Chapter Text
It wasn’t exactly that he was scared. He was terrified.
The young prince looked down at the clothes he’d been dressed in, turning sideways and watching as the dark fabric swayed with his hips. The onyx silk gleamed in the bright candlelight of the room, intricately woven with threads of red and gold. It was strange. He’d studied about different cultures before but had never learned of the North’s traditions of wearing black to their weddings. In his kingdom, black was worn for the dead and attending their wakes.
Then again, it did feel like he was preparing for his own funeral.
“Your Highness?”
He looked back to find a meek servant girl, peeping shyly from the doorway. She curtsied to him before entering the room, a dark-wood chest in hand.
The girl approached him with silent steps before gently lifting the lid. Inside was a gold… cuff.
“What is this?” Mo Guanshan asked, eyes squinting at the golden choker. It was thick and wide of width, tailored so that it would fit his neck snugly. He lifted it from the box and rubbed a calloused hand over its outer rim, the heat from his palm spreading through the gold.
“The Emperor… has ordered you to wear it to your wedding ceremony later, Your Highness.”
Guanshan’s eyes widened in rage.
He tossed the cuff back into the box, angrily shutting the lid before dismissing the poor girl with a litany of insults for the Emperor.
The war and its aftermath was already a great humiliation to him; leading to the signing of a treaty that had essentially stripped him of his power and what little honor he had left. The least the Emperor could do was spare him the added indignity of wearing a symbol of submission in front of his own subjects, much less on his wedding day.
“Your Highness?”
“Goddamn… What now?!”
He turned to find the same servant girl, now with two other guards whom Mo Guanshan recognized almost immediately. They were the same men who had arrested him a week prior. Zhan Zheng Xi and Jian Yi.
The girl curtsied to him again before opening the box. Her hands shook as she stepped closer to him.
“I’m so sorry, Your Highness… but the Emperor insisted…”
“Wouldn’t have to do this if you’d just put it on yourself.” The light-haired blonde, Jian Yi, scoffed, taking a step forward to link Guanshan’s arm into his own. The prince tried to wrench away from him but was stopped when Zheng Xi linked his other arm to him.
“Let go of me!” he demanded. Zheng Xi sighed tiredly, lowering the prince’s head with the help of Jian Yi. “Fuck! Let me go! I’ll put it on myself!”
“A bit late for that, Your Highness.” Jian Yi said, edging Guanshan’s neck to be a little more exposed. The meek girl stepped closer to them, eyes fearful and shaking. As swiftly as she could, she reached over and clasped the cuff around his neck.
Mo Guanshan seethed with pain as he felt a burning sensation against his skin. The two soldiers standing on either side of him muttered their apologies under their breath as they released his arms, wincing at the sight of him.
He turned to face his reflection, fingers clawing at the cuff in a desperate bid to free himself from the physical torment it brought. The prince cursed and swore, his words forming a sort of chorus of anger and frustration. The pain slowly subsided, leaving only a lingering discomfort and a tingling sensation in its wake.
“We’re… sorry, Your Highness.”
Mo Guanshan steadied himself on a nearby stool, eyes welling up with tears as he gazed down at the floor, unable to face his own reflection again. A sense of helplessness and defeat weighed heavily upon him, like a leaden cloak that he could not be cast off. Maybe it was the cuff. Maybe it was this whole mess of a situation he’d gotten himself into. Either way, it made Guanshan want to sob or throw something. Anything at that point.
“Get out.” he said, placing a hand on his temple in an attempt to quell the racing thoughts behind it. Zheng Xi, Jian Yi, and the meek servant girl bowed to him before each shuffling out the door.
The young prince felt as though he were nothing but a pawn in a game he could not win, a victim of the machinations of others who cared nothing for his feelings or his fate. The thought of it all was almost too much to bear, and he didn't know whether to laugh at the cruelty of his situation or to cry at how comically tragic it all seemed to be.
The Emperor stared ahead at the ocean view beside the castle. Beside him stood He Tian, his brother and the crowned Prince of the North. The party beneath them and the crash of the waves against the shore were the only sounds to be heard at the height of which they stood, as if the world had fallen silent in deference to their stoic presence.
