Prologue
The prince opened his eyes to absolute darkness. Not a single ray of sunshine streamed in through the closed curtains. All the candles had burned out during the night. There was no light save the dimness that peeked beneath his door from the wall torches that hung in the hallway outside. The thin bodies that lay on either side of him were warm, but the heat didn't reach him. It never reached him. He felt cold - as he always did, every morning, no matter who he awoke next to. For minutes that seemed to stretch into hours, he laid still and unmoving, staring into the nothingness that surrounded him. His heartbeat was a hollow pulse in his ears, his short breaths caused his chest to burn, and he felt empty. He felt nothing. But when did he not?
Zuko sat up. As he rolled his shoulders, his fingers fluttered over the base of his neck. Zuko was still unaccustomed to the bare nakedness he felt there, and wished again that the chain and pendant of his father's hung there now like it had all his childhood. But it was gone, and so was the thief who took it. A flash of regret and shame heated his chest and spread to his face, the first wave of warmth he had felt since... since he had first laid eyes on her.
He flexed his arms and cracked his knuckles, causing the two girls to stir awake. The one on his left, small and childlike - but extremely flexible - draped her little arms across him, fingers gripping tightly onto his shoulder. Her lips nibbled playfully at his ear. On Zuko's right was a taller girl with long hair as black as the darkness of the room, framing her oval face, a stark contrast to her wan skin, paler than his own. She stifled a yawn as she swept the bed sheet away from Zuko's lap, bending forward, her warm fingers lingering on his cold skin. She licked her lips suggestively as her eyes grazed across his bare chest and flat stomach, down the thin line of hair between his navel and waist. She looked at him from beneath curled lashes, her gaze filled with lust and longing.
An irrational fury boiled his blood, blossomed in the pit of his stomach. "Enough," Zuko barked, and roughly shoved each girl away, nearly tossing the little one off the bed. They withdrew from him, almost reluctantly. With a growl, Zuko balled the sheets in his fists and threw them at each girl. He waited and watched them impatiently as they slowly wrapped the blankets around their bodies. He didn't know their names, Zuko realized. Then he carelessly laughed aloud, earning odd glances from the young women as they silently slipped out the door. Peasants. He shook his head. As if they actually mattered.
As the bedroom door closed, Zuko rang for Wu. The aging woman arrived a couple minutes later, chicken feathers stuck in her gray hair and worn apron. "You're up early." Wu didn't spare him a glance, going straight to work. She'd grown used to the young prince negligently ass-naked every morning, especially after a busy night with one (or more) of her employees. "Mai and Ty Lee didn't tire you out, did they?" she asked sarcastically, drawing hot water into the metallic-gold bathtub. She pulled a bamboo room divider in front of it, leaving just enough space for Zuko to squeeze past, and hung a new, clean towel on it. There was a hint of disrespect to her tone.
He simply raised an eyebrow, but otherwise ignored the implication hidden within Wu's remark. Zuko slipped behind the divider and into the bathtub. The steam that rose from the hot water stung his eyes. "Ah, so that's what their names are," he said casually. Zuko closed his eyes and let his head rest on the edge of the tub. "I'm afraid I might have called out for the wrong wench at climax, then." Ka- He quickly ended his thought, forcing the memory of her brown hair and even browner eyes away.
Wu snorted. Very faintly through the divider, Zuko could see her silhouette stripping the bed and replacing the sheets. "You have no respect for any of these women," she said harshly, her voice cold. "And because of you, they are beginning to lose respect for themselves."
"What respect?" Zuko scoffed, his voice rising in incredulity. "They're filthy servants. They have no dignity. Your little girls don't even know what those words mean, Wu."
"And neither do you, my lord," Wu shot back immediately, sneering. Beneath her breath she muttered, so low that Zuko almost missed it, "What happened to the beautiful little boy Lady Ursa raised?"
"I'm not a boy," he said in protest, flicking at the water. As he watched the droplets fall back into the tub in small ripples, Zuko smirked, imagining the bitterness in the old woman's face. "Just ask Ty Lee, or Mai, or any of the rest of the little girls you hire. I'm surprised you haven't begun hiring dying old men by now. Keeping me busy, are you? Quite thoughtful, Wu. I ought to thank you- but I won't."
