Yù’chén grabs my hand, stopping me. “Don’t.”
The distance stretches taut between us again, unspoken words filling the silence between our heartbeats.
I set the towel down in my lap. “You’ve saved me more than once, yet I can’t help you when you need it?”
He’s staring at the ceiling, his lashes fluttering. Fighting unconsciousness. “Don’t do this to me again,” he mumbles, and I realize he’s close to deliriousness. “Don’t…make me think you care, give me hope, and then leave again.”
“Who said I was leaving?”
“You always find a way to leave,” he replies quietly. “I know you never wanted this, forced to be here with me in a land the sun never touches. So tell me you hate me, that you’re only using me. Tell me I’m a monster that repulses you.”
I taste each sentence he speaks on the tip of my tongue, insults I used to hurl at him without question and without remorse.
But I find, now, that they are only shadows of what once held true.
“You are my ally,” I say firmly, “and I need you to be strong so we can face Sansiran together tomorrow. So let me heal you.”
The expression that crosses Yù’chén’s face is one I have never seen him wear.
He looks…afraid.
I summon my spirit energies and begin tracing the talisman for healer with my fingertips on his skin. I’m slow, steady, my eyes never leaving my work. After some time, his labored breathing eases, and then his muscles relax, and the scales, the scars, the tremors—they vanish with each stroke of my hand.
The only thing that never changes is his gaze on me, unwavering as an arrow in the dark, slowly setting fire to my veins.
19
Àn’ying
Palace of the Aurora, Kingdom of Night
When I wake, I am in the bed. The drapes are fluttering, and across the chamber, Yù’chén is gone; he has not put up the wards to his side of the room. It must be around midday—I can now tell by the position of the moon and stars in the sky.
I recall what Yù’chén said last night about missing the sun, and I’m suddenly filled with a yearning that makes my heart ache. I can’t imagine living here for a decade, half a lifetime, after having known the warmth, fires, and laughter of the mortal realm.
I make my way to the crystal spring to bathe and dress. When I return, Yù’chén is waiting for me.
He’s wearing his crimson cloak again. It brings out the flush to his cheeks and his mouth, and I suddenly have the feeling I’m with that red-cloaked practitioner I first met in the bamboo forest of the mortal realm.
“Good morning,” he greets me.
“Good morning,” I reply after a beat, studying him.
Yù’chén clears his throat. He seems to be working up the courage to say something.
At last, he asks: “Would you have lunch with me today?”
—
He leads me to his part of the chambers this time. Beyond his study is a dining space overlooking his open-air pavilion. The gauze curtains have been pulled back, revealing the scythe moon and the mists rolling through the vast, empty night of this realm. I find that the sight I’d thought eerie just weeks ago feels less so now, warmed by the soft light of lamps in the study.
Yù’chén draws out an intricately carved rosewood chair—one of two placed at the matching table. I trace a finger over the patterns as I sit: dragons and phoenixes, lotuses and clouds—all emblems of the imperial family in the Kingdom of Rivers. The dishes he has had prepared are simple but plentiful, and again I spot some of my favorites from the banquets during the Immortality Trials. Egg stews steam gently from clay pots, glutinous rice balls glisten from atop spreads of bamboo leaves, and rounding out the spread of delicacies is a pot of tea and two porcelain teacups with little patterns of flora and fauna similar to the one I smashed on my first night here.
Yù’chén takes his seat across from me. There is a new, tense air of courtesy between us; neither of us has acknowledged what happened last night.
Something twists in my chest, and I blink away the image of him lying on the floor, alone and bloodied, barely breathing. “Thank you for this,” I say aloud. “It reminds me of home.”
The edges of Yù’chén’s eyes soften, and his mouth pulls in a tentative smile. It brightens his entire face. “I’m glad. It reminds me of the mortal realm, too.”