The wind blew against He Cheng's face, tousling his long, dark hair as he clutched his staff.
Next to him, He Tian gazed out at the shimmering ocean and the pale, bright moon.
“You didn’t have to make him wear the slave cuff.”
“Is it really a slave cuff if it’s made of gold?” He Cheng asked, his face indifferent.
“Gold. Silver. Wood. Does it matter? It’s still for a slave, no matter the material.”
“Mm.”
He Tian glanced over at his brother, head cocked to one side. He Cheng returned his gaze, grey eyes meeting grey. “What?”
“Is this wedding really necessary?”
"For the last time, He Tian,” He Cheng said, rubbing a gloved hand over his face, “we need this wedding for the people of Nan Sha to trust us," he said, voice tinged with frustration. He was tired of having to explain this time and time again to his little brother.
“We invaded their land and killed thousands of their men. I don’t see how a wedding is going to make them magically start trusting us.”
He Cheng's response was immediate and sharp. "Do you think I’m an idiot?" he snapped, turning to face his brother directly. "I know that this doesn’t immediately absolve us of the war, but the wedding is one step towards a stronger alliance with this kingdom.”
“And what about the prince?” He Tian pushed.
“What about the prince?”
“Do you have any idea how this looks to his people?”
He Cheng turned his gaze towards the endless sea ahead, sensing the mounting tension in the country. Rebellion was on the horizon, and this wedding was just the tip of the iceberg.
“You know just as much as I do that the people will see Prince Guanshan as a traitor if he marries me.” He Tian said, stepping closer to his brother with conviction. He Cheng stayed quiet for a moment, his grip alternating between loose and tight over the cane.
“Why are you so against it?”
“What?” He Tian said, raising his brow at his brother in confusion.
“Why are you so averse to marrying Guanshan? Is it because he’s a boy? I seem to recall that you don’t find women attractive anyway.”
He Tian chuckled bitterly at his brother’s strange logic, “No. He’s actually kind of cute.”
“Then what’s the problem ?”
“You can’t be serious.” The boy rolled his eyes, toying with a loose piece of fur on his cape. “Do you think I’m going to fall in love with some foreign prince with a snap of your fingers? Or just because you said so? He’s handsome, yeah, but his manners are as filthy as his mouth.” he laughed again, recalling the first time he’d seen the redhead.
After the battle at Siwang Pass, they had captured the Prince and several of his remaining generals. Before the Treaty of Worms had been signed, the boy had been a nightingale of curses and foul words, singing every insult known to man and then some.
"I never asked nor expected you to fall in love with him, Tian," He Cheng said firmly. "This is for the good of the empire and nothing more. We only need his people to trust us, understand?"
“There are other ways of gaining the people’s trust.”
“Such as ?”
He Tian pursed his lips.
“Mm. As I thought. Even if there were other ways, this is the fastest and best option we have right now.” He Cheng said, turning to He Tian, “Emperor She Li is forming his armies as we speak and every second we spend debating this is a second wasted.”
He Tian shrugged in defeat, realizing that there was no way of stopping this and no point in arguing with the Emperor even further. He shook his head over the fact that they had both inherited their father’s habit for being mule-headed; the only difference being that it was stronger in He Cheng than it was in him.
The boy sighed, waving his hand casually with a sarcastic " your wish is my command ," before leaping onto the edge of the balcony. He Cheng opened was on the brink of scolding his brother but was too late as the boy jumped, bursting into a cloud of dark feathers.
Guanshan sat at his window sill, watching as the waves crashed against the shore and the noble people scurried about like rats in the palace gardens; with their colorful frocks and tunics, suits and capes, dancing and laughing with other Northern nobility. He narrowed his eyes at them in rage, praying to the Four Winds that some sort of divine lightning would strike each and every one of them down for their treachery.
Traitors. All of you, he thought, tracing his fingers across the golden choker that coiled around his neck. Somewhere in the dark recesses of his mind, he contemplated whether jumping from his window would absolve him of this situation. It was a fleeting thought, but one that held the weight of the world.
The prince wondered if death would be his last chance at freedom; if it would give him the ability to start anew in a different world. One where he wasn’t a prince or burdened with the suffocating love of his people. Mo Guanshan yearned for a life where he could finally breathe freely, where responsibilities and expectations hadn’t plague him at every turn.