Zuko heard the door open. Wu's shadow held a large bundle in her arms, and he had a fleeting thought that maybe he should go help her. Then he chuckled to himself, laughing the thought away. I'm a prince. I don't need to help Wu. She's been cleaning after my family for thirty years. The woman's perfectly capable. He strained his ears for her snide response.
Wu's voice was soft; it sounded feebly like it had when her heart was breaking as she retold the death of his mother to the other servants. He heard the weariness in her words, and perhaps a slight loathing. "You're going to die alone, Zuko Rokan. May the Spirits watch over your broken soul."
Despite the intense heat of the water, Zuko felt his heart stop cold. His chest ached like he had forgotten how to breathe - and maybe for a moment he had. The words from the night before had haunted him, and hearing them again - and from Wu, of all people - they rang in his ears like a slap across the face. The silence around him as Wu left was deafening. He blinked rapidly, and every time his eyes closed, he saw the night sky crackling, angry storm clouds racing, raging bolts of lightning. He saw the woman with her silver hair that reached the ground, and the pure, pearly white orbs where her eyes should have been. He remembered getting caught in her gaze, remembered feeling like he was being torn apart to shreds. From his memories, Zuko saw the woman steadily raise a slim finger, her nail long and pointed. Her voice, echoed by the ghosts of time, caused a cacophony of noise in his mind.
...face the wrath of your own empty soul and die; alone, unwanted, and unloved.
Desperate for a distraction, he called out, "Wu, what ever happened to that one girl of yours? The one whose virtue was over me?" Zuko laughed coldly, but couldn't ignore the irritating pang in his chest. "Sent her away, didn't you?"She didn't answer. Wu closed the door behind her with a soft click.
The sun was at the base of the sky, so low Zuko thought the Spirits were personally trying to burn him with its heat. He walked out into the courtyard and knelt beneath the great oak tree that had been standing in the center of the Rokan manor since his great-great-grandfather, Roku, had built the mansion with his bare hands, a gift to his new wife. Below the tree there was dug a shallow pond in which little turtle-ducks swam; the babies squawked and splashed one another while their mother pecked at the willow grass. Zuko held a roll of bread in his hand, twirling it between his fingers. He gazed at it intently, remembering the old days of his childhood when his mother was still alive. Whenever the sun was shining and there wasn't a single gray cloud in the sky, Ursa would sit with him there, beneath the tree and beside the pond. She used to tell him silly stories about her life growing up in school with his father, and every now and then, when Ozai was away on business, she would tell him the housewives' legends that his father often scoffed at. Sometimes Wu would accompany them, carrying with her a wicker basket of bread loaves for Ursa and Zuko to share and day-old rolls for the turtle-ducks.
His favorite legend was a story about the love of a man and a woman doomed to never be together. "They lived apart, in villages that had been at war with one another for hundreds of years," Ursa had said. Zuko closed his eyes and leaned against the tree, imagining that her arms were still around him. She had had such a lovely voice. "They couldn't be with each other because their families forbid it, too blinded by an ancient hatred that they couldn't understand their love. But every night, once the beautiful Yue hung the moon mightily in the night sky, they snuck away to the mountain that separated their villages. There was a secret room at the base of the mountain where they'd meet, and only they knew how to travel through the tunnels to reach it."
The hint of smile raised the corner of Zuko's lips as he recalled what he had said to his mother. He asked the same question each time she told the story, even though he knew the answer; it was always the same. "But how can there be a secret room in the middle of a mountain?"
Ursa always squeezed him in a tight hug, burying her face in his hair, loose from its top knot whenever Father was gone. "Magic." The world rolled off her tongue in a whisper, as if it were the greatest secret in the world. The key to happiness that only a few select people possessed. He wondered now if she had ever intended to give it to him.
The last time Ursa had told him the story, Zuko had been a somewhat older, about eleven-years-old. He had liked to think that he understood the order of things more clearly, and he had taken after Ozai's scientific reasoning that there was tangible proof behind everything. "There's no such thing as magic," he had said, trying to sound tough - but at the back of his mind, he desperately wanted to believe in it. "Father said so."
"Oh, but there is," his mother had assured him, poking his nose. Zuko could still remember every detail of this memory; his last good memory of Lady Ursa. She had torn off a small piece of bread and tossed it to the turtle-ducklings, who attacked it hungrily. "It's a special little thing called love." Then she had kissed his forehead before assuming a mockingly authoritative tone. She puffed out her cheeks as she mimicked Ozai. "There's no such thing as magic. Science, science, science. Science this, science that. If you can't prove it, it's not real." Zuko had laughed then, but he only felt bitter now. "Your father's an old fart. He doesn't know anything. You want proof that magic is real? My love for your father brought me you. That, my son, is magic."
