Chapter Twenty-One: Not Weird at All

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

NOT WEIRD AT ALL

“The army is not responsible for anything that happens to you, okay, Rich Boy?” Sima Yi unlocks the door to Yizhi’s—our new quarters.

Yizhi has not wasted time. While Li Shimin and I spent the afternoon failing to ice dance again—made harder by his worsening alcohol withdrawal—Yizhi bought a multi-room suite right in the Kaihuang watchtower.

Okay, he didn’t buy it. You can’t buy property along the Great Wall. But he made a “generous donation” to the army, and they let him “borrow” a spare suite reserved for a high-level strategist and his family when they visit from their home city.

So the three of us are moving in together.

What I have learned through this madness is that you can absolutely solve your problems by throwing money at them. If you can’t, you probably don’t have enough money for that particular problem.

Since Li Shimin is supposed to be confined at all times, the lock on the front door has been replaced with one from a prison cell. We have to call Sima Yi if we want to leave. Which is fine, because his own suite is just three floors up. He warns us not to annoy him too much with door-opening requests, then shuts it behind him, penning us in for the night.

As the echoes of the door’s impact fade out, a numb relief settles through me. I breathe in, breathe out, look around the suite. It’s compact, practical. Not big or flourished, like a pilot’s loft, but still paradise compared to Li Shimin’s bunker.

Yet another reason to thank Yizhi. I could not have slept soundly there ever again.

An orange-red haze of sunset slants through a slender kitchen and across a wooden dining table. I slide open the glass doors that take me into the kitchen and lean through an open window. Barren plains spread to infinity under the setting sun, bringing the scent of earth and wild things. Here in the northwest of Huaxia, the soil is gray with deposits of Metal-white and Water-black spirit metals. These crystallized granules of qi are what Hunduns came to our planet to harvest. They need it to heal and replicate. But what I’m looking for is—

The White Tiger crouches in its Dormant Form beside the window, mind-bogglingly huge, ready to pounce. At the watchtower’s thirteenth floor, our suite is level with its soap-smooth yet powerful neck. It looks naked, not being striped with the green and black lines bestowed by its legendary pilot pair, but an intense thrill roils through me nonetheless. It’s like I’m a kid again, back when I could relish the tales of Chrysalises and pilots without thinking about the implications.

“Yizhi!” I squeal and grab his arm as he comes beside me. “That’s the White Tiger! The White Tiger! Right there!”

“What’s the deal?” He laughs. The blazing sky flushes his face and ignites his eyes. The wild winds skim a stray hair across his cheek. “You pilot the Vermilion Bird!”

I sigh, guilt and cold reality draining my excitement. Even though the White Tiger is piloted by a Balanced Match and is safe to root for, it’s still part of this terrible piloting system. I cannot buy into the fantasy of power and heroism that hides the true horrors. “Right.” I tuck the stray strand of hair behind Yizhi’s ear, then peer at the ceiling. “Dugu Qieluo and Yang Jian live in the loft, right? Wonder if we’ll run into them.”

Yizhi shies at my touch, but smiles wryly. “I heard it’s best never to cross paths with Dugu Qieluo.”

“Oh, please. You know they exaggerate any stories about a girl with an attitude. Besides, isn’t Yang Jian the one I should be worrying about?” I drop my voice. “He is distantly related to Yang Guang, right?”

“I heard they didn’t get along.” Yizhi shrugs. “Plus, he’s a freaking Prince-General. He wouldn’t do something as impulsive as Xing Tian.”

“Hope you’re right. I don’t want to worry about another—”

Li Shimin’s looming figure catches the corner of my eyes. He’s standing outside the kitchen, the fiery sunset gleaming off his glasses.

My hand springs from Yizhi’s arm as if scalded.

“Uh, I’ll start brewing the medicine.” Yizhi manages a smile, lifting the paper-wrapped package of herbs that the army doctors recommended for Li Shimin. They prescribed some expensive lab medicine, too, but traditional herbal remedies are better for qi flow in the long run.

As Yizhi sets up a clay pot, I leave the kitchen. Li Shimin doesn’t get out of my way, even when my face nearly skims his chest. My ribs cringe against my lungs, but I click the glass doors shut behind me, shoulder past him, and sit down at the table, acting nonchalant. The weight of his gaze follows me, clings to me, presses down on me.

Footsteps. Wood screeches against tiles as he pulls a chair out and sits down as well.

A prickle travels up my spine and over my scalp. My throat goes dry. I eye the bulky metal front door that’s preventing me from escaping. The memory of him smashing the Fire pilot’s face against our cafeteria table shudders through my mind. I keep my eyes on the table’s sticky vinyl surface, heart pounding out a prayer for him to not ask questions about me and Yizhi.

Then I snap out of it.

