I can’t bring myself to think of a good enough response. I’m very conscious of the waterfall plunging into nothingness just steps behind me, of the heat of his body between my thighs, of the grip of his hands against my skin.
Yù’chén takes a step in the wrong direction, to the ledge of the waterfall. The red glow of the scorpion lilies illuminates the sharp edges of his features. My fingers tighten against his shoulders as my heart goes into overdrive.
“Let me go,” I say.
He holds my gaze as his eyes begin to glow crimson. “All right,” he says, and with a vicious tug, he tips us off the ledge.
Then he lets me go.
—
I reach for him. I can’t help it; as he spreads his arms, I wrap mine tighter around him and bury my face in his chest.I’m going to kill you,I think as the thrum of his laughter vibrates in his throat.
A cluster of clouds swallows us, and everything becomes a dizzying tangle of shadows. I close my eyes. Just as my grip slips, I feel pressure around my waist, the warmth of hands encircling the small of my back.
The feeling of uncontrolled free fall shifts, just as the wind changes. When my stomach settles slightly, I crack open an eye.
The world is no longer spinning. Yù’chén holds me gently, as if we are in an embrace, shielding me from the cold. Currents of magic pulse from him, heating the air—not spirit energy but dark magic. He’s manipulating the wind, I realize, calling on it in such a way that it bends its will to him, wrapping around us to steady our descent.
“Àn’ying.” His voice sounds in my ear. “Let go.”
I don’t know why I do. Immediately, I spin away from him—but he grabs my wrists, then slowly slides his fingers down to twine them around mine.
The clouds have ended. The world opens up beneath us, and in that exact moment, the moon comes out from behind the clouds, larger than is possible in the mortal realm. Its light spills onto the unending expanse of sea below, casting silver into the waves so they seem to spark with stars.
My breath catches.
“You wanted to see the ocean,” Yù’chén says. He’s watching me, his crimson eyes burning with otherworldly power and magic. A smile curves his mouth, and his face is alight with a joy I have not seen, a look so different from the cynical smirk with which he beholds the world. No, Yù’chén’s eyes dance over my face as he looks at me.
“How did you know—” My words falter as I remember, in the haze after Qióng’qí, his voice calming me.Think of the one wish you hold in your heart.
I wanted to see the ocean, but I always imagined it as it was in Ma’s tapestries: in the daylight, with rays of sun lancing off white-capped waves, filling the waters with every color of blue imaginable.
I never expected my first look of the sea—my firsttruelook—to be at night.
And I never expected to love it.
There is something haunting about the darkness that weaves between the waters, but the way the moonlight threads through it in a delicate dance is nothing short of magic. I inhale the briny scent carried by the wind and find that I am smiling.
We slow, and Yù’chén pulls me to him again, wrapping his arms around me. As he lands, the waves seem to swell to catch each of his footsteps. Around us, there is nothing but ocean; in the distance, the columns of rock that are the Immortals’ Steps rise into the sky.
I place my feet on the surface of the sea. Immediately, the energies of the waves scatter beneath my toes, and I sink inelegantly into the water.
“Ah.” Yù’chén lifts me by my waist, drawing me close so that I’m standing on his feet. By instinct, I wrap my arms around his shoulders. I hear his sharp intake of breath as the fabric of his collar slips and the inside of my wrist brushes against the warmth of his skin. Pressed this close to him, I am afraid he’ll feel the frantic beat of my heart.
Yù’chén shoots me a smile that scatters every thought I have. Searching desperately for signs of land beyond us, I dip my head away as my cheeks heat.
“Hmm,” Yù’chén muses, casting his gaze around. “Theway I imagined it, my companion in a midnight escapade would have mastered the art of qing’gong to walk on water.”
I cast him a scathing look. “I am not your companion in a midnight escapade.”
That wicked grin again. “No? Then what would you call this?” His eyes narrow as his thumb traces a stroke against my waist.He is distracting me,I realize.
“An unfortunate situation,” I reply, and stamp hard on his feet. That wipes the smirk off his face. “I need to get to land.” I dislike how helpless I sound. I can’t do this without him, and we both know it. “I have to find a messenger dove.”
“Or,” Yù’chén says, “one could summon a messenger spirit in the middle of the ocean.”
I stare at him. “Can you?”
