Chapter 3 — A Gentle Voice

Yixing nocked another arrow to his bow and drew back the string. Once his drawing hand reached its anchor, he braced his body and began a slow exhale. He stared down the shaft of the arrow at the target fifty meters away and chose a single point in the center. When he exhaled all the air from his lungs, he released the string. The arrow gave a high-pitched screech as it ripped through the air and lodged its head in the center of the canvas target. The shot completed, the prince lowered his bow and let his stance rest. 

Being under house arrest—despite his earlier protestations—was a lenient punishment when one paused to consider that there was quite a lot to do around the Palace grounds. Archery was merely one of the many activities that Yixing engaged in to fill in the empty hours. It had been years since Captain Huang had deemed him skillful enough to no longer need formal lessons. But preserving his aim meant that he would still need to practice frequently. And Yixing had been neglecting the archery range as of late. 

“Bring me the target, please,” he said to the servant boy standing by. The boy bowed and then ran the fifty meters to retrieve the target. When the boy brought it closer, Yixing tilted his head and frowned at his clumsy aim. The arrowhead had lodged itself just a few inches to the right of dead-center. 

How disappointing, he thought.

“Evidently, you are out of practice,” said a voice behind him. Yixing turned to greet Captain Huang, who crossed his arms over his chest and had an amused look on his face. Yixing scoffed as he took another arrow from the quiver behind his leg and nocked it to the string.

“Or perhaps I had a lousy teacher,” he countered. Captain Huang laughed. Yixing waited for the servant boy to return the target to its place before getting back into his stance. Captain Huang watched quietly as Yixing straightened his back and drew back the string. The captain ordered another target and another bow and quiver to be brought out for him. The servant scurried away to bring the equipment just as Yixing failed to hit another target. 

“I don’t understand,” Yixing grumbled. “I haven’t done anything differently from before. The stance, the nock, the draw, the anchor, everything’s the same.”

Captain Huang smirked. “Maybe it’s you who’s different,” he suggested. Yixing scoffed. 

“Has His Majesty sent you here to talk some sense into me?” he asked, reaching for another arrow. “It won’t work. You of all people should know best, Shifu.”

“Know what?” Captain Huang asked. A servant brought him his equipment just as Yixing lowered his bow for a minute and laughed.

“How hard-headed I am,” Yixing said. Captain Huang laughed. Hard-headed, indeed. The captain remembered when the king first approached him about fifteen  or so years ago and asked him to teach his son how to shoot a bow. The captain had been just another Palace guard back then, but when the king broached the subject with his then-captain, the group unanimously agreed that Huang Lei was the most skilled and most qualified. 

Huang Lei had taught many others how to shoot before, and he was convinced that he could teach anyone to shoot. But when the king and queen had first presented the little prince to him all those years ago, he began to doubt his own philosophy. The boy was scrawny and did not have much strength at all. He couldn’t even hit targets that were placed a mere three meters away. He couldn’t draw back the string no matter how light of a bow Huang Lei presented to him. 

He almost gave up on the boy. But the skinny little rascal was too stubborn for that. 

Captain Huang would never forget all the times he had rushed the prince to the Surgeon’s Hall when he hit his arm with the string or when he released the string incorrectly or all the times the Healer had to be summoned to give him massages for the tension in his back. Or the times he had spied the young boy doing push-ups to increase his arm and upp