Chapter Forty-Four The Push, the Pull

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

THE PUSH, THE PULL

When my senses find their way out of the darkness, my skull throbs and pounds as painfully as after I disconnected from the Yellow Dragon in midair. Translucent red silks stream through my vision, flaring out from a circular bronze frame on the ceiling. My foggy mind takes a few dazed seconds to register that I’m lying in full armor on the big bed in my residence that I hardly ever use.

Qin Zheng lies beside me on the massive round mattress, eyes shut, chest rising and falling with a heavy rhythm. Bandages encircle his neck.

I’m vaguely aware of Lingyue, the staffer who replaced Wan’er as my assistant, leaping to her feet at the bedchamber desk, giving a raised-fist salute, and bolting out the huge room’s double doors. But I don’t take my eyes off Qin Zheng. Every tendon in my body tenses to the brink of snapping, as though I’m next to a live bomb. And he might as well be one, considering the wrath he’ll unleash once he wakes up.

I break into a cold sweat, thinking of the full depths of what Yizhi did. Did he make it out of the palace? If he didn’t, Qin Zheng will execute him by The Hammer, no doubt.

Did Yizhi weave the ruse to…protect me?

I run my hand over my fake pregnancy. Qin Zheng was con-fident that Yizhi loved power more than me because he went behind my back to deceive me, but Yizhi had been deceiving Qin Zheng even longer. He played us against each other. An emperor and an empress, mere puppets on his strings.

I can’t forgive Yizhi for making me a mother against my will, and yet, if Qin Zheng had been free this entire time…I don’t want to imagine how different my life would be.

Maybe I should start imagining it, though. No barrier exists anymore between me and Qin Zheng. He can do whatever he pleases to me, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to stop him. Especially if my message about the truth of our world actually spread on the networks before the gods caught me.

There’s something absurd about being terrified of someone unconscious beside me. He looks so vulnerable with those bandages around his neck. After almost half a year without the sun’s touch, his skin is so pale it’s nearly translucent. His eyes quiver behind his eyelids, and his brows furrow at whatever he’s dreaming about. When he’s lying still like this, not making smug remarks or death threats, there’s a cold, frail sort of beauty to him. He is a living paradox, so invincible until he’s not.

If only Yizhi had pushed his dagger a little deeper. It would’ve destroyed our best hope of taking down the gods, but…

My arm slides across the smooth red sheets. My throat seals up. I reach for Qin Zheng’s neck.

His hand seizes my wrist.

As I sit paralyzed in place, his eyes open with agonizing slowness, scanning our surroundings before focusing on me. Without letting go of my arm, he makes a laborious effort to sit up. I resist the compulsion to cower from his gaze. He will punish me for fighting him for Yizhi’s sake. I just don’t know how yet.

“Your Majesty!” Sima Yi barges through the doors and falls to his knees on the long carpet in front of the bed’s elevated platform. “Thank heavens you’re awake!”

“Where is he?” is the first thing out of Qin Zheng’s mouth. Shivers race down my spine at the chill in his voice.

Sima Yi’s throat bobs up and down. “Gone through the tunnels, along with Doctor Hua and the doctor’s family. But rest assured that I’ve assembled a task force dedicated to capturing them!”

Qin Zheng presses his fingers to his forehead. “What did that mutt unleash on me?”

“A nerve gas, Your Majesty. By our scientists’ analysis of the residue, it should leave your systems by tomorrow and not leave any permanent damage.”

“A nerve gas ,” Qin Zheng echoes.

“It’s a neural toxin in the form of—”

“Yes, I inferred.”

Sima Yi drops his forehead to the carpet. “Forgive me for not seeing Zhang Yizhi’s true nature, Your Majesty! He must’ve had his escape planned out for months. And the gods…they did not warn me,” he says, sounding deflated. Guess he’s not so haughty anymore, knowing he wasn’t the only one in communication with his beloved gods. For the ruse to have worked for so long, I don’t think Yizhi was bluffing about it being the gods’ will. Was he a second agent for them in more ways than this? Did he hear more about Shimin?

I may never know the answers.

