Chapter 41. Gift and support
AT THE SAME TIME
EMPEROR LIANWEI POINT OF VIEW:
I didn’t know what to do except hold her. Mei Shen was still clutching her head, shaking, her breaths sharp and uneven. Huan stayed beside her like a little soldier guarding his mother, his eyes huge and wet. The fire hissed in the hearth, but the heat didn’t touch the chill creeping into my bones. And then, the air changed again. Not like when Zeirith spoke. This was... warmer and stranger. The lanternlight shifted, shadows deepening at the far side of the chamber. The rain outside seemed to hush for just a moment, as if the world were holding its breath. And then she stepped forward. Rosalie. Not as the faint echo of a spirit I’d glimpsed before, but whole, radiant, real.
Her gown shimmered as if woven from morning light and stormwater, her hair catching the firelight like threads of gold. She looked younger than I remembered her... and impossibly sad. I rose slowly, never letting go of Mei Shen’s hand.
"You-" My voice caught. "How-?"
She didn’t answer at first. She only crossed the distance between us, silent, her bare feet making no sound on the rug. When she reached me, she looked at Mei Shen with a softness I’d never seen in anyone’s eyes. Then she turned to me. Without asking, without warning, she placed her palm against my forehead. The world cracked open.
It wasn’t like remembering. It was like living. Fire roared around me, no, not me her. Rosalie. I stood in the ruins of a palace I had never seen but somehow knew. The smell of smoke choked my lungs. Children screamed. Steel rang against steel. A voice, my own voice but not mine shouted orders to protect the gates. I knew every soldier’s name. I knew every street, every hiding place in the capital. Then, another memory. A dry season that lasted too long, the famine that came with it, the desperate measures to keep the kingdom alive. The careful rationing, the secret routes for water transport, the way she had kept entire provinces from collapse without ever letting the enemy see weakness. It all poured into me, decades of choices, sacrifices, strategies like a flood forcing its way into a jar already full. My knees almost buckled, but Rosalie’s hand kept me upright. When she finally let go, I staggered back a step, gasping.
"You can not stop what is coming. But you can hold the line. I give you what I was, what I knew because she will need you more than you understand."Rosalie whispered.
I swallowed hard, looking down at Mei Shen. She was still trembling, lost in the storm of her own mind.
"You’re telling me I can help her through this... if I use what you gave me."I said.