Chapter 36
The next few hours passed in a blur. Biyu dragged Nikator’s unconscious—and very heavy—body to the nearest home she could find.
He was too heavy for her to pull onto a bed, so she took the bedding from the bedroom and gathered it in the living room, and yanked him onto it.
She then got to work finding medicine—it wasn’t actually that difficult to find.
She raided each of the houses and found an array of bottles with strange liquids, potent-smelling ointments, and tools to stitch wounds together.
The hard part was figuring out how to do it.
She had no real time experience in mending wounds.
The only knowledge she had was from reading books a few years prior when she’d been bored with nothing to do.
She hadn’t retained much of that information, so she did what she could remember.
She cleaned the wound, staunched the bleeding, stitched with trembling hands, and applied some ointment that she prayed was for wounds.
Biyu sat on the floor of the living room, the hearth flickering with the fire she had created with magic.
An orange glow blanketed the room. Nikator laid in the center beneath a pile of blankets, his head propped up with a pillow, and his chest bare.
She had bandaged him up to the best of her ability, but it had been hard to wrap the bindings underneath his back and around his chest.
Tears rolled down her cheeks and she hugged her knees to her chest. She didn’t want him to die. The thought of losing him rendered a deep fear within her that was soul-crushing.
“You have to keep fighting,” she said between sniffles. “I don’t want to lose you, Nikator.”
He was deathly still, his skin pallid and his hair appearing like blood. She inched closer to him and rested her hand above his mouth. He was breathing, but barely.
“Nikator, I love you,” she whispered.
And yet, he didn’t stir.
She wiped her tears with her blood-stiffened sleeve.
She sat there watching him breathe until the sun began peeking out on the horizon, and even then he hadn’t moved.
More tears streamed down her cheeks and her eyes burned.
If he died, then so would she, according to the bond.
But what if that wasn’t the case? The spell was written poetically, so there could have been other meanings.
Not that Biyu cared—she would rather die with him if it came down to it.
She wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt that she had ruined everything and caused his death by forcing him on this mission to track her down.
Biyu intertwined her fingers in his and gave them a gentle squeeze.
“Please, you have to survive this,” she murmured. “I can’t—I can’t live without you.”
His hand was cold to the touch.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Please, Nikator. You have to fight.”
The days passed agonizingly slow. Nikator still hadn’t woken up.
Occasionally, he would twitch and moan in pain, but that was it.
Biyu spent her days sluggishly. She changed his bandages, checked for infections, applied ointment, and sat by his side.
She scavenged for food in the village that wasn’t rotting and managed to make a stew by tossing everything together in a pot of water—it usually resulted in a horrible amalgamation of different flavors, but it was the best she could do, since she had never cooked in her life.
Nikator’s horse had returned the next day and she was able to take all the supplies from it—the bedrolls, the feed, and Nikator’s pack—and kept them inside the house in case the animal decided to bolt again.
She kept the horse in one of the stables across the street and visited it twice a day.
She, truthfully, didn’t know what she was doing, but she fed it and refilled its water pail daily.
Biyu passed a hand over her greasy and unkempt hair; she hadn’t been bothered to find a river to bathe in, since she didn’t want to leave his side, so she had managed with quick sponge bathes that lasted minutes. Not that she cared. Her lack of hygiene was the least of her concern right now.
“Nikator, I got you this necklace.” She pulled out the jade pendant she had bought at the market. She held it up as if he could see it. “I got it because it reminded me of you. I … I don’t know if you even like jewelry, but I figured you might be able to appreciate it.”
Silence stretched between them.
Biyu placed the pendant beside him. “You know, it’s strange, isn’t it? We spent so much time together and we never really talked about our childhoods, or anything about ourselves, really.”
She sidled closer to him and traced the burn scars over his chest and shoulder.
Her heart wrenched at the sight of them; she didn’t think she could ever look at his scars and not feel guilty.