Qin Zheng makes Sima Yi brief him about the developments we missed. We were out for about a day, during which the army captured Kong Zhuxi by tracking retreating rebels. With Zhuge Liang gone and now no Sage as a clear leader to rally behind, the scattered insurrectionists will be easy to isolate and defeat.

When Sima Yi leaves with Qin Zheng’s new orders to the government, he shoots me a quick, resentful look before exiting through the double doors. My heart sinks. That glare wasn’t venomous enough to be a response to watching me snatch his device to commit treason . This means he never found out what I wrote. If he’s not jumping to tattle to Qin Zheng, my message couldn’t have made it to the public.

“Unbelievable,” Qin Zheng says after a long silence. “That opportunist mutt bamboozled both of us with science.”

Against all logic, I burst out laughing, though it sounds more like a choked sob.

Qin Zheng’s attention whips onto me. “You find this humorous ?”

I press the heels of my hands to my stinging eyes. “Just the way you said it.”

He wrenches my face toward himself. “When I get my hands on him, I will strip the skin off his back and boil him alive. And I will not be so forgiving if you get in my way again.”

Coldness seeps into my bones from where his armored fingers meet my jaw.

This isn’t happening , some part of me insists. It goes against one of my few anchors to reality: If Qin Zheng can touch me, it’s not real.

Yet only in reality do I need to breathe, and stars pop in my vision when I struggle to take in the air between us. It’s as if he’s dangling me off the edge of a cliff, and my next words will determine whether he’ll let me go or pull me in.

“I know,” I say with all the calm I can muster, my teeth chattering slightly. “If I were you, I’d do the same.”

A hint of surprise passes over his features, but he doesn’t let go of my face. There’s no saving Yizhi from this level of wrath. I can only pray he’ll avoid capture until Qin Zheng and I are set to take on the gods in less than five months.

Or is that still our plan, when Qin Zheng doesn’t actually have a useless immune system?

I don’t dare ask the question out loud. Not after my taste of just how closely the gods are watching.

“Six months,” Qin Zheng mutters. “The things I could have done…”

His eyes rove over my face, a new intensity heating inside them. He bites his lip, and in this moment I can’t tell what he wants more, to kill me or taste me. The fingertips of his gauntlets melt away against my skin like thawing ice. Absently, he strokes my cheek with the bare pad of his finger. My awareness sharpens to the fact that he hasn’t touched another human being in nearly half a year.

It might be the only thing keeping me alive.

Fighting every restraining thread of my good sense, I lean in. He moves with me, his mouth angling toward mine.

In the last second before the space between us closes, I jam my hand against his chest.

“You need to host an emergency court assembly,” I say softly, my lips almost brushing his. “Right now.”

He recoils, blinking, like he’s snapping out of a trance.

I continue in a rush, “Tell them Yizhi and Doctor Hua were part of the insurrection and tried to assassinate you. That’ll explain why the glass in the throne room is shattered. By walking around on camera, you can also put a stop to the rumors that you’re incapacitated. Nothing will work better to crush what’s left of rebel morale.”

Blinking some more, Qin Zheng releases me. He scowls, yet doesn’t meet my eyes. Is he unnerved by how he just reacted to touching me?

He turns, looking as though he’s about to push himself out of bed, but then he twists back and grabs my arm.

“You are coming with me,” he says.

While waiting for the central court to assemble, Qin Zheng films a scathing broadcast denouncing Yizhi as one of the rebels and announcing a nationwide hunt for him. He smacks his hands on the throne room’s balcony railing as he speaks, which should kill any lingering suspicion about previous footage of him being fake. The bandages around his neck add to the realism, being too random a detail to include in a fabrication.

Once the officials arrive, Qin Zheng subjects them to a thorough, menacing petrification in his newly freed state, even stomping down from the dais to prowl among them. I don’t know how many have become suspicious about why he never seemed to leave his “bulletproof chamber,” but their conspiracy theories won’t hold after this. If any of them are double agents, I imagine their last hopes are crumbling into ash.

