You Must Fall In Love

Chapter Sixty

Christine would have sobbed, but she couldn't cry. She didn't feel like she was working right. It was all nothing, just like Rob's life, just like what he had shown her of himself.

"I didn't even get to know him," she said. Then she sniffed, loudly, incredulously, surprised at the false air she was breathing. It still smelt of rot and suspended sap, but blood suffused the whole of it, the blood pouring from Rob's chest, matting the furred mark of his curse.

Ming placed a hand over Christine's own. Her eyes were not soft — they were far too old for that — but they were slightly sad, in the same way that a baby fawn's were, without the possibility of deep feeling. It was like she was trying to recall what grief felt like, though she had known it once, a long time ago.

"His fate was linked with yours," she said. "Men will die for you. It is your destiny as the Hart Princess."

"But I wanted to," said Christine. "I wanted to get to... I thought he liked me."

"He was your suitor," said Ming. "He loved you well enough, in the end, to offer his life. He did not shrink from the moment, even though he did not know it was his time."

"I... no. He wanted revenge. He had so much left to do, I... I don't accept it! That's not how it's meant to... Fix it. Ming, fix it now!"

She was babbling now, spewing words in a fast jabbering stream, like the fetid mud that burbled around her knees. Despair picked at her heart, pecked, like a seagull at a rotten mandarin.

"When I was alive," said Ming, "there were many things that I wanted to accomplish. I thought that I was meant to marry a great lord, even an Emperor. Perhaps I would become Queen Consort and bear a prince who would rule all under heaven. It was clearly meant to be."

"I don't care about your backstory, Ming, just help me!"

"When Prince Doe, my lord husband, offered to make me a goddess, I spurned him as a mere creature. It was the greatest mistake of my mortal existence. If I had simply listened to him, he would have given me eternal youth. I would not be this crone you see before you, but a nymph with beautiful skin and unclouded eyes..."

"Ming!"

Christine hit Rob in the chest, but he didn't even move. She slumped down and began to wail.

Ming reached out to touch her hair, but stopped. The same reserved sympathy lingered on her brow, like she had her hands on the slats of a closed window, uncertain of what time it was, or whether to open it.

"Christine Lam Siew-Fong, you must embrace your fate if you do not wish to end up like me. I am offering you this as a warning."

Christine wanted to tell her to shut up, but she couldn't say anything, because her breath was coming in sharp gasps and she could barely inhale. Her chest heaved out and in. Tears rolled from her clenched eyelids like she was nothing but a rag, a rag with a skeleton and a thin covering of skin.

"I... I d-don't need your warnings... I... I want..."

"Do you want to save him?"

The question was so direct she couldn't doubt it, not even for a second. Christine had heard right — there was some chance, somehow.

She shut her eyes and breathed, even though it sounded more like she was drowning.

"Yes," she said. "I do."

"If you want to save Robert Slade, you have to accept your destiny. Swear that you will become my replacement."

"And be married?"

"It is as I said. It was my mistake not to."

Christine's eyes were glued shut, but not of their own will. She just didn't want to open them. This was everything she hadn't wanted. Marriage had loomed over half her life like a chimera, a shambling, roaring mess of everything she feared, her insecurities and anxieties and her mother's will.

But there was something else in the uncertainty, something small and bright and almost sweet, like a pearly bead of purest air.

"I..."

It was terribly, horribly simple in the end. There was Rob dying, and there was Rob not dying. It was such an easy choice to make that she felt almost cheated, but there it was.

There wasn't any room for doubt. She'd spent too long doubting. If she had learned her magic well enough, if she was as strong as Lawrence, perhaps this wouldn't have happened. Jen and Yusuke, and even August... none of them would have been hurt.

"I'll do it," she said. "I'll marry. I'll become the Hart Princess. I swear it on my ancestors."

Ming stood, not smiling, but not frowning either. Christine sniffed and followed suit, her hands sinking deep into the mud as they squelched and pushed her up. The old woman raised her withered fingers in benediction.

"Then receive, Princess, a foretaste of your power."

The world shot inside her, like a cloth furling into a magician's sleeve. She saw everything.