Ānníng took a deep breath as he began to awaken. He kept his eyes closed as he listened to the rain softly falling outside, the wind periodically whistling through the corridor and in between columns, and the thunder rolling like battle drums in the distance. The floor was hard beneath him, and he stretched to straighten his crooked back.

 He turned his eyes toward his bed to watch her sleep, but all he could see from his angle was the blanket bundled near the edge of the bed. It appeared to have slipped off of her. He stretched again and lifted himself to cover her. That’s when he noticed she wasn’t there. He looked around in the darkness and heard a soft whispering from the other room.

 He stood and walked quietly toward the sound. He didn’t want to startle her in the darkness, but he was curious as to what she was doing late at night talking to herself.

 “I think I’ll always be safe with him,” Mĕilì told the tiger in a soft voice. “He promised he’d never send me away. His father was a soldier and he tried to protect my mother. Don’t you think it’s Fate that he’s now protecting me? If Grandfather had allowed his father to watch Mother, she would still be alive. I think Uncle understood that, so he sent this general to be my husband.”

 She hugged her tiger closely and rocked back and forth as Ānníng watched and listened from the other side of the large tub.

 “He’ll keep me safe always,” she said as she started to cry. “He’ll never let Father and those men take me. I know he won’t.” She hugged the tiger closer as she struggled to quiet her sobs.

 Ānníng moved around the tub to go to her just as a flash of bright white lightening lit up the entire room. Mĕilì gasped when she saw him, then screamed when the thunder shook the building. He hurried to her and pulled her into his arms.

 “It’s all right,” he soothed. “It’s only me.”

 She quickly wrapped her arms around his neck and gripped his back tightly. She tried to calm her rapid breathing as he lifted her into his arms. He carried her back to bed and sat her on his lap.

 “What were you doing, angel?” he asked as he pulled the blanket around her.

 She looked around the room with wide eyes before she answered.

 “I wanted to talk but you were sleepy,” she replied.

 He patted her arm as she relaxed against him.

 “It was a long day,” he explained, “but I’m awake now. If you want to talk, I’ll listen.”

 She took a thick strand of his hair that was lying across his chest and held it in her hand. She rolled it around in her fingers as she thought of what she wanted to say. There were so many things that kept her from sleeping that night and every night she’d had no one to talk to. The most pressing issue, however, was what only she knew of her mother’s death.

 “If I tell you something, you’ll hate me,” she said softly.

 Her lip trembled against his chest and he felt fresh tears run down his skin.

 “No matter what you ever tell me, I will never hate you,” he replied. He held her close and kissed the top of her head.

 “Uncle will hate me, too,” she said just before she let out a small sob.

 He was almost certain then that it was about Bái Quán. He waited for her to speak, but she started chewing her bottom lip and didn’t seem she could continue.

 “Your uncle and I have always believed your mother died protecting you,” he revealed in an attempt to encourage her to talk. “Is that why you think we’ll hate you? Do you think we’ll blame you because she sacrificed her life for you?”

 Mĕilì started sobbing loudly as she nodded. He pushed himself farther onto the bed so he could rest against the high wooden side. He held her in his lap and rocked her, hoping he was finally about to hear what she’d kept secret for eleven years.

 “It wasn’t an accident, was it,” he prodded. “It’s all right,” he said as her body stiffened and she grew fearfully quiet. “We always suspected it was your father, but we had no proof. Is it true? Was it him?”

 Mĕilì took several sharp breaths as she listened. They already knew and never blamed her. Was this why her uncle tried so hard to get her out of her father’s manor, as her husband had claimed?

 She finally nodded in confirmation, and he shut his eyes and held her closer. King Rénlóng now had a witness, and her account could resolve so many speculations and set them on the correct course to move forward.

 “Do you know why he would do such a thing?” Ānníng continued.

 She nodded.

 “It really was all my fault,” she whined and sniffed at more tears. “Mother and I had been in Father’s study earlier that day. She wanted to look for a book he kept with poems and paintings of flowers. She was teaching me to read, but I only knew words for things. I couldn’t read or write complete sentences. She said the book would show me how.

 We started to play. She tickled me all of a sudden. I ran away laughing and I dropped my rabbit she had made. We ran outside and through the courtyard. When we were tired from playing, she brought me to the kitchen to find something to eat.

 Sometime later that day, I remembered my rabbit and went to my father’s study to find it. I knew I had to be quiet or he would punish my mother and me.

 He wasn’t as brutal back then, but he would use a leather strap on us if we did anything to bother him. When he was at the manor, Mother and I would be as quiet as we could so he wouldn’t even know we were around. That’s what he wanted. When he was at court or meeting with someone outside of the manor, we could play and do as we wished.

 His study was always forbidden. I don’t know why Mother wanted to go there that day. There were books in other places of the manor, but she insisted on using that book to teach me. 

 I was quiet getting into the study. I heard him speaking to a man somewhere in the room, but I couldn’t see them. I tried to sneak to where I believed I left my toy, but the voices were louder around there. I decided to sit on the floor where I was and wait for them to leave.

