Jiayi’s heart was crumbling. Even though she had been inside the minds and bodies of many killers over the years, she still could not understand how someone could do such a thing. How a person could make the choice to take the life of someone else. There were many times when she had felt angry, hurt, or wanted to lash out. But she had always controlled herself. She had never hurt another person. How could Lian ever think that she could kill the empress? Kill anyone?
Jiayi let Zhihao hold her. She felt safe and comforted in his arms. But she didn’t understand how he could do nothing. She gave him a final squeeze and then pulled away. She turned to the shelves and began touching items randomly.
“Jiayi!” Zhihao said. “What are you doing?”
“Something here must have seen what happened,” Jiayi said. She ran her hands over scrolls, books, artifacts. Bronze statues, a bolt of silk, a wooden carving of a door god. Nothing happened!
“How is this possible?” she mumbled as she pulled things down, touching everything. Even if the items had not seen Hu Xiaosheng’s murder, she had never touched so many things before without having a vision. What was wrong?
“Jiayi!” Zhihao called again. “Stop!”
“I can’t,” Jiayi grumbled. “I have to know. I have to see—”
Zhihao grabbed her arms and turned her to face him. “Please, stop.”
Jiayi tried to pull her arms away, but the fight had gone out of her. “Let go,” she said. “I’m fine.”
Zhihao released her and she turned away from him, back down the aisle, away from the blood. Away from the items that refused to speak to her. She walked back toward the door. What was left for her here? She couldn’t imagine coming back to this cursed place without Hu Xiaosheng. Zhihao could always come to see her at the Forbidden City. But then she remembered the box where she had hidden her money and the items she had not sold. She stopped, glancing at Zhihao out of the corner of her eye. Zhihao had said he might not have a job now that Hu Xiaosheng was dead. If that were the case, she would have no excuse to return here. Even if the empress dismissed her, she might not be able to access the library again. She needed to take her things while she was here. While she had the chance. She wasn’t sure if she should take them back to the Forbidden City. Maybe she could give them to Zhihao for safekeeping.
“What is wrong?” Zhihai asked, and Jiayi realized that she had been standing silently for several moments.
“Nothing,” she said. “I…I just need to get something.”
He nodded as she went down the aisle where the little music box was hidden. She kneeled down and reached behind the dusty scrolls. As her fingers touched the box, she gasped.
She was kneeling over Zhihao, her blonde tendrils falling over her shoulder.
“Are you all right?” she asked, and Jiayi recognized the voice. She was Rebecca. But this was not the Rebecca from many years ago. As she looked down at Zhihao, he looked exactly the same as he did now. This was a very recent memory.
“How?” was all Zhihao could manage to say. His face was one of utter bewilderment.
Rebecca laughed. “I guess you didn’t get my letters.” Then she looked up over Zhihao’s shoulder and saw Hu Xiaosheng standing near the stairway to the upper floors. His face was a frown, and his arms were crossed over his chest. Rebecca narrowed her gaze at him, and Jiayi felt something bubbling up in Rebecca. Something she couldn’t quite identify. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled in warning. But a warning of what? Why? Rebecca couldn’t have known Hu Xiaosheng before she arrived in Peking.
“Oh,” Zhihao said as he pushed himself to his feet, dusting off the seat of his pants and straightening his cuffs. “No, I’m sorry to say I didn’t. The post here is notoriously unreliable.”
Rebecca stood as well, and she smiled again, turning her attention to Zhihao and ignoring the wizened old man across the room.
“Jiayi!” Zhihao was calling her name, shaking her.
“I…I’m here,” Jiayi said as she opened her eyes and sat up. “Rebecca…Rebecca was here.”
“What?” Zhihao asked. “You aren’t saying that Rebecca…killed Hu Xiaosheng?”
“No,” Jiayi said, rubbing her head and trying to remember the details. “She was here. You had fallen…over there.” She pointed toward the door.
“Oh,” Zhihao said, his face slightly flushing. “I was so shocked by her appearance, I stumbled. You saw that? Something so recent? It was only a few days ago.”
“She saw Hu Xiaosheng,” Jiayi said. “And he was not happy to see her.”
Zhihao chuckled. “He did not seem fond of her, no.”
“But why?” Jiayi said. “They never met before. What did he say to her?”
“Nothing,” Zhihao said. “After she left, he only said that…that I should forget about her and focus on you.”
“I didn’t see that,” Jiayi said. She pulled her sleeves back down over her hands and grabbed the box, holding it to her chest. “This box never showed me anything before. And nothing else in here gave me a vision. Why did I see that? What was the significance?”
“Let me see,” Zhihao said, reaching for the box. Jiayi recoiled, holding the box tighter. “What’s going on? That’s not your box. A student donated it.”
“I…I know,” she said. “I put some things in the box. For safekeeping. I thought that since Hu Xiaosheng was gone and you might lose your position, I should take them back.”
“Oh, I see,” Zhihao said. “What is it?”
