Chapter Text
The Bridal Chambers, Fire Nation Palace
The mirror before her stood as an opulent monstrous thing of lacquered wood, catching the morning light and throwing it back in distorted amber ribbons across the chamber walls. She counted the seconds between her blinks in the mirror. She did not know why she was doing that. The reflection was far too clear, and much to her dismay, bore no lies.
Taziri Shiguren watched herself with the detached curiosity of someone observing paint dry.
Hands moved around her in choreographed silence. Maids, Fire Nation girls, with pinched mouths and quick fingers who had been trained not to meet the eyes of brides. One secured the inner layers, a thin chemise of pale silk. It was delicate against her skin, pleasant even. Another knelt at her feet, adjusting the hem of the under robe so heavily embroidered in gold thread that it could have stood upright on its own. The needlework was so fine that they looked like the silk itself was burning. Each layer heaped on top of her was more ornate and more suffocating than the last. The ceremonial wear, borne of so many labouring hands, carried a weight she could only allude to as ownership. Taziri could not complain, though. So many other girls had it worse; she should be grateful. Why wasn't she grateful?
Someone lifted her arm; she let them. Her shoulders squared when the head seamstress, a woman whose face was permanently tense with disapproval, circled her with a scrutinizing eye and tugged at the sash beneath her bust. The penultimate robe went on next, deep coral silk, patterned with gold floral, darker at the hems. Its collar rose high against her throat, smothering her even more. Taziri thought of the Earth Kingdom bridal robes she had seen when she visited boutiques back home. They were fluid, designed to move with the body rather than armour it against the world. Here, in the Fire Nation, it seemed a bride was wrapped like a blade being sheathed.
Think, she told herself. You are always three steps ahead. Where are the steps?
A maid approached with a pot of coconut oil that she then warmed between her palms. Taziri felt the first touch against her scalp, of her curls being coaxed into submission. The girl worked silently, sectioning, smoothing, drawing the oil through each ringlet until it gleamed under the morning sun, then pulling it taut until each ringlet disappeared and became straight. Another maid joined her, and together the braiding began.
She watched it happen in sections, the maids dividing her hair with a precision that felt military, separating lengths that Taziri had never seen laid flat before, coaxing her hair into long, smooth ropes that they then began to work with fingers that moved so quickly she lost track of the pattern. She had seen intricate hairstyling before, had worn it herself for court functions in the Earth Kingdom where her mother had overseen the process. This was different , however. It was older, more structured, the kind of style that built itself like architecture--foundation first, then height, with gravity working in opposition to itself, the braids looped and folded and pinned.
You look like a woman getting married, said the part of her that was still running commentary. Congratulations.
The strands were pulled back from her temples and parted perfectly, with locks woven atop her skull in a pattern that radiated outward from a centre point at her crown. It was beautiful. Immaculate, even. If it were anyone else looking in the mirror, it would be a portrait of a woman who was being pampered, of someone who had wholeheartedly agreed to this.
She had not agreed to this.
Her hand drifted upward without a second thought, fingers grazing the place just below her collarbone where the scar resided. She could not feel it for the silk that had buried it, and, fleetingly, she felt a wild, irrational grief for it. It had been with her for fifteen years and had grown with her. It ached when she felt grief and tightened when her temper rose. Its edges long since softened by years of skin that had kept growing around what fire had tried to unmake. It reminded her, every morning, exactly what the Fire Nation had done to a seven year-old girl who had only wanted to save her friend.
And now it was hidden under wedding robes embroidered with the very emblem that had caused it. The irony was not lost on her; it would have elicited laughter had it not felt like swallowing glass shards. Some things you stopped fighting. Some things you learned to carry like a second rib, ever present, mostly ignorable and occasionally the only thing you could feel.
A maid's hands moved, smoothening and the silk that sat atop her scar. it took her mind off it.
Good, she thought, and did not examine what she meant by it.
"Is the hair too tight, my lady?" one of the maids asked, not quite meeting her eyes.
"No," she replied. Her voice came out steady with a pleasant inflection. Diplomatic. "It is perfect. Please, continue."
The maids nodded and returned to the braiding. Taziri;s gaze returned to the mirror.
Her face was a wall. She had learned to put it up years ago under her father, where emotions were currency and anger a debt. Smooth brow. Relaxed jaw. Eyes that revealed nothing except patient, pleasant attention. In many ways, she had to admit, it had worked in her favour. A wall was meant for protection anyway. But beyond it, her mind was running and had been running for two days straight, beating the same dead horse.
