GUNPOWDER MAGNOLIA Chapter 10: The Dead Woman (Patreon)

Hi Dagger Tier!

Here's the tenth chapter of Gunpowder Magnolia ahead of the newsletter. Not caught up yet? Find links to previous chapters here.

There were perfectly logical reasons not to kill Princess Yelhwa there on that divan. Foremost of these was that it would make a mess of Lanthe and Tairo’s mission. The whole point of infiltrating Yao as Ro defectors was to gather information and, when they did end Yelhwa’s life, to make it look like an accident. If Lanthe strangled their target during their first meeting, she and Tairo would almost certainly be executed. The deaths would galvanize Ro and Yao against each other without Ro having any more information than they had when this all started. Lanthe would have failed Tairo, General Chang, her family, and her kingdom.

All these logical thoughts came to Lanthe hours later as she hollowly tried to make herself feel like less of an idiot.

In the breathless moments she had Yelhwa pinned, her mind was empty with confusion. Thought and time disappeared in Yelhwa’s black eyes. Lanthe didn’t know how long she stayed over the princess of Yao, frozen with her hand on that slender neck. But it was too long.

The knife had driven deep into her shoulder, piercing muscle, and she was starting to feel it. Really feel it. The involuntary shiver in her limbs, the quickening of her breath, the blackening dizziness that rushed to fill her head in the absence of battle fever. Lanthe had charged, brawled, and killed through worse injuries than this on the battlefield. But this wasn’t a battlefield. The moment Yelhwa had spilled back on the silk cushions, weaponless and smiling, it had become something else. Something Lanthe didn’t understand. Lanthe’s battle power came from motion. Yelhwa’s gaze had stopped her dead and held her immobile—until the strength went out of her.

When the princess rose, pushing against the hand on her throat, Lanthe tipped back. And they ended up sitting on the divan side-by-side, half facing each other like a pair of school friends on a bench.

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