I’m on my feet in an instant, blades in my hands as I approach the doors. Beyond the moonlight spilling in from thegauze curtains, I make out a crumpled form in the shadows by the farthest wall.
Only the wall is not a wall anymore but a shifting curtain of shadows and dark magic. Beyond is…another room. A desk, it appears, a futon…and a figure lying on the floor.
I step across the threshold, and I’m in an adjoining chamber, one I never knew existed until now. Compared to the decor of the Palace of the Aurora, with all its flowering trees and open skies and wilderness, this room resembles one from the mortal realm.
Bookcases line the walls, filled with gilded vellum tomes and trinkets resembling the ones from my father’s study: horsetail-hair brushes and inkstones, porcelain teacups and a lacquered-wood box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A sprig of dried peonies, a frayed tassel of blue silk.
Remnants of the mortal realm. Of Yù’chén’s life when he lived in the Kingdom of Rivers as one of the emperor’s bastard sons.
Yù’chén lies on the floor, halfway to the futon. Blood smears the floorboards, forming a trail from where he entered.
I kneel by him. In the near-darkness, I can only make out his back, the rise and fall of his shoulders as his breaths come fast and shallow.
This must be why the wall between our chambers yielded today—because he isn’t strong enough for his dark magic to maintain it.
“Yù’chén?” I touch his arm, intending to flip him over, but he winces. When I lean over him, I see why.
His shirt is a bloody mess, shredded to strips of fabric clinging to flesh that has peeled from his body. Dark veins runthrough his skin as his magic works to heal him, stitching his flesh together and smoothing over the wounds until his skin glows like moonlight again, perfect and unmarred.
And I realize that Yù’chén, whose skin has always looked sculpted, does not bear any marks of his suffering. His skin will make itself over, night after night, in time for Sansiran and her court’s fits of rages to split it open again and again.
He doesn’t acknowledge me as I turn him onto his back. I summon my spirit energies and trace a healing talisman on his chest. My hands shake, and I press my palm to his heart as the talisman activates, my spirit energies glowing gently in thedark.
His breathing eases; his lashes flutter. “Àn’ying?” His whisper is hoarse as his gaze settles on me. His demon’s gaze, terrifying in its black and red…yet, now, familiar enough. I don’t look away. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“You’re hurt.” My throat knots.And it’s my fault.
“I broke a rule.”
My heart clenches. He broke a rulefor me. “How often does this happen?”
He closes his eyes. “Leave me.”
“I’m not leaving,” I say.
Yù’chén opens his eyes again. His gaze is very dark as he stares at me.
“Is this where you’ve been?” I gesture around at the chamber. It’s clear to me now that this room and the one I’ve been staying in are all part of the same chambers—his chambers.
He nods.
“Why did you make a wall between us?”
A humorless chuckle. “You might’ve thrown all my teacupsat me if I hadn’t, considering how much you hate me. I couldn’t risk you destroying my collection.”
“I don’t hate you,” I say.
He falls silent.
“Are these…from your life back in the mortal realm?” I’m struggling to make conversation, something I’ve never been very good at, if only to break the tension heating the air between us. In one corner is a cherrywood bathtub, perhaps enchanted to be filled with gently steaming water.
I grab one of the towels on the tray next to the tub, wet it, and turn back to Yù’chén.
He’s still watching me, his expression inscrutable. “Yes.”
In the half darkness, the chamber might have been one from a noble manor of the Kingdom of Rivers. I press the towel to his face, dabbing at the blood. He only blinks, his gaze unmoving from mine. “Do you miss it?”
Wordlessly, he nods. I move the towel to his throat, down to his collarbone, and then I begin to clean his chest, peeling the strips of fabric away. Beneath, his skin is already as perfect as if the wounds never existed.