You are a strategist. Pull yourself together. Reshape this court from the inside. Be a threat if need be. This does not constitute defeat, rather is simply an accelerated timeline. This is...
This was her father's doing.
The reminder felt like being drenched in cold water, and for a moment, her reflection flickered as a wince tugged at the corner of her mouth, before she caught herself and smoothed it away. The maids did not notice. They were too busy with the headpiece.
Brought forth on a cushion of red velvet, carried by two attendants as though it weighed as much as a millstone. Well, because it did. Solid gold, shaped into an elaborate peony and the Fire Nation flame emblem. Each filigree stamen was bent precisely, each petal etched with veins so fine they looked nearly real. It would sit atop her crown, dangling delicate chains of pink sapphires, pearls, and rubies. Truly, a testament to excellent craftsmanship. A pair of red chrysanthemums at her ears would be set with care. The whole ensemble ensured people would tremble when she walked, catching the light, announcing her presence before she even entered the hall. But she would still be wearing the Fire Nation's symbol on her head like a brand.
"This is very heavy," she observed, because it was the only innocuous thing to say.
"It is the traditional headpiece of a Fire Lady," the head seamstress replied, with the tone of someone explaining water to a fish. "It has been worn by every royal bride since the time of Fire Lord Sozin, my lady."
Sozin, who had started the war. Sozin, whose legacy was written in the scar on her torso and the colonies that had raised her and taken away the friend whose face she could no longer quite remember. Sozin, whose descendant she was about to marry. The headpiece would sit on her head, and every courtier would see it and think of tradition, while she seethed inside.
She did not say any of this. She simply inclined her head, a gesture of acceptance that cost her nothing and revealed less, and allowed the attendants to lift the headpiece into place. A solid gold dragon pin followed, securing it through the elaborate hair; a forehead ornament of gold and rubies came last.
Yuna arrived between the third and fourth adjustment of the headpiece, which was when Taziri had needed her most and also the exact moment she had been pretending not to need anyone,
Yuna had always been good at that, moving through spaces like a ghost who had learned to haunt the living out of love. She was holding a small lacquer box in her hands, her expression perfectly neutral in the way that only someone who had known Taziri since childhood could manage. The other maids parted for her without being asked. Yuna had that effect on people, despite being only twenty-one and technically a lady-in-waiting rather than a servant. Or perhaps because of it. Yuna had the bright, knowing gaze, but buried beneath was the history of someone who had once held Taziri while she sobbed through nightmares.
"My lady," Yuna said, her voice pitched low enough so only Taziri could hear. "The pigments are ready."
Taziri met her eyes in the mirror. Her lady-in-waiting's gaze was steady; her usual upbeat demeanour, however, had dimmed. She saw the question buried there, the one Yuna had been asking her for two days straight: you still there?
Taziri gave the barest of nods, and Yuna set the box on the dressing table and opened it with the familiar click, and the smell that rose from it was so exactly home that Taziri's throat closed for a moment. Ground pigments and powdered clay and the faint ghost of pressed jasmine petals that had gotten into the lining of the box during a trip through the royal Earth Kingdom gardens years ago and never really left. She had smelled this box in Ba Sing Se, in the colonial outpost at the edge of the southern mountains, in a trading vessel that smelled of salt and overripe fruit, in three different embassies, and now in a Fire Nation bridal chamber on the morning of her own wedding, and it was the same smell each time. This was, she realized distantly, the most comforting thing that had happened to her in two days.
The first pigment was a deep hazelnut-wheat brown, a mixture of rice powder and clay that Yuna began to dab beneath Taziri's eyes with the pad of her ring finger. The touch was featherlight, precise, the same hands that had braided her hair and made her tea exactly how she liked it. Now, those hands were covering evidence. Taziri had not slept in two days. The hours of shut-eye were replaced with the only instance in which she allowed herself to grieve. How could anyone not, after learning that one’s marriage contract did not bear one's signature? The evidence of this was the redness that had bloomed beneath her lower lashes; it had to be covered up.
"The rice powder will hold for several hours," Yuna murmured, "but if you cry, it will streak."
"I am not going to cry," Taziri said.
"I know." Yuna's tone was perfectly neutral. You never do with eyes around, she did not say.
