It takes me a while to get out of my dress—a wedding gown, torn and shredded in places, that I don’t remember putting on.The spring water is hot, vaguely fragrant with the sharp, spicy tang of a flower I can’t place. I close my eyes and let myself sink into the heat, the ache of my muscles and my fatigue setting in, the fog in my mind darkening with the steam that envelops me.
When I climb out of the spring, a small silver-lined tray has appeared next to me. It sits in a patch of red oleander that wasn’t there before. Folded atop it are a towel and a beautiful silk shift, a steaming cup of tea, and a delicate little platter of cakes and sliced fruit.
I dry myself and slip on the nightgown. It falls to my ankles, a gorgeous deep violet that yields to corals at the bottom, reminiscent of dawn or dusk. Small silver stars are stitched into the bodice.
The heat of the spring bath has left me parched, so I reach for the tea. As soon as it coats my tongue, a feeling of wrongness strikes me—before it’s hidden by the cloying sweetness of the drink. As it swirls down my throat, that hot, euphoric bliss surges again in my chest. The moon and stars overhead seem to enlarge, and the glow of the scorpion lilies expands.
The world tilts as I make my way inside. It’s dark beyond the gauze curtains, and the uneven stone smooths into obsidian beneath my feet. It’s only by the red light of the flowers inside that I can see anything at all.
“Àn’ying?” My host spins from a futon at the foot of his tall, curtained bed. He freezes as he catches sight of me.
“Who gave you that?” he asks sharply, but I can’t answer, because the entire chamber is spinning and I can no longer move forward. It feels as though I’m stuck in a dream. When I’m next aware, I’m in his arms, and he’s carrying me across the room. As he places me gently on the bed, I’m seized by a sense thatsomething terrible will happen when I wake—if I don’t hold on to him now.
I reach for his hand. He tenses in surprise, but he doesn’t pull back.
Instead, he sits down next to me. With his other hand, he brushes aside a lock of my hair. That faint crimson glow—traces of his magic, I find myself thinking—is draining from his eyes, like a sunset turning to night.
I have the feeling I am falling into those eyes.
Slowly, I sit up and lift my hands to his cheeks. His skin is made of the same warmth as mine, yet I marvel at the way the faint moonlight worships him. He holds very still as I explore his face. His eyes, too, roam my face, yet when he raises them to meet mine, I am unprepared for the wave of emotion that crashes into me.
Because I can’t have you, but I can’t stop wanting you.
I draw back, my heart thundering against my chest. “I know you,” I whisper.
He stares at me. A hundred emotions flicker across his face. “You’re drugged with oleander nectar,” he says quietly. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know you,” I repeat, with more conviction.
It takes several breaths before he responds. “You know me,” he echoes. His fingers dig into the sheets of the bed.
I take his face in my hands. Focus on a single image, the red of his gaze burning into my mind. Close my eyes, trying to catch the fleeting, shattered memories through the fog in my head.
Red.Red.
A wedding gown. A banquet, paper lanterns…my betrothed.
The name comes to me in a rush, all at once.
“Hào’yáng.” Yet even as I speak it, a different set of memories surface. The shimmer of dragon scales. A prince beneath the sea. A lotus in the sun.
My eyes fly open. The face before me is not the one in my memories of sunlight, water, and laughter. No—the face before me is bathed in half darkness, lit only by the cold light of the moon, eyes tainted with that eerie, otherworldly crimson.
For the first time tonight, my host’s composure shatters. He reels back sharply, but I don’t miss the devastation in his expression as he turns away from me.
“I’m sorry,” I begin. “I’m so sorry—”
“Don’t,” he says. He grips the bedpost, his knuckles white, his back to me. Only the rise and fall of his shoulders tells me that he is breathing.
“I’m so sorry,” I try again, but he cuts me off.
“Please, Àn’ying.” He won’t turn to look at me. “Please, stop.” Then his voice changes. It pitches low, magnifies, filling the chamber and my mind.“Rest, Àn’ying.”
Darkness fills my consciousness. I try to fight it, try to call out to him—a name on the tip of my tongue—but my thoughts are blurring, my eyelids too heavy. As the world fades, my dreams rush by in a torrent of crimson flowers and soft whispers and the gentlest of red gazes, swallowed by the dark.
12
Yù’chén