Jiayi shrugged and held the box tighter. “Just…things. But I can’t keep them at the Forbidden City either. Could you…if you promise not to open the box…Could you keep it safe for me?”
Zhihao smiled and held out his hand. “Of course.”
Jiayi hesitated. She didn’t want to let the box go. She had a feeling he would peek inside the moment he had an opportunity, but what choice did she have. She handed it to him quickly, before she could change her mind. Then they walked back toward the door.
“I still think there was more to that vision,” Jiayi said. “There had to be a reason for it.”
“Other than to embarrass me?” Zhihao asked.
“Rebecca…” Jiayi hedged. “She is working with Marcus.”
Zhihao nodded.
“And Marcus is working with your friend Lian,” Jiayi said. “Lian doesn’t just know that Marcus is a slave trader. He’s involved in it.”
“What?” Zhihao asked, grabbing her arm so she faced him. “What did you say? What makes you think that?”
“He admitted it,” Jiayi said, pulling her arm away. “When I met him the other day, I confronted him about the women I saw chained on the ship. He didn’t deny it. ‘Overthrowing an empire isn’t cheap,’ he said.”
“No,” Zhihao said. “I…I can’t believe it. Lian wouldn’t do such a thing. He wouldn’t sell his own people into slavery. His whole motivation is to free China from the Manchu. He wouldn’t…couldn’t…”
“You never would have thought that Rebecca would work with Marcus either if you hadn’t seen it with your own eyes,” Jiayi said, and Zhihao’s face darkened. She knew she was treading on dangerous ground, but she couldn’t stop. “Rebecca might be a much more dangerous woman that you want to admit. It is strange that as soon as she arrives in town, Hu Xiaosheng ends up dead.”
“Stop it,” Zhihao said. “Rebecca is not a killer. She’s here because she’s in love with me!”
“Hu Xiaosheng tried to warn you away from her,” Jiayi pressed on. “What if he spoke to her as well, and she lashed out at him?”
“Jiayi,” Zhihao warned. “You need to stop.”
Jiayi scoffed. “Maybe you can’t see it because you are still in love with her too.”
“I love you!” he said. “What do I have to do to prove it? Travel through time and change the past so that I never met her?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jiayi said.
“I’m being ridiculous?” Zhihao said. “I’m not the one trying to change the past to save the life of a man who died a thousand years ago!”
Jiayi’s mouth gaped and her face blanched. “What?” she asked.
“I know what you have been trying to do,” he said. “I know about Prince Junjie and Meirong and Shidu.”
“How?” Jiayi asked.
“I’m a historian,” he said. “I don’t need to travel through time to understand the past.”
She had a feeling he was insulting her. As though she was too stupid to understand history without supernatural means.
“So what if I am?” Jiayi asked. “That has nothing to do with you.”
“It has everything to do with me,” Zhihao said. “Warlord Shidu and Lady Meirong are my ancestors. They have to marry. If they don’t, I might never be born.”
Jiayi paused, trying to understand what he was saying. Maybe that was why Warlord Shidu looked like Zhihao in her vision, because they were related.
“But…that was a thousand years ago,” she stammered. “How…”
“Think about it,” Zhihao said. “If your mother never married your father, you would not have been born, right?” Jiayi nodded. “So, if your grandmother didn’t marry your grandfather, and your mother had not been born, then you wouldn’t either. Follow?”
“Yes,” Jiayi said. “So, you are saying that if your great-great-great ancestors a thousand years ago didn’t marry and have children, eventually, you wouldn’t be born either?”
“Exactly,” Zhihao said.
Jiayi took a step back, steadying herself against a table. She had never considered the effects of saving Junjie’s life down through time. She had only wanted to save his life, not kill someone else to do it. Or perhaps kill many people. Generations of Zhihao’s family. But if he was never born, did that mean she wouldn’t miss him?
But if she never met Zhihao, she never would have met Hu Xiaosheng either. She never would have learned the extent of her powers. She never would have believed she could save Junjie in the first place—
She placed her hand to her forehead. It was too much to try and sort out. So many what-ifs.
“Jiayi?” Zhihao asked, reaching for her hand, but she pulled away, her eyes filling with tears.
“I…I have to go,” she said. “I can’t…”
She ran from the library, down the stairs to the street and hired a rickshaw to take her back to the Forbidden City. Could she really walk away from Junjie? Let him die? No! She loved him, and he had been nothing but kind and gentle with her. She believed he loved her too—at least as much as he could for not knowing who she really was.
But what about Zhihao? He was alive now. He was her friend. The only friend who really knew the truth about her now that Hu Xiaosheng was gone. There were other people who knew of her powers—the ladies of the court, Der Ling, Prince Kong, the empress—but she did not consider them friends. Not really. She couldn’t really trust them or be honest with them the way she could with Zhihao.
But Junjie. She loved him. Had loved him for so long. When her life had only been an endless sea of darkness, he had saved her from drowning. She couldn’t abandon him now. Not when she was so close. When her powers were growing. When she felt she was on the cusp of being able to make a difference in his life. She couldn’t just let him die.
She wouldn’t.