The hailstorm of broken glass on the floor crunches beneath Qin Zheng’s armored soles. He didn’t let the palace staff clean it up. I think he likes the imagery of being surrounded by destruction. My side chamber remained intact, though. With its one-way tint activated, I listen to him terrorize the central court until deep into the night. It feels more than ever like I’m tucked away in a box in the corner.

Yet after the officials bow out, shivering like autumn leaves, I’m grateful for the glass and its obscuring tint. It keeps Qin Zheng from seeing me freeze in my chair.

What happens now?

How will I spend my nights when there’s no longer anything keeping us apart?

I shake my head. That’s not what I should be thinking about. I should be figuring out what to say in my own statement about the insurrection. Just because Qin Zheng is free doesn’t mean I have to yield my role as a leader. I should visit Chengdu as soon as it’s safe, speak with the Phoenix Ladies hospitalized from the fighting, award them medals and compensation packages. For those who outright gave their lives, maybe I’ll commission a memorial and invite their families to the unveiling ceremony. That would be more emotionally bearable than visiting their homes.

Metallic footsteps approach my side chamber. My attention snaps up. Qin Zheng stops before my door, arms folded. He shouldn’t be able to see me from the outside, yet his eyes lock onto mine so accurately that I’m hit with a paranoia that he switched off the tint without me noticing. I certainly didn’t notice the throne room emptying out, leaving just the two of us. How did that happen so fast? Or did I sit in a daze longer than I thought?

“Come have a drink with me, empress.” He touches the glass.

The sight sets off memories of all the times I’ve been on the other side, mocking him, thinking I’d be safe until the day we launched off on our mission. How naive I was.

No use cowering in this chair. I hoist myself up with my scythe and open my door.

Something shifts in the air, as if I’ve crossed a boundary to a different world. I look up at him through unobstructed space. He stares back at me with an unreadable gaze.

On the balcony across the throne room, a small table and two chairs have been set up while I was lost in thought. A bronze wine jug and a goblet await us.

“No thanks.” I do my best to sound bored. “I still have a wicked headache from the nerve gas.”

“All right. Then I suppose we should retire to our quarters.”

I bristle.

Right. My residence is now ours . Was always meant to be. It’s only logical. We’ll have to fall asleep beside each other sooner or later to discuss whether our attack plan on the gods is changing. No way around that. Unless I sleep on Lingyue’s couch with the spirit thread extending through the manor—

No, that’s way too convoluted. I’m not some little girl who can’t handle sharing a bed with some guy .

In fact, there’s still a bed in this side chamber. The more I look at Qin Zheng, the more I’m thinking about its existence. It’s not far. Just a few paces behind me. Basically the setting for what we did in our dream realm that one time. Memories flutter through me, of his hands pressing my wrists to the mattress, his lips over my breasts—

“Actually, let’s have that drink.” I leave the side chamber immediately, twisting my thoughts toward the kind of memorial Chengdu should have. Is a stone slab too basic? Would a statue take too long?

The open night sky beyond the balcony grants some comfort in being alone with him. He can’t try anything terrible here. Half the palace would hear if I screamed.

Whether anyone would come rescue me is another matter. I lean my scythe against the balcony at the perfect distance to behead Qin Zheng with one swing. With an amused glance at it, he transforms his sword into a sledgehammer and rests it parallel to my scythe, recreating what we usually wield on propaganda posters.

“Have you ever had lychee wine, empress?” he says once we’re sitting down at the small table.

“No.” That time with Gao Qiu was my only real taste of alcohol. Since Wan’er, Taiping, and Qieluo think I’m pregnant, they made sure I didn’t touch any the few times we went to Club Lily or The Split Peach. They seemed to have fun with it in moderation, though.

Qin Zheng pours a glistening stream out of the jug. “If you’d like any, we must share the goblet. It would not do for the staffers to find two used vessels and deem you an irresponsible mother.”

I gasp and palm my fake pregnancy. “But I radiate such maternal warmth.”

He laughs, then sets the goblet in front of me with a smile. Now I wish I hadn’t made that cheap joke. Under no circumstances should I be making Qin Fucking Zheng smile.

The wine wavers, looking bottomless in the night. I push it across the table. “You first.”

