The world grows mute but for the shrill screaming in my head as I pivot toward the open night and the sharp drop into the valley below. My legs move of their own accord: one step, then another. Mercilessly bringing me to the edge.
I raise a foot into empty air.
Dark energies erupt behind me. Scorpion lilies burst from the soil at the cliff’s edge, their vines and leaves twining around my ankles and thighs, rooting me to the spot. A hand wraps around my waist, tugging me backward. Xisenyin’s command surges through me, and I fight until a voice says in my ear,“Àn’ying, stop.”
The present filters back in fragments. The glint of a garnet on a sword pommel, pointed at the two mó facing me. Someone’s fingers digging into my waist, a solid chest behind my back, rising and falling rapidly. And when I turn to look back, Yù’chén’s eyes match the jewel, burning crimson with his power. His canines have lengthened; the skin on his hands and neck has shifted to scales of black and red—an indication of just how much energy he exerted to defy Xisenyin’s command.
“You forget your place, Xisenyin,” he says calmly, but his voice is laced with threat. “Touch another hair on her head and I’ll call in my mother’s bargain.”
My head is light from the efforts of resisting the dark magic earlier, but I latch onto this piece of information. “What bargain?” I whisper, glancing up at Yù’chén.
He ignores me.
Niefuzan has thrown his head back, his body shaking with laughter. Behind him, his mó underlings cower with little chirps of fear. But it’s Xisenyin’s reaction that I will remember later on.
She brushes petals of Yù’chén’s scorpion lilies from her dress, the red turning to white beneath her touch. When she looks up, her smile promises retribution.
“Don’t you know, mortal girl?” the Higher One simpers, her gaze pinned on Yù’chén. “The reason you’re alive and safe, kept in our kingdom like a precious flower in a vase?”
I stare at the sharpened points of her teeth, the way her saliva is still red from my blood when she smiles and hisses, “Hebeggedfor you.”
Yù’chén tenses. “Enough,” he says quietly, but this only encourages Xisenyin.
“Oh,yes.” The Higher One giggles. “He begged her to spare your life. He made her an unbreakable bargain, held by the old magic of our kind.” Behind her, Niefuzan’s underlings titter. “You see now why mortals are weak? You see how easy it is to manipulate one at the mercy oflove? The mó were born without this weakness, and we are all the stronger for it.” She raises a hand, and ice crackles beneath her feet. “Well, Princeling—as much as I’d love to say we dropped by for a bit of fun, there is a reason we came to seek you out.”
“Then spit it out and leave,” Yù’chén snarls.
“Our empress has left for business in the Kingdom of Sky, but she returns tomorrow night. She has requested your presence then. And she has asked us to remind you that she will be expecting the answers you promised her.”
Yù’chén falls silent.
Xisenyin smirks. “It seems you understand. Well, Princeling, if you were desperate enough to invoke the name of our empress, it seems we have overstayed our welcome. Until next time, little flower.”
The air ripples with dark magic, and in a flash of frost and shadows, they’re gone.
—
As soon as we’re back in Yù’chén’s chambers I pull away from him, clasping a hand over where Xisenyin licked me. The feelingof her teeth against the most vulnerable part of my throat has unmoored something inside me.
Worse, the knowledge that she holds at least one of my crescent blades—my most precious possessions and the last items Bà gifted me.
Yù’chén follows me as I rush across the chamber to where the moonlight and wind from outside spills through the open-air terrace. “Àn’ying, wait,” he calls, but I keep running.
Except I have nowhere to go. Outside, the night sky is beyond my reach with the wards over the Palace of the Aurora. And even if I return to the Kingdom of Rivers, there is no escaping this.
“Àn’ying.” Yù’chén approaches. He reaches for my neck, his fingers scraping the bleeding wound there.
“Don’t touch me,” I gasp. I’d tried to think of him as my one ally here, but tonight as I look at him, I can’t help but remember that he, too, is one of them. The red and black scales are gone now, the crimson in his eyes faded to a faint glow, but just the same, he could command me at will. Could make me do things like slit my throat or walk off a cliff.
He draws back. “Let me heal you,” he begins, but I whip out the porcelain shard from the bodice of my dress and point it at him.
Yù’chén’s eyes flick down to it. He’s silent for several moments. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says quietly, but makes no move to approach me again.
I don’t lower the piece of porcelain. “You’ve hurt me enough,” I choke out.
He’s silent for a long time.
Then, slowly, Yù’chén tips his chin back, baring his throat tome. He takes my hand and sets it against the curve of his neck, the sharp point of the shard digging into his flesh. I can feel his pulse beneath my palm, warm and insistent.