He had wanted to act older, Zuko remembered, so he had challenged Ursa. "If love is so magical, then why couldn't they be together without having to sneak into the mountain every night?"
And then his mother's face grew somber. She had never told him this part of the story before. "You see, Zuko," she'd said, "When I said that their villages were always fighting one another, I meant always. They had conflicts over the smallest things, which often broke out into full-scale wars. One day, there was a very gruesome battle, much like the ones your Uncle Iroh used to participate in."
"A battle like the one Lu Ten died in?"
A distant look had passed over Ursa's face as she nodded. "Yes. The night after the battle, she went to the mountain. She waited there all night. She went every day for a week, but he never came. He had died in the war."
"Love sounds like a curse," Zuko had said bitterly, looking at his mother in accusation for placing such lies into his head.
"To the contrary-" Ursa had taken up that funny tone again "-my little prince, their love was so strong that both villages were able to feel its magic and see how foolish their hatred for one another was. They built a new city together behind the mountain and named it Omashu, in honor of their love." She had smiled, so brightly she shone like the sun. "Don't you see, Zuko? Love is magical."
Zuko opened his eyes. "Love," he muttered harshly, "is a curse." His hand was closed into a tight fist, the nails digging into his palm. Slowly he unraveled his fingers, bread crumbs falling through the spaces between.
He rapped twice on the door of one of Rokan manor's many spare rooms. It was large, similar to his own bedroom, but not as elegant. The furniture was crafted from wood with engraved characters of peace and prosperity; the walls were bare. A young man and the tall girl he had slept with the night before - What was her name? He racked his brain, trying to remember. Kana? Mara? - were cleaning the room. The man scrubbed at the windows while she stripped the bed. At the sound of Zuko's knock, the pair immediately stopped what they were doing. They stood straight as a board, clasped their hands together, and bowed their heads. The girl peeked at him from beneath her lashes in the same way she had that morning, but the boy hid behind his hair.
"Come to my room after lunch," Zuko said, his voice gruff. He looked directly into the girl's eyes, and raised an eyebrow. "A distraction would be nice."
The girl inhaled sharply once she realized what he was implying, and she swayed, stunned. A satisfied smirk was plastered onto Zuko's face as he walked away with slow strides, feeling the angry, burning glare of the young man on his back. His arms swung casually at his side.
His eyes were wide in terror, his hands shaking. Zuko's fingers brushed over the girl's quivering body. Her eyes rolled back in her head, showing only the grisly whites. Her mouth hung open slightly, dribbles of drool at the corner of her lips. Her hands clenched and unclenched irregularly-
Only a few moments before, he was tearing her dress off her shoulders, fumbling at the knot that bound the wrap around her chest, his lips trailing fervently along her collarbone. He had held her in a death grip, squeezing her hips and pulling her closer, while she had been straddling him, running her hands up and down his body. His chest burned where she kissed him - yet he still felt cold. She had whispered his name like a sacred chant, her voice rising and falling as if in ecstasy, as if she drew closer to climax just from screaming out his name, even though Zuko still couldn't recall hers- and suddenly she'd stopped, frozen like a statue. Then she had fallen down atop him, quaking like a bolt of electricity was shooting through her. Startled, Zuko had pushed her off of him as he struggled to sit upright, staring at the girl in horror...
Just as suddenly, she stilled, and her body went limp. Zuko gulped, trying to swallow down his anxiety. A dark memory too similar to the situation he was dealing with at hand haunted the back of his mind; he tried to push it away, but the horror of it stayed there, at the edges of his consciousness, just waiting for the right time to strike at him. Zuko held her wrist in his palm gently and looked for the slightest hint of a heartbeat; he found none. He placed his fingers at the base of the girl's neck, looking for a pulse. Once again, there was nothing. Zuko turned the girl's head toward him before quickly letting go, repulsed by the dead stare of her eyes. Gingerly, he leaned over her body and tilted his head, his ear hovering above her lips. He expected to feel her breath as she exhaled. But she didn't breathe, and he didn't feel a single brush of air. He pulled back and tried to provoke her to move, to end this silly game. But she didn't, even as he prodded her arms, pinched her nose, tugged at her hair.
