His hands grip my waist, pressing me tightly to him as he turns us around and sets me gently against the bed of silks without breaking us apart. His body covers mine, but he suspends his weight on his elbows so he does not hurt me. I tighten my legs around his hips and wrap my arms around his back, burying my face in the crook of his neck. I have the feeling I am falling into an endless night of stars with him holding me.
I find that I am no longer afraid. I capture his lips with mine and arch into him, running my hands down the contours of his back and feeling the ridges where he bore lashes to gift me my sewing box. I touch the hard planes of his stomach, the wound there healed from his fight with the mó outside my house and then with Yán’lù—all for me. An ache builds inside me as I think of all he has gone through for me, and all the times I have pushed him away because of what he is. The way he touches me now, the way his lips trail my skin and he holds me like I am his end, leaves me no doubt as to how he feels, as to why he did all that he did for me. And the least I can do is give him one last truth.
I dig my fingers into his hair and press into him, the closest I can be to him. “Yù’chén,” I gasp, and then I lose myself in him.
He shudders against me, a noise breaking from his throat, and I cling to him as I give myself over to him, to the knowing that from the very start, there was only one way this could end.
Yù’chén shifts to lie down beside me and draws me against him, pressing butterfly kisses to my cheeks, my jaw, my neck. But my gaze is drawn to the window behind him, the way the moon has climbed halfway into the starlit sky. Its light spills on Yù’chén, frosting him in a beauty that is impossible and impossibly cruel, because I know the moon worships him, and I know the moment it rises to its highest and I will have to leave.
“You’re thinking.”
I blink, pulled back to the present by Yù’chén’s voice. He watches me through those long lashes, like strokes of ink, his fingers absently tracing the curves of my lips. My throat knots at the way he looks at me, his eyes bright with joy.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he says.
I brush my hands against his cheeks. “I’m thinking about you.”
His lips pull up in that grin, the one I remember from the very first day we met in that clearing in the mortal realm. He takes my hand, threads his fingers through mine, and brings it to his mouth. His lashes flutter as he kisses my palm, his touch sending shivers up my spine.
“Àn’ying,” he murmurs, his lips grazing my skin, his breaths hot on my hand. He hesitates, then lifts his eyes to mine. He is no longer smiling. “In any other life…if I weren’t mó…” He swallows. “Is there a chance that you would choose me?”
I tip my head back and search his eyes. No more masks, I realize; no more charm and flirting, cruel smirks and teasing.Beneath it all is a yearning that I know with my own heart, that all humans share.
Why is it in our natures to want that which we cannot have?
I know my answer. I’ve known since he risked his own life to protect me from that stray mó, or perhaps when he saved my sister from death by trading his own health…or perhaps even earlier. The debts I owe him run through my mind in an endless tally, and for a moment I can’t breathe against the waves of guilt threatening to drown me.
I want you to look at me and seeme.
I touch a finger to the corner of his mouth, recalling the easy way it stretched into a grin. Trace my hand over the sharp curve of his cheeks, the long lashes and dark brows, and think of the charming young practitioner draped in red I met in the forest.
“Yes.” The word unfurls from me in the softest whisper, barely a sigh. He freezes, shock blanching across his face, and I sit up, unable to meet his eyes, because it is breaking me. “I have to go.”
“Àn’ying—wait—” He catches my wrist and pulls me against him, wrapping his arms around me so tightly that I feel the gallop of his heart against mine, hear its rhythm beat out all the words unsaid between us. He buries his face in the crook of my neck, and I feel his muscles coiled so tensely he’s shaking.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers hoarsely. “I’m sorry. I—I just…I just want to hold you for a few more moments.”
My eyes burn.I can’t,I think.I can’t.The fates have granted us a crossroads on the two paths we walk, paths that were never meant to meet. Maybe, under different circumstances,in a different lifetime, the stars would have been kinder. Maybe I could have loved him without knowing it would burn down the world.
But meeting the right person at the wrong time, the right love in the wrong life, is a tragedy written from the start.
Yù’chén exhales. He seems to be fighting something, fighting himself, and it seeps through the cracks as he untangles himself from me. “Go.” He smooths my hair and fixes my dress, button by button. He dresses himself, then picks up my two blades on the bed and hands them to me. “Go, and be happy, Àn’ying. Promise me you’ll be happy.”
In that moment, I’m not sure I can feel joy again without tasting this sorrow.
Yù’chén slides us off the bed. He picks up two more crescent blades. Kneels at my feet and slides them back into their sheaths at my thighs, then presses two light kisses on me there. When he reaches the final two blades, he slips them into the sheaths on my arms and draws back. We stand like this, gazing at each other, the distance between us an abyss as we race toward the end.
“Forget me, Àn’ying,” he says at last.
The words taste like ashes against my tongue. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t. I’m not worth it.” His eyes search mine, and something like shame, like resignation, crosses them. “Àn’ying, I want you to know…I’m so sorry for what the Kingdom of Night has done to your realm.”
I give him my last truth. “We’re going to fight back, Yù’chén,” I whisper. “There is a resistance brewing against the Kingdom of Night. Hào’yáng and Shi’ya have planned it and gathered allies in the Kingdom of Sky. We will return to themortal realm to declare war, and Hào’yáng will fight to take the throne.” I press my hand to his heart. “I’m going to make a safer world, for mortals and for halflings alike. For you.”
So that, in your next life, you can have the right to fall in love with whomever you wish.
So that, in his next life, Fán’xuan can roam the realms as free as a bird.