“ Empress ,” he chides. “If I wanted you dead, I would not resort to poison. Poison is the weapon of cowards. I’d break your neck like a real man.”

I stare off into the mountains, regretting all of my major life decisions. “Wonderful.”

“Cheers.” He raises the goblet, starlight glinting off the metal and in his eyes. He downs half the wine in several quick gulps before passing it back. “My condolences about that liberalist,” he says, softer. “Even though he was a liberalist.”

The tension goes out of me. He means Di Renjie. A sickness sweeps through my cheeks and eats at my insides. Renjie will never have a statue, even though he cared more deeply about Huaxia than anyone I know.

“I should’ve…” My words come apart like a cloud of breath in winter.

I grab the goblet and tilt the wine past my lips. Sickly sweet and with only a mild kick, it’s not as strong as the liquor Gao Qiu made me drink. I almost wish it burned more. Why else do people drink when they’re miserable, if not to fight pain with pain?

A breeze sweeps through the balcony, smelling of the damp earth on the mountains. Qin Zheng tips his head back and closes his eyes. “Dwell not on a past that cannot be changed, empress. You’ll miss the blessings of the present. The warmth of the sun, the scent of the trees. Things you would not think to cherish until you can no longer have them.”

I watch the faint stirring of his lashes. What must it be like, feeling the wind on your face after months of confinement?

“In this world, there is nothing that lasts.” His eyes open and turn on me with a pointed force. “What is there one season may be gone the next. Never hesitate to carry out your heart’s will while you have the opportunity.”

I draw tenser with his every word. Is he talking about our mission? That we shouldn’t postpone it?

It’s true that just because his fragility was a lie, it doesn’t mean he’s safe to do as he wants now. The gods got Yizhi to spin the ruse for a reason. They’re playing a game of balance, aiming to reap as much as they can from us while smothering any inclination we might have to turn our weapons on them instead of the Hunduns. They took Shimin hostage to control me. They imprisoned Qin Zheng to control him . They set him free to punish my attempted rebellion, but it’s only a matter of time before they limit his authority in some other way. They’ll never let him have unobstructed power.

Ironically, the thought that there remains a time limit on my relationship with Qin Zheng puts me more at ease. We pass the goblet back and forth in silence, refilling it several times.

“You know, lately I’ve had some thought about how much you remind me of myself.” Qin Zheng puts an elbow on the table and leans his cheek against his knuckles. “Neither of us are here because we accepted the destinies levied upon us. We were born to be chewed up and spat out. We broke the teeth instead.”

I make a hum of acknowledgment, not bothering with words.

“Yet we are not entirely the same.” His voice slows with purpose. “Even if we may share an identical soul, we grew up within different sets of chains that molded our thoughts in different ways, with you being a woman and me being a man. Fascinating, is it not?”

“Fascinating?” I side-eye him.

“Your chains are more numerous and harder to break, it seems. Despite your fierce resistance, you have yet to shed them all.”

A bitter taste waters in my mouth. “Is this your way of saying I should stop feeling so terrible about killing a co-pilot?”

“Partly. But not the only matter I had in mind.”

“Then what?”

He lands a single finger on my gauntlet. A shiver travels through me from that sole, minuscule point of connection. I gain an awareness of his armor, of how its curves and angles hug his body. I jerk my hand back. He catches it, holding it in place.

“Why does this frighten you?” he questions.

“I’m not fri—I don’t like people randomly touching me! Obviously.” My voice comes out too high.

“Random? After all the nights we’ve spent together, my touch is still random to you?” he says with a tinge of mockery.

“Let go!” I tug against his infuriatingly firm grip. “What are you trying to do?”

The mirth leaves his face. “You know what I’m trying to do.”

My stomach swoops as if I’m back in battle and falling from the sky. Though I’m not sure why I’m rattled. It was obvious, where this is going. What’s notable is that he’s trying to ease me into it rather than overpowering me without a care. He also got really mad when I outright offered to sleep with him in exchange for Wan’er’s freedom. I’m guessing he hates the implication that he’s so repellent that climbing into bed with him would be some agonizing act of sacrifice. He needs to feel desired for real. If that’s the case, maybe I can get him to do what I want by playing this game more tactfully.

