The Lamb and the Gray Battle

March 13, 1994

Diyiren flipped each page calmly as he read Her Story. He remembered every minute as if it happened only yesterday.

Winter 1446

"Please, My King, don't make me go back there," She-Meimei sobbed. "She's a monster!"

She-Meimei wasn't cut out to be a servant. The only reason he allowed her to stay after his mother was killed was because she begged. The snake clans had been wiped out almost as effectively as the dragon clans. She had no family to return to.

"I'm wrong," she continued, kowtowing to him. "Punish me. But please, I beg of you, I can't go back to that room."

He paced away from her. Her tantrum was as infuriating as Aoibh's.

What he really wanted to do was to curl up in a corner and sleep forever, but he couldn't leave Hell and China to BoBo and his grasp on Wales was thin. His mother would haunt him if he surrendered so easily, after she worked so hard to make him strong.

A parchment rested on his desk. King Henry was complaining again. The Sixth. As if Aethelstan's wall was a mature way to deal with demons, now King Henry the Sixth was demanding that Diyiren make his people prove they weren't one hundred percent demon. Or else they would go to war and he'd abolish the treaty.

What treaty? Henry, that ass, refused to sign a treaty. If he instituted one more demand before signing, Diyiren would prove just how useless that wall was.

Besides, no human army could beat his demon bloods. The demon slayers who joined England were hypocrites.

"Please punish me, My King," She-Meimei continued.

Diyiren couldn't very well draft a man from his army to deal with Aoibh. He could just picture the insult if he approached one of the female warriors and requested that she deal with his wife.

"Very well," he said.

The sight that greeted him was as expected. Aoibh tore out of her vanity chair and hid behind the bed. A hailstorm of objects launched at him.

Aoibh screamed, "I don't want you here."

Clearly.

He used his wrists and arms to put a tray of soup, cheese and bread on the broken vanity and left.

Aoibh was curled up behind the bed, her eyes red, her sobs quelled.

A few days later, Diyiren brought in a new mirror for the vanity, a replacement hand mirror for the one she'd destroyed and a new chamber pot. Under his arm, he had a rug. He knelt on it while he cleaned out the fireplace.

"At least, sleep in the bed. You hate the cold. The stones will carry a chill until spring," he said, building a new fire.

He was going to take the rug with him when he left, but he left it in place.

Sure enough, when he came around for dinner, she was balled up on it drinking up the flames like sweetened tea. Dinner included noodles, fish, bread and cheese. To please her, he included a few candied dates.

She didn't wait for him to leave. She was a few feet from him, nibbled on the dates.

"Let me go," she said.

"I already told you my terms." He added, "You don't have to imprison yourself in this room. You can go anywhere you want in this Fortress. You will be honored as Banrion Aoibh and your requests will be granted."

"But you won't let me go," she cried. "And they won't let me see Gran."

Diyiren had no response, no way to explain. He turned to leave, but decided to add, "Your hair looks better, springy, full of curls. Your weight too is improved. It makes me happy, Qizi."

"Don't call me that," she screamed and launched the teapot at him.

He held the tea in midair, stopped the spray. Carefully, he used the liquid in the pot to bring the pot back to the tray.

"All apologies, Mo Bhanrion."