 While I waited, I listened to what they were saying. They were discussing Father being a better king than Uncle. The man Father was speaking to said Uncle was too content with peace. All of the other kingdoms were falling to one another in the war to become unified. Soon, our kingdom would be swallowed up because Uncle didn’t want to grow stronger and fight for our place above the others.”

 Ānníng stroked her arm. She confirmed more of what King Rénlóng suspected and what he had been told by spies. She was a witness to the seeds of the plot that had been growing all those years.  

 “Did you see the other man?” he asked and she nodded.

 “I hadn’t been paying attention to anything around me,” she answered as she played with his hair, wrapping it around the tiger’s paws in a child-like manner. “Another man came up from behind me and grabbed me. He brought me to my father and the man he had been speaking with. There was another one, too.”

 “Three men and your father?” he asked for clarification.

 She nodded. “Father demanded that I tell him what I heard. I was so afraid, all I could do was cry. He slapped me and grabbed my arm so tight, it hurt. I tried to tell them I hadn’t heard anything, but they knew I was lying. I was too afraid to repeat it, though. I knew Father would hurt me if he knew what I heard. I knew he would hurt me if I didn’t tell. I didn’t know what to do.

 I started to scream for my mother. He hit me again and someone gave him something from a pouch on his belt. He shoved it into my mouth and forced me to swallow it with wine from a cup on his desk. I fell asleep.

 When I woke up, I was in a small room with fire all around. The rabbit was in my arms even though I hadn’t found it. I started screaming and running anywhere I could to find a way out.

 I heard a loud banging on the door and saw Mother run in. She ran past big flames and picked me up. The fire was so big, it already blocked the door. She covered me with a blanket and found a window that was still safe to use. She shoved me out but a big shelf fell on her before she could follow me. She screamed at me that she loved me.

 A servant came just then and dragged me away while everyone tried to put out the fire. I could hear my mother screaming until I couldn’t hear her anymore.”

 Mĕilì began to cry so loudly, she drowned out the storm. Ānníng brought up his legs and wrapped his arms around her until he was like a cocoon hiding her from the world. He listened to her cry and blinked back his own tears at the memory of seeing Princess Bái Quán’s corpse.

 As the son of the top general to the royal family, Ānníng had seen dead bodies. As a fourteen year old seeing the girl he looked up to as a beloved sister burnt and mangled, it was something that haunted his very soul.

 He remembered holding onto the prince and watching as a maidservant tended to Bái Quán’s small child. The girl was covered in ash, her pink robes burned, her hair singed, and her soot-covered face streaked from a steady stream of tears. Her haunting screams for her mother pierced his ears.

 King Rénlóng, the twenty-four year old crown prince at the time, was beside himself with grief. Ānníng buried his face into his friend’s hair as the crown prince knelt before him sobbing uncontrollably.

 He looked up at his father, General Lăohŭ Nù, and saw the rage consuming his expression. He’d always suspected his father and the princess were in love, but out of honor and duty to the king, he dared never to express it.

 He recalled his father being sent to a battle soon after. It was his last. Ānníng always knew in his heart that Bái Quán’s husband had something to do with his death. Dying on the battlefield was expected. Dying while nursing a broken wrist in the medical tent was suspicious. He vowed at his father’s shrine to find justice for him and Bái Quán. He wouldn’t stop until he did.

 In his arms amid the sound of pounding rain was the tool he needed for justice. With it came part of the responsibility he had sworn to his sister and friend. He kissed the top of her head and patted her arm. Love or not, she was his forever. Her father would never hurt her again.

 He breathed in deeply as he listened to her grow quiet. Her breathing was still uneven as she trembled over the memories, but she had relaxed within his protective embrace. One more question and he would let it go for the night.

 “Do you know the men he was meeting?” he asked hopefully.

 Mĕilì swallowed hard and chewed her lip. She shook her head, but he could sense she was still hiding something. He would let her find the right time to say it. She’d relived enough for the night.

 “I want to go to sleep now,” she whispered, though she didn’t want to leave him.

 “All right, angel,” he replied.

 He loosened his hold on her and lowered his legs. She took a breath of fresh air and followed his unspoken command to lie beneath the blanket he had spread across the bed.

 “Please, don’t leave,” she asked when he started to return to his pallet on the floor.

 He looked back and watched her clutch the tiger as if in memory of the rabbit and her mother. He nodded and took a shaky breath. It would be easy not to make it more than it was, especially after witnessing her breakdown.

 He crawled in under the blanket with her and barely had time to settle in before she wedged herself between his arm and his side. She rested her head against his chest and held onto the tiger. He patted her back and stared up at the ceiling in wait for her to fall asleep.

 As he listened to her breathing quiet and felt her body grow still, he thought of all she had told him. He only slept in short spurts as his own memories invaded his dreams. They would all suffer. In one way or another, he would see to it justice would find every corner of their depraved and disgusting world.