Countless times, I watched my father turn my mother into a nervous wreck by simply transforming himself into a dark cloud of a presence. He wouldn’t use any curses or shouts, but he’d set his bowl down a little too loudly, or slam doors a little too harshly. She’d step cautiously around him as if he were a bomb, worrying about her every move for fear of setting him off. Without uttering a single word, he’d teach her to twist herself into knots to prioritize his needs and wants, in some strangling hope of quelling the pressure in the house and returning things to normal.

I was never willing to learn my father’s lessons. My default solution was always to push him until he exploded. A few moments of pain were better than days and nights of fear.

“Do you have a problem?” I hiss under my breath, jerking my head up.

Li Shimin’s gaze bounces away from mine, but his shoulders keep quivering with strain. The dark circles under his eyes look dented into his bones. His lips press into a tight, flat line, as if holding back a shout—or a cry of pain. His body is a war zone of conflicting things. I can’t tell what’s a symptom and what’s an emotion.

Water boils and whistles from the clay pot, muffled through the kitchen doors. Steam fogs up the glass, lit a volcanic orange by the falling sun.

“Don’t sulk.” My fingers retract like claws across the tabletop. “I hate guys who sulk.”

Shock flashes across Li Shimin’s face. Then, between ragged breaths, he starts speaking. “I…I just didn’t know you were capable of looking that happy.”

“And that bothers you?”

“You’re hiding something.”

“Believe whatever you want. We’re not a real couple. I owe you nothing.”

A muscle works in his jaw. He adjusts the wristlet Yizhi gave him to keep track of his bio-stats. “This isn’t about that. This is about us having to be honest with each other. Whatever it is, I could find out in our battle link, and it could ruin our synchronization if it’s shocking enough. So…what really happened last night?”

I grunt. Fine. Better to come clean early than to let his suspicions brew. The important thing is that the army stays ignorant, and I doubt he’ll blab to them when Yizhi is doing so much to help us.

I lean over the table while beckoning for Li Shimin to come closer. He does. Our faces pass each other. His stubble almost grazes my cheek.

“Remember that city boy I told you about? The one who taught me to read?” I whisper near his ear, my eyes sliding toward the orange-misted kitchen doors. Yizhi’s flowing-robed figure shifts like smoke behind them. “That’s him. Right there.”

Li Shimin’s chest hitches. He pulls back slightly. “He came here for you.”

“Yes. He did.”

A soft breath shudders out of his mouth, the heat ghosting past my cheek. To my surprise, his eyes moisten. Or maybe it’s just his glasses reflecting the orange light.

“And do you love him?” he whispers, without malice, without accusation.

My everything comes to a standstill.

I’ve never admitted it out loud, but when I look deep inside myself, the answer is clear. Undeniable.

“I do.” My voice trembles as hard as Li Shimin’s hands. “He’s the most amazing boy to ever walk this planet.”

His brows squeeze upward. “And yet you chose enlistment over him?”

I fall back against my seat. How is Li Shimin sounding like a naive romantic?

“Yes, because love doesn’t solve problems,” I say. “Solving problems solves problems.”

“Poor guy.” Li Shimin gazes at the kitchen doors, then back at me, shaking his head slightly. “Don’t you ever let that boy go again.”

“Too bad.” I pick at the edge of the table. “You’re the one I’m stuck with.”

His words muffle against my lips, dispersing into hot, brilliant tingles that tide through me. They streak across my nerves, jolting lower, lower, awakening the parts of me I’ve been taught to hide and ignore my whole life, because although they are part of me, they were never for my free use. They hold my family’s honor, they’re property that must not be damaged before delivery, they’re meant to be saved for my eventual husband. For Yang Guang. For Li Shimin. To pleasure him, to extend his bloodline.

Well, fuck that.

I push Yizhi farther into the room. A nudge of my hand closes the door behind us. Our frantic breathing and the soft sounds of our mingling mouths crowd around my head, making the world shrink down to just the two of us. This is a different kind of desperation than our first kiss, right before I left him to come here. Feather-soft heat buoys through my body and stretches a tender, aching tension in me to the point of snapping. I hate that I’m not immune from this want, this need.

But if it’s him, it just might be okay.

He steps back, carried by my momentum, but then stumbles. He pries himself from the kiss.

“Zetian…we shouldn’t…” he says, light and airy. His hair is completely down—the first time I’ve seen it so. It frames his elegant face, making him look so vulnerable, so beautiful. Moonlight strains through a thin curtain, caressing his features as if it adores him too.

“Yizhi, we’re finally alone,” I whisper, peering up at him through my lashes. “Truly alone. And I know you want me.” I take his hands and guide them over the curves of my body, emboldened by the anxiety that something ever more terrible might happen at any time and cost us the chance to do this. “You’ve wanted me since the first time we met. Isn’t that right?”

Three years ago, when we were both fifteen, I found him meditating near one of my favorite herb bushes. I had never seen anyone with skin that clear, hair that glossy, or clothes that clean and white. It was unnatural.

So I snapped a branch off the nearest tree and attacked him.