“There it is again. That fear.” He observes me like a scientific specimen. “Have you given a deeper thought to where it comes from?”

My heart pounds so heavily against my chest that he can likely feel every frantic beat through my armor. What does he want to hear? I can’t just drop my attitude and start begging him to ravish me. That wouldn’t feel real enough. “You don’t know why people are afraid of you? You’re joking, right? You almost killed me less than twenty-four hours ago!”

He gives a slow shake of his head. “You are not cowed by violence or death, or you would not have dared raise a weapon against me. So, I ask: how is it that you show more fear when I touch you gently than when facing down my blade?”

“Wow, I wonder why I don’t want to be touched by a man who threatens my life on a daily basis!”

He pulls an offended face. “I do not do that on a ‘daily basis.’ Monthly, at most. And only when you’re thinking about divulging information that could destabilize Huaxia and/or attempting to kill me. The very fact that you remain alive is a testament to my patience.”

“Oh, thank Your Majesty so much. What an honor.”

“Indeed, it is. You deny you want it, and yet…” He lifts my hand.

I realize his grip has loosened for quite a few moments now. I could’ve taken my hand out of his during all of them.

I retract it at once, rubbing my wrist. “Ugh. You disgust me.”

“Do I?” He drums his fingers over my side of the table. “You act as if I alone harbor carnal desires, yet I know that to be untrue. You, with an appetite so insatiable you need two men at once to satisfy you.”

My vision flares red. I swing my fist toward him.

He seizes my arms and locks my wrists together.

“Are you ashamed of it?” he says with a wild, crazed look in his eyes, the look of a gambler betting everything for the thrill alone. “I’ve slept with multiple partners plenty of times. You don’t see me feeling ashamed.”

So much pressure builds in me that I picture myself bursting into flames. “I’m not you !”

“You’re not a man, you mean. Such is the chain around your mind you have yet to shed.” He holds my wrists together with quivering force. “You are not free, empress. Not while you deny your desires out of a shame others have imposed to control you.”

I dig my elbows into the table, yet I can’t break from his clutches. “Are you seriously suggesting I can’t be free unless I sleep with you?”

“If you were a man, would you be this hesitant to act on a mutual attraction so potent?”

“If I were a man, would you still be attracted to me?”

Lines crinkle near his eyes. “You truly haven’t seen very far into my memories, have you?”

My mouth hangs open. He releases my arms and leans back in his chair, swiping up the goblet to take another drink. His other hand grazes the underside of my hand. Before I can muster my next words, a cold surge of his qì rolls from the last bit of loose contact between our fingers, up my arm and into my collar. The top edge of my collar liquefies and slips, slow as honey, into the conduction suit I’m wearing underneath.

I gasp as the cool sensation trickles down my fever-hot skin, splitting into several languid paths. Frissons of dangerous pleasure arc through my spine. He’s caressing me with his mind alone while sipping nonchalantly at his wine. Above the edge of the goblet, his gaze is practically molten.

It’s so outrageous for spirit metal to be used this way that it stuns me from reacting for far longer than I should be allowing.

I fling his hand away. The instant our contact breaks, my armor hardens again, feeling almost empty without the pressure of his mind. I need to stay in control. To keep thinking strategically. If only the wine isn’t making me feel so funny.

“You are unbelievable.” I push out of my chair, but I stand up too quickly. The balcony sways.

Qin Zheng drops the goblet and lurches to catch me across the table, one hand on my shoulder and the other on my waist. His half-masked face doubles in my view before coming into focus, way too close.

“Tell me something, empress,” he says in a low rumble, the warmth of his words grazing my cheek. “If you feel no desire for me, why does your breathing quicken when I come near you? Why does your face go flushed?”

His fingers trace my jaw. I snatch his arm to jerk it away, yet I’m shaking uncontrollably, and not entirely from anger. He rounds the table to close the remaining distance between our bodies.

“You are attracted to power. What could be more natural?” He cups my face with both hands and tilts it upward. By his will, my crown peels away and fuses with the rest of my armor. My mask splits apart and rolls to either side. “Look into my eyes and deny that you want me,” he says, with the roughness of a warning.

