Heng took several deep breaths.“Much better.You are a talented man.”
“That’s what your mother keeps telling him,” Xi said with a chuckle, “but you know Lian.He never listens to compliments.”
“Very true, but my mother does not say what is not true.”Heng sat up.“Min, allow him to cure you.”
“I do not require the assistance of outsiders with their strange magics,” Min snapped.“Not even Master Teacher Bo can remove poison from the body.I do not trust these Americans with their weak magic.”
Heng frowned.“You have seen the proof with your own eyes.”
“I cannot see into your body to see the damage that one might have done,” she shot back.She sat up, her hand braced against the wall.“I will allow my body to heal naturally.”
“Magic is natural,” Heng said.“Do not allow your fear to rule you, Min.”
“I am not afraid.I am also not blindly trusting.”
Leander didn’t like the vitriol on Min’s face.He sent his magic out into the air, dancing with the traces of flora that existed everywhere.The frame of the bed remembered being a tree.The sheets carried hints of bamboo growing in muddy soil.But then Leander found the night-scented lily, not in Min’s direction, but toward the dresser.
Leander stood, and the quiet argument between Heng and Min fell silent.“What are you doing?”Min demanded when Leander walked to the dresser.“Stay out of my possessions.”She hurried to him, shoving him to one side.Leander yielded rather than get in a physical fight with Heng’s friend.
“Why do I sense the poison in there?”Leander demanded.
Heng stood.“Are you certain?”
“Absolutely,” Leander said.“And I do not sense any poison in Huang Min.”He crossed his arms and dared her to contradict him.Given she’d leaped across the room and shoved him aside, she didn’t have many symptoms of the poison that had left Heng miserable.
She looked from Leander to Heng and back, her eyes narrowing in fury.
“Min, what have you done?”Heng whispered, his voice full of horror.
“I hoped it would bring us closer.We were here, and you did not choose my bed.”
“I would not dishonor you so,” Heng said.
“Yet you take your qidi back after he has taken a wife and fathered a child.His life is back with his wife’s family, with his family.He should not be here.”
“He has no family.You know this.I told you of this.”Heng held out a hand as if trying to placate her, but her fury only grew.
“You told me you were done with being a qixiong, yet your parents hosted a ceremony and you have done nothing to stop them.”
“They wished for a grandson, and Lian has given them one.”
Min slapped away Heng’s hand.“I could give them grandchildren.There would be space in the Nie home for us to have a half-dozen children, and yet you reject me.”
Heng stepped back, his own anger bubbling to the surface.“I told you I was dedicating myself to cultivation.I cannot seek a relationship while I seek to distance myself from worldly matters.You know this.You were a cultivator before you sought worldly knowledge.”
Min threw her hands into the air.“You encouraged me to believe you would follow.I gave up my place in the school for you, and I was left working for a man who treated me worse than his donkeys.And I accepted my role.I believed the universe would lead me to my success.Only then did you come out of the school for him.For them.”She poked her finger toward Leander and Xi with such violence it was clear she wished she had a sword in her hand to stab them.“You came to search for outsiders when you never once came to see if I had a safe home in the outer village.”Her voice rose until she shouted and spit flew.
“I never wanted to interfere with your choices.”
“I made choices for you!Always for you!”She threw herself forward and punched Heng with both her fists on his chest.He toppled over backward onto the bed, and she ran for the door, shoving Xi out of her way before fleeing into the hallway.
“Whoa.That was a lot of drama,” Xi said softly.“So, does that mean she murdered the pill master or did she just take inspiration from his death and my near-death to...I don’t know...what was she doing?”
Heng had fallen on his bed, and now he sat up.“She had been nursing me.I imagine she hoped I would feel grateful.But I do not know if she was responsible for the poisonings back in the village.She certainly sounds jealous enough to poison one of you.”
“Me,” Leander said softly.He understood jealousy that crawled into a person’s heart and destroyed everything it found.“Xi got sick because he touched the basket, but she hoped to kill me.”
“I feel like a great fool.”Heng pushed his hair away from his face.“I thought she was a friend.”
