The Last Dahlia

049

Blood splattered across her face and arms, staining her sword, but still she did not relent.

Kill them all, a voice inside her head kept repeating. Whispering. Coercing.

These were the invaders. Gi, Feng, Hwa—kingdoms who coveted her crown and her land, and who would kill her father to claim them.

Kill them all.

In front of her, a soldier dressed in the Hwa military armour put a spear through the chest of a Dahai man. Readying her sword, she charged towards the enemy, tip of her blade poised to pierce through his heart.

Clang!

Before she could hit her mark, her weapon was parried away but someone else. She turned and came face-to-face with another soldier from Hwa, who stood out from the crow with his clean-shaven head. She frowned. There was something familiar about this man, but again, her mind drew a blank.

She swung her sword again. The man dodged to his right, and her blade only managed to nick the armour at his left shoulder.

"Princess! Stop this! It's me, Ru Fei," he called out.

Ru Fei? Was she supposed to recognise that name?

They exchanged more blows.

"Your Highness, you have to wake up. She has you under her control. You are not from Dahai. You are the princess and regent of Hwa. You personally trained us—each and every Firebrand. You are our family!"

"Liar."

Lady Kang had warned her that they would try this. They would attempt to make use of her memory loss to fill her mind with lies, to turn her against her kingdom. She was Princess Naying of Dahai—every soldier and servant she had met in the Dahai camp addressed her as such.

Although Ru Fei was a man, Yuehwa was the more skilled of the two. It wasn't long before the commander of the Firebrands began to struggle to keep up with the speed of her moves. He held up his sword to block another swipe, but it forced him to stumble backwards. Yuehwa caught the opening, pointing her blade straight toward his chest.

It hit its target.

Ru Fei dropped his sword and fell to his knees, both hands clutching on to Yuehwa's blade to stop it from digging any further.

"Please, you have to remember," he pleaded.

"You should be thankful that I do not remember what you did to me." She moved one palm to the back of her hilt, thinking to push the blade through, but someone intervened, grabbing Ru Fei by his armour and shoving him away and back. The commander collapsed by the side, coughing out a mouthful of blood.

It was him—again. The man from last night.

The White Scorpion.

She hadn't managed to kill him before, but he would not escape today.

Without hesitation, Yuehwa flung out a long silk strip from within her sleeve. It wrapped itself around Shoya's right arm, and she yanked hard to pull him off balance. He lurched forward, but then he slashed through the silk with his sword and freed himself.

"Yuehwa, you're going to hurt yourself," he said.

"That's none of your business."

The White Scorpion was of much higher calibre than the previous man she had been fighting, but she was not about to bow down in defeat. She went after him with blow after killing blow, but he either blocked them or evaded them with deft twists and turns. Rage bubbled up inside her. Did he find her so insignificant that he wasn't even bothering to fight her properly?