Chapter 76: The Wrong Path, The Right Question
The column departed the Fire Nation colony under a sky the color of bruised parchment. The festive garlands and paper lanterns of the Sun Festival looked garish and forlorn in the grey morning light, remnants of a celebration whose guest of honor was already moving on. Zuko led from the front, his komodo rhino's heavy footfalls a steady, grinding rhythm on the hard packed earth. He had given the order that morning with a cold, clipped efficiency that brooked no discussion. They were heading for the mountains of the western continent, to a place called the Western Air Temple. He offered no further explanation, and the sheer specificity of the destination had silenced any questions before they could be asked.
Azula fell in at the rear of the main party, her own mount keeping a disdainful distance from the common soldiers. Her posture was one of utter boredom, but her eyes, sharp and calculating, missed nothing. The unspoken severance of their arrangement lay between them like a chasm, and the journey became a silent contest of wills, a race along the same path for entirely different reasons.
For two days, they traveled northwest, leaving the fertile river valleys behind and climbing into the rugged, pine covered foothills. The air grew thin and sharp. The vibrant greens of the lowlands gave way to the dark, somber hues of the high country. The mood within the party was fractured. Rin was quieter than usual, his usual gruff commentary replaced by a watchful, almost sullen silence. Lee, while maintaining his usual analytical demeanor, had developed a habit of checking and rechecking his map scrolls with a nervous intensity.
On the afternoon of the third day, they made camp on a high ridge that offered a staggering view of the jagged, snow capped mountains they were destined for. The Western Air Temple was out there, a ghost in the stone. As the soldiers set up tents and lit cook fires, Zuko stood at the edge of the ridge, his cloak whipping around him in the bitter wind. He watched the distant peaks, his mind a tempest of Jeong Jeong's warnings and Azula's cold ultimatum.
He needed a distraction. An anchor to the mundane. He turned from the view, his eyes scanning the camp until they landed on Lee, who was seated on a fallen log, meticulously annotating a map with a charcoal stick.
"Lee," Zuko called out, his voice cutting through the wind. "A word. In private."
Lee looked up, a flicker of that now familiar wariness in his eyes. He carefully rolled his map and stood, following Zuko as the prince strode away from the main camp, down a narrow game trail that led to a small, sheltered clearing overlooking a deep ravine. The sound of the wind faded to a dull roar above them.
Zuko stopped, turning to face his strategist. He did not speak immediately, letting the silence stretch, watching Lee stand there, perfectly still, waiting for his prince to speak.
"How is Hinaro?" Zuko asked, the question sudden and utterly unexpected.
Lee blinked, thrown completely off balance. "My… my wife, Your Highness?"
"Unless you have married another Kyoshi warrior without informing me, yes, your wife," Zuko said, a faint, almost imperceptible trace of dry amusement in his tone. "The last I heard, there was some… difficulty. Regarding the… consummation of your union."
Lee's ears turned a bright, unmistakable shade of red. He cleared his throat, adjusting his grip on his map scroll. "Ah. Yes. That particular… logistical and emotional impasse has been… successfully navigated."
Zuko raised a single eyebrow. "Navigated?"
"Resolved," Lee corrected quickly, his vocabulary failing him for once. "It is resolved. Quite… thoroughly."
"Thoroughly?" Zuko pressed, the corner of his mouth threatening to twitch upwards. He had not felt this kind of mundane amusement in what felt like a lifetime. "Define thoroughly."
Lee looked genuinely pained, his analytical mind clearly struggling to find the correct terminology for such an unscientific subject. "Prince Zuko, with all due respect, the specific… mechanics and… frequency… are perhaps beyond the scope of a military debriefing."
"Frequency?" Zuko repeated, and this time he did smile, a brief, sharp flash of teeth. "So it was not a singular event. You have been… busy."
Lee stared at a point somewhere over Zuko's shoulder, his face a mask of academic mortification. "Well it all began that night after the battle against General Fong. The period following our departure from Nan-Hai was characterized by a series of mutually agreed upon interactions that successfully facilitated the finalization of our marital bonds. The initial encounter, while somewhat pedagogically challenging, ultimately proved to be a catalyst for a more… streamlined and… efficient process in subsequent iterations."
Zuko let out a short, sharp laugh, the sound foreign to his own ears. "By Agni, Lee. You make it sound like you were optimizing a supply chain. Did you file a report afterwards? Chart the data?"
Lee finally looked at him, a flicker of genuine confusion in his eyes. "A report would be highly irregular, sir. And ethically questionable. Though I did make some private notes on potential areas for improved… synchronization."
This sent Zuko into another, quieter fit of laughter. He shook his head, the tension in his shoulders easing slightly. For a moment, it was just two young men talking about something normal, something human. But the moment could not last. The shadow that hung over them was too long.
