Epilogue

Lao Riluo

12 Years after The Long Night

Hei’an City

It was too nice a day for Lao Riluo to be so sad. He tried to tell himself this again and again, but even after chatting with his sister for over an hour and then laying her favorite flowers on her grave, he still couldn’t shake the heaviness in his heart.

You’d think after ten years he would have gotten used to it by now…

The Prince and Princess are still in their afternoon lessons by the time he starts to head back to the city. In the markets, children run and play, vendors shout at them to be careful, and parents pretend they’re too busy examining vegetables to notice what the little ones have gotten into.

Riluo remembers when A’Yue and A’Xing were like that too.

He buys a few sweets for the Princess and some more brushes for the Prince before he begins to climb the stairs to the upper floors of the palace. Lao Riluo stops and watches the way the sun reflects off the lake for a moment, and can’t help the way the ache in his chest grows, seeing such a beautiful sight. Alone.

Why should I care about the future when you won’t be a part of it? Riluo used to have the same thoughts about his sister. He used to hear his King’s voice every time those thoughts persisted-

“A’Luo,” Taixing might say. “You must go on. The future will be better, do you know why? Because you will be in it.”

It has been many years since he could remember what Taixing’s voice sounded like.

Riluo eats lunch by himself in the kitchens and then before he is done, of course, the children find him and begin to brighten his day in the way that only they can…

“Uncle! You’ll never believe this, but I got every answer correct on my history test today!” Liuxing buzzed around for a while and then settled to eat the sweets he’d bought her in reward. He knew she would do well on the test.

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“Uncle…” Canyue pouted. It still amazed Lao Riluo that the Prince could be almost eleven years old and still look the same as he did as a baby-

“You don’t need to keep getting me brushes… but, thanks.”

Riluo smiled, “If I don’t, how will you paint? You go through about five a week.”

A’Yue blushed and looked away shyly. Lao Riluo thought once again how proud Taixing would be if he could see his children today. They were growing up so well.

Riluo likes to think that a small part of that is because of him. Because he stayed. Because he kept his promise to his King to help raise and be there for his children… it wasn’t always an easy thing to do, not because of them, but because of the memories.

The children don’t need to be tucked into bed anymore, so he doesn’t. They only need him to be their friend, and listen to them as they discover who they are. So that is what he does.

Lao Riluo doesn’t make a habit of wandering the palace, he’s still far too nervous about running into any of the former Elders for that. But sometimes, if he’s feeling up to it, he manages to settle his heartbeat and go down the steps toward The Under City.

It’s been sealed for almost ten years, no one coming in or out, and yet Riluo still finds his palms sweating and his breathing shifting the further down he goes.

Every few months it seems, he makes a trip down, sometimes he has to turn around and go back after only getting halfway there, sometimes he spends a while staring at the sealed door and thinking nothing at all before all at once it will feel like the walls are trying to eat him alive.

Tonight it’s not like that. Lao Riluo finds himself at the door to The Under City without even thinking about it. He sits on the lowest step, he touches the wood of the door, and he wonders if anyone will ever open it again and if they do, what they will see.

Nothing of us, he thinks sadly. All of that is gone now.

Lao Riluo tries to keep his King’s memory alive for his children, for himself… but also for Hei’an City. This place needs a ruler like Xie Taixing, and the idea that his legacy could be forgotten, even in the smallest amount, is what drives Riluo to get out of bed everyday, raise children that aren’t his own but might as well be, and do everything he can to curb greed and injustice wherever he sees it, before it can go too far.

Before it can go too far again.

“I miss you,” Lao Riluo hears himself say.

His voice is so quiet by itself, but so loud in the following silence.

“I won’t let them forget what you did.”

He promises again, to remind Taixing but also to remind himself. There are many reasons to keep going, Riluo tells his reflection every day. More than anything, he lives well so that someday, when he meets his sister again at the gates to the next life, he can lead her straight to Xie Taixing and introduce them and say-

“This is the man who saved my life after you were gone.”

Lao Riluo lives in this fantasy so much that it feels more like a memory than a dream these days…

His King will look him in the eye and smile and say, “Your life. Was it beautiful?”

Riluo wants to be honest when he tells his King, it was.