A rebuke surges to the tip of my tongue, but I falter at the last second, afraid I might not sound certain.

That hesitation itself is enough to betray me. When his lips curve into a smirk, I know this is as good of a moment as any to make a believable surrender.

“ Fuck you ,” I snap, breathless, and pull him toward me.

“Please,” he whispers just before our mouths meet for the first time in real life.

He kisses me back with an aggression that leaves no doubt about whether he’s still angry at me for fighting him to protect Yizhi. I match his ferocity by instinct. It’s all wrong, rage mixing with pleasure, violence mixing with bliss, but it’s the closest I can get to punching him in the face or stabbing him in the chest. I have never hated anyone more than him in this moment, and hate that burns this hot demands release. We’re not so much kissing as we’re assailing each other with lips and tongues and teeth. It’s like trying to stand my ground against a vicious typhoon, like I’m fighting for survival instead of embracing anything tender. I clutch his shoulders as if I might get swept away if I don’t hang on.

He uproots me anyway, edging me backwards until I hit the balcony wall. The length of his body pins me in place, his thigh jamming between my legs. My armor has become soft as flesh under his touch, and I can feel his hands as if they were running down my bare skin, moving with an urgency to make up for months of deprivation. My electric-charged body wars with my wine-clouded mind. I shouldn’t have drank so much. Stay in control , I remind myself. Yet it’s been so long since anyone touched me this way that I struggle to keep my thoughts straight. I miss this, the buildup of passion and desire toward a blinding-hot release. What I did with him in our dream realm has nothing on the intensity of flesh and blood. The medicinal scent of the bandages around his neck and the wine-sweetened slide of our mouths are somehow more intoxicating than the sensations he could flood into me through a mind link. It feels better to drown in this than to let in the pain, the grief, of losing people I actually care about.

“I can make it very good for you,” he murmurs against my lips between kisses, his hot breath mixing with my own, “if you tell me you belong to me.”

My hands tighten like talons on his shoulders. Skies, who says stuff like that ?

I might need to gag him to go through with this.

“You belong to me,” I say as flatly as I can.

He draws back, frowning, then lets out a low laugh. “Very funny.”

My armor liquefies and pools to the floor like heavy gold silk, leaving me in my skin-tight conduction suit.

Cold clarity cuts through the haze in my head. “Wait, not here—”

“Who would stop us?” he says near my ear while palming my chest.

I resist the pleasure tingling through me. “That’s—that’s not the point—”

The thought of the bed in my side chamber flashes through my head. My mouth opens wider, about to shape the suggestion to go there, except that would be admitting out loud that I want this to happen.

Before I can bring myself to do it, he weaves his fingers into my hair and tugs my head to an angle, exposing the arch of my throat. He drags his tongue over my erratic pulse and suckles my skin like he wants to drink my blood. I go as tense as the time he held a dagger to the same spot after I startled him, every sense in my body driven to the brink between life and death. His other hand slips behind me and fumbles for the hidden zippers on either side of my spinal brace. When I make a noise of alarm, he ravishes my throat with more hunger. This man has no shame. And maybe he’s right that this is the crucial difference between us, one that holds me back.

But no matter what, I cannot let this go any further until he bends to my will.

“ Stop .” I wriggle against him. “Seriously, stop for a second!”

He takes his mouth off my neck and his fingers off my zipper. The night hits cold on the patch of my skin that he left wet. Looking highly inconvenienced, he places his hands on the wall to either side of me. We’re both breathing as if fresh out of battle.

I gulp between rasps of air. “Wan’er.”

He turns around instantly, hands going to his hips while he heaves a frustrated sigh.

Panting, I push off of the wall. “How am I supposed to sleep with you while you have my friend in prison?”

“ I don’t have her in prison!” He spins to face me again. “The revolutionary law does! Making an exception for her would undermine the very system!”

“Then don’t make her an exception. Abolish extended punishment and release everyone who’s in for a crime they didn’t directly commit.”

“It is necessary to…” He trails off while staring at my admittedly very large breasts, emphasized by my conduction suit.