A product of crushed beets,overripe cherries and binding agents, which smelled faintly of honey and beeswax, gave a deep red paste. Yuna applied it to Taziri's lips with a small brush, using careful and deliberate strokes, painting the mouth of an unwilling woman with the colour that called for celebration. Taziri held still. The earthy carmine was vivid against her deep brown complexion, bright and demanding. She was supposed to look joyful.
She was supposed to feel the soft bristles of the brush on her lips, but all she felt was static, concentrated and numb all at once at the tip of her mouth.
Shiguren Estate, outermost Fire Nation colony, at the border
Joint Habitation Zones
"Taziri. My study. Now."
She had risen immediately, because that tone brooked for no delay. He used it when something had gone wrong and he needed someone to absorb the impact. She had been that someone for years now, his eldest daughter, his sharpest strategist. She knew her father's moods the way a sailor knows the tides.
The study was lit by a single oil lamp on his desk, its flame wavering in the draft from the door. He stood behind the desk, his back to her, hands clasped behind him in the posture that told her whatever was going to follow wasn't pleasant, but necessary. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered, with the same deep green eyes that Taziri had inherited; and his hair, once as curly as hers, had been tamed into submission for so many years that it had forgotten how to rebel. Lord Ronan Shiguren. Pragmatist. Diplomat. Father. In that order.
"Shut the door," he said, without turning around. Taziri did as she was told.
"Sit."
She listened again. The chair was stiff and high-backed, designed for petitioners who were meant to feel small. She had sat in it many times before. For lectures about her education, for praise after achievements he deemed worthy, for sharp criticisms, all of which were delivered with the same tone he used to discuss the weather. She had learned to keep her back straight, her hands folded, and her face perfectly neutral. Just listen and let it pass.
When her father turned, his face was tired, more so than usual. The lines around his mouth were deeper than they had been a month ago, the grey at his temples spreading like frost. But despite it all, his eyes usually held a flicker of warmth when they looked at his child; but now that warmth was gone.
"I have secured a marriage proposal for you," he said.
For a moment, Taziri did not understand him. Her brain, always so quick and practiced at parsing, simply refused to process what she had just heard. A marriage proposal. Secured. For her?
"I don't understand, father," her voice sounded foreign to her own ears. "What proposal? From whom?"
"From the Fire Lord." His tone was measured; she wasn't speaking to her father, but rather to diplomat Ronan. "The Fire Nation royal court has been seeking ways to strengthen ties with the former Earth Kingdom colonies. A political marriage was deemed most advantageous. After careful consideration, I accepted on your behalf. The wedding will take place in two days' time."
Two.
The number lodged in her chest like a splinter. She stared at her father, waiting for the rest of it. Perhaps an explanation? A justification, a well thought-out argument that would make all this make sense. Lord Ronan Shiguren did not make decisions without reason. He was a pragmatist, not a tyrant. He loved his daughters. He truly did. He had told her so many times, in the quiet moments between his diplomatic obligations and her own political education. You are my greatest achievement, he had said once, after she had successfully navigated a day at King Bumi's court. You are everything I hoped I would be.
But now he was looking at her as though she were a resource to be allocated. A piece on a board.
A pawn.
"You accepted," she said slowly, "on my behalf."
"Yes."
"Without asking me."
His expression faltered with something that might have been irritation, but he promptly suppressed it. "Taziri. You are twenty-two years old. I have trained you for diplomacy your entire life. This marriage is the culmination of everything we have worked toward, my child. You will be Fire Lady. You will have a position of unprecedented influence. You will make our people feel seen. You will be able to-"
"You want me to marry a Fire Nation royal." The words came out flat, because if she let the emotion in, she would shatter. "A descendant of Sozin, of all people. The people who burned our homes. The people who--" Her hand drifted toward the scar, which had begun to ache; she caught herself and forced it back to her lap. "You want me to marry one of them."
"I want you to secure our people's future," her father said, and there was an edge in his voice now, the first crack in his diplomat's composure. "This marriage stabilizes the colonies. It will quell the animosity that is plaguing these lands, and it prevents the need for martial force. I need you to understand the political realities of--"
"No . What, Papa--"
She used to call him that when she was small and afraid and still believed he could fix anything. She still did, in moments when she wasn't his student but just his daughter. She saw it land, saw him flinch. The emotional card hurt too much, she had to change tactics. the rights card, perhaps?
