Chapter 17
Ting-zhi was vaguely aware that it was Yun-si who was bringing him to his rooms. Just like he was painfully aware now what exactly was in the wine he had drunk in the palace.
“Master Gu!” she called out, but silence answered her.
His father. Where—
Ting-zhi struggled to remember where his father was, “Ancestors.” he managed. His father was away on a trip to their ancestral home to thank the ancestors, “Rites.”
“You. Go away.” He thought he said it loudly enough, but it came out as a weak croak.
Yun-si didn’t go away. Of course she didn’t. Stubborn woman.
“Go away.” He tried again but the rasp was muffling his words. His vision blurred at the edges. Everything felt too hot, too tight. He tried pushing at her to make his point but nearly fell.
She was trying to help him stand. Her small hands under his arm, around his waist. Too close. She smelled like peach blossoms. Why did she always smell like peach blossoms?
“Hold on,” she was saying, voice tight with worry. “Just a few more steps. I’ll get you to your bed and then fetch the physician.”
Hold on. Right. He was holding on. Barely.
The drug that was slipped into his wine at the palace was turning his loins to fire. Every nerve ending screamed. And Si-er, sweet Si-er with her careful concern and gentle hands, was the worst torture of all.
They made it through his door. Across the room. Nearly to the bed.
Then her foot caught on the edge of the floor carpet.
She fell backward.
He fell with her, unable to catch himself. His weight crushed her into the bed, and her sharp gasp cut through the haze in his mind.
No. No no no no no.
He tried to push up, to get away from her softness, her cool skin. But his arms wouldn’t cooperate. Everything was heat and need and her scent everywhere.
Something wet dripped onto his cheeks.
Tears.
He was crying. The humiliation of it burned almost as hot as the aphrodisiac raging through his veins.
“Zhi-zhi?” Her voice cracked, held the barest hint of a panicked sob. “Zhi-zhi, are you okay? Please don’t scare me. I’ll go get a physician now.”
Must send her away.
The thought was distant. Drowning.
But her scent, that sweet peach fragrance, slammed into him as the aphrodisiac raced through his veins.
His face pressed into the curve of her neck and before he could stop himself, he breathed her in.
Slowly, just breathing in her scent. Slowly, uncontrollably, his mouth opened against her throat to taste more of her.
He began softly, sucking at the side of her throat, so gently that it was barely there.
Just a little, he told himself, even as his body screamed for more.
Just a little. But the side of her throat was so close to her ear, and his lips moved there because it was the most natural thing in the world.
He nibbled at her ears, and felt a tremor pass through her body.
Then her face. Her eyes, Her nose. Then down again, desperate and seeking.
His hand slid higher, over the curve of her breast, and even through the layers of silk, he felt her softness. He cradled her breasts, kneading it, caressing it, until he could feel her peaks stiffen. And he heard Yun-si whimper.
Her hands clutched at his shoulders, his back. Not pushing away. Holding on.
He made a sound against her skin. Half groan, half sob.
He moved lower, desperate to feel her breasts with his lips, seeking more of her skin. But a sharp jerk in his scalp stopped him.
His hair was pulled tight, caught in her ornaments.
The pain carved reason into the muddled fog of his mind.
Stop.
Stop.
STOP.
This was Shen Yun-si. The Chancellor’s daughter. His best friend. And he was destroying her.
“Si-er.” The words scraped out. “I’m alright. Go to your room. Don’t. Don’t let anybody see that you’ve been here tonight.”
He forced himself up just enough to reach for the hairpin tangling them together. It came free. Her hair spilled loose across his pillows. Dark silk everywhere.
His breath stopped.
Only husbands were supposed to see their wives with hair unbound.
Yun-si looked up to see Ting-zhi staring at her hair with a dazed expression. His eyes were glazed, unfocused, but fixed on the dark strands now spilling across his pillows.
He was crying again. Did he know that? Fresh tears tracked down his face, catching the lamplight.
Her heart clenched. She’d only ever seen him cry once, when his mother died eight years ago. He’d stood rigid and dry-eyed through the funeral rites, but wept in his room after.
But now, tears fell freely. Because of her loose hair?
Heat crawled up her neck. Only married women unbound their hair in front of men. Only in the privacy of the marriage chamber. She knew this. Everyone knew this.
His hand still hovered near her face where he’d pulled the ornament free. Trembling. His whole body shook with the effort of holding himself up, holding himself back.
“Ting-zhi.” Her voice came out wrong. Too soft. Too uncertain. “Let me help you.”
“You can’t.” The words were harsh. Raw. He rolled away from her suddenly, putting the width of the bed between them. His back to her now, shoulders heaving with labored breath. “Leave.”
A command. Barely coherent, but desperate.
Yun-si didn’t go.
She sat up on the edge of the bed and watched his shaking back. The lamp threw long shadows across the room. Outside, crickets chirped. Somewhere distant, the sound of a night watchman’s drum.
“I’m not leaving you like this.”
Ting-zhi turned to looked at her and laugh a rugged laugh, then stabbed her hairpin into his left forearm.
Yun-si’s breath snagged in her throat. “What are you—”
“Pain is clearer than heat.” His jaw was set despite the tears still drying on his face. “Go. Now. Before I can’t ask you again.”
She couldn’t move. She stared at the blood tracking down his arm and her chest locked up entirely.
He pressed the tip in again and shouted at her. “GO!”
The door burst open.
Shen Yun-shan stood in the frame, travel cloak still on his shoulders, one hand braced against the doorpost. He had clearly been moving fast. His eyes swept the room in less than a heartbeat—the disordered bed, Yun-si’s hair unbound and tumbling loose, her disheveled clothes—
“Yun-si.” Yun-shan said firmly. “Come here.”
His expression didn’t change. That was the worst part. It simply went still the way a blade went still the moment before it struck.
She stood. Her legs felt strange. She crossed the room and her brother pulled her behind him, putting his body between her and Ting-zhi.
Ting-zhi loosened his tight grip on the hairpin, it dropped unto the bed, and fresh blood spurted from his wound.
Something shifted in Yun-shan’s expression. Still hard. But calculating now.
“You left the banquet,” he said. To Ting-zhi. To Yun-si. To both of them. “I noticed.”
Yun-si pressed her fingers to her brother’s sleeve. “He was drugged. At the palace. Someone put something in his wine and I—I couldn’t leave him.”
Yun-shan’s grip on her tightened by one degree.
Ting-zhi, still sitting on the edge of the bed, pressed his palm to his bleeding forearm. The blood flowed down his arms, leaving dark stains on his sleeves. His head was down, shoulders rigid but shaking.
“Drugged,” Yun-shan repeated.
“Yes.”
Silence stretched between them. Yun-shan studied the blood on Ting-zhi’s sleeve.
The hairpin now lying on the bed. The ruined state of him.
The tears still tracking dried lines down his face.
He looked at the way Ting-zhi hadn’t moved toward her again.
The way he had used her pin on himself rather than on her.
“Make yourself presentable and go to your room,” he said to Yun-si. Quiet. Final.
“But—”
“I will handle this.” His tone allowed for nothing else.
She looked past his shoulder at Ting-zhi, who still hadn’t raised his head.
Then she left, turning her head back at every step for a glance of him.