Lips against lips.
Their eyes met.
For a fraction of a second.
Then Tianyin collapsed.
Like a flame being blown out.
Her body fell against Yanlong’s shoulder, limp.
Her head tilted.
Her arms fell loosely at her sides.
As though she had simply decided to give up.
Yanlong did not move for a moment.
His own lips were still where they had been.
His hand had not yet decided what to do.
Something in his chest had paused.
Like when a clock stops and you only realize afterward that you had been hearing it the entire time.
Then he took her into his arms.
Without a sound.
Without hurrying.
With that economy of movement he applied to everything he did.
The least movement possible for the exact result.
He stood.
She weighed little.
He crossed the palace corridors.
Tianyin in his arms.
Their wet clothes leaving a trail across the lacquered wood.
A few lanterns swayed in the corridor.
No one.
Only the silence at the end of the banquet.
The muffled voices of the Great Hall far behind them.
No servant asked a question.
A few lowered their eyes.
Only one met his gaze.
And understood that neither speaking nor remembering was an option.
He whispered without stopping.
“My room.
