3. Hold That Thought #2
I don’t wait for his response. I can’t. My stomach has seceded from the union, and the rebellion is not going well for anyone involved.
The decorative vase behind the moon viewing pavilion was not designed for this purpose.
I apologize to it anyway.
We have an understanding now, the vase and I. A bond forged in mutual indignity. It’s Qing dynasty, probably. Worth more than most houses. Now it’s a repository for my humiliation and whatever I managed to eat this morning.
The worst of it passes. Eventually.
I lean against the cool stone of the pavilion and breathe. My eyes water. My throat burns. My dignity has retreated to a safe distance and is refusing to return.
Eight hundred years.
I’ve navigated courts and assassinations and three separate attempts by minor gods to end my existence. I’ve survived things that would make historians weep, things that don’t make it into the official records, things I try not to remember when the nights get too quiet.
And I’m being defeated by jasmine and a creature the size of a plum with opinions about floral arrangements.
The vase and I share a moment of silent communion.
Sorry about this, I tell it. You seem like a nice vase.
The vase does not respond. The vase has no opinions. The vase is my new favorite thing in this palace.
I wipe my mouth. Straighten my robes. Consider throwing myself into the ornamental pond out of pure embarrassment.
Instead I walk back to the garden.
Ren is exactly where I left him.
Same spot. Same position. Same careful posture, except—
His expression has changed.
He looks like someone kicked his favorite dragon.
Whatever he was saying, whatever careful speech he’d prepared, lies abandoned somewhere in the air between us. His hands, which had been gesturing earlier, hang at his sides like they’ve forgotten their purpose. And his eyes—
His eyes are doing something complicated. Something soft and frustrated and unbearably tender all at once.
“Sorry.” I gesture vaguely toward the pavilion. “The jasmine and I are having a disagreement. It’s winning.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fantastic. Never better. Definitely not actively negotiating a cease-fire with my own organs.”
He doesn’t laugh.
He should laugh. That was at least moderately funny. Instead he’s looking at me with that expression I can’t parse, the one that makes my ribs go tight for reasons I’m not examining.
“What were you saying?” I ask. “Before I rudely interrupted with my… situation.”
A pause.
The longest pause in the history of pauses. Empires could rise and fall in the space of that silence.
“…Nothing.” His voice is even. Too even. The kind of even that takes effort to maintain. “It can wait.”
He’s lying.
He’s definitely lying.
But my ribs ache and my mouth tastes like regret and the jasmine is still blooming with aggressive romantic intent, and I don’t have the energy to push.
“You’re sure?”
Another pause. “I am sure.”
He’s not sure. I can hear it in the careful way he’s not moving, not reaching for me, not doing any of the things his body clearly wants to do.
Something in my chest pings. A warning I’m too tired to interpret.
I let it go.
I shouldn’t let it go.
I let it go anyway.
The afternoon light has shifted while I was communing with the vase. Shadows creep longer across the garden, and the jasmine scent has faded to something almost bearable now that my stomach has finished its revolutionary activities.
Ren moves to the stone bench. Finally. I lower myself beside him with the careful movements of someone whose body has become untrustworthy terrain.
We don’t talk about what happened.
I don’t even know what happened.
He’s not telling.
The silence stretches. Comfortable, mostly. But there’s something underneath it—a tension I can feel, like a held breath, like a question that didn’t get asked.
“You’re quiet tonight,” I observe.
“I am always quiet.”
True. But this is a different quiet. This quiet has weight.
I should push. I should ask. I should make him tell me what he was trying to say before the jasmine staged its attack.
Instead I watch the light change. The sun sinks toward the garden walls, painting everything in shades of amber and rose. It’s beautiful. It’s ridiculous. It’s the kind of evening that belongs in poetry, and I’m sitting in it with vomit on my breath and a headache building behind my eyes.
Romance. What a concept.
A sound from behind the pavilion. Soft, rustling. The particular quality of something small and furred and entirely too pleased with itself.
Dumpling appears from around the corner.
Orange. Smug. With paper stuck to his face like he’s discovered the world’s most entertaining decoration.
The cat sits down directly between us, radiating the satisfaction of a creature who has found something interesting and intends to share whether anyone wants him to or not.
“What—” I start.
Ren moves.
Fast, for him. Reaching down to remove the paper from Dumpling’s face with fingers that are careful, deliberate, like the paper matters. He smooths it once, twice, then tucks it into his sleeve before I can see what it says.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.” His voice is perfectly level. “Palace correspondence.”
“Palace correspondence.” I look at Dumpling, who is grooming himself with an air of profound innocence. “That the cat found. And brought to us. Stuck to his face.”
“The wind carries things.”
“The wind is very literate, apparently.”
Dumpling pauses his grooming to stare at Ren with an expression that, on a human face, would be called knowing. Ren stares back. Neither of them blinks.
Something passes between them. Some understanding I’m not part of.
I’m too tired to investigate.
But that paper—something about the way Ren handled it, the careful smoothing, the quick concealment—tickles at the edge of my awareness. I saw writing on it. Careful brush strokes. Before he hid it away.
My eyes are heavy. The bench is hard but Ren is warm beside me, and the evening has gone soft around the edges.
Dumpling has found my lap. A warm weight of orange fur, purring contentment. Between the cat and the shoulder and the light fading gentle over the jasmine, I drift toward something that might be sleep.
“Earlier,” Ren says quietly. “In the garden. Were you—”
“Mmhm.”
I’m not listening. I should be listening.
His shoulder is right there.
And I’m so tired. And at some point between one breath and the next, I stop fighting the weight of my own head.
I don’t mean to fall asleep. Certainly not on him. But my eyes close, and his shoulder is warm, and the jasmine smells almost sweet now instead of sickening.
I let myself rest.
Just for a moment.
Time moves strangely in the space between waking and sleeping.
I’m aware, distantly, of voices. Ren speaking to someone—the low murmur of a servant being dismissed, the soft pad of footsteps retreating. His shoulder shifts slightly beneath my cheek, adjusting, making room.
His arm comes up to settle around me like a question he’s not brave enough to ask.
I should wake up. I should talk to him.
I don’t wake up.
Dumpling has repositioned at some point. A warm weight against my stomach, purring with the contentment of a creature who has claimed territory and intends to keep it. The sound is oddly soothing. The warmth is soothing. Everything is soft and distant and safe.
Voices again, later. Ren’s, low and careful: “She is resting.” Someone else’s, apologetic, retreating.
Then silence.
His hand moves—almost touches my hair, then stops. I feel the hesitation like a physical thing. The want and the restraint. The question he’s not asking.
Stars are out now. Bright points scattered across the darkness.
I surface just enough to notice them, to register the chill of night air and the warmth of body heat, and then I sink again.
“Ren?”
My voice is rough with sleep. The word barely formed.
“Mm?”
“Were you trying to tell me something earlier?”
The question floats up through layers of exhaustion, strange and displaced.
Was he? I remember jasmine and nausea and the endless parade of courtiers who’ve suddenly decided I’m worth knowing.
I remember him starting to say something—careful and formal and very Ren—before my stomach staged its rebellion.
A pause.
Long enough to build a small empire in.
“Nothing that cannot wait.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am sure.”
He’s not sure.
I can hear it in the careful way he’s holding himself, in the tension along his arm where it rests against my back. In the silence that follows my question like a held breath.
Something in my chest pings again. That warning. The one I keep ignoring.
But my eyes are heavy. And his shoulder is warm. And the world has gone soft around the edges, all jasmine and starlight and the steady rhythm of his breathing beneath my ear.
I let it go.
I let it go.