Part 2, Chapter 21

Mommy dearest

Ch 21

Jiangou stared blankly at the piles of documents that had accrued on his desk. They seemed higher than the mountains that bordered the Red Desert and twice as intimidating. Memoirs, reports, requests, petitions, he couldn’t keep track of everything that was being demanded of him. And it never seemed to end. He buried his head in his hands.

“What’s wrong, my son.” 

His mother’s salty ocean smell flooded into the room. Jiangou looked up, desperation in his eyes. “Mother, we need to bring Brother back. I can’t do this. I was never meant for this, I don’t-“ his voice cut off abruptly as his mother slapped him sharply across the cheek.

“Don’t you dare,” she said in a cool, deadly voice. “This is the only thing you were meant for. I swore when that b*****d took me as a hostage against my father that I would bear him a son and that son would rule over this realm. You were born for this and only this.”

Jiangou looked away. “I can not do this job, Mother,” he said tightly.

She patted his head, “It’s not forever. Your Grandfather will come after the child is born. Then he can help you in managing everything.”

Marun despaired of her son. He had always been weak, she had no illusions about that. He was happier drinking and composing poetry with his wastrel friends than he had ever been studying. She had watched the development of Jianyu with envy as he had slipped naturally into the role of a leader. 

It had been a stroke of luck when she had met Namu at a banquet held by her brother’s wife. Beautiful, ambitious, and cunning she had been the perfect prod for Marun’s lazy son. Namu had wound Jiangou around her little finger with an ease and simplicity that Marun could only admire. 

The two women had worked together to push Jiangou into feeling cornered enough to lash out against his brother. And when the moment had finally arrived Jiangou still wouldn’t kill his sibling. Although the idea of breaking him and stealing his identity had been a good one. The Heavenly Realm was completely unaware that they were being undermined from the inside. Her father would come for the birth of his grandchild, but he would come with an army of merpeople at his back to take the Palace. While her family swept the Palace Namu’s father would catch the Heavenly army unaware, driving them into the waiting, fortified army of the merpeople. Jiangou’s son would be proclaimed Emperor by both tribes and she would be his regent while her father and the Lord of the Red Desert slowly carved the Heavenly Realm up between them.

Of course her son and his wife wouldn’t be necessary after the initial takeover. It was a shame, but when she sat on the throne in the Great Court her revenge would be complete. 

Jiangou sat at the desk with his head in his hands again. Merun promised herself that her grandchild would not be as weak as her son had turned out to be.