Poppy slowed, staring upward. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“It is common in the South,” Mingxi said, voice gentle in the stillness. “My clan keeps several groves for meditation and warding rituals.”
“It feels… ancient.”
“It is.”
She watched him carefully as they walked. His injury might have eased, but exhaustion clung to him—shoulders too tight, breaths too shallow, blink slow and heavy. The bamboo forest’s filtered light washed over him in pale gold, making the shadows under his eyes stark.
“You need to rest more,” she said.
“We rested.”
“You rested as much as a fox spirit who refuses to sleep can.”
He huffed a breath—not quite a laugh. “It is not refusal.”
“What is it, then?”
He hesitated, and then he quietly continued, “When I sleep deeply… the shadows find me first.”
Her breath caught.
He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t have to.
“Mingxi,” she said softly.
She saw how his hand trembled, just faintly, as he brushed it against a bamboo stalk for balance. The night’s wound. The death-magic fatigue. The sleeplessness. And the weight he never let anyone see.
“You’re shaking.” Poppy stepped closer—not touching, but near enough that if he faltered, she would be there. “You don’t have to walk alone.”
He swallowed. “You should not say things like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” he said, voice low, “I will believe you.”
A shiver spiraled through her.
They walked together in silence for a long stretch, moving between massive pillars of bamboo. Every so often, the wind brushed the canopy, sending a soft rolling whisper through the stalks—a voice-like sound, ancient and tender.
Mingxi leaned once, barely, but Poppy caught the movement, placing a hand at his elbow before he could right himself. He exhaled, defeated.
“You see too much.”
“Only because you let me.”
Through the mist, she saw his profile soften.
“I trust you,” he said simply.
It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t even confident.
It was honest, startlingly so.
The bamboo swayed, a long sigh of green and light, as if the forest recognized the moment for what it was. A breeze whispered through the bamboo, stirring a shiver of pale-green light. Poppy kept close to Mingxi, ready to catch him if he stumbled again.
Then something brushed her ankle, very soft, very smooth, very wrong.