She vaguely remembered the sea of violet that had taken over when she panicked and thought he would kill her all those years ago.
For a brief moment, she wondered what he had thought when he laid his eyes on her for the first time.
“I never really got along with any of my siblings.” Her voice echoed in the quiet room and she grasped his hand in both of hers.
She turned his hand and touched each of the callouses on his palm.
“It’s strange how I have—had—so many siblings, and yet none of us cared for one another or knew one another.
And now there’s only the four of us left.
Me, Liqin, Daewon, and Yat—” Her throat closed up as she remembered what had happened to Yat-sen.
“Oh, well, the three of us, I suppose. But Daewon is too young to remember what it was like before the throne was usurped by our father. It’s probably better this way, anyway. ”
Biyu continued to prattle on about court life while she was a child.
About how her mother never cared about her or never gave her any attention because she had been born a girl.
About how her mother had tried to have another child with the emperor—a son—but because Father had barely looked her way, it was hard to spend time with him, much less become pregnant.
She told him how her mother had died from sickness a few years before the usurpation, but Biyu hadn’t even noticed her absence since she hadn’t been involved in her life in the first place.
The more she spoke, the more she realized that even as a child, she had been a prisoner in her own home. She had been isolated from her siblings, had no relationship with her parents, and had only had a rotation of servants and palace guards to keep her company. She had always been lonely.
“I wonder what it would have been like if we had met as children? Would we have loathed each other or been friends?” She could imagine him as a child with long red hair, bright blue eyes that were innocent of the world’s cruelty, and a mischievous smirk.
She could also imagine herself shadowing him, curious at whatever adventure he wanted to go on.
But then her imagination shifted, and she could see a red-haired child with black eyes like hers.
And then a dark-haired child with fierce blue eyes.
It took her a second to realize she was imagining what their children would look like.
Children.
Theirs.
She covered her face with her hands to suppress the urge to burst into tears.
How could she even think of children in this situation?
It wasn’t possible for them to have a future together like that.
They couldn’t be married in the outside world—beyond the magicked bond—and they couldn’t live together like a happy family.
She had betrayed him, while he was planning on turning her in to the emperor—that was their future. Separated.
A soft caress on her knee made her jerk her hands away. She stared at where Nikator’s hand rested by her knee. Had it been her imagination? Surely, he hadn’t moved?
But then it happened again. His finger twitched. So slight, but it made her heart pound. She inhaled sharply, watching, then glanced over at his still face.
She waited with bated breath.
Then, his eyelids fluttered.
“Nikator?” Hope filled her and she searched his face for more movement. Ever so slowly, his hand twitched again, and his eyelids lifted slowly. A soft groan released from him and he squinted, as if the light was bothering him.
Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open.
He was alive. He was awake.
“Nikator,” she sobbed, holding onto his hand and cradling it to her chest.
“You didn’t run,” he whispered weakly, his gaze searching her face as if imprinting it into his memory. He raised his hand out of her grasp and wiped a tear rolling down her cheek. “You stayed.”
“I would never leave you like that.” She threw her arms over him and cried against his chest, making sure not to put all of her weight on him.
He weakly placed a hand on her lower back.
“I thought you were going to die.” Her voice cracked and she could barely get the words out.
One of her greatest fears these past few days had been thinking that he would never wake. That he would be stuck in this comatose state forever. That the jiangshi bite had altered him completely and rendered him undead.
His hand tangled in her hair and he murmured hoarsely, “I’m not planning on dying any time today.”
“Or tomorrow. Or ever.” She sniffled, embracing him even tighter. “You scared me.”
“How many days has it been?”
“I don’t even know. Maybe a week?”
“Do you have water?”
Biyu quickly went over to the pitcher she had filled that morning and poured a cup for him.
She helped ease his head up and gave him some, which he tentatively sipped.
When he’d had enough, she sat beside him while he lay down.
Despite being asleep the entirety of the week, he appeared haggard and unrested.