More and more appeared—popping out from pavilions and corridors, bringing gifts and trinkets and welcome.
And with each person’s arrival, Lucien grew worse.
My skin burned where I clutched him as if I pressed my hands to a bubbling kettle about to blow. Dozens of staff in earthy-coloured clothes crowded us, oblivious to how dangerous Lucien was.
But Whisper knew.
He snarled and chased, prowling around Lucien and me, creating an island where his master couldn’t be touched.
“He has his father’s eyes!” A gardener—by the looks of his soil-stained hands—beamed.
“He looks exactly like Jin Ashfall!”
“Where have you been, Master Luxin?”
“Why didn’t you come home sooner?!”
Their voices collided into a rising wall of noise, never knowing that the prodigal son who’d returned home had been a lonely prisoner for most of his life.
Lucien staggered against me, his hand clamping over his metal-trapped heart as if he was moments away from incinerating. Heat coiled off him in thick, blistering waves, warping the air—
“Please,” he panted against my hair. “You have to make it stop.”
Memories of the ice plunge where I’d found him in Cinderkeep haunted me.
He needed that.
He needed a blizzard—an arctic storm to blow out his pain.
He groaned again, fumbling for my hand.
I winced as his fingers wrapped painfully tight around mine.
My own agony made everything warp and shiver. I was only standing by sheer stubbornness and a lifetime of surviving constant nausea and headaches.
Locking everything down, I stopped trying to be polite and shouted rudely over the babble of voices. “It’s been a long day! Can we do this another time? When Lucien is washed and fed and rested?”
“Oh goodness, what are we doing?!” The woman Lucien had called Auntie Mei lamented, cutting through the crowd like a tiny scythe. “Of course.Of course. Where are our manners? Ofcourseyou’re tired. Come.” She shooed a few girls away—pretty girls who couldn’t take their eyes off Lucien.
My hackles rose at their obvious interest, followed by another punch of pain.
“This way.” She bowed a little and pointed toward a corridor that swept high with winged eaves, flanked by lily-pad dotted ponds.
Black specks danced on the edges of my vision as I stepped forward, hoping Lucien wouldn’t pass out before we were behind closed doors. “Come on,” I murmured. “Let’s go.”
His scarlet-ringed eyes found mine, tight with discomfort. “Don’t stop touching me.”
“I won’t.”
Forcing himself to walk, he slung his arm over my shoulders. I knew he used me as a crutch, but I couldn’t help throwing a glance at the girls who fancied him, hoping they saw, hoping they understood, that he was mine and no one else’s.
His arm spasmed around me as we made our way toward the open-air corridor and Auntie Mei who was waiting.
Her face fell as she finally took note of the state Lucien was in. How sweat rolled down his cheeks. How he trembled uncontrollably. How the air felt uncomfortably warm around him.
“Are you...are you okay, Xiao Lu?”
Xiao Lu.