"Father. I am not a bargaining chip. I am your daughter. You cannot simply--"
"I can. And I have." His voice was hard now, the diplomat's mask slipping entirely. "This is not a discussion, Taziri. The arrangement is final. The proceedings have been signed. You will marry Fire Lord Zuko in two days' time, and you will do so with the dignity and composure befitting your station."
The silence that followed was deafening. It filled the study like water, pressing against Taziri's ears, making the lamplight seem strange and wavering. She could hear the rain outside , and the distant creak of the house settling. Upstairs, her mother was reading to Arike before bed. They did not know yet that their father had sold her to the Fire Nation while they were turning pages.
"You were accused of being a collaborator," Taziri said, her voice quiet. "They called you that in the colonies. I defended you. I told them you were a just utilitarian, not a traitor. I told them you loved your people. I told them--"
"Do not speak to me of those allegations." Her father's eyes had gone to ice ; it seemed he had finally exhausted his patience. Shit. "I have spent my entire career navigating between Earth Kingdom interests and Fire Nation power. I have kept this house standing when others crumbled. I have protected our name, our holdings, and our daughters' futures. I have secured YOU a future. Everything I have done—-everything-— has been for this family."
"This is not for the family." Taziri was on her feet now, though she did not remember standing. "This is for you. This is for your reputation. Your connections. Your position. You are handing me to the Fire Nation like a tribute, and you are calling it diplomacy, and I am supposed to be grateful--"
"It prevents escalation--"
"At what cost?"
"It ensures peace--"
"At what cost?"
Her voice rose higher.
Finally.
She was nose to nose with him.
"At mine?" she demanded, green eyes blazing. "At mine?"
"Tazi--"
"No," she shook her head, incredulous laughter escaping her lips. "No, don't-—do not call me that. Do not pretend that this is something you're doing for me."
"I am doing this for everyone," he snapped, temper flaring now, finally matching hers.
"Then marry him yourself."
"You will lower your voice."
"I will not--"
"Lower your voice."
"I will not! I am not your subject! I am not your emissary! I am your daughter, and you are giving me away to a man I only caught glimpses of a handful of times, to a nation that almost pushed our family to destitution, to people who burned me, and you did not even ask. You did not even give me the dignity of--"
The slap came without warning.
Full-force, delivered with the flat of his palm, and it caught her across the left cheek with enough force to snap her head sideways. The sound of it was louder than the rain, louder than her heartbeat, louder than the roaring in her ears. Pain bloomed through her jaw, hot and sharp, radiating outward until she could feel it in her teeth, in her temples, in the roots of her hair. Her lips went numb, then tingled, then burned, and then it was just static sitting there. She thought, very distantly, of her scar. How fire felt. How the first second of it was always heat before it was pain.
She staggered. Caught herself on the edge of the table.
When she looked up, for one brief, unguarded moment, she saw something she had never seen in his eyes before: horror. Not at her. At himself. But it was gone as quickly as it came.
"I will not be spoken to like that. One day, Taziri, that tongue of yours will be your demise."
He sounded so cruel. Had he always been this cruel, her father?
the answer seemed to be yes.
She straightened her spine, lowered her eyes , and sank to her knees. she folded forward until her forehead touched the floor in a bow so deep it erased the line of her body. "My deepest apologies, father. I seemed to have forgotten my place." Her words mirrored his lack of kindness.
"Taziri--" he began as she stood.
She didn't let him finish and moved away instinctively, her head still bowed. Tears welled, but she willed herself not to let them fall till she was out of eyeshot. She would not give him the satisfaction. She walked out of the study without a word, her cheek blazing, her hands trembling, her heart a cold and furious stone in her chest.
In the corridor outside, sound and time blurred. She could hear sobs, high and thin, emanating from ten year-old Arike's room. The sound of someone trying to be quiet who was not quite succeeding at it. She stood there, her hand resting against the wall, and she thought about going in. Thought about what Arike's face would look like when she opened the door. Arike was ten years old and still young enough to believe lies delivered with the right face, and the thought of using that skill on her baby sister made something tighten behind her breastbone so sharply that she had to be hold still for a moment for the pain to ebb.
Any other day, she would have gone in, but she simply didn't have it in her tonight. And as much as it gnawed at her inside, she continued walking.
Downstairs, their mother, Lady Imani Shiguren, was screaming at her husband.
