The king of Wu crumpled, and then he was no longer a king at all, but a boy, bleeding against my robes. I held him. His eyes fluttered open, focused on me; it was how he had looked at me in all our time together, across the palace rivers, across the polished floors of his chambers, underneath the moonlight. No matter where we were, he was always the first one to spot me, always the last to look away. As if afraid I would disappear at any moment, like smoke in a breeze. As if he knew that one day, he would run out of time, out of chances.
