The Girl King by Mimi Yu

Author:Mimi Yu [Yu, Mimi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Young Adult
ISBN: 9781473223134
Google: TtFADwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B07D5BB8TX
Goodreads: 35105833
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2019-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

Exile

Crying was a weakness, and Lu was not weak. She would choose fury over fear, and her fury would sear away any tears that might well inside her. This was what she decided on the trail north.

She rode with the reins of the horse in hand, the Ashina boy seated behind her. He sat stiffly, as though trying to avoid touching her, but otherwise was so still, so silent she might have thought him asleep. The soft, lethargic sway of the wind-swept pines and the high trill of breeding cicadas had more to say than he did.

She let him keep his quiet. He’d been through enough. They both had.

Her father was dead. Her father was dead, and everyone believed she’d been the one to kill him.

Not Min, she thought. Surely her sister couldn’t believe she could do such a thing, could she? Their mother, though . . . she wasn’t so certain. But Min . . .

Poor Min. Sweet, innocent, simple Min. Sold off to Set by their mother like some prized mare. The thought slid through her, oily and repugnant.

Pushing away the thought, she looped the reins around a wrist and held up Omair’s map, studying the browned paper rotely for the hundredth time.

As she folded it back up, Nokhai shifted behind her. Lu felt she ought to speak, but she could all but feel the mistrust radiating off him. How could this be the traveling companion the heavens had chosen for the most important journey of her life?

Omair trusted the boy to guide her, she reminded herself. And Yuri trusted Omair.

Did she trust Yuri, though? Even if his heart were loyal, he hadn’t left her with much to work with. Was there anyone she could rely on?

Not anymore. Out here, I’m alone.

Fear sluiced through her gut as the horse stumbled beneath her. Horses, Lu thought in annoyance, were a decidedly inferior mount to elk. She yearned for Yaksun’s broadness, his sure-footed strength. This creature, for all its meticulous breeding, seemed to spook at every pit and root it stumbled on.

And there were plenty of pits and roots on this jagged, narrow forest lane. She’d wanted to take the well-maintained, slate-paved Imperial Road, but the boy had insisted—rightly, she had to admit—that they try a route less frequented by hordes of imperial soldiers.

The horse stumbled beneath her again. She frowned.

“You have a mule,” she mused aloud. “Mules aren’t so different from horses, are they? How frequently do you need to reshoe a mule?”

The boy at her back was silent for a long moment. Then he whispered, “Bo.”

“What?”

“The mule’s name is Bo. We left Bo behind,” he said, sitting up straighter. There was now a panic in his voice that alarmed her.

“I know . . . ,” she said. “We had to.”

“Oh gods,” he croaked. “Omair. We have to go back.”

“Wait!” she cried, but too late. The boy slipped from the saddle and was running down the trail, back in the direction they had come.

It occurred to her for a frozen moment that she could leave him.

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