She did not scream often. She had spent twenty-three years a dutiful wife, straightening his collar in silence, smiling when she was supposed to smile, speaking numerous dialects and using none of them to tell him what she truly thought. But tonight, her voice rang through the house like a bell that had finally shattered its casing.
"You did what? Without telling me , without telling anyone--Ronan, what were you thinking?--"
"I was thinking of our family," her father said, and his voice was hollow now, all the conviction drained out of it. "I was thinking of--"
"You were thinking of yourself." Imani snapped.
"You have to understand--"
She could not hear her father's response. She did not try to.
When Taziri reached her room and closed the door behind her, she pressed her palm against her mouth and sank to the floor. The sob that tore out of her was silent and terrible, like that of a keening animal. She felt so utterly, completely alone.She let the night be what it was going to be, and in the morning she began to plan.
The Bridal Chambers, Fire Nation Palace
"Yuna," Taziri murmured, as the brush swept across her lower lip.
"My lady."
"Do you remember the tree?"
Yuna's hand paused for half a heartbeat ,before resuming. "The sakura tree at home. Of course I remember."
Home. Taziri scoffed internally.
"I used to climb it when I wanted to escape my tutors. You would stand at the bottom and tell me which branches looked weak."
"You never listened."
"That is why I fell twice."
"And got back up both times." Yuna set the brush down and reached for a small pot of what looked like crushed charcoal mixed with oil. Kohl. She first painted her waterline.
"Close your eyes, my lady."
Taziri, yet again, did as she was told.
In the darkness behind her lids, she could see the sakura tree, though it was a little fuzzy, as though it was already a faraway memory. Its bark was rough and silver-grey, its branches heavy with pale pink blossoms that fell like snow in early spring. She had spent entire afternoons on that tree, her back pressed against the trunk as she sat on one of the branches, a book open in her lap and the world far below. Arike would sometimes sit at the base, too small to climb, chattering up at her about whatever had captured her attention that day. Yuna would bring them looted snacks wrapped in cloth, usually plain rice cakes ; if they got lucky enough to raid the kitchen, there would be some sweet meats, and they would stay out until the sun dipped below the estate walls and their mother called them in for dinner.
Taziri had not thought about the sakura tree in months. She had been too busy accompanying her father to Omashu, studying what her tutors demanded of her , and for the past two days, pretending she was not drowning. But now, with her eyes closed and Yuna's steady hand drawing lines of charcoal along her lash line, she let herself remember. A pressed fragile petal was tucked in her sleeve; she had transferred it to the inner pocket of her wedding robes this morning. A small act of defiance that no one else would ever see.
"Open."
Her reflection had a different face. Not a false face --Yuna did not do false, which was one of the things that made her invaluable-- but a gathered one. A face that had decided something about itself and was keeping it between its own walls. The kohl made her green eyes land differently in the light, and the pigment had smoothed the night out of her skin, leaving it now luminous. The crushed berry pigment for her lips was now a earthy carmine that bloomed, was deep and deliberate, and tied the rest of her features together.
She looked regal and poised and utterly, devastatingly beautiful.
She looked like a liar.
"You look-"
"Don't."
"-like yourself," Yuna finished, which was not what Taziri had been bracing for. She opened her mouth. Closed it. "I wasn't going to say anything too sappy."
"That makes it worse," Taziri said, and it came out mostly like a joke, and Yuna almost laughed, and they both let that be what it was.
The distant sound of the Fire Nation palace already stirring beyond the chamber door-- footsteps, somewhere, a distant bell, what might have been a gong's deep reverberance testing itself for later.
"The procession begins in an hour."
"I know."
"The corridor will be lined with fire sage and white lily. I confirmed it this morning." A pause. "I also confirmed the jasmine tea will be in the chamber at the end of the reception. I told them it was a preference."
Taziri's gaze returned to the mirror.
"In case you need something familiar," Yuna murmured, as if this were a logistical matter of no particular weight. "At the end."
The knock came hurriedly; belonged to someone who wasn't supposed to be there. Taziri heard it beneath the rustle of silk as the seamstress adjusted her train. Three sharp raps, then a pause, then two more. It was an uneven rhythm, a child's rhythm.
A younger maid, barely fifteen, her braid unraveling from her ribbon, slipped through the door with something held protectively in her hands. She was obviously not one of the bridal attendants, as by her robes she was perhaps a general palace servant. She should be carrying tea trays, not interrupting the Fire Lady's preparations. She seemed to think the same , too ; her eyes darted around the chamber, searching for authority, and landed on the seamstress.