I have no idea why he ended up promising to come back. But whatever it is about me, it made him keep that promise, again and again, at the end of every month.

It spellbinds him still, intoxicating him, clouding over his eyes. He bites his lip.

“I want it to be you.” I gently trace the bruise around his eye. The bruise he took to save my life, the only flaw I’ve ever seen on his face. “I’ll have no regrets if it’s you.”

He tenses twice. First at my words, then again, tighter, when I skim my lips down the pulse at his neck. His chest lifts with a shaky, almost inaudible gasp. His blood throbs faster and faster near the tip of my tongue. His fingers crumple the sides of the proper night robes he got for me. Finally, he pulls my head back with a slight tug on my hair and joins his mouth to mine with an unleashed hunger.

An electric storm crackles through me like Wood-type qi, wild and lively, the kind of force that drives the rampant growth of all things during springtime. My lips pull into a grin under the onslaught of his. A growl of relief crawls through his throat.

So this is what he was holding back while smiling innocently at me and teaching me a world of knowledge I’m not supposed to know.

Good. Because this is what I fantasized about as well while acting cool and collected and making wry comments about his class notes.

For a sudden, still moment in the madness, like passing the eye of the storm, our eyes meet. His sly, mine challenging. The same dark energy hums between us. It’s like seeing each other unmasked for the first time.

Then we’re back to kissing fervidly, longingly. Our hands claw, knead, and swim over each other’s bodies, touching one another in all the ways we could not have in the woods. In all the ways we still shouldn’t.

I urge him forward again, on an angle, until the bed collides with the back of his knees. He slumps onto the silk sheets, the mattress gasping under his weight. His hair flattens out around him. I flip my own over one shoulder while climbing over him, watching the drags of his breaths, running my knuckles along his delicate jawline. He lets out a long exhale, baring the pale column of his neck. I trace the ridges, the valleys. His pulse palpitates against my fingertips. I feel every bit like the fox spirit people believe me to be, here to seduce him and then eat him alive.

My fingers slither down, twirl around his robe sash, and pull it loose.

“Wait—” Sudden clarity surges into his eyes.

Too late.

His robes fall open with a small gust of heat. The sight beneath dazes me.

His torso is covered in tattoos. Colorful blossoms outlined by thin gold, entwined in a forest of vines and leaves. Roses. Lilies. Poppies.

He sits up, gaze unreadable. I scoot back in his lap to accommodate the motion.

“Do you know what these mean?” he mumbles huskily, touching a poppy on his chest.

“No?” I shake my head while taking in more details. Dragonflies, butterflies, moths. And the vines aren’t just vines—some of them are snakes.

“They mean I’m part of the family.” His jaw tightens. “My father’s family.”

“He makes you and your siblings get tattoos?”

The lean muscles in his body slacken. His expression turns both sad and amused. “Some of us.”

Chills crawl up my scalp. There’s something he’s not elaborating on. “Is this good or bad?”

“Depends on your perspective.” He caresses my cheek, smile softening. Then he lies back while guiding me down again. “Someday I’ll explain it better,” he whispers in my ear while shrugging off his robe top. I move to kiss him again, hair swishing over his.

But something’s not the same. Deep in my mind, something has cooled off.

My awareness lingers on his tattoos. They meander over his shoulders and down to his elbows. I’ve seen his floppy luxury-brand sleeves slump near there so many times, yet never have I suspected that all of this could be lurking just beyond the perfect pale skin of his forearms. My mind reels back, farther and farther from where it should be, splintering. Cold logic worms into the cracks.

I’ve always known Yizhi wasn’t a “good” person. The only utterly good people in the world are either naive or delusional. I could never associate with someone like that. There was always an element of danger, an edge of a thrill, to our meet-ups. I could’ve died if someone had caught us together. He knew this. No one truly pure would’ve continued subjecting me to that kind of pressure.

But how far does the darkness in him go? How well can I really know someone after seeing them a mere once per month for three years?

What do I actually know about doing this?

A growing anxiety simmers in me. I kiss him harder, drawing a sweet thread of blood, yet it just feels more wrong. Images shred through the mess in my head. Me not resisting as Yang Guang hovers over me, his armored weight trapping my body, his mouth kissing me just like this. Me not being able to resist as Xing Tian straddles and strangles me.

Me not wanting to resist as Li Shimin leans over a puddle of fresh blood on our cafeteria table, flashing a rare, precious smile.

I jolt up in a burst of horror.

The trance clears from Yizhi’s eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s—it’s nothing.” I rattle my head, leaning down again.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Our eyes whip toward the wristlet on the nightstand. Yizhi gives a reassuring pat to my shoulder, then maneuvers out from beneath me to go check it. The screen illuminates his face.

His features twist with shock.

He grabs his robe top and dashes from the bed.

“It’s Shimin,” he gasps, ripping his door open while dressing. “His heart rate is spiking out of control.”