The laughter died In Zuko's throat. His expression grew serious, his golden eyes fixing on Lee with an unnerving intensity. The shift was so abrupt it was like a door slamming shut.
"Which is more than I can say for you and Rin," Zuko said, his voice losing all its prior warmth, becoming flat and hard. "You have not been streamlined or efficient. You have been clumsy. You look at me as if I am a spirit that might possess you in the night. You flinch when I give an order. You hold your breath when I walk past."
Lee's embarrassed flush vanished, replaced by a pallor of dread. The comfortable ground of marital awkwardness had fallen away, and they were back on the razor's edge. "Prince Zuko…"
"Do not insult me by pretending you don't know what I am talking about," Zuko interrupted, his voice a low growl. "I brought you in here, into the confidence of your Crown Prince, and I asked you a question. You will answer it. You and Rin have been acting like spooked ostrich horses since the morning after the forest ambush. Since I reminded you of what you overheard on watch. We are going to talk about it. Now."
Lee swallowed hard. He looked down at the ground, then at the ravine, anywhere but at Zuko's face. The scholarly composure was gone, replaced by the raw fear of a man who knows he is standing on a precipice.
"It is… difficult, Your Highness," Lee began, his voice hushed. "To unsee what has been seen. To unhear what has been heard. We are your men. Our loyalty is to you. It is absolute. But that night… it recontextualized everything."
"Recontextualized," Zuko echoed, the word a weapon. "What does that mean? Speak plainly, for once."
"It means we saw a side of you we were not meant to see!" Lee's voice rose, fueled by a surge of desperate courage. "We saw the prince, our commander, and then we heard… something else. Something private. Something… intense. And then you confronted us. You confirmed it. You made us accomplices to a secret that could see us executed a hundred times over. It is not just that we know. It is that you know we know. Every look we share with you is now layered with that knowledge. Every order you give is filtered through it. We are terrified of what it means. We are terrified of what it might make you do. We are terrified that Princess Azula might somehow discern our knowledge and have us silenced. We are living in a state of perpetual, high alert anxiety, and it is… exhausting."
The confession hung In the thin mountain air, laid bare between them. There was no scholarly vocabulary left, only blunt, terrified truth.
Zuko stared at him, his own anger cooling into something more complex. He saw the genuine fear in Lee's eyes, the weight of the secret he had forced them to carry. He had been so focused on his own shame, his own fury at being discovered, that he had not fully considered the prison he had built for them.
"You think I would harm you?" Zuko asked, his voice quieter now.
Lee met his gaze, his own filled with a pained honesty. "We do not know what you are capable of, Prince Zuko. Not anymore. We saw you breathe fire like a dragon. We saw you defeat Jet with a cruelty we had not seen in you before. And we know you share a bed, and whatever else, with a woman who is both your sister and the most dangerous person we have ever met. You have become an equation with too many variables. The outcome is… unpredictable."
There it was. The core of it. They were not just afraid of the secret. They were afraid of him. The Victor part of him recoiled at the idea. The Zuko part understood it perfectly.
Zuko looked away, out over the ravine. The wind howled a lonely tune above them. "Your loyalty is to remain absolute," he said, his tone final, leaving no room for argument. "Remember what I said to you before. You will bury this. You and Rin. You will lock it away in whatever analytical vault you use for your private notes on marital synchronization. You will never speak of it again. Not to each other. Not to anyone. And you will stop looking at me as if I am about to burn you alive for the crime of having ears."
He turned his head, his golden eyes pinning Lee in place. "I am your prince. I am your commander. That is the only context you need. Is that understood?"
Lee stood straighter. The fear was still there, but it was now compartmentalized, forced back into the box of duty. "Yes, Your Highness. Perfectly understood."
"Good," Zuko said. "Now, get back to camp. And for Agni's sake, the next time you write to your wife, try using words a normal person would understand."
Lee bowed, a deep, formal gesture. "I will… endeavor to utilize a more colloquial vernacular in my spousal communications."
He turned and hurried back up the path, leaving Zuko alone in the clearing. The moment of normalcy was gone, shattered by the reality of his life. He had an army that saw him as a hero, a sister who saw him as a rival, and the two men closest to him saw him as a terrifying, unpredictable equation. And he was leading them all on a long, hard march in the wrong direction. He looked toward the distant Western Air Temple, a cold certainty settling in his gut. He was not just climbing a mountain. He was climbing toward his own ruin.
[A/N: Can't wait to see what happens next? Get exclusive early access and read 30 chapters ahead on patreon.com/saiyanprincenovels. If you enjoyed this chapter and want to see more, don't forget to drop a power stone! Your support helps this story reach more readers!]