Stiffly, he stood and wrapped himself in a tunic. Then he rung for Wu.
A few moments later, the old woman appeared, annoyed to be summoned in the middle of the day. She opened her mouth - most likely to yell at Zuko about how all of his demands kept her busy, so she didn't have time to personally pour his tea just because he was paranoid one of his servants felt "bitter" about the night before - when he stepped aside and the dead girl, naked and motionless on the bed, came into Wu's vision. Wu stopped moving altogether, making Zuko worry that she was about to faint, and possibly die, too, from the grief or shock. Tears sprung at the corners of Wu's eyes; her lips mouthed words, but her voice failed for a long time before Zuko heard her murmurs of denial.
He glanced over his shoulder at the girl he was about to sleep with, now dead. Zuko blinked, and in that flash of a moment, the memory he had locked away came into full view: Lady Ursa on the carpet of the library in a position eerily alike to Mai's, her eyes open and unseeing.
Zuko's tone was flat and emotionless. "She's dead."
"You killed her!" one of the girls screamed at him in a high shrill, piercing his ears. She raked Zuko across the face with her nails, and he vaguely remembered her as the second girl from the night before. In bed, she had gazed at him with awe, crooned his name as if it were a drug that she couldn't get enough of. Now, after learning of her friend's death, she glared at him with such a fierce loathing that he could feel her hatred like ice on his neck. She spat his name as if it burned her tongue, scorched her throat. "Mai did everything you wanted - everything! She worshiped you like a god. She was fucking in love with you! And you killed her, you son of a bitch! You killed her!"
She lunged at him again, and three or four other girls joined in, clawing at his skin. Zuko fought back, forgetting that he was striking women - no matter how lowly he thought of them, they were still women, and a real man never hit them - and punched the nose of the closest of his attackers. The young girl's short blonde hair floated around her face as she spun from the force of Zuko's jab. She lost her balance and tripped over her own feet, knocking into another girl that was beginning to join the fight. As the other girl fell, her head crashed into a nearby glass table. It shattered, spraying the crowd around him with sharp pieces of shrapnel, while one deadly shard struck home into the girl's skull. When she landed on the ground, the shard disappeared behind her ear, buried into the skin and between the bones.
Zuko averted his gaze, bile rising in his throat. Half of the girls that surrounded him screeched and dropped to their knees, trying to shake the girl awake. He couldn't catch her name in between their screams, but he clearly heard the curses directed toward him, blaming him for another girl's death. The other half continued to slap, kick, scratch Zuko. His arms and face and neck were bleeding, his tunic shredded to pieces. In a desperate attempt to make them stop, he pulled a knife from a hidden fold in his pants. Brandishing it, Zuko only intended to prick their skin and scare them off, but when he stopped waving his arm, he found three girls laying at his feet in a pool of blood. His clothes were stained red.
He turned quickly and sprinted away from the chaos, the shrieks, the death. Zuko made for his office, terror gripping him and making his thoughts fuzzy, his vision unfocused. He ran down hallway after hallway. Everywhere he turned, a stream of profanity filed from the lips of his employees. Bastard. Murderer.
Why did the servant hall have to be so far away from the royal quarters? Zuko thought angrily, and dodged a thrown tomato followed closely by a butcher knife as he passed the kitchen. He looked over his shoulder and saw Kuzon, the chef and his "favorite" person second to Wu, step out of the archway that lead to the kitchen. His hands were balled into fists and his eyes were narrowed. Kuzon's lips moved slowly as if casting a curse, and Zuko thought of the slow way the woman's tongue lolled as she had cast her own imprecation.
Zuko shuddered. Don't think. Just run. He turned the corner- and barreled straight into Mai's closest friend. Her small fist swung and connected. Pain exploded on his face and he vaguely realized that she had just broken his nose. He wiped the back of his hand across his face and when he pulled it away, it was covered in his own blood. Zuko looked up, completely taken aback by the girl's strength, and narrowly avoided another blow. But he didn't see her knee come up. She caught him right below the waist and between the legs, right where it counted, and Zuko doubled over.
The girl squatted and brought her fist up beneath his chin. Zuko bit on his tongue and a metallic warmth filled his mouth. He toppled over backwards, and then she was straddling him, legs on either side of him. He blinked; the last time they had been in this position, the situation was very different. When did these girls learn to fight?