"There's" -a laboured breath in- "a message," the girl panted out, "from the Earth Kingdom , the Shiguren household. A rider just arrived, my lady. He said it was urgent . He said it couldn't wait . He said the young miss had insisted--"
"The young miss?" Taziri's voice cut through the chamber, and every maid went still. The news had cracked her composure, just slightly, at the edges. There was only one person in the Shiguren household who would insist. Only one person would send a rider across half the land on the morning of a royal wedding and demand that it could not wait. "The young miss , who?"
The girl held out her hands. "Lady Arike, my lady."
In her palms, trembling slightly from the urgency and the terror of interrupting a royal ceremony, lay a small bundle wrapped in pale green silk. The fabric was unmistakably not from here, hand-woven, the colour of new leaves in spring, bearing the Shiguren emblem at its corner. Tied around it was a ribbon the colour of sunrise, and tucked beneath the ribbon was a scrap of parchment folded crookedly by small, impatient fingers.
Taziri crossed the room in three strides. The seamstress made a sound of protest, the train was yet to be fully secured, the headpiece could shift, but Taziri did not hear her. She took the bundle from the maid's hands with a reverence that bordered on religious, and she unfolded the parchment.
Lady Taziri Shiguren, The Fire Lady-to-Be
Fire Nation Palace, Bridal Chambers, Eastern Wing
Caldera City, Fire Nation
11th Day of the Harvest Moon, Fire Nation Palace, Caldera City
Dear my Tazi,
Papa said not to send anything from home before he left, not even flowers. He said fire brides have to wear gold flowers and fire flowers and nothing from here. I said that was stupid. Not to his face because he gets that vein in his forehead when I say things like that and then Mama says Arike please. But I thought it really loud. Annnnyyywayyyys I don't care what he said. The sakura tree is blooming!! The pretty thing!! Early this year. You said you wanted to see it and I remembered. So I made some get there to you. Are you proud of me? Old Chen helped me cut the best ones!
Anyway Mama didn't say anything before she had to leave too but her eyes got all shiny and she kept wiping them with her sleeve and I pretended I didn't see. Give her a hug when you see her okay?? Wear them in your hair okay?? Even if the fire ladies say no. Even if papa finds out and gets mad. They're yours. They're from our tree! You're still my Tazi and you belong to our tree same as me. I told the rider man he has to go super duper fast. I said if you don't get these before the wedding I will be SO MAD. He said yes miss and got on his horse real quick. I love you. Come visit. After you're done being fire queen or whatever. Love love love
P.S. Is the fire man scary?? Is he mean? Does he yell? He better not. If he does I will come there myself and I will kick him. P.P.S. My Lady, the young miss made me promise not to fix the spellings. I beg your pardon for any confusion this causes. She also made me pack our estate's blossoms, I hope it will bring you comfort on this day. My best wishes for your wedding. May the spirits watch over you Lady Taziri. — Old Chen
your sister, Arike
A small choked laugh escaped from her as the letter blurred. Taziri blinked again, hard, and the blurring resolved. She would not cry. The clay paste was fresh and the ceremony was minutes away and she would not cry. But her ever steady hands held a slight tremor as she pulled aside the green silk.
Nestled inside against a bed of damp moss to keep them fresh were a dozen sakura blossoms.
They were perfect. Pale pink and paper-thin, their petals veined with the faintest lines of deeper rose, their centres dusted with gold pollen that shimmered in the lantern light. They smelled like the estate in early spring, rain and green things, like when things actually made sense.
They had bloomed on the tree not three days ago, carried across the land and river by a rider who had probably not slept, because a ten year-old girl had insisted, and no one in the Shiguren household could refuse Arike when she insisted.
"She sent sakura," Taziri said, and her voice came out strange.
Yuna moved closer, her expression carefully neutral for the benefit of the other maids, but her eyes were bright. "The young miss has excellent timing, as always."
"She has terrible timing," Taziri corrected, but the word came out wrapped in affection. "The ceremony is about to begin. The headpiece is already in place. The seamstress will have my head if I…"
She halted.
