’s tears drip down her cheeks, catching on her lips and making the noodles saltier. She shoves every molecule of food into her mouth, as if that will help her hold on to her memories better. Her chest is splitting open in the centre, her heart beating, so painfully alive. She doubles over and sobs, choking back the sounds, because she can’t bear to hear herself cry. She can’t bear to be weak. Weakness has no place in the plan for revenge.
She cries until she falls asleep, and in her dreams, she’s somewhere better.
When Qi Yan married into the Nangong family, she never expected to be faced with true emotions.
The court is a malicious place, both inside and out, with court officials sabotaging each other and princes eyeing the throne hungrily. It’s a given that everyone would wear the same fake smiles, and Qi Yan dances along to their tune.
There is nothing more real than the grief in Nangong Shunu’s music.
The sound of her qin strikes Qi Yan’s heart, because she’s never met anyone this lonely before. She’s never met anyone with so many pent up thoughts, so much resentment. Qi Yan is the Zhenzhen Princess’s fuma, not by choice. Nangong Shunu is Nangong Rang’s daughter, not by choice. Neither of them wanted their marriages.
She’s found a friend in music.
The ache in her heart travels to her fingers, wrenching a note out of its place, pulling her emotions out of her chest. She freezes with horror. There is nothing real in the palace, and Qi Yan cannot be the first.
She hurries away before the Nangong sisters leave their quarters in search for the mysterious dongxiao player. She pretends the slip was because of the cold.
The next time she sees Nangong Shunu, her eyes have darkened considerably, but her back is as straight as ever. This, Qi Yan thinks, is a princess.
Nothing Qi Yan owns is her own.
Her name belongs to someone long dead. Her life belongs to the god of death. Her past is weaved together from fragments of other people’s lives. The only things she can claim are her lies, and those are what she gives Nangong Jingnu.
“My father used to take me to the Shangyuan festival every year,” she says, her eyes softening as if it were the truth, reminiscing a memory that isn’t hers to keep.
“Take me too,” Nangong Jingnu smiles, and Qi Yan crumbles.
What Nangong Jingnu gives her is nothing but her own. She gives Qi Yan her displeasure as she sees fit, and now she wishes for Qi Yan’s health with all her heart. When she asks Qi Yan if she can see the stars, all she can do is stare at this woman who had the misfortune of being hers. She finds that she cannot look away.
“The stars are mere inches away. What’s unfortunate about that?”
The first person Qi Yan killed was not Chuntao.
At seventeen, she’d wiped Qiyan Agula’s existence off the face of the earth. From now on, she will only kill more and more people.
Nangong Wang is laughably pathetic. Nangong Wei can ride on that high horse of his until Qi Yan pushes him off. Everyone from Nangong Rang to Nangong Jingnu will pay.
The kingdom of Wei will burn beneath her.
Chuntao’s blank eyes stare at her, angry and accusing, and Qi Yan tries not to smile.
Qi Yan doesn’t really know what love is.
She has an inkling, much like the way children don’t know what society is and adults don’t know what happiness is.
In her earliest memories, she remembers her father kissing her mother’s forehead and her mother staying up to sew her father’s coat. That, to Qi Yan, is what love is.
If so, what’s this thing she’s feeling now?
Loving Nangong Jingnu, if it could be called love, hurts in all the best and worst ways. She has moments where she feels she replicated that image of peace and adoration she’d seen in her parents, and other times she clutches the tattoo on her chest as her heart bleeds.
She doesn’t think love is supposed to be this painful, but how could she hate it when it’s Nangong Jingnu? What hurt is there when Jingnu smiles so sweetly? What regret is there when Jingnu holds onto her even after she falls asleep?
It’s dreadful, loving Nangong Jingnu. Devious on Qi Yan’s part, doting on Nangong Jingnu’s part, a disaster all the same.
Pain or not, Qi Yan will treasure this until she has to ruin it with her own hands. Such is Qiyan Agula’s first love.
Everything about their relationship is conditional. Qi Yan loves Nangong Jingnu for a price that she will pay one day. Even then, she might not atone for everything she’d done and plans to do.
When they meet in the afterlife, Qi Yan will take Nangong Jingnu’s hand, as she’d always done. She will guide her through all the trials, as she’d always done. At Meng Po’s bridge, she will coax Nangong Jingnu into drinking the soup, because what if it’s bitter? What if her Highness doesn’t want to drink it? She will feed Nangong Jingnu every drop, and when they go to the next life, they will remember nothing of each other.
Maybe, that’s for the best.
Maybe, just maybe, they can start over again.
Maybe, Qi Yan can finally love her without guilt.