She leaned over him. The girl's hair was pulled back into a messy bun; stray locks that had come loose from the struggle hung around her, tickling his face. Her eyes were wide and she was panting. The girl looked downright psychotic. "You killed her, you son of a bitch," she repeated, her voice dropping to a whisper. Her hands came around his throat and she began to squeeze. He coughed and choked; black spots dotted his vision. "So now I'm going to kill you."
He wasn't thinking, focused only on survival. Adrenaline pumped his blood, made his head ache. As the girl squeezed, Zuko reached into the hidden pocket again and withdrew the knife before air stopped flowing to his lungs. It was rusty with dried blood. He sat up suddenly, throwing the girl off him. She fell onto her back, and then he was over her, and his knife was buried in the center of her chest.
She died instantly. Her eyes were open and staring at him with that same empty gaze he had seen in Mai's.
Zuko jumped up, tossing the dagger away. He was breathing heavily, trying to replenish the lack of oxygen. He felt dizzy as he continued to his office. Once safely inside, he locked the large double doors. Zuko swiped his arm across the shelves of the nearest shelf, knocking the scrolls onto the floor. Zuko pushed the case, trying to barricade himself away from his crazed house staff. It toppled, landing just below the doors' handles. Backing up, Zuko cautiously lowered himself into the chair behind his desk in the center of the office, his eyes darting right and left. He almost expected the young women that "worked" for him to come barging in by breaking down the door or smashing through the windows. He imagined the men bearing pitchforks and torches. He knew that they would all be chanting death to his name - all for a death he didn't cause.
A curse shall fall upon you and your house...
The prince swore beneath his breath, shaking his head. There's no such thing as magic, he reminded himself, not for the first time, and forced himself to laugh. He coughed dryly instead. That woman was delusional. She must have had too much cactus juice.
Suddenly, the floor beneath him shook violently. Smoke began streaming into his office through the cracks under the doors, and his eyes started to water. Zuko hastily reached for a rag and held it over his nose, trying to breathe slowly and steadily. Instead he coughed thickly and his vision began to blur. The air around him became unbearably hot, as if the sun had collided with the planet, and an orange-yellow light seemed to emanate from the doors. Zuko strode forward and pulled the scroll case aside. He tried to open the doors, but his palm burned once he touched the metal knob. Zuko jerked back reflexively, staring at his hand, then the door in bewilderment. Sweat trickled down from his hairline and on the inside of his arm from fear and the heat of the fire.
With a start, Zuko realized how noisy it was. On the other side of the door, he heard the roaring of the fire - and screams, of horror, of fright, of pain. The double doors suddenly caught, erupting into red and orange. The flames spread out across the walls like the fingers of Death. Family paintings and old portraits of his ancestors charred at the edges before finally turning to ash. Zuko stepped back, looking for a way out. He held his breath and dropped the rag, reaching for the chair. He threw it at a window, shattering the glass. As the pieces fell to the floor, he thought of the servant girl that had died when her head hit the glass table. He shivered from the brutality of the memory, then crawled through the window. The fire licked at his heels, turning his exposed skin pink.
Once outside, Zuko scrambled forward ten feet, twenty, thirty, forty- he didn't stop until his back no longer burned as if he stood on the surface of the sun. When he finally turned, the Rokan manor was completely engulfed in the red and yellow waves of fire. Even from as far away as he was, he could dimly heard the wood crackling, the screams. His chest tightened as he imagined his mother's room alight, as he imagined everything she had owned disintegrate into little more than ash. Everything must have been gone by now: her dresses, gifts from Ozai that she had progressively come to loathe; her scrolls, treasures of knowledge; her odd collection of fans, keepsakes from every city she's ever visited; the drawings he made for her when he was a child; the paintings she created late at night. He expected the manor to fall to pieces - and when it did, he fell to his knees, his hands holding fistfuls of his hair.
Zuko searched the hazy horizon and the untouched landscape. He searched for Wu, for the women that attacked him, for anyone that survived the fire. But there was no one around for miles, just like any other day. Everyone had been trapped inside the manor. Everyone.
He tried to weep. He tried to mourn. But he felt nothing except for absolute and pure astonishment as his home crumpled to the ground.
...Death shall stalk your shadow...