Chapter Thirty-Four Dark Side

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

DARK SIDE

I storm through the palace on my recently healed feet, scythe striking the stone paths, as dawn breaks beyond the surrounding mountains. A sense of unreality hovers around me, making me wonder if I’m still dreaming. In what world would Yizhi betray my trust so grotesquely? It has to be a fabrication by Qin Zheng to mess with my mind.

The soldiers guarding Yizhi’s residence freeze up when I advance toward them. They look utterly stumped about whether to stop me as I stumble up its front steps.

“Move aside!” I command.

They do.

I trace the familiar path to Yizhi’s bedroom and pummel his locked door with my armored fist.

“Who is it?” His sleepy voice stirs from within.

“ Me ,” I say, steady as I can despite the tremors wracking my body.

There’s the sound of fabric shuffling, then his footsteps approach at a rapid pace.

“Your Highness?” Yizhi opens the door, his gaze alighting briefly on my masked face before he remembers to avert it.

My chest tightens around my thumping heart at the sight of his free-flowing hair and thin night robe, which he’s holding closed with one hand. A sight once reserved for our most intimate moments. I wish I could forget what I discovered and return to that simpler time when it was just us against the rest of the world.

But I will not leave without answers.

“Yizhi, what was really in the shots Doctor Hua gave me?”

I catch the instant he stops breathing, the second his body goes still as stone.

“What makes Your Highness ask?” he says, perfectly plainly.

Spots crowd my vision. Air shudders in and out of my lungs. “Zhang Yizhi, were those shots full of hormones so you could…so you could steal my eggs ?”

It sounds so ludicrous when said out loud. Yet instead of recoiling in confusion, Yizhi opens his mouth for a few seconds, then closes it without a word.

Nausea roils through me at the thought of doctors lying in wait for me to slip into a dream session with Qin Zheng, then sneaking into my chamber to perform procedures on my unconscious body. I recall the time I woke up feeling so horrible that Qin Zheng breached the glass divider in his insistence to know what was wrong. That was the night, wasn’t it? He didn’t freak out because he cares about me; he was worried the doctors had accidentally broken his favorite toy.

“Zhang Yizhi.” I jut the curve of my scythe against his chest and push him deeper into his room. “Zhang Yizhi, please, please, please do not tell me there’s a woman out there pregnant with mine and Qin Zheng’s spawn.”

Yizhi trips backward, robe falling open, until he hits a wall of wooden planks where the sliding door to his balcony used to be. A precaution against assassins, I assume. Did he ever consider that I could be the one to put a weapon through his chest? That I could use my armor-boosted strength to shatter his ribs with this scythe and leave him choking on his own blood?

“Say something!” I shriek.

“The gods gave us an ultimatum,” Yizhi says in a voice so small I almost don’t hear him over the pounding pulse in my head. “And I couldn’t bear the thought of you being forced to carry a baby.”

“So you lied to me? Had a meeting with two other men to decide how to breed me like cattle without me knowing?”

“That is not how I think of you.” He places a hand on my scythe, but makes no effort to pry it away from his chest.

“No, you just think I don’t deserve to know what’s being done to my own body! Because I’m too difficult to deal with, right? Too unreasonable? Too unstable?”

This would be easier if he raised his voice to match mine, entered a screaming match with me so we could tear each other limb from limb. Yet he remains impossibly, chillingly calm, as if he were no more than a machine pretending to be human.

“I knew you would’ve been tormented over the option to have another woman bear the pregnancy,” he says. “So…I made the decision in your place.”

My blood goes boiling hot while my skin chills to ice. “Why did you just assume that’d be a discussion I couldn’t handle?” I scream. Then, after a hesitant beat, I add, “Did it work?”

His bottom lip quivers. “Yes.”

My scythe slips from my grasp. It clatters to the floor with a massive, resonant sound. I brace against the wall to keep myself from collapsing.

There is a woman out there pregnant with mine and Qin Zheng’s baby. I will become a mother without having had any choice in the matter. Not even the option to end it by stabbing myself in the womb.

“It’s a staffer I trust, Auntie Wei.” Yizhi’s voice carries over the ringing in my ears. “She’s had two children before, so it won’t be hard on her. She’s being well taken care of. Her family received a new apartment in a prime location.”

For a moment, I seriously consider killing Yizhi. I could sharpen the blade of my scythe and lop his head off.

The more rational part of me immediately recoils from the idea. A glimpse of his bed at the corner of my vision sends a splintering crack through my heart and across my psyche. There, beneath his covers, I once felt so safe as we held each other. I laughed and kissed him while indulging in my deepest desires, not caring how the world would condemn me for it, from that awkward, fumbling first time to knowing each other’s bodies with practiced ease.

How could that boy from my happiest memories be the same one now ripping me apart?

I’m at a loss, yet the answer is obvious, literally right in front of me in the form of his Brotherhood tattoos. I always knew he had a dark side. I just never thought he’d turn it on me . Foolish, foolish me.

Does he even understand why what he did is unacceptable? Or does he think it’s all right because he did it to spare me pain?

Numbness spreads through my limbs like I’m bleeding out. I can’t stop shaking my head. “Yizhi, you realize what you did, right? You betrayed my trust. You lied to invade my body. You violated me. You know that, right? We can’t come back from this. Ever.”

The worst part is how resigned he looks, as if he’s been preparing for this moment for a long, long time.

“I know,” Yizhi says, no louder than a whisper. “I knew.”