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The Great Puzzle, Chapter 15

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Mulan, General and Ghost Bride
Previous Parts Here

Mulan start to pace and mutter to herself. She’ll have to just send Shilong to him with her letter. It’s not as if such a thing could be trusted to arrive any other way, and think of what would happen if what she wrote down were to get out? No. But what on earth can she say to convince her father? She believes this because she trusts Liu Guo, but anyone sensible would turn Shilong over to the emperor and her father is sensible. In his way. In this way, at least. He will believe it because she believes her, but anyone can write a letter. Will recognizing her handwriting be enough? Perhaps if she sends him with her horse – or that will just convince her family that Shilong has killed her and stolen her house.

“Mulan,” Liu Guo starts.

She shushes him, waving a dismissive hand in his direction. Part of her is irritated by his use of her actual name, but in truth it doesn’t really matter.

There is an obvious solution here.

If she goes home and pleads the case to her father, he will of course believe her and help her and Shilong and, be extension, their emperor. Of course he will.

But part of protecting her family by using her brother’s name and going off to die in war was never having to face the consequences of that deception. She knows it’s nothing her father or grandmother or brother would ever ask of her. She knows she abandoned the family she married into by leaving and has also tarnished her family’s reputation.

If she goes home, her father will not let her leave it again. He will not see the wisdom and sending a daughter off to die to protect the only son her family has. Her father is sensible, but not in that way.

She’s Liu Guo’s lieutenant. She cannot leave these men to die without her. She –

Wait.

“You are not cannon fodder,” she says, stopping abruptly to face Liu Guo. “I thought it a waste of you and your father, but I assumed it was simply desperate times. But it’s not. Of course it’s not.”

“Mulan,” Jinhai says quietly.

She ignores him. Liu Guo’s face is drawn tight, but he doesn’t stop her and he doesn’t deny it.

He is at least part of what is tying Shilong to them, what’s motivating him to betray his father. They’re willing to risk everything to meet in secret like this. Shilong would not allow the man he loves to be killed in the war he’s trying to end.

Of course. Of course. Liu Guo and the general are too valuable to lose.

“You weren’t going to go to the battlefield with us,” she says with numb lips. “You’re going to leave. You and the General and Yichen. That’s why you promoted me and Changrui. When the battle comes, we’ll lead them onto it. We’ll die with them. But you won’t.”

It’s not that she wants Liu Guo to die, or the general, or Yichen.

It’s that she thought they were in this together.