Chapter Twenty

CHAPTER TWENTY

T he note came back to me six full moons later , after Zixu's corpse had already been buried deep in the dirt.

It was folded into the same white flower, but the inside was different, the complex map and diagram gone, my annotations erased. Now there was only a poem, written in clean, crisp lines. I could still smell the ink on it.

The moon rises white

illuminating your beauty,

your shadow which wounds me

until my heart's devoured

I stroked the words with my fingertips, as if it were some rare creature that would be scared away. Here was proof that Fanli was alive, that he had returned to Yue in one piece. Then I read the poem again and again to myself, silently, my lips parting around the syllables. I'd studied it before in one of the classical texts he'd taught me, but the memory was dim now. He had dismissed it as too sentimental at the time, rushing through to get to the more political pieces, the ones where every couplet contained twenty different meanings.

I remembered teasing him for it: "Are love poems not important too? Perhaps I will memorize this for when I meet the king."

We were both sitting inside his study. He'd cast me an indecipherable look without lifting his head, his face cast in beautiful shadow. "Memorize something else. Not this."

"Why not?"

But either he had not replied, or I'd forgotten it.

I stared down at the flower. Was it a message? A confession? I felt shaken; the pain in my chest was suddenly overwhelming, more violent than a stabbing. I wanted to run to him. I wanted him to answer me himself, not speak in riddles, in inscriptions, in poetry, however lovely. I wanted to wrap my hands around the nape of his neck and feel the warmth of his skin.

But that was foolishness. I read it once more, memorizing it as I would the date of my own death, then fed it to the fire, watching the folded white petals wither in the flames, the ink slowly melting away.

In the following months I tried to forget the poem, the possibility wrapped within those words, the person who'd written it out. To think of him was like pressing my mind up against a knife: the cold, sharp pain of it; the blood running free. But still I did it, again and again.

The ache in my heart deepened.

I woke up in a cold sweat, gasping.

It was late in the night, some dark hour when the sun hadn't even risen yet. My eyes were blurred with sleep, so it looked as if everything was cloaked in white fog. Sweat soaked my inner robes. The air was ice cold. As I took in great, heaving breaths, I caught on to the tail end of my dream right before it could slip away from me.

I had been dreaming of him. Fanli. We were back in Riversong Cottage, but something terrible had happened. A fire, a flood, some great natural disaster—the details escaped me now. All I knew was that he kept telling me to hide, forcing me onto a boat that looked like it would shatter at any second. It will be safer there , he'd repeated, gazing down at me with those sad, dark eyes, like he knew something I didn't. I had tried to cling to him. My fingers had twisted into the sleeves of his robes, tears springing from my eyes the way they never did in real life. Don't leave me. Even now, my throat felt raw, as if I had actually screamed the words. Don't make me go. I don't want to—please, I don't want to. I had known with a burning, knife-sharp conviction that if I got on the boat, if he let me go, I would never see him again.

But then his expression had turned cold, and he'd demanded that I recite the book we'd learned together word for word, in the correct order. What book? I'd yelled at him, trying desperately to remember. Which one is it? Just tell me. Zhengdan had appeared then too, and the scene changed; we were standing on opposite sides of a river. She was staring at me, her features frozen, her eyes blank as a ghost's. Do you know? Can you help? I'd asked her, but when she opened her mouth to reply, she vomited blood. It gushed from her, unceasing. There was so much of it I could see her skin shrink, her complexion turning blue. Hurry , she'd croaked out between mouthfuls of red. Even the whites of her eyes were shot through with bloody veins. Hurry. You promised—

"Xishi. Xishi, are you all right?" Fuchai was kneeling on the bed next to me, his face open and handsome as ever, yet his eyes were unusually dark. His robes parted at his chest and fell from his shoulders when he moved closer. I could see the tension in his muscles, those hard lines illuminated by moonlight.

"Just a dream," I murmured, rubbing my eyes with my palms. They were nothing new, but they always grew more vivid when I spent the night with Fuchai. Perhaps a product of my own guilt. Still, the dreams had been bothering me more frequently. As if they were leading up to something, something terrible.

My heart, too, had been hurting more than ever. I felt it now, the wrenching pain behind my ribs, so intense that my fingers scrabbled over the front of my robes, feeling for fresh blood, half convinced I had been stabbed in my sleep. There was nothing. Yet still I shivered from the invisible agony, my teeth chattering.

Without another word, Fuchai lifted the blankets and wrapped them around my shoulders. Then he held me. There was no lust in it, no provocation, no ulterior motive—just a simple gesture of comfort. I was so startled I could not speak. Crickets chirped outside the windows, and the blue shadows moved over the walls like souls lost in a ghost city.

"You were crying," he said, lifting a warm finger to my cheek.

To my surprise, I found that my face really was wet. "It's fine."

"No, this is important." In a flash he drew back, his features hardened, the contours of his face sharp and regal. Even in bed, with his ink-black hair rumpled from the pillow, he took on the airs of a king. "Is somebody bothering you? Who? I'll kill them."

I shook my head. He had expressed such sentiments before, and I'd always taken them as proof of his brutality, his ruthless nature. The Wu monsters : From kings to convicts, they were all the same. But now it hit me with astounding clarity that it was the most he could do, the most he considered himself capable of. Like how a cook, when something goes wrong, might busy himself making delicious meals; or how a physician, during a disaster, might offer medical advice.

"I'm fine, really," I reassured him. "Only…" Only sad. But it was the kind of sad that left you hollow, that made every movement feel slow, excruciating, that made all food taste bland. I could not explain it to him, much less tell him why. "It's only my old illness," I said instead. "Some days it hurts more than others."

He made to rise. "Should I call for the physician?"

"No, there's no use." I shook my head, pulling him back down. "If there were a cure, I would have found it by now. And the pain is normally not so bad, when I have other things to distract me."

"It's my fault," he said. He rubbed the small of my spine as he spoke, the warmth of his palm spreading through my robes. "I've been too preoccupied with overseeing the construction of the canal recently; I've neglected you. But don't worry," he went on in a rush. "The canal will be completed very soon, and I'll be yours, every second of every day. What can I do to make you feel better?"

I hesitated.

"Should I behead some servants? Hold a public flogging?"

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "No, that's really… that won't be necessary."

"Then what?" His hand moved to the back of my head, stroking my hair. His eyes were urgent and completely earnest. "Tell me. I will do anything."

It struck me then, what I had to do. It felt as if a wild swarm of hornets had suddenly dove into my mind. I remembered the poem Fanli sent me:

The moon rises white

illuminating your beauty,

your shadow which wounds me

until my heart's devoured

I had been focusing so hard on the lines of this poem when I should have thought about the poem that came after it, the one Fanli had insisted on analyzing in great depth. It told the story of a king who'd secretly disguised himself as a guest to the enemy kingdom's banquet. After dining and drinking all night, unnoticed, he had not left the kingdom gates, but rather stayed just inside them, preparing to launch a secret attack the next morning.

That was what Fanli meant. I had been wrong; he would never be so sentimental. There was always a hidden message, a mission. A purpose. I swallowed a bitter laugh at myself. What a fool I was to imagine otherwise.

"There is… one thing," I began, sitting up.

"What?" Fuchai pressed his lips gently to my exposed collarbone, his eyes meeting mine from under his long lashes. Warmth rushed through my skin at the same time a chill shot through my bones. "I wish only to take your pain away."

I took a deep breath. "What do you say about holding a banquet?"