“Lan,” Zen repeated, and she felt his fingers wrap around hers, firm but gentle. Heat bloomed where his skin grazed hers. “Lan, look at me.”
She did, and the recognition in his eyes felt like coming home: a longing and grief for a part of her history and her identity that she had never known. The air between them had thickened, and for some reason her blood roared in her ears and her heart tumbled in her chest.
Without breaking their gaze, he reached into his black silk pouch. When he unfurled his palm, she almost stopped breathing.
He held a tassel strung with black and red beads, at the end of which rested a silver amulet carved with black flames. A red cord extended from it, meant to be tied into a necklace.
“This is one of the few relics I have left of my homeland,” Zen said, “along with Nightfire and That Which Cuts Stars. It was meant to be a set of earrings, but the other was lost—so I fashioned a necklace out of it. In my clan, it is tradition for us to receive one set of silver earrings at birth, meant to be given away one day.”
In my clan.Her breath caught; she remembered Taub’swords, that most Hin had clan bloodlines somewhere in their ancestries. Most had merely forgotten their own histories as the Imperial Court sought to rewrite it—but not Zen, it seemed.
“Well.” Lan’s lips curved, and she took on a teasing tone, meaning to break the sudden heaviness between them. “Since you have only one of the pair left, you had better choose carefully.”
Zen’s eyes flickered. Gently, he took her hand and turned it so that her palm faced up. Then, carefully, he slipped his other palm over hers. The amulet felt cool as his rough fingers pressed it against her skin. “I want you to have it,” Zen said, “to remember that you are not alone. That you have lost so much, but I…I am glad to have found you.”
Her heart was unsteady; she might have been drunk on plumwine. She looked into Zen’s face, open with earnestness and a vulnerability she had never before seen in him, and in this moment, all the trials and tribulations she had gone through to get here might have been worth it.
Lan lowered her gaze. The red cord of the necklace had somehow gotten caught over their fingers; it draped over both of their interlocked hands, seeming to bind them together. She thought of what Ying had told her of the red threads of fate, of how each Hin was born into this world with an invisible red cord tying them to their destiny.
“Is that all?” she asked. “You wish for me to feel less alone?”
He hesitated, and she could see the conflict on his face, emotions warring with the guard he always put up. Then, without warning, all the layers of defensiveness and distance in his eyes thawed. In that moment, he spoke the words that utterly surrendered himself. “I wish for you to not go anywhere without me. In this world and the next. I wish for you to choose me.” A pause, and softer: “That is, if you would wish it.”
The Teahouse had taught Lan to dread the affections of men; she had listened to enough wistful stories from the older songgirls and glimpsed ample passages of novels to know that it was only an illusion. Greasy, grasping hands, leering gazes, and the exchange of girls for coin were all that her world had shown her. Being chosen had always been something to dread—and there was never a choice in return.
Lan thought of how safe she felt with Zen, how gentle he was with her. How his presence could light up her world and speed up her heart, and how she had come to gravitate toward him like the moon to the sun. Of how his touch reached through the layers of imperfection and tragedy this life had conferred upon her and reminded her of hope.
Of how she trusted him.
All the terrible stories and unwanted memories peeled away from her, and she found within herself an instinct, guiding her like a lodestone.
She pressed his hand with the necklace back to him. “Would you put it on me?” she asked.
Disbelief, followed by relief and a rush of joy, colored Zen’s expression. He leaned in. She heard the hitch of his breath as she swept her hair to bare the nape of her neck. Closing her eyes, she held still and tried not to imagine the greedy touch of the patrons back at the Teahouse.
She felt the cord slide over her throat, the amulet coming to rest, cold, on her breastbone. When the tip of his finger grazed her skin, she started, yet the nausea she had dreaded did not come. Instead, she felt something new. Heat bloomed low in her belly, and desire flamed through her blood.
She dared to open her eyes and found his face inches from hers, his pupils dilated. He smelled of mountain wind and rain and smoke, the scent invoking in her a sense of belonging.
It felt natural for her to tip her head and press her lips tohis.
Even the dim lighting could not hide the surprise in his expression. It gave way to something dark and heady that set her on fire as he drew her to him. Slowly, softly, with hesitation, fingers barely touching her waist as though afraid she might break. Afraid, she understood, that his kiss might conjure memories of what songgirls were made to endure at the hands of Elantians.
Lan reached up and ran a hand through the silky fall of his hair, rain-wet. The taste of him—sharp smoke and starless nights, quiet sorrow and tender hope—washed away the memories of cycles at the Teahouse. Tonight, she was but a girl, being touched by a boy for the first time in her life.
Gently, he drew back. His mouth was soft as he pressed it to her forehead, her left cheek, then her right. His hand came up to cup the back of her head as he pulled her to him. And that was all he did: he simply held her, arms wrapped over her back, their hearts beating the same rhythm in the silence broken only by the whisper of rain outside.
It was in that moment she knew—knew he understood her, more than anyone left alive in this world, and knew that she craved, more than anything, tobeunderstood in a way that none had for the past twelve cycles. Not the kind aunties in the villages she’d wandered through, not the songgirls at the Teahouse, not Old Wei, not even Ying…she had given parts of herself and her past to them, yet she had kept hidden so much more that she herself had not even known at the time.
She was one of the last living practitioners in a conquered kingdom. Daughter of a woman who hid secrets within secrets, a family long gone. And now, the last of her clan’s bloodline, with the ability to wield qì through song.
It wasn’t until she felt Zen’s thumb tracing her cheeks that she realized she was crying—out of the cycles of pent-up grief, the relief of knowing a part of who she was, and the joy ofhaving found someone whounderstood.Looking into Zen’s eyes felt like coming home, like gazing into a reflection of her own face.
Zen pulled her down onto the kàng. She tensed as he reached for her, but he only brushed a hand down the side of her jaw. His eyes were quiet black pools, and tonight was the first time she thought she saw through them: past the wall of ice or the raging flames. Tonight, there was tranquility in Zen’s gaze, the shimmer of something that might have been joy as he beheld her, drinking her in.
They remained like that, lying side by side, gazing at each other and marveling at the small miracle of two lives having crossed, two souls having found each other in this vast world. The paper windows were thrown open to the vast sprawl of mountains and gray skies and thepat pat patof rain, but in this moment, their worlds might have just held each other.
We divide the night sky ecliptic into four regions, each governed by one of Four Demon Gods. Much like a reflection of earth, the skies, too, abide by the laws of yin and yáng, as evidenced in the wax and wane of the moon and the endless cycle of days and nights.
