Aerin lifted her head. Her golden hair flew across her eyes like sunlit streamers. Tears filmed her gaze, shadows pooling like ink, until they fused into a blur.
That blur was a figure that had haunted her memories and threaded her dreams.
Her heart stopped, like a bird caught mid-flight.
“F—Father?” she called, disbelief snagging her voice.
“Ha.” The newcomer chuckled, lazy as drifting smoke. He drew a black ruler from his sleeve and rapped her forehead.
Tap—
It landed like a reflex she’d never dodge, not hard, not soft, yet it snapped her back like cold water.
Her vision cleared like mist lifting off a pond. Not the long-gone ghost after all, but—
“Ma—Master Bai!” She clutched her brow. Light flared in her dim pupils like a flower by moonlight, and then, in a breath, it died. The shine was drowned by muddied silt.
Shame and humiliation flooded her, thick as swamp water. She opened her mouth to ask when he’d arrived, whether he had seen her at her ugliest, whether he’d brand her a fraud, whether he’d come to hate her.
She couldn’t speak; the wind had left her throat. She only clenched her hands and lowered her head, like a sapling bearing a storm. Master Bai, the Imperial Tutor, had never despised her small, brittle talent. He’d stood beside her and taught her. Yet the only things she could truly claim—her “persistence” and “will”—had almost shattered like cracked jade.
Master Bai had asked her so many times, “Do you want to become the Hero King?” And she had always answered without wavering.
But what she’d shown just now—so fragile, so ugly—was a slap of irony.
He would see it, surely. That timid, false Aerin the Liar. The so-called perseverance was only a shell.
I’ve been lying all along.
Master Bai must be sick with disappointment.
Her chest twisted like a knotted rope. She didn’t dare look up; the sky above felt too heavy. Losing the right to chase the Hero King didn’t scare her; that was a crown she could set down. Meeting his disappointed eyes did; that blade would cut to bone.
“Hey, Aerin. I’m asking you.” The black-haired boy spoke, voice smooth as a lake at dawn.
Careful as stepping on thin ice, Aerin raised her head and looked at Master Bai.
The sun was climbing like a slow-burning torch. Threads of light seeped through the canopy, weaving with the dusk-dark, like a scroll unrolling. The theme was light, spilling from the reel, growing louder. And at the center stood—Ye Weibai.
Against the glow, Ye Weibai’s outline blurred within the gold of her eyes.
“Do you want to become—” At the worst possible moment, as if blind to the rot chewing through her heart, the black Demon King spoke again. “—the Hero King?”
When Ye Weibai asked, his tone was easy. No censure, no expectation. It was like asking, Did you eat today? What’d you have.
Every time, he asked like that. As if Hero King were a job on the lowest shelf, one step up, one hand away. Before, that effortless calm had made Aerin yield, admire, and look up.
Not this time; the river had changed course.
Thud!
It felt like a fist to the heart. Aerin’s pupils cinched to needles. She trembled and bowed her head again.
Her long hair fell like a curtain, hiding her face. Her breath quickened, ragged as torn cloth.
“I—I don’t understand.” She ground the words out, low and cold, like steel from ice.
She didn’t understand how Master Bai could ask so carelessly. Hadn’t he seen how pathetic she’d been?
She should have been glad if he hadn’t. Then she could keep her bright shell on, keep walking beside him. He was all she had left. Lose him, and there was nothing.
She should have wished for that; it would have been the easier shore. But no—no joy, no relief rose up, like birds that never came. Instead, from the pit of her heart, the black vine climbed. Anger uncoiled, a serpent dragging itself out of the abyss.
“You—”
By the time Aerin noticed, the hurting words had already leapt free.
“—how can you still—”
No. Don’t. Not like this.
Panic hit. She tried to smother the black tide, but what can a tattered heart hold? Clutch it tighter, and the sludge only spurts harder.
“How can you—say it so lightly—” Though she knew she shouldn’t, she lifted her head. Like a cornered cub, she shouted, near hysteria, “—the three words, Hero King!”
No, don’t—
“You—you— all of you—” Her eyes blew wide. She bit her lip till silver teeth drew blood. Drops fell onto her mud-grayed clothes, a sorry mess. She shook all over, anger wiping her mind clean. She wanted only to pour everything onto the one in front of her—even knowing none of it was his fault.
At times like this, people are beasts, all breath and fur. Feeling takes the reins. Reason has no say; the bridle snaps.
“You people,” Aerin roared, “you make the Hero King sound way too simple!”
…
…
