My guardian in the jade.
My dearest, oldest secret, passed to me from my father.
I look up at Yán’lù. Then I spit in his face.
For a moment, he’s so frozen in his shock and fury that itmight have been funny. But when his hand whips across my cheek, I see white and feel my face slam into the soil.
When feeling returns to me, I’m lying on the grass, head spinning, blood pooling in my mouth. Yán’lù’s knife is pressed to my collar. He drags it onto my chest, then down the plane of my stomach. Lower. “I’m going to humiliate you,” he snarls, and there is a mad glee to his words. “I’m going to humiliate you until you wish you’d drowned in the ocean that day.”
He lifts his knife, and that’s when the darkness behind him moves. Between one blink and the next, Yán’lù’s dagger spins out of his fingers…and simply vanishes.
“Talk to me again abouthumiliation,” comes a deep, familiar voice.
There’s a sickeningcrack,followed by a shout, and suddenly Yán’lù is sprawled on the ground, his leg twisted at an odd angle.
The figure that steps from the shadows is utterly terrifying and utterly beautiful—a combination I did not know could coexist until I set my gaze upon him in this very moment.
In the moonlight, Yù’chén’s deep crimson cloak takes on the color of blood. He hasn’t drawn any weapons, but there is something cold and completely lethal to his gaze and his gait, the way he falls very still when his eyes land on the five men pinning me down. The air around him seems to crackle, and I realize it’s his spirit energy rolling off him in thunderous waves.
He’sfurious.
“If I were you,” he says, “I would let her go.”
The biggest and bravest of Yán’lù’s cronies opens his mouth to talk back. What comes out instead is a scream.
Something thuds to the grass. I catch sight of fingers and nails, and my stomach turns.
Whimpering, the candidate brings his bloodied stump of an arm to the dim moonlight. “Y-y-you cut off my hand,” he stammers, and then his voice rises to a scream.“You cut off my hand!”
“Leave any fingerprints on her skin, and it’ll be all your hands as well as the softest, smallest parts of your bodies,” Yù’chén replies, his tone still low. His sword is at his side, a dark liquid staining its steel. “If I were you, I’d grab your leader and go before that happens.”
The others flinch away from me as if I’ve burned them. They scramble, hauling Yán’lù up by his armpits and dragging him away from us. The one who’s lost his hand stumbles after them, keening.
“Wait,” Yù’chén says.
They obey, freezing like rabbits.
Yù’chén half turns to them. Half his face is in shadow. “Touch her again—if I even get awhiffof you near her—you’re all dead. I don’t care what the Precepts dictate. I will kill you. And I will make it hurt likenothingyou’ve felt before.”
Yán’lù’s lackeys haul him away, fleeing like dogs with their tails between their legs.
Yù’chén turns to me. He lays his sword down on the grass and, with his hands raised, approaches. I flinch as he crouches by my side. He says nothing, only rakes a gaze down my body. Fury pulses from him in waves.
“You’re bleeding.” His voice is harsh, but softer now than moments ago. He extends a hand, then hesitates, his fingers curling an inch from my skin. “May I?”
I don’t have the energy to resist. In my silence, he touchesa finger to my jaw and lifts my face. I see the tightening of his lips as he takes in the cut Yán’lù opened on my cheek.
“I can heal it,” he says. “Do you want me to?”
Yes. No.I don’t know anymore. Of all the candidates here, he is the most dangerous. I am meant to revile him. But the fight leaves me when his fingers slide across my face and his palm comes to rest against my cheek.
I close my eyes and nod. The warmth of his skin and spirit energy flow into me, and my muscles relax. His other hand is on my shoulder, supporting me, injecting heat into my clothes and my body, drying the water from the river. It feels so good.
“Àn’ying. Àn’ying, don’t fall asleep.” His voice pulls me from the ocean of blackness. I’m slumped against him, my chin tucked against the crook of his neck, my body shielded from the wind by his. “You’re in shock.”
His thumb traces circles against my cheek; his other hand is warm against the small of my back. I realize it’s no longer his spirit energy but his demonic magic that’s spreading through my veins, hot and slow and delicious in a way that makes me feel good for all the wrong reasons. My head is foggy, as though I’ve drunk an entire carafe of plum wine, but between the rising heat in my belly and the strange desire closing my throat, I remember a fact about the mó: how their dark magic is designed to lure mortals to them, to poison our minds like a drug and draw us to them even as they devour us. It’s sickening, but in this moment, I can’t seem to remember why.
I tip my head back and press my palm to his cheek, turning it to mine.
