Chapter 18 Àn’yīng #2
Niefuzan speaks now as he takes a step forward. “You are familiar with the punishment for traitors and those who inflict harm upon our kingdom, Princeling. Justice must be served.”
Yù’chén’s gaze falls on me. Not for the first time, I cannot read his expression. “I’ll be right there,” he says quietly.
“No,” I whisper, but behind me, the branches of the scorpion lilies are twining over my neck, my arms, my bodice, wrapping me into the passageway of flowers. I reach for him, but he pulls away. “Yù’chén—”
Flowers clamp over my lips, silencing me. Yù’chén lets me go, the flower passageway takes me in, and I’m ensconced in a gentle darkness and the soft glow of scorpion lilies.
—
I’m released into his chambers. When I turn around, the passageway of scorpion lilies is shrinking into his doors.
I spring forward, but I’m met with hard obsidian.
I call his name and pound on the doors, but there is no answer.
He isn’t there; he is far away, somewhere out there in the Court of the Aurora.
Being punished for my actions.
I sink against the door, holding my blades to my chest.
And I wait.
—
I don’t know how long it is before I sense movement in the chambers.
I’ve spent the passing time restlessly, cleaning the blood from my hair and dress, turning my crescent blades over and over between my fingers.
In the dark, it is easy to summon memories: of the blankness to Yù’chén’s eyes as he was whipped for stealing during the Immortality Trials; of the way he bore Sansiran’s torture the night she invaded the Kingdom of Sky.
The mó thrive on fear and pain, he told me.
The slowly shifting stardust in the obsidian doors ripples suddenly, and the chamber fills with a flash of red, the thick scent of flowers—and blood.
I hear someone breathing.
I’m on my feet in an instant, blades in my hands as I approach the doors. Beyond the moonlight spilling in from the gauze curtains, I make out a crumpled form in the shadows by the farthest wall.
Only the wall is not a wall anymore but a shifting curtain of shadows and dark magic. Beyond is…another room. A desk, it appears, a futon…and a figure lying on the floor.
I step across the threshold, and I’m in an adjoining chamber, one I never knew existed until now. Compared to the decor of the Palace of the Aurora, with all its flowering trees and open skies and wilderness, this room resembles one from the mortal realm.
Bookcases line the walls, filled with gilded vellum tomes and trinkets resembling the ones from my father’s study: horsetail-hair brushes and inkstones, porcelain teacups and a lacquered-wood box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A sprig of dried peonies, a frayed tassel of blue silk.
Remnants of the mortal realm. Of Yù’chén’s life when he lived in the Kingdom of Rivers as one of the emperor’s bastard sons.
Yù’chén lies on the floor, halfway to the futon. Blood smears the floorboards, forming a trail from where he entered.
I kneel by him. In the near-darkness, I can only make out his back, the rise and fall of his shoulders as his breaths come fast and shallow.
This must be why the wall between our chambers yielded today—because he isn’t strong enough for his dark magic to maintain it.
“Yù’chén?” I touch his arm, intending to flip him over, but he winces. When I lean over him, I see why.
His shirt is a bloody mess, shredded to strips of fabric clinging to flesh that has peeled from his body. Dark veins run through his skin as his magic works to heal him, stitching his flesh together and smoothing over the wounds until his skin glows like moonlight again, perfect and unmarred.
And I realize that Yù’chén, whose skin has always looked sculpted, does not bear any marks of his suffering. His skin will make itself over, night after night, in time for Sansiran and her court’s fits of rages to split it open again and again.
He doesn’t acknowledge me as I turn him onto his back. I summon my spirit energies and trace a healing talisman on his chest. My hands shake, and I press my palm to his heart as the talisman activates, my spirit energies glowing gently in the dark.
His breathing eases; his lashes flutter. “àn’yīng?” His whisper is hoarse as his gaze settles on me. His demon’s gaze, terrifying in its black and red…yet, now, familiar enough. I don’t look away. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“You’re hurt.” My throat knots. And it’s my fault.
“I broke a rule.”
My heart clenches. He broke a rule for me. “How often does this happen?”
He closes his eyes. “Leave me.”
“I’m not leaving,” I say.
Yù’chén opens his eyes again. His gaze is very dark as he stares at me.
“Is this where you’ve been?” I gesture around at the chamber. It’s clear to me now that this room and the one I’ve been staying in are all part of the same chambers—his chambers.
He nods.
“Why did you make a wall between us?”
A humorless chuckle. “You might’ve thrown all my teacups at me if I hadn’t, considering how much you hate me. I couldn’t risk you destroying my collection.”
“I don’t hate you,” I say.
He falls silent.
“Are these…from your life back in the mortal realm?” I’m struggling to make conversation, something I’ve never been very good at, if only to break the tension heating the air between us. In one corner is a cherrywood bathtub, perhaps enchanted to be filled with gently steaming water.
I grab one of the towels on the tray next to the tub, wet it, and turn back to Yù’chén.
He’s still watching me, his expression inscrutable. “Yes.”
In the half darkness, the chamber might have been one from a noble manor of the Kingdom of Rivers. I press the towel to his face, dabbing at the blood. He only blinks, his gaze unmoving from mine. “Do you miss it?”
Wordlessly, he nods. I move the towel to his throat, down to his collarbone, and then I begin to clean his chest, peeling the strips of fabric away. Beneath, his skin is already as perfect as if the wounds never existed.
Yù’chén grabs my hand, stopping me. “Don’t.”
The distance stretches taut between us again, unspoken words filling the silence between our heartbeats.
I set the towel down in my lap. “You’ve saved me more than once, yet I can’t help you when you need it?”
He’s staring at the ceiling, his lashes fluttering. Fighting unconsciousness. “Don’t do this to me again,” he mumbles, and I realize he’s close to deliriousness. “Don’t…make me think you care, give me hope, and then leave again.”
“Who said I was leaving?”
“You always find a way to leave,” he replies quietly. “I know you never wanted this, forced to be here with me in a land the sun never touches. So tell me you hate me, that you’re only using me. Tell me I’m a monster that repulses you.”
I taste each sentence he speaks on the tip of my tongue, insults I used to hurl at him without question and without remorse.
But I find, now, that they are only shadows of what once held true.
“You are my ally,” I say firmly, “and I need you to be strong so we can face Sansiran together tomorrow. So let me heal you.”
The expression that crosses Yù’chén’s face is one I have never seen him wear.
He looks…afraid.
I summon my spirit energies and begin tracing the talisman for healer with my fingertips on his skin.
I’m slow, steady, my eyes never leaving my work.
After some time, his labored breathing eases, and then his muscles relax, and the scales, the scars, the tremors—they vanish with each stroke of my hand.
The only thing that never changes is his gaze on me, unwavering as an arrow in the dark, slowly setting fire to my veins.