The world narrows, and I remember the first day we met in that forest clearing, his beautiful smile and the ethereal way the sun kissed the edges of his profile. I think of when he saved Méi’zi’s life from sickness in my house; of when he fought off that mó, protecting me with his own body. How he was the one to pull me back, one memory-infused black feather at a time, from that endless despair I felt on waking in his realm; the pain he endured from Xisenyin and Niefuzan because I’d broken the rules.
Bà told me once when he handed me my eighth and strangest blade, Heart:Sometimes, Àn’ying, the heart knows before the mind.
I’m moving toward Yù’chén before I can think, my hand outstretched toward him. He blinks, then reaches for me.
Our fingers slide through one another.
Different realms, I remember.
Yù’chén lets out a sharp breath. He flicks his wrist. Another black feather drifts down from the air, and then, with a ripple of darkness, Yù’chén’s shadowcrane appears. I feel its presence as it approaches me; feel the brush of its soft feathers as it envelops my forearm with a great wing.
Yù’chén’s eyes flash; the shadowcrane’s orbs glow, the red intensifying as the air heats with their dark magic. The dark tendrils in my veins begin trickling toward the shadowcrane’s wings. The tips of its feathers, usually a mercurial shade of silver, darken.
The pain in my bones dissolves, replaced by a blissful coolness.
When the shadowcrane removes its wings, the skin of my forearm and hand are clear.
A lightness fills me, and I suddenly find it easier to breathe.
The shadowcrane gives me one long, slow blink. Then it turns and takes wing into the night, and I’m left alone with the illusion of Yù’chén in my chamber.
He’s staring at me in a way that makes me aware of my own heart pounding, of the air between us thickening with all the lines of fate we’ve crossed to be here tonight.
Then he says, with a sad smile, “I told you, little scorpion, you always find a way to leave.”
Something unmoors within me. I recall his face as he stared up at me from the puddle of blood spreading beneath him, the utter heartbreak in his eyes as he reached for me.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, because it’s all I can offer. He couldn’tleave; I couldn’t stay—and now, finally, this cursed dance of our destinies in this lifetime is nearing its end.
“You asked me why I came,” he continues. “You’ve asked me, on many occasions, why I do what I do for you. The truth is, you changed my life the day I met you in that clearing, Àn’ying. And from that day on, I became very aware of the ironic fate I was trapped in.” He gives a sharp, humorless smile. “I couldn’t imagine a life without you, but there was no part of you that wanted me in yours.”
My heart is cracking, an old, familiar ache.
“So I’ve been learning to let you go,” Yù’chén says steadily. “Ever since you left this realm with him that night, I told myself to let you go. I told myself that you were so happy with him, that you were smiling again, and that you were better off without me.
“But then I saw you in my mother’s vision, heard her plans for you, and I couldn’t do nothing. I told myself that no matter how much you hated me for it, I had to save you. As long as you were alive, it didn’t matter. So I made that bargain with Sansiran—one that would bind me to her but would keep you alive. When you arrived at my side again, I knew how much you despised me, but I just couldn’t help wanting you and hoping for…for something more, no matter what I told myself.
“I was afraid—I wasterrified—of hoping. I wanted you to keep on hating me because the last time I hoped for something more, it broke me. It hurts more to be so close to something and have it taken away—than to never have had it at all.” He closes his eyes briefly. “Despite everything I told myself, despite all the warnings I drilled into my head…I let myself believe.There was a time that I thought you could want me back.” He exhales long. “I suppose that’s the cruelty of hope.”
My own hands are trembling, the hilt of my crescent blade digging into my right palm. It’s difficult to find the words, to find the voice to speak, and I don’t know the point of imagining all these what-ifs and impossibilities…but I know I owe it to him. The truth.
“I did,” I whisper. “In spite of everything, Yù’chén, I did.”
He goes very still. His eyes don’t leave me as I push on.
“I meant what I said to you back in the Temple of Dawn. In another lifetime, if things were different.”
Yù’chén’s expression is inscrutable as he slowly approaches me, each step a countdown until we are close enough to touch.
He stops an arm’s length from me. A realm and a lifetime away.
“It’s a date, then,” he says, and his smile feels like sunrise, like heartbreak.
And for some reason, I know, we are nearing the end.
Softly, he continues: “The truth is, I also came to say goodbye, Àn’ying. The day I met you was the day I learned what it means to be truly alive. You showed me what makes a mortalhuman, how it feels to be afraid and to be brave in spite of your fear; to want to risk everything to protect those you love.” He pauses, and I swear, no one has ever held me in their eyes like he does in this instant. “The mó do not have souls, but I’d like to think if I did, mine would be carved through with memories of you.”
I think of the cold and dark of the Kingdom of Night; the beings in his mother’s court that thrive on cruelty and humiliation. I think of Niefuzan’s words about halflings:I would notdebase my lineage by mixing my ichor with the mud of mortals.And I understand, so much, what Yù’chén means.
