He looked away. “It is a Guardian’s way. We rest lightly. Never fully. Never safely.”
Her chest ached.
“Mingxi… that’s not living.”
“It is duty.”
“No,” she whispered. “It’s loneliness.”
Something flickered through his expression—sharp, unguarded.
She reached out, brushing her thumb along his jaw. “You deserve rest. Real rest. A place where you’re safe. Where someone is watching over you.”
His breath caught almost imperceptibly. “Last night helped,” he admitted. “It quieted… everything.”
“But you still didn’t sleep.”
“No,” he said. “I could not allow myself to.”
“Why?”
His voice softened to a confession, barely audible. “Because if I slept, I might not feel you here. I might wake and think you were gone.”
Her heart hit her ribs hard. “Mingxi…”
He shook his head as if clearing something too raw, too honest.
“It is foolish.”
“It’s not,” she whispered. “It’s… human.”
He looked at her then, truly looked, as if trying to understand the shape of the tenderness she was offering, and Poppy cupped his cheek.
“I want you to sleep someday. I want you to know what peace feels like. I want you to know you’re safe.”
His breath stuttered, and the air in the pavilion shifted. Not with danger, but with energy. A subtle charge rippled through the room, brushing her skin like static before a storm.
“Mingxi?” she whispered.
His eyes widened—not with fear, but recognition. “Poppy… wait—”
Light flickered along his spine, a faint spark and then a slow, rising glow.
“Mingxi—”
He shuddered once, sharp and contained. Poppy saw it ripple through his frame, the way a vibration travels through a drawn bowstring. Behind him, his four tails lifted, slow and deliberate, as though answering something she could not hear. Poppy’s breath caught.
“Mingxi—what’s happening?”
His voice was tight. “You… are what’s happening.”
The glow intensified, wrapping him in soft gold. Nothing about it seemed harsh or violent. Instead, it seemed healing, balancing. Becoming.
Foxfire welled beneath his skin, shimmering like molten dawn. The air around them warmed, rippling outward in glowing waves that made the wooden beams hum. Then light gathered behind him. One glowing thread. Then two. Then dozens twisting together like strands of spun sunlight.
Poppy pressed a hand to her mouth, astonished at what she was witnessing. “Mingxi…”
The threads wove themselves into shape, slow, deliberate, sacred—until a fifth tail hung suspended behind him in pure gold light. Then the tail solidified, fur blooming from the light itself in soft, radiant strands.