Her gaze caught the mirror , on the woman in coral and gold, the Fire Nation bride, the diplomat's daughter who had been wrapped in silk and heavy metals and other people's expectations until there was nothing left of her that belonged to herself. The headpiece glittered on her brow. The braids were pulled tight and intricate and immaculate, not a curl out of place, not a single strand allowed to rebel.
But the blossoms in her hands, they were from home. She turned to the head seamstress.
Please, something inside her whispered, the voice she had not heard in years, please let me have this. Let me have this one thing. This piece of home before I become someone else entirely.
The woman was watching her with an expression that Taziri could not identify, which annoyed her. She was old enough to have dressed brides for two generations of royal weddings, and her face was as lined and weathered as old parchment. She had been stern all morning, adjusting hems with brisk efficiency, correcting the other maids with sharp syllables, treating Taziri's body as a mannequin to be decorated rather than a person to be consulted. She had shown no emotion apart from disapproval.
But that was not the case anymore.
"The sakura is the flower of House Shiguren, is it not, my lady?" the seamstress asked.
Taziri swallowed. "It is." She did not know how to explain that it was the closest thing she had to a temple, that she had whispered prayers beneath its branches, that she had touched her scar and asked spirits to never let another child burn. She did not know how to explain that the flowers in her hands were not just flowers.
The seamstress studied her for a long moment. Then she set down the pin cushion she had been holding and walked over to where Taziri stood.
"Fire Nation bridal tradition is very old," her voice was deliberative. "It is also very rigid. Gold and fire lilies , peonies. Nothing from the outside that might suggest divided loyalties." She paused. Her eyes shifted to the blossoms, then back to Taziri's face. "I have dressed brides for thirty-four years. I have never once broken tradition."
Taziri's heart, which had been climbing into her throat, began to sink back down.
"But" , the word hung in the air like a door left slightly ajar , "I have also never dressed an Earth Kingdom bride before. And I am told" --her mouth twitched, the barest suggestion of a smile-- "that Earth Kingdom brides wear flowers in their hair on their wedding day. For good fortune. And for the family."
"Are you suggesting," Taziri said carefully, "a cultural compromise?"
"I am suggesting," the seamstress replied, "that the Fire Lady should honour her house as well as her new nation. The headpiece will remain --that is non-negotiable-- the Fire Lord's grandmother would rise from her grave and haunt me otherwise. But there is space. Along the braid. Just here." She reached up and touched a spot near Taziri's ears, beside the peonies , where the intricate weaving of her hair created a small hollow, as though it had been waiting for something to fill it. "If we tuck them in carefully on both sides, they will not disrupt the symmetry. They will look intentional, much like a diplomatic arrangement, my lady."
A diplomatic arrangement. The words were so perfectly suited to Taziri's life that she almost laughed. Even her sister's gift had to be negotiated, positioned, framed as strategy rather than sentiment.
But she was not going to refuse. She was not going to let pride or bitterness or the weight of the headpiece stop her from having this. One piece of home , of Arike. One piece of the girl she had been before her father's hand had struck her cheek and his signature had sold her future.
"Yes," she said. "Please."
The seamstress nodded once and began to work.
She took the blossoms from Taziri's hands with surprising gentleness, sorting through them with a critical eye, selecting the ones that would sit best against the dark gleam of Taziri's braided hair. The moss was discarded. The green silk ribbon was set aside , but Yuna picked it up, quietly, and tucked it into her own sleeve.
One by one, the blossoms were woven into the hollows between the braids. The stems had been trimmed short and wrapped in thin wire so they would hold their position, and the seamstress slid them into place with the same carefulness she had used to fasten the headpiece. Pale pink petals against dark hair, with the forehead pendant adjusted one last time. Fire Nation gold above, Earth Kingdom blossoms below. The contrast was striking, defiant, if one chose to see it that way. Taziri chose to see it that way.
"There," the seamstress said, stepping back. "It is done, my lady."
Taziri looked in the mirror one final time and for a long moment, she said nothing.
The blossoms did not match the rest of the ensemble. They were too delicate and obviously foreign. They belonged to a different loyalty, a different nation, a different girl. They did not match at all.
They were beautiful.
"They are Earth Kingdom flowers," Taziri said. She needed to hear the words in the air.
"Yes," the seamstress agreed. "They are."
"Everyone will see them."
"Yes. They will."
"The court will talk."
"The court always talks." The seamstress allowed herself a small, dry smile. "Let them. A Fire Lady who honours her heritage is not weaker for it. She is simply… more complete."
