Chapter 6 Àn’yīng #2
He turns his head sharply as I near, and I marvel that even with the protection of my talismans, he can sense my approach. I slide Shadow and Fleet back into their sheaths in my new sleeves and step out from beneath the treeline.
“àn’yīng?” Hào’yáng spins around; the guarded surprise to his expression dissipates into something else, something entirely unguarded, as his eyes fall on me.
He inhales sharply as he takes me in, gaze roaming down my dress, his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword.
Desire surges across his face, and I wonder how I could ever have missed it.
Just as quickly, it’s gone, schooled into the careful, distant expression of the captain and heir.
Hào’yáng glances away toward the water again. “I didn’t mean for you to have to come out here to find me. The festivities start in a half hour, and I thought—”
“I came to talk to you,” I interrupt, “about the conversation you had with my mother.”
His jaw flexes. “You already know the strategy we laid out. There is nothing more we need to discuss.”
“I disagree.” I start toward him, and his head snaps up. He looks almost afraid of me. And though my heart is pounding against my rib cage, I find that I am no longer frightened to face the truth, as messy and complicated and unresolvable as it is.
Hào’yáng makes as if to step back, but the water is behind him, and he has nowhere to go. He looks at me helplessly. “àn’yīng, I don’t wish to discuss this now,” he says.
I stop before him, an arm’s reach away. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I try to keep my voice steady, but something inside me is loose, unmoored. “All this time. Why didn’t you?”
“Because your mother is right. I cannot offer you the life you deserve.”
“And you’re the one to decide that?”
“No,” he says. “No, of course not.”
“Then—”
“Because I knew it would be fruitless,” Hào’yáng says at last, and his expression breaks open with that familiar sorrow. “Because your heart is taken already, àn’yīng. And I have no right to use our alliance to get in the way of that.”
I draw a tight breath.
A memory hangs in the air between us. Him, facing me in the dusk light of the immortal realm. Watching me beg him to save Yù’chén’s life.
“You say his name sometimes when you dream,” Hào’yáng continues quietly. The last rays of sunlight limn his profile. “I had no wish to burden you with feelings you cannot return.”
I think of those nine years I spent in my house crying over the shadow of my father, when I still had my home, my sister, a part of my mother, and my neighbors—when Hào’yáng had witnessed the death of his entire family and been spirited away to another realm.
All those times I spoke to my guardian in the jade of my grief and he wrote back to me words of comfort and care when he was the one with nothing.
I think of him watching me through the jade, perhaps waiting for me to speak to him of the pieces of his heart he’d kept hidden from me for half a lifetime.
I’ve seen the way he looks at you, jiě’jie, when you’re not paying attention.
“Tell me.” My voice is soft, so soft. “I would like to hear it from you.”
He draws a sharp breath. “àn’yīng,” he says. “I know you see me as your friend, your guardian, your trainer…but I am a man, too, and I have my pride.”
I’m not sure what gives me the courage to close the gap between us, to reach out and tip his chin toward me, forcing him to meet my eyes.
Within, I find grief and broken dignity—and unmistakable desire as he gazes back at me.
I surge up on my toes and brush my lips against his.
Hào’yáng inhales sharply, and I feel the muscles of his shoulders tense. He catches my arm as I draw back. A hundred thoughts seem to race through his eyes, the intricate calculations of his brilliant mind.
Then it all clears. Hào’yáng cups my cheek, his touch gentler than anything I have felt before.
And kisses me.
His lips are soft, his palm steady and warm against my waist, his other hand cradling my chin.
He tastes of salt and spun sugar, and as his eyes flutter shut, a wind stirs flower petals from the trees around us.
They drift in the fading glow of sunset, showering over my wedding gown and Hào’yáng’s golden armor, and I find myself thinking that this is the type of kiss befitting fairy tales.
Slowly, he pulls back. Blinks away the haze in his eyes. “àn’yīng.” He speaks my name in a way that sends shivers across my skin.
Reaching to close the distance between us, I kiss him again. Hào’yáng thaws—and this time, the kiss is no longer a fairy-tale one.
He grips my waist and pulls me against him, the movement sudden and hard. His grasp tightens, and he makes a noise low in his throat as his mouth caresses mine. And I’m drowning in sensation as the dam in my chest finally breaks open, those whispering waters swelling into the waves of oceans.
Hào’yáng draws back sharply—and there it is again: the conflict in his eyes, the sadness that shadows his face.
“I made a promise to your mother, àn’yīng, and I will not be a man to break the promises I make,” he says haltingly, as though each word costs him a great effort. “But most of all, your mother is right. I will not be the man to hold you back from the life and the love you deserve.”
The words take flight in the soft dusk air. Beyond us, the last light of sunset fades from the surface of the river and drains from the sky, and I imagine the distant horizon, a place where sea and sky meet, forever reaching yet never touching.
Hào’yáng steps away. Cold air seeps in between us; the blossoms litter the ground like dying butterflies. His hand goes to the hilt of Azure Tide. In the moments that follow, his lips move, and the words he speaks might have been something like I love you too much to be selfish—had I heard them.
But I don’t.
A great tremor rolls through the ground, and the setting sun seems to vanish completely from the sky. Hào’yáng’s gaze snaps to the east, where Xī’lín lies. His hand tightens against my waist.
I turn, and what I see nearly sweeps my legs out from under me.
In the sky above my village, a fracture has appeared. It widens and shadows spill from it: amorphous at first, and then I make out claws, jutting bones and ribs, wings…and two deep, crimson flames burning with the light of the Ten Hells.
Hào’yáng draws his sword; the sound of the metal slicing through the clearing. He utters a word that breaks open my world, draws me from the sunlit, golden afternoon back into my old nightmares:
“Hellbeast.”