“You—You’re injured,” I whispered, the words grazing my throat like sand.
He stared down at me, his face strained, eyes black as the night around us. “Ironic that you should mention it.”
“What?”
“You’re bleeding out in my arms as we speak, Xishi.” His voice caught on the end of the sentence. He cleared it, smoothed it out. More evenly, he added, “It would be wiser to worry about yourself first.”
“Why? I don’t look pretty this way?” I managed to smile as I said it, teasing.
He cast me a dark look. “Are you trying to make a joke?”
“No. That’s why I’m important to you. Because I’m beautiful.”
He said nothing for a long time. Almost imperceptibly, his hold on my body seemed to tighten. At last, he muttered, “Well, at least your confidence has not been injured.”
I huffed a soft laugh, then winced; the faint movement drove a black spike of pain through me. Still, I croaked, “Could you not be sweeter to me? Even just a little?”
Something flashed across his face. But I could not identify it. My vision was growing duller, white bleeding into the edges. Everything—the trees blurring past us, the dark sky looming overhead, the salt scent of blood and dirt and old bark—felt farther and farther away as he ran on, drifting beyond reach. We had crossed into some kind of new terrain. The shrubbery thinned out, and the low rush and hiss of waves traveled to my ears. The air felt crisper, damper, cold on my skin. We were on a riverbank.
“Fanli,” I murmured, or at least I tried to speak. My voice was so faint it was little more than air, dissolving in the breeze. “I can’t… keep my eyes open much longer.”
“You have to.” His footsteps slapped over rocks and mud. Something splashed in the water before us; there was the groan of wood, a loud clattering. “Listen to me.Listen.If you die, my…”
But I couldn’t hear the rest of it. The roar of blood in my ears was too loud, drowning everything out. I could only guess at what he’d meant to say.If you die, my great plan will be ruined, my most valuable weapon lost forever. If you die, my reputation will suffer, and His Majesty will never forgive me. If you die, my kingdom will have no savior.More voices rustled past my head. Unfamiliar, but urgent. An incomprehensible mumbling, no more meaningful than the rustle of wind through grass. All I knew was the solidity of Fanli’s presence, the way a red-crowned crane knows the sweetness of the pine trees, or how a cormorant knows the melodies of the river water. He had not let me go. The last thing I saw before myeyes fell shut was his face, its cold, ineluctable beauty pinched tight with concern and hovering over me.
I woke to the world swaying.
My mouth was dry, as if it had been stuffed with a rough cloth, and tasted bitter, like old blood. My whole body felt cavernous. At first glance, I was in a small room of sorts, with a single bed and wooden planks covering the walls. When I tried to sit, a sharp pain speared through my shoulder, and I gasped. Looked down. A white bandage had been wrapped snugly around my wound, a small patch of crimson blossoming from the center. The violence of the night suddenly pressed close against my memory: the arrow that had missed Fanli and caught me instead, the men leaping from the trees like monsters, the sound of Fanli’s breathing hot and harsh in my ears as he ran—
“Xishi-jie! Oh, thank the heavens, you’re finally awake.”
Zhengdan rushed over to my bedside, her bright skirts brushing against the wood. Her face looked more wan than usual, and there was a slight tremor to her hand that had not been there before, but otherwise she looked safe. Unharmed.
I felt a dizzying rush of relief.
“What happened?” I asked. My lips cracked, and my voice came out a rasp.
“Drink this first. Fanli said you would need it.” She handed me a cup of water, still warm. I took a long swig, then another. It was as if I had never tasted water before; it was so sweet, so filling, so soothing down my throat. “Slow down,” Zhengdan chided, her expression torn between concern and amusement. “You’re going to choke.”
I shook my head, not even willing to lift my mouth from thecup to reply. When I had finished every last drop, I set it down again. “Tell me now,” I urged. “Where are we? How long has it been since they attacked?Whydid they attack? Is Fanli all right? Is Luyi?”
“One thing at a time,” she said, scooting closer, a placating hand resting on my hair. It was a gesture that reminded me sharply of my mother, and I felt a deep tug of homesickness in my gut. “We’re on the boat King Goujian had prepared for us. Fanli thinks the attackers had timed it so they could intercept us right before we boarded, to stop us from reaching the Wu Kingdom at all. We set sail a little over a week ago from Xiaoshan.”
“A week?” I shot up, then instantly regretted it. Pain blazed through my stiff muscles like a flame.
“Careful—your wound’s only just closed.” Zhengdan grabbed my arm and helped me shift into a less torturous position. “And yes, you’re lucky Fanli had thought ahead to request a physician to come along with us. Whatever medicine he brewed for you put you to sleep right away. Though for a while…” Her voice wobbled, and she averted her gaze to the bucket below my bed. The water inside was tainted dark red. A blood-soaked cloth hung over the edge.Myblood, I realized with a sickening jolt. “For a while, you were so still… I was afraid you had left us already. Fanli must’ve feared it too, because he… You should’ve seen him, Xishi-jie. I’ve never seen him so—” She shook her head, seemingly unable to find the words. “It was terrifying. He refused to let the physician tend to his injuries, and forced him to focus only on treating you. He has not moved from the place outside your door. Nobody has dared approach him these past couple days, not even Luyi.”
I stared at my hands, my heart quickening, remembering the way he had lifted me as if I weighed no more than a feather and hugged me tight to his chest, even as arrows rained down on either side of us. “Well, of course he was afraid. He has invested so muchtime and effort into training me.” I tried to smile, to play it off as a jest. “If I had died, it would all have gone to waste.”
“It’s not just that—”
The curtain to the room flipped open. Fanli stood in the doorway, the dark moss-green of the river glittering behind him. His eyes widened marginally as he took me in, before he crossed the room in three quick strides. Stopped a foot away from the bed. His fingers flexed in my direction, as if to reach out to me, but he curled them again into a tight fist at his side.
It was to Zhengdan that he spoke. “You could have told me she’d woken.” There was a hard edge to his voice, a faint creep of irritation. If I had not heard it, I would’ve thought Zhengdan had been exaggerating.Nobody has dared approach him.
“Don’t blame her,” I said quickly. “I only just woke.”
His eyes flickered to me, lingering on the bandage covering my shoulder. “How do you feel?”