Taziri met the woman's eyes in the mirror. For a moment, they were not diplomat and servant, Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom, old and young. They were simply two women who understood that survival sometimes meant compromise, and that compromise sometimes meant finding small, stubborn ways to remain yourself.
"Thank you," Taziri said. "I do not know your name."
"Yoshiko," the seamstress said. "Head Seamstress Yoshiko. And you are welcome, Lady Shiguren."
Not Fire Lady, not Lady Zuko, not the title she was about to marry into. Lady Shiguren. The name of her house. The name of her family. The name she still carried, at least for a few more minutes before she spoke vows she had not written and became someone else entirely.
Whatever cage she was walking into, whatever locks she would need to learn to pick, she would do it . The blossoms would remind her.
Yuna stepped forward and adjusted the blossoms with a final, feather-light touch. "Arike would be very pleased with herself."
"She would be insufferable," Taziri agreed.
"She will write you three letters about it by the end of the week."
"At least." Taziri's voice caught, just slightly, on the thought of those letters. "I will tell her--"
She stopped, because there were no words for what she wanted to tell Arike.
"Tell her the Fire Lord isn't scary , probably," she said instead, because that was simpler.
Yuna's eyes glinted with something that was akin to amusement. "I will relay your assessment of the Fire Lord's lack of scariness, as stated."
"You will do no such thing."
"I will paraphrase."
"Yuna."
"My lady." Yuna's face was perfectly innocent.
Then Yuna caught her gaze in the mirror and held it. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The other maids and seamstress had retreated to the edges of the room, busy with their own tasks,and were out of earshot. Her lady-in-waiting's expression morphed.
"There is something I need to tell you," Yuna said, her voice barely above a whisper.
Taziri's gaze sharpened. "What is it?"
"Later. After the ceremony." Yuna's jaw tightened imperceptibly. "When we are alone."
"Yuna--"
"It is not my place to say it now. And you need to walk into that hall with a clear mind." Yuna reached out to adjust the dragon pin in Taziri's hair, a gesture so familiar it ached. "But after. I promise."
Taziri studied her friend's face ,the tension in her brow, the way she was avoiding direct eye contact now, the slight tremor in her fingers as they withdrew. Yuna was afraid of something. Yuna was never afraid of anything. She had stood beside Taziri when the Fire Nation guards came, had watched them drag away the friend Taziri had tried to save, had held her afterrward while she shook and shook and could not speak. If Yuna was afraid now, it meant something terrible was coming.
Or something terrible had already happened.
"After," Taziri repeated.
Yuna nodded, stepped back, and became once more the perfectly composed and bright lady-in-waiting, hands folded, face serene. None of the other maids had noticed the exchange. To them, it was simply the bride and her attendant sharing a quiet moment before the ceremony. Nothing more.
The head seamstress returned, clapping her hands briskly. "The final layer, my lady. The outermost cloak. And then we must proceed to the great hall. The Fire Lord is already waiting."
This was really happening.
Taziri rose from her seat, and the maids descended upon her one last time, draping the final garment over her shoulders. It was a cloak of pure white, so long it pooled behind, lined with gold thread that caught the light and threw it back in sharp, brilliant flashes. It was opulent. It was a work of art.
She hated it with every fibre of her being.
The memory dissolved as the door to the bridal chambers swung open, and an attendant in the gold-trimmed robes of the Fire Palace household bowed deeply from the waist. "My lady. They are ready for you in the great hall. The Fire Lord has taken his place at the altar." Smiling, Taziri put the wall up again , rose, and allowed herself to be led toward the door.
The headpiece shifted on her head, its golden chains chiming faintly with the movement. The cloak pooled behind her, white and gold, heavy as a burden she had not chosen but could no longer refuse. Yuna stepped forward to arrange the train, her movements quick and practiced, and for a moment their eyes met again.
After, Yuna's gaze conveyed.
Taziri inclined her head in an imperceptible nod, and then she turned toward the door.
Deep in the palace, the first bell of the morning ceremony sounded--a single, resonant tone that moved through stone and silk and gold and the onerous weight of things decided by people other than herself--and Taziri straightened her spine against the headdress's demand, and lifted her chin, and did not close her eyes.
Be 'generous'.
She breathed in. Clay and blossoms and berries. The sakura petal in the inner sleeve of her ceremonial robe .
A pawn, she reminded herself, moves slowly.
But it moves.