Could death offer him that chance? He thought to himself, mind consumed with the possibility, if just for a brief moment.
That brief moment was swiftly interrupted by a loud thud.
A crow had flown into the glass pane and was now shaking its head in disorientation. Guanshan recognized the bird as the same one that had been visiting him for the past week, his little companion as he’d come to call the corvid. With a small smile, he opened the window.
“Hi there.” he said, reaching over to his desk where a small cloth bag of berries had been set aside just for the times when his little companion would visit him.
The bird flapped its wings, as if excited, as Guanshan placed the berries before it, popping one into his mouth. They ate together in silence for a while, staring out the window together with Guanshan sometimes throwing the berries a fair distance for the crow to try and catch–which it did, each time with a strange grace that the prince didn’t know crows had. Some time after the berries had been finished off, Guanshan broke their silence, sighing. “I’m getting married today.”
The bird looked up at him with beady, curious eyes, as if listening intently to every word he spoke. As if it had understood.
“I’ve… I haven’t told anyone but… well, you’re an animal so you can’t really blab about this anyway, so I think I can tell you,” he mumbled to himself, blinking away the tears he’d worked so hard to keep at bay. “I’m… I’m scar–no, terrified . I don’t think I’ve even met the person I’m marrying.” he said, clenching his fist.
“See this?” the boy gestured to his cuff, “Nice of the Emperor to give me some fucking jewelry on my wedding day, huh? Doesn’t this slave cuff look so damn charming?” he croaked, the tears finally falling. The crow edged closer to him and nudged his folded legs, almost as though it was trying to comfort Guanshan. “I c–can’t do this… fuck, I can’t do this…”
“Son?”
The prince gasped, quickly wiping away his tears. He shoved the crow behind himself before turning to face his mother.
There, by the doorway, stood the Queen Mother, clad in a black dress with golden stars embroidered from the hem up to the waistline. Her neckline was low with a crocheted mesh covering up the wide expanse of skin beneath; her peach-red hair was neatly tied into a bun atop her head, sprinkled with small specks of rubies and golden flower pins.
She smiled sorrowfully at her son before quickly striding over to him, pulling the boy into a tight embrace.
The weight of her sadness was palpable, and it seemed to press heavily upon them both. Still, in that moment, as she held her son tightly, it was as if nothing else in the world mattered. They pretended as though nothing had gone wrong and nothing was going to go wrong.
For just a few fleeting seconds; the wedding, the war, and the worst case scenario was nothing but a figment of another life in an alternate universe. Here and now, in the solace of Guanshan’s room, they could live in the fantasy that things were not as bad as they seemed.
But of course, that small moment of fantastical delusion was immediately broken through by the looming presence of reality. Reality that crashed upon them all too soon.
“My son…” the Queen Mother whispered, clasping his shoulders as she pulled away. She looked into his eyes and nearly broke down for the nth time that day. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…”
“Mom–”
“N–no. Listen to me , Guanshan.” she said, kneeling on the stone cold floor. Her face held a sense of urgency to it, as if she were desperate to free the words that clamored to the forefront of her mind. “You have one chance to escape tonight, do you understand? I—I found help from some of our people and they’re here, waiting for you.”
“What–”
“You have exactly three minutes to get down to the kitchens. From there, you’ll take the cellar path and out into the main roads which lead to the city. Do you hear me?”
“What about you?!”
“I’ll be right behind you.” she smiled, placing a soft kiss on his forehead. “Don’t worry about me. Please, just listen and do as you’re told. Okay?”
Guanshan had never been the smartest person to walk the earth but even he could tell when his mother was lying. They were both dreadful liars, prone to little gestures that gave them away. While Guanshan's was the tendency to look askance, his mother's was to lower her gaze.
“You’re… you’re lying.”
“Son–”
“No! I’m not going to leave you!”
"Please," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Don't make this any harder than it has to be. I'm only doing this to protect you."
“And what if I don’t?”
“Then you leave me no choice.”
With a deep sigh, she stood up and placed her hand on his forehead. The prince felt a strange warmth radiating from her palm and then, before he knew it, everything went dark.