“Greed,” Zhengdan replied at once, with a curl of contempt in her voice. I wondered if she was thinking of the village men throwing themselves at her door, how their eyes lingered on her figure, how they called after her whenever she walked the streets. “Possession.”
“Absence,” I said, after some thought.
Fanli looked at me and made a silent gesture for me to continue.
“We are most tempted by what we cannot have. Men will dream of the mountains they have yet to scale, the rivers they have yet to set sail upon, the plains they have yet to conquer. They are told from birth everything belongs to them, and so when something does not, they view it as a personal challenge.” I thought about it longer. “But also, from a distance, everything looks more beautiful; we are better able to conjure our own fantasies about them. Sometimes the fragrance of a feast is better than the taste itself.”
“Absence,” Fanli repeated, and nodded. He stood, began to walk in slow circles. “That is true enough. And that is what you must keep in the back of your mind when you are with King Fuchai. More than any man, he believes he owns the world. Do not fall straight into his arms. It is too easy; he will grow bored within days. He is more likely to be intrigued if you keep him reaching for you. And every time he believes he is close, close enough to touch”—he held his hand out toward me, and for one foolish moment, I wondered if he would do something like brush my hair from my cheeks—“you pull away. Again and again.” His voice was low. For the first time, I noticed there was a faintly hoarse quality to it. “Until he is consumed by thoughts of you.” He withdrew his hand, a snap of the sleeve, and resumed walking.
I swallowed. My skin was hot from the flames, yet there was another, more potent heat rising behind my ribs. Absence. The forbidden object, the thing you cannot have. Why had I said it, and said it so easily? Where had the answer even come from?
Zhengdan nudged me. I startled, a strange, guilty flush spreading through my skin, though I had not done or thought anything wrong.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered while Fanli’s back was to us. “You have an odd look on your face.”
“Nothing,” I whispered back.
She squinted, then pointed at me. “You’re turning red—”
“I’mnot—”
“What’s the issue?” Fanli asked, whirling around.
I quickly shook my head, remembering everything he had ever taught me about controlling my emotions. I imagined my face as a frozen lake, hard stone, blank and impenetrable. Perhaps it worked, for he asked nothing more.
I was returning from the dining hall that evening when I saw the candlelight flicker in Fanli’s room. A shadow moved.
I did not know what slowed my steps. The sky had already darkened to a heavy purple, the air sweet and cold the way it is when it approaches nightfall, and I was eager to stretch across the comfort of my own bed, to sleep my exhaustion away. But instead, I crept closer. The sliding lattice door had been left ajar just a sliver, and through the gap, I saw Fanli just as he lowered himself to the floor.
My heart skipped.
It was only him inside, his ink-black hair glistening wet from the bath and running freely over his shoulder. I had never seen him with his hair out of its usual high knot before. He was facing the other direction, and as I watched, hardly breathing, he shrugged himself free of the thin white robes he’d been wearing. A sound rose in my throat, though I quickly squashed it down. He could not know that I was here, what I had seen. The entirety of his upper back was exposed, from the shoulder to the column of his spine to the narrow curve of his waist, but that was not what made me freeze.
His back had been split into a brutal map of scars. They looked obscene against his skin, which was otherwise smooth and delicate as first snow. Each was the rough width of a whip, and all were old enough to have faded into a darker, purplish shade. There was no order to them, where they started and ended, nothing but evidence of blunt violence, pain inflicted for the sake of pain.
Then he dipped his fingers into a jar of ointment, the motion rehearsed, routine, and began the labor of rubbing it slowly into his ruined flesh. The strong scent of herbs wafted toward me where I stood, like flower fragrance but more bitter, with a biting edge. My nose stung from it, and my throat prickled. Yet for all Fanli’s efforts, he could not quite reach the scars running through the center of his spine. After a few attempts, stretching his body this way and that, he gave up completely with a just-audible sigh.
I considered stepping inside and offering to help. But then I would have to explain why I had stopped here in the first place, and I would surely wound his pride.
While I weighed out my options, he suddenly stiffened, then whipped around. I tried to duck out of view, but he was too fast.
“I know you’re there,” he called. “Come in.”
I entered, feeling like a thief who had been caught by the very master of the house they intended to rob. It felt more difficult than ever to maintain control over my facial muscles, even after so many lessons. My guilt and shock must’ve burned like a flame in my gaze.
“Sorry,” I stammered out, unsure where to look. In the time it took me to step forward, he had already finished dressing, a black outer cloak thrown on over his robes, a broad sash tied tight around his waist. But the sight of the scars was seared into my mind. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Spy on me?” He said it without accusation.
I said nothing. My mind was racing with questions: What had happened to him? Who had done it to him? Whodaredto? Did the scars still hurt? Did anybody else know about them? Was I the first? A wild, dangerous impulse seized me. I imagined myself tracing those jagged lines with my fingertips, pressing my lips to the wounds. Would he flinch away from me? Or would he break his own rules and let me stay? Then I gave myself a shake; it was like being doused in cold water. These were not things I should be wondering. What was wrong with me today?
“I can hardly blame you for the spying,” Fanli continued. “It’s what you’ve been trained to do. My main complaint is that your presence was too obvious. I should not have discovered you at all.”
“Next time, I will be sure to…” I paused.Spy on you more silently?That hardly seemed like the right response.
His mouth twitched. But despite his calm demeanor, I noticed that he held himself with more care than he usually did, as if hewere guarding a secret. At the same moment, I noticed that we were alone. Alone, and in his room, which I had never visited before. The awareness of this struck me like flint.
“Let’s both forget about it and get to the point. Was there something you came here for?” he asked, studying my face.
