"You…you want me to join you?" Mingzhe repeated. His whole body felt numb.
Hikari nodded like he hadn't just asked Mingzhe to betray everything he stood for. Everything he'd sacrificed for. Everything he'd lived his life for up to this point. This moment. "We are trying to save the Camelia. It needs a stronger leader. Someone who can make the hard decisions needed to restore its glory."
Mingzhe didn't want to ask, but he knew he had to. "What decisions?"
"The Camelia has fallen behind other estates. Our income has dropped."
"Chenzhou brought back hundreds of pounds of wealth from the previous war."
"A one-time surplus, while our regular treasury dwindles. Once, the Camelia could feed itself from its own fields. From its own waters. Now we spend more than half our income buying food from other estates. Even other lands."
"Chenzhou hardly controls how fertile the land is."
"No, but as lord of the estate, he should understand how to rotate crops and ensure that the soil is not overdrawn. And if he does not, he should know to listen to those who do. He has made no attempt to restore our fields. Neither did his father or grandfather. The Crimson Army used to be twice the size it is now. People traveled from all over Sorrow to serve in its ranks. In the last five decades, our numbers have dropped to half of what they were. Every year, we struggle to find capable recruits and must accept whoever comes. The quality of our soldiers has dropped drastically, and with it, our performance."
"We still win."
"Eventually. With every conflict, the number of lives lost grows by leaps and bounds. An Arnheim general once fought three successive wars and only lost ten thousand soldiers. Princess Soliel lost thirty thousand in a single battle."
"The entirety of the tribes were against her."
"The Camelia has withstood forces of that size before." Hikari looked sad, leaning back and almost seeming to shrink. "Other estates in Sorrow have flourished. They grow year after year while we shrink."
"And that means you betray everything we stand for?" Mingzhe didn't understand. How was Hikari so convinced that he could ignore all common sense? How could he overlook breaking the oath every member of his family had taken? Had sacrificed their lives for?
The first thing Mingzhe had learned to read was the oath of loyalty to the Camelia and the Crimson Army, and he knew Hikari was the same. Just like Chenzhou and every other child who had grown up inside the black stone walls.
"It is not betrayal to love something so much that you want to make it better. That is the very definition of love." They were dangerous words, not only because Hikari believed them, but because they sounded so beautiful while hiding such ugly intent. They were the kind of words that someone with a speck of confidence could turn into violence if they chose the right audience. "We're going to make the Camelia better, Mingzhe. Better than it has ever been before. A place people can be proud to serve."
And they couldn't do that now? Mingzhe wondered. But he supposed it made sense that Hikari and Lady Yang couldn't see or acknowledge that. Too lost in their own version of the world.
A chill ran through him. They were far more dangerous than he'd thought. Zealots were far more dangerous than someone who was simply ambitious.
There were some good zealots in hist- No, there weren't. It was a fleeting thought dismissed as soon as it appeared. No one called successful revolutionaries or leaders' zealots, because zealots were known for leading their people and their cause into ruin, because they couldn't see anything else. That was what made them zealots.
Hikari and his family were going to destroy the Camelia, Mingzhe realized. Even if half of what they believed about Chenzhou was true, the way they'd gone about things doomed them from the start. Someone would figure it out, word would spread, and Chenzhou still had some supporters. It would turn into a bloodbath, or the Camelia would empty to the point that it couldn't sustain itself when people realized their new lord was mad.
"When do you imagine this change is going to happen?" Mingzhe asked cautiously.
Hikari smiled. "Soon. It has been in the works a long time, Mingzhe."
For hundreds of years, Mingzhe thought. The dark cloud that had blanketed the estate for so long.
There wasn't long to stop them then. There was probably a lot of damage still to occur that was unstoppable, but if he could just find a way to make sure they didn't succeed in taking down Chenzhou, perhaps something would survive.
But how?
He felt like an idiot a second later when he remembered he'd already been considering how. The shock of the entire conversation was muddying his brain.
Hikari had unintentionally given Mingzhe a way to stop him by inviting him to join them.
It was a move so foolish that Mingzhe would never have believed Hikari capable of it before today.
And there was the slightest chance that it was a trap. Another scheme by Lady Yang, but something in his gut told Mingzhe that wasn't the case. Hikari's affection was honest; he'd always been terrible at hiding his feelings about people, although apparently that didn't translate to being terrible about hiding other things.
"I'm not sure…" Mingzhe hedged. He needed to be careful not to come across as too eager all of a sudden. "This- what you're asking me to do…"
"I know." Hikari's eyes were sympathetic. "You don't have to decide immediately. Just think about it. You'll see we're right and we'll be waiting for you."
"But everything that's happened-"
"We can undo that," Hikari promised, and Mingzhe knew it was a lie. Hikari might believe it. He prob- definitely did, but Mingzhe knew better. "It was an accident, and we can fix it." He reached out and took Mingzhe's hand, squeezing tightly. "You're too valuable to the Camelia to lose."
Mingzhe imagined Hikari thought those words were the height of reassurance. A lying lover promising forever to a fool.
But Mingzhe was no fool. Not anymore.
He was going to destroy them while standing right by their side.
They'd never see it coming.
~ tbc