A hulking shadow appeared ahead.

The Eastern Gate.

Meihua was thoroughly soaked now, from the rain and the wastewater and her own sweat. She’d only been allowed limited physical lessons, nothing near what the soldiers got and definitely nowhere near what even beginner cultivators received.

She had to get through the gate before the alarms sounded.

She didn’t understand why Li Jie or Sui Jiang hadn’t just told her. It was obvious from the way they’d acted that they’d been together for years.

Was she really that untrustworthy?

What was the point of all those years of study, of being locked up in the palace, if they were never going to let her out?

Why was she meant to be chained her entire life?

No one had answered that.

Sui Jiang had just cried that it was for her own good, for the good of the kingdom, that they could let Meihua become her grandfather.

Meihua never met her grandfather. She’d been born a decade after his death and all but a few select portraits and records of him had survived the purge following his death.

Mao Wudu, the Mad Emperor, they called him. 36th Emperor of All Under Heaven. Who’d killed millions of his own people through persecution and famine and greed. Who’d emptied the treasury to feed his cravings and cut down anyone who looked at him the wrong way.

What was it about Meihua that made them think she was going to be just like him?

A man who wiped out entire clans and villages on a whim.

Meihua felt guilt when she accidently stepped on bugs in the gardens.

A man who had killed all sixteen of his half-siblings on his way to the throne.

Meihua had never even set foot in the interrogation pits! She’d never been allowed to leave the Inner Palace and Mao Wudu had roamed the empire bring to strife to every corner.

Was Meihua really that much like him?

He’d killed his own mother for interfering in his reign. As frustrated as her mother made her, Meihua had never even imagined harming her.

How could she be anything like him?

But they were all so worried. That was why she’d been confined growing up, according to her father. Why there were so few children around her, according to Sui Jiang. Why everything was so regimented, Kang Su had explained.

Everything designed to ensure control.

Even Li Jie had been specifically chosen because of his family and his own strength.

Someone who could keep Meihua under control if the need arose.

The floor currents picked up as she approached the Eastern Gate, picking up speed as the ground flattened. It practically washed her out the open gate and several feet down the road before the water dispersed enough for her to regain her footing and stop.

How funny, she’d gotten washed out with the trash she realized, seeing it clump into piles along the road as the water ran out. Done up in all her fancy silks for her wedding that it turned out wasn’t for her at all.

Eighteen years of learning and studying and practice to protect an empire and a people who believed she was the reincarnation of a monster.

She’d been so looking forward to the marriage, to her chance to rule.

To her first steps out of the palace and into the world.

They weren’t supposed to be because she was fleeing the only home she’d ever had and the only people she’d ever known.

It was enough to make her look back.

The palace on the hill was glowing, lit from within for the celebration. Inside it was everyone Meihua had loved in her life so far. The people she’d sworn to love and obey. The people who’d sworn to protect and teach her.

Every single person she’d ever spoken to.

Her chest became tight as she gulped in air. Did they even speak the same language outside the capitol? What did they eat? She hadn’t grabbed any money in her rush to flee, she didn’t even know where to get any because she’d never needed it before. What the hell was she thinking, running away in the middle of the night like some criminal?

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The palace sat on its hill, glowing like a beacon calling her back.

Back to Li Jie and Sui Jiang and their love.

To her parents, so beloved by the people and each other.

There was no space for her here, was there?

Was that she’d always been so desperate to escape? Was there some part of her deep inside that had realized it before.

Would people beyond the capitol be the same? Maybe Meihua would end up just as alone out but she’d also be uncomfortable and poor and miserable.

Her feet already ached, her head was throbbing, she was starting to feel hungry.

She didn’t have her sleeping clothes or her soaps.

She didn’t know how to cook. How did you make tea, she suddenly wondered. It was always ready when she wanted it, she’d never had to make it herself.

She could go back now.

The bells were ringing, nothing more than a whisper in the storm.

She could go back and pretend she didn’t make it this far.

Back to all those people that loved her and thought she was the reincarnation of the devil.

Or she could keep going and be uncomfortable and hungry and sore and free.

Free into what she doesn’t know. There wouldn’t be anyone who loved her there, because they were all back in the palace. There may not be any shelter or comfort. There might not even be warmth.

They might think she was evil too.

But she would be free. And if she went somewhere where it was all of those things, then she could just leave again.

