That was the thing about Sky. You always knew exactly what he was feeling.
“You’re beautiful,” he breathed.
I smiled up at him, believing him for the first time.
Now I tore hungrily at his clothes, anxious to see the body that was at once both familiar and foreign to me. Familiar because I’d caught him shirtless many times during the war. Foreign because it had never belonged to me. Now I studied him as if I owned him. The solidity of his chest, which was so hard and pale his skin looked like honed marble. The strength of his thighs, which clamped around me as he pinned me to his bed and climbed atop me. If before he had kissed me gently, now he kissed as if trying to possess me, claiming my body as he savored my throat, my breasts, the curve of my waist and hips. The desire once contained to his eyeshad taken over his entire being, lending him a savage, bestial quality. I thought I had known all there was to know about him, but here was a side I had never seen before, a side of him that was neither noble nor princely.
When I rose on my elbows to kiss him, he cupped a supporting hand around my left shoulder, knowing it remained weaker than the other. Sky hadn’t forgotten my old injury from the war; he had recognized how much it still pained me. The thought was like fresh water down a parched throat. I had once believed pain to be private. But now I understood even your suffering could be shared, when someone knew you, knew the entirety of you—the secrets of your hidden hurts and old scars, the fears that kept you restless at night, the way you said one thing but truly meant another.
He eased my shoulder back onto the pillow before bracing himself over me. His eyes were made strange by lust, but still, he was himself. He was the friend who had trained with me every night under the flickering torchlight, who had nursed me back to health after I’d fallen ill with fever, who had kissed me at the front of the anniversary parade, before his father and his family and the cheering hordes of people. Everything he did, he did with intensity. And I, like a creature left out in the cold, found myself drawn to the warmth and brilliance of his temperament.
“Meilin?” he whispered.
“Yes?”
“Can—”
But before he could ask, an abrupt knock sounded against the bedroom door.
“Your Highness,” said his manservant Hanbing.
“I told you I was not to be disturbed!” Sky snarled with uncharacteristic impatience.
Hanbing coughed. “It’s your mother.” Even through the door, I could hear the discomfort in his tone. “She wishes to see you.” A pause. “It was not a request.”
Sky groaned and rolled off me before going into the adjoining washroom. I heard the sound of water splashing in the basin, before he emerged several minutes later, cheeks still flushed but otherwise sober-minded.
“You should get changed,” he told me. “My mother can be…nosy.”
Now it was my turn to sigh. He left first, and although he kept his voice low, I could hear the bickering nature of their discussion.
I had no desire to meet Sky’s mother like this. But conversations of this sort would soon become my duty as Sky’s wife.
Sky’swife. The first consort of the Imperial Commander. The words were so foreign they felt like an entirely different language. As if I couldn’t understand the meaning of them. As if I couldn’t even form the syllables in my mouth.
Fear twisted like a serpent in my stomach.
You want this. You want this more than anything else in the world. Remember, that’s why you fought so hard for the throne. So you’ll never be forced to kowtow again. So you’ll never see your name defamed in the official reports, the credit for your hard work stolen by another.
So you’ll be remembered as your own person, by your own hand.
It was no longer the dragon’s voice in my head. No—it was my own.
As I left the room, I did not wonder why the two had begun to sound the same.
Nineteen
One must remain vigilant in preserving qi as a summoner. For when a spirit depletes their vessel entirely of his life force, full control becomes inevitable. In such a state, the spirit may manipulate their human vessel as a puppet master commands a marionette. Thus, death is the only escape.
—Lost Journals of an 8th-Century Lixia Scholar, date unknown
The next day, with Winter’shelp, I made certain Consort Caihong made it safely out of the city. She was to travel with a wealthy marchioness who was returning to her hometown in eastern Anlai. Consort Caihong, who would now be simply known as Caihong, would serve as her lady-in-waiting. She was vastly overqualified and far too pretty for the comfort of most noble ladies, but the marchioness was wealthy and widowed, and she claimed Caihong’s beauty was a feast for the eyes.
On the morning we parted, Caihong wore plain gray linen robes, nothing like the fine attire she’d once donned as imperial consort. And yet her beauty was so brilliant it felt like staring into the sun. I wanted to say this, to compliment her, but I wondered if she’d grown tired of being praised for her looks.
“You look well,” I said instead.
“I’m nervous,” she confessed in a low voice, as we waited for the marchioness to climb into her carriage.
