Chapter 40
Every time she looked down at him, sleeping peacefully with even breaths, a bitter mix of hatred, anger, and jealousy would simmer within her.
They were supposed to be similar beings… so why could he sleep when she could not?
More than three years of slavery and sleeplessness had gradually worn away at her spirit, leaving it frayed and sharp-edged. Whenever she felt this change in herself, she would sink into a pool of self-loathing. But her circumstances were too heavy, too overwhelming, for her to halt the transformation.
If she truly was, as the emperor claimed, a being sent for his sake… couldn’t it have been someone else?
Why did it have to be me?
The injustice of it all churned in her gut. Jia closed her eyes and curled into a ball, trying to quell the storm inside. Still, sleep would not come.
***
The day of the hunting festival arrived. Dressed in a habit that matched the emperor’s, Jia headed for Guinaicheum Forest, the imperial family’s private estate.
She tried to ignore the flood of stares, keeping her head lowered. Only when she was inside the carriage could she finally escape their scrutiny.
“Why can’t you hold your head high?” the emperor asked, his tone laced with incomprehension.
Jia picked at her nails. “Whatever I may have been on Earth… here, I’m… a former prisoner.”
“If your status is the only issue, I will have you adopted into a suitable family.”
Jia was inwardly aghast. An adopted daughter? She couldn’t possibly accept such a thing now. She shook her head emphatically. “No, that’s all right. I’ll… I’ll just get used to it…”
“Do not lower your head in that wretched way. It is unbecoming.”
“…Yes.”
He might have said it casually, but his words struck Jia like a poisoned dart. They stung all the more because he wasn’t wrong. It was wretched to bow her head while standing beside the emperor. Jia bit her lower lip.
The emperor’s four-horse carriage led the procession, setting a brisk pace. The lead horses, with their flowing white manes, were a magnificent, even wondrous, sight.
Jia stared, mesmerized, at the line of carriages that followed. Everything here was so different from what she had known on Earth, so new and fascinating. Only the emperor’s horses were white-maned; the rest were all black. A cloud of dust kicked up by their hooves rose in their wake, and even that seemed like a scene from a film. She was so captivated that for a moment, she forgot the emperor was even beside her.
“Is this all new to you?”
“…Yes. Riding, magic, even being in a carriage like this… it’s all a first.”
“I take it the world you came from lacked such things?”
“We didn’t have magic, but we had machines called automobiles that took the place of horses. We could fly through the sky in airplanes to travel to distant lands…”
Jia herself had never been on a plane or a ship. She’d been told she had as a small child, but she had no memory of it. She and her older sister had been planning to take a trip by boat during the summer vacation…
The memory brought a lump to her throat. Jia clenched her jaw, swallowing back the sudden urge to cry.
The carriage arrived at the edge of the woods. Jia gazed in wonder at the vast, dense forest before her, a feeling that only grew stronger when she alighted from the carriage. Rows of beautiful, majestic poplar trees filled the woods, their unique, upward-reaching green leaves drawing the eye.
Soon, the other carriages began to arrive. As the nobles disembarked, they immediately hailed the emperor.
“Eternal glory to Eustanville and His Majesty!”
The cry echoed through the forest. Jia flinched, but she remembered the emperor’s warning and held her head high. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
“We will keep the opening ceremony brief,” the emperor announced as he ascended the prepared dais.
Jia hesitated for a moment before following him. The eyes of every noble in attendance turned to her. Unable to lower her head, she was forced to bear the full weight of their stares.
She endured them all: the baffled stares, the probing inspections, the gazes that looked her over like a piece of meat, and the ones that dismissed her as if she were an insect. Her tightly clenched fists began to tremble.
The emperor gave a ceremonial address, then called forth a knight who had distinguished himself in the recent fall of the Standa Kingdom and bestowed upon him a new title. Throughout it all, Jia clung to the emperor’s command to simply stay beside him, forcing her mind to go blank.
The sacrificial pyre for the god Erun was lit, the flames roaring as they leaped toward the sky. The emperor casually sent a bolt of magic into the inferno, and the fire blossomed in midair, a spectacular floral shape of pure flame.
A thunderous cheer erupted, followed by deafening applause. Jia’s teeth chattered.
She couldn’t begin to fathom his reasons for making her stand beside him. With nothing to do but stand there, blank and silent, she felt like a doll on display.
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