“Alright,” Taira sighed, laying down on the floor of his own room while I laid on his bed. “I think I’ve found the mother of the child in your room.”

  “Think?”

  “I had to narrow it down,” he said. “You know the courts dance around dropping names. And without you in the Kōkyū, I can’t just go in to hear what the women say with their looser tongues.”

  “Whose is he then?”

  “I know names mean nothing to you,” he said. “So I’ll just tell you she was among the Emperor’s favored. Favored only after the current Empress.”

  All the fighting and killing these women did to obtain favor that did nothing for them was ridiculous. It only increased the risk of death to themselves and their children, but none of them cared about any of those things.

  “Families are a unit, not a home for such strifes,” someone had said. The foreigner, Nefret.

  It wasn’t what families were, but it was what they should be. Why bother with it otherwise? Yet I’d never seen it executed.

  No. That wasn’t true.

  I looked over at Taira. The only family that had been that way had been executed in a different way…

  “You say that like it’s supposed to be important.” I said.

  “It is.” He said. “Given that the Empress is pregnant.”

  “The Empress is always pregnant.” I said, for the majority of her short term, before she died, and another Empress took her place to do the same thing. I’d been alive 8 years, and she’d be the 5th Empress to take reign since my short life. I was no good with numbers, but it had been said by Taira so often I knew it wasn’t a good count.

  “She’s farther along than she should be, according to what I’ve heard,” he said. “It’s likely before her selection, which wasn’t that long after your arrival, that other concubine was close to obtaining the position.”

  “Why should this matter to me?” I asked.

  “I know you have no care for court dramas,” he said. “But this could be something very deep running. You need to tread carefully.”

  “I have no need to fear women who play with poisons.”

  “Depending on what it is, it could be much more than that. Be careful Ryuunosuke. Please.”

  “Fine.”

  *****

  That was the conversation we’d had a month ago. A conversation followed by an oath. One I intended to keep despite my distaste for it. Keep peace. Among people who wanted no kind of peace, it was a ridiculous ask, but doing so in these conditions was easier than if I had stayed in the Kōkyū. I preferred to be here.

  Taira’s room was isolated. Quiet. Among servants and not snakes. Not to say they were much better. They simply lacked power of any sort, and so required none of the restraint and concern as the Kōkyū.

  So the days passed. I stayed in his room, waiting for the child in my room to die, checking every week. The room had built a smell of sick that warried me to go inside. I wasn’t afraid of dying to something like a wound, but a sickness was much easier to fall to. Much less easy to kill.

  The day began as most all days did.

  Taira washed me. Dressed me. Then took me outside for us to find food. Even with the authority to do so, I would take nothing from the filthy kitchens, or from the hand of the Emperor. I did not depend on them, and I never would. For all that Taira lectured me on not caring about anything regarding court perception, I cared about at least that much.

  Most hunts involved little mess and little leftovers. Nothing to comment on. Nothing that brought anyone’s attention. No one paid attention to getting me food, and they paid just as little to where the food I did eat came from. It was a small stretch of trees, too small to be called a forest, Taira said, but there was nothing else to call it.

  It held few prey animals and fewer predators. That was how it was.

  Today it was different.

  Wolves wandered in from time to time. That wasn’t so strange in and of itself, but it was unexpected.

  Not that it mattered.

  Taira and I were predators to something as small as wolves, and food was food. But they were messy, and they left leftovers.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Kuso,” Taira let slip a rare bit of the kind of language he scolded me for. “We’re going to need to hurry and get cleaned up.”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “What do you mean what for?” He asked. “You can’t go walking around all bloody. You’ll cause a fuss. The court ladies will scream.”

  “If anything they’d think it’s mine and celebrate.”

  “You’ll terrify them.”

  “They should be terrified.” I folded my arms. “It keeps them away from me.”

  He only sighed. “I do wish you’d try to ally with someone older than you.”

  “You’re older than me.” I said.

  “I alone can’t get you very far.”

  “You keep me alive.”

  “But I can’t guarantee you the throne.”

  I did need that throne. One way or another.

  “Fine then,” I said.

  So we went back to the palace after hanging the remaining wolves to dry and be preserved.

  All Taira’s planning to avoid a fuss became completely disregarded by everyone but me. The moment we walked into the Kōkyū, covered in cloaks he had gotten from somewhere, we bumped into the one person he had been set on me staying away from. The Empress. The cloaks did too well in disguising us, as she ripped it off me, finding me covered in blood that matched my eyes, or so they said, among other things.

  The ladies at her side gasped. The Empress, her belly protruding under her clothing, revealing more than there would be for a woman who had become pregnant after her coming to her title, fainted.

  Her ladies caught her, screaming amongst themselves and perhaps at me. It was none of my business what they said. As angry as they were, they didn’t dare to hit me. They weren’t worth my attention.

  The man that came to check on the commotion was worth attention. The man I knew to be the Emperor’s brother without Taira needing to say so. He bowed instantly, as did the women beside the Empress.

  I didn’t.

  “Hanami, what’s happened?” He was speaking to the Empress. Quite familiarly. I guess he bothered to get to know the women who died so quickly.

  She only raised a pale finger to me, and he turned his eyes to me.

  The blaze of blue and orange almost looked like they meant something on him, his facial

  hair giving him a look of age and importance, his glare giving a look of at least attempted dominance.

  “Have you no respect, brat?” He spat.

  “Respect for who?” I asked.

  “This is the Empress before you!” He raised his voice.

  “And?” I said. “There’s been others. There’ll be more.”

  “Ryuunosuke–”

  Taira was cut off by the man’s hand moving through the air to strike me. I caught it.

  “WHICH OF THESE WOMEN IS YOUR MOTHER?!” He demanded.

  “My mother is dead.” I looked at him. “Just like she’ll be, and she’ll be forgotten the same.”

  That it seemed, was all he needed, to recognize who I was.

  He pulled his hand away. “Your insolence is unbelievable, but I suppose it’s to be expected from one who carries such a cursed gaze.”

  He turned back to the Empress. “Let’s lay her down somewhere.”

  “What’s this commotion I’ve heard you were mixed up in?” The old man heading my engagement asked.

  “Nothing.” I said.

  “You ran into the Empress.”

  “Yes.”

  “And…?”

  “And what?” I asked.

  Taira bowed politely. “She saw him in a disorderly state and fainted. An effect of pregnancy.”

  “Not this early,” he said, and Taira passed me a sideways glance.

  “Have you sent the letter yet?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he bored his bald head. “A little over a month ago now. We can expect they’ll receive it in two more.

  I clicked my tongue and left, Taira running after me.

  “Ryuunosuke, you can’t just do that.” He said.

  “He did what he was required to.”

  “He was also telling you something,” he said.

  “Telling me what?”

  “That the Empress’s pregnancy is further along than she’s leading the general public to believe.”

  “I already know that. I saw her.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is he could be useful to you.”

  “He’s trouble.” I said. “As soon as the engagement is sealed, I want him gone.”

  “Ryuu–”

  “I’m going to check on the child.”

  I did as I said, smelling it before I observed it any other way. On top the scent of sickness the smell of death.