“No, it’s not necessary.” I cross my arms over my chest, to his visible disappointment. “Too harsh of punishments end up making people stop fearing them. If they’re facing death along with their families and neighbors anyway, of course they’d rather join the rebellion than sit around waiting to get The Hammer.”

Qin Zheng huffs, eyes squeezing shut. “We can discuss this later.”

“No!” I say, but then I take his hand gently. This is a pretense he’ll believe and accept: that I’m indeed attracted to him and want to be with him, only that external factors are making me hesitate. “We’ve pretty much quelled this insurrection, but more will keep popping up unless we make some concessions to what they’re fighting for. You know not all of them are in it for unjustified reasons. Your policies are wronging even your most loyal supporters, like Wan’er.”

He twists his hand to grasp my fingers. “Are you becoming a reactionary?”

I jerk my arm back. “Skies, not everyone who disagrees with you is a reactionary! Or a revisionist! Or whatever other label you laborists love to slap on each other! I’m not asking you to let profitizers sell human beings again; I’m trying to take the steam out of further insurrections.” I slide my hand up his chest. “Now that you’re not stuck in a glass cell anymore, there’s a thousand new ways for you to die. If you get taken down by an assassin or something without having eased these policies, what do you think will happen to the masses?”

He goes slack all over, biting his lip. He knows what I’m saying: we don’t have enough time or leeway left to push the revolution to more radical heights. Not without risking the implosion of the whole thing once we leave for our mission. Or maybe the gods will kill him before that, if they grow alarmed about how far he’s going.

“Fine. I shall consider what you said.” He moves to kiss me again.

I block him with both hands. “Not until you actually do it. You should also make Wan’er your new Imperial Secretary once she’s free. She’s a lifelong laborist who scored third on the exams, and she can read your terrible handwriting. While we’re at it, Taiping is a great candidate for Minister of Finance. She has experience running the logistics of the biggest enterprise in Huaxia, and she placed decently in the exams, too.”

He hovers his lips near my hair while kneading circles into my shoulder. “It’s so late in the night,” he says in a lazy, whining drawl. “Any policy changes would have to wait until tomorrow.”

I gulp, my belly tightening at the way his fingers are moving. I’m pretty sure he’s deliberately trying to make me think of how it would feel if he moved his hand somewhere else. “So?”

He pulls back and stares me down as if trying to change my mind through the force of his gaze alone. “You test my patience.”

“You like it when I do.”

There has to be a reason he constantly provokes me on purpose. He’s so sick and twisted that he likes me better when I’m biting back. When I’m a challenge.

Color emerges in his cheeks. A slight grin tugs at the corners of his kiss-bruised mouth. “You are the strangest-priced whore I have ever met. And that is saying something, considering where I grew up.”

“I thought you hate it when people call me that.”

“Yes, when others do it. You’re my whore.” He pulls me close by my waist. The four-month pregnancy padding under my conduction suit presses into his hips.

I suck a breath through my teeth. “How are you so possessive while being a laborist? Di Renjie was right. You make no ideological sense. You should send yourself for re-education.”

“Excuse me, as if I’m not about to perform far more labor than you!”

“Not unless you meet my conditions! Call me a whore all you want—you still can’t get with a whore unless you can pay the price. I’m not a cheap slut like you.”

I don’t actually believe in the concept of “slut” as an insult, but the retort is worth it for the look on Qin Zheng’s face alone.

“I’m not a—” His expression freezes, then mellows. “All right, I suppose I did sleep my way across the seven nations. Acquired quite a few pieces of war-changing intelligence from it, actually. Feel free to interpret this as a testament to my capabilities.” He rolls a swirl of liquid spirit metal around his fingers.

A flush warms me all over. I clench my jaw shut. What was in that wine?

Smiling, he releases my waist. The folds of spirit metal at my feet swirl up and lock around me as my armor again.

“May this prove I care for you more than you believe me capable of.” He steps away from me and returns to the table. “Also, for your information…” He lifts the wine jug by its handle with two fingers. “There was no alcohol in this. It’s lychee juice with ginger.”