Shao Qing’s throat bobbed. “What I mean to say is, there are rules and expectations here I’m not used to. You’re the only one from...beforethat I can meet.”
“I see,” Zhi Lan said. Perhaps he wanted a respectable excuse to travel and see his fellow thieves. She folded her hands and thought it over. The arrangement would not be an unpleasant one. “I suppose you could come with me. It would be beneficial.”
Shao Qing looked up hesitantly. “Beneficial?”
“You’re wealthy now. And you’re willing to support my painting,” she conceded. “It’s a practical decision.”
He frowned, looking almost offended. “I suppose it is.”
She raised a teasing eyebrow. “You know, a thief once told me the practical way for a woman to get what she wants is to marry into wealth.”
Shao Qing leaned back into the tree trunk, gazing at her. His face was serious when he said, “I won’t be opposed to marriage.”
Zhi Lan felt hot. The conversation had veered further than she had expected. “I-I didn’t mean to suggest that. Don’t tease me.”
He covered her hand with his, lacing their fingers together in an intimate gesture. Zhi Lan stopped breathing.
“One of the interesting things about having a soul,” Shao Qing said softly, “is that it tells me exactly what it wants. And mine wants yours. Alarmingly.”
Zhi Lan looked up at him, speechless. Had he been putting on romantic airs all this time? Her heart pounded at the thought. A memory resurfaced. The dragon had first come to her after being released from its scroll. She originally thought that it was fickle and playful, butthis?
As much as she and Shao Qing had been through, they’d known each other for less than a week. That version of him no longer existed. Did he truly want her now, or were his feelings skewed by the sudden return of his soul? Perhaps he still wasn’t thinking straight.
Zhi Lan began to withdraw her hand. “Are you certain?”
Shao Qing recaptured it. “Souls cannot lie.”
She swallowed. It was ridiculously flattering and her heart was beating fast from pure, nonsensical joy. Still, she didn’t want Shao Qing to choose her if he didn’t truly mean it. She wouldn’t want to impose on him, and she respected herself too much to allow herself to be deluded.
“I confess I’m not sure who you are anymore,” Zhi Lan finally said.
The young man before her was nothing like the thief she had known. She wasn’t sure how to consolidate the two.
“Stay and I can show you.” Shao Qing leaned close. Zhi Lan’s breath caught when she saw the depth of feeling in his eyes. Carefully, he lifted her chin. She knew what was to come next.
His lips met hers. She leaned into him, seemingly on instinct, unable to hold back a sigh when he deepened the kiss. It was more restrained than their first, but she felt this more acutely. When Shao Qing withdrew, his eyes were full of promises that made Zhi Lan blush.
She raised a hand to her mouth. She would let him kiss the rouge off her lips. Because curse him, she had painted it on for his sake.
“Scoundrel,” Zhi Lan said without heat.
Shao Qing smiled.
He was certainly in better spirits now. Zhi Lan realized she wanted to know this lighter version of him. Even if the version she’d known had been tortured, contrary, and soulless, Zhi Lan knew that at his core, Shao Qing was truthful and honorable. He had stuck by her when he didn’t have to. He was capable of compassion, with and without his soul.
When Zhi Lan had stepped through the gates, she expected this to be their last meeting. After this confession, however, she no longer had the heart to leave him—perhaps she never did.
“Who has ever heard of a magistrate’s grandson marrying a farmer’s daughter? I’ll be your concubine at best and I’d rather avoid that title,” Zhi Lan finally said. It was her one last objection, though a weak one at that. He already had her.
“I don’t think my father objects. And...I prefer you as my wife.”
Zhi Lan’s heart stuttered. She had vowed once to never marry a man for money’s sake, and yet here was a man with money asking to marry her, and she was not unwilling to be with him.
Had her principles changed? No. Only her circumstances.
A smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “I won’t tell you no. But I would like to go home and paint first.”
“Whatever you wish for, wife.”