Somehow, that thought is less frightening than turning around.

So, she presses on.

By dawn, she’s crossed the small forest just outside the outer wall and the palace was just the size of a shack on the horizon above the treetops. Her head had stopped bleeding, thankfully, but there was still a pulsating throb that she couldn’t ignore and made her vaguely nauseous. Like she did right before she threw up whatever fish she’d had for dinner.

Her silks weren’t dripping water anymore, but they still caried the night chill and if she stopped for too long, she started to shake.

There was a collum of smoke rising from the palace now. The emergency signal lit just an hour before dawn when they’d failed to find her anywhere in the Inner Palace.

They were hunting her now. The gates to the Jeweled Capitol were likely closed and barred, guards in every tower, the rest prowling the streets.

Dread settled into her bones like frost on glass.

Eighteen years of love and shelter and she’d thrown it all away in one night, because there was no going back now.

She pressed on. Tears wet her cheeks and there was no doubt her makeup was running. Her mother would have punished her for looking such a mess in public.

“Ow!” A sharp pain in her foot made her stumble. The thin fabric of her slippers was really no protection at all from the sharp rocks that littered the ground and now her foot was bleeding, but she can’t stop.

She didn’t bring any medical supplies anyway.

It looks like a dark day. The rain has lessened the farther she’d gotten from the palace, but dark clouds are skill heavy and low. She turned north when she cleared the forest, or at least she thinks she did.

With no stars, she can’t be certain, but what she remembered from the maps she’d studied, dictated that turning north at the last clutch of cherry blossoms and going in a straight line would take her towards the Blooming Gorge and beyond that the mountains that made up the Spine of the World.

She’s certain she’d been traveling in a straight line north, but she hadn’t been lucky enough to stumble across any roads or fellow travelers yet. The farmlands that made up most of the Southern and Eastern lands outside the Jeweled Capitol would be appearing soon. Meihua had studied them through a far glass more than once from the walls of the Inner Palace. Golden fields that danced hypnotically in the wind. She’d wanted so terribly to run through those fields. To see what the rice felt like in her hands before it had been cooked soft.

It's not the season now, but now that she’s free, she can come back when it is.

The empty fields are easier to traverse than the forest, even if she’d terribly out in the open. The ground soft under the crusty top layer, and even if she rolls her ankles a few times, she manages to cross the fields before the sun goes down.

She’d never been allowed to train in martial arts despite asking. Begging. She was a princess, a noble lady, not a simpleton, according to her mother. There were more important pursuits, but she’d managed to sneak a few books from the library before she’d been caught. She’d thought she’d been able to feel her cultivation core and her qi circulating, but theory from books was not the same as learning from a skilled teacher and her ability to manipulate or use it was limited to a few outbursts that hadn’t been entirely under control.

Now, she thought she could feel it again. Experience cultivators were said to be able to travel for days with only their qi, using it to fuel their bodies. Meihua was not an experienced cultivator, and her stomach was letting her know, loudly. She’d never gone more than a day without eating, which was as long as her anger could outlast her hunger.

She thought she could feel it circulating under her skin, sluggish and out of sorts, but something like what she’d read about in the books.

She couldn’t make it do anything, had tried reaching for it, only for it to skitter away or just not do anything in response.

It was frustrating and Meihua had little energy to be patient. She could stop and try to meditate, because the palace would have sent the cultivators of the Golden Way to look for her by now.

And it was a vastly different thing to run from a cultivator than a simple guard. The Golden Way was the only cultivation sect based in the Jeweled Capitol and the strongest of the six largest sects across the Land of Song and Snow. There were hundreds of smaller sects littered across the land that were of little consequence or concern according to her father. But the Golden Way was considered the most righteous of the sects, not only did they boast the most knowledgeable masters and most promising disciples and were often asked to handle serious cultivation matters by the emperor himself. Their blue, white, and gold uniforms were recognizable across the land, and it was forbidden for any other sect to wear those colors.

They were masters of musical qi manipulation and talismans. Meihua had been tutored briefly by one of their senior disciples about the history of the sects and cultivation, but he hadn’t thought Meihua had any talent for it.

She hadn’t liked him much.

According to the maps she could remember, there should be a road not long after the fields, avoided by those in the capitol because it wasn’t maintained but preferred by the farmers because there were no tolls.

She had a good chance of finding someone who could give her a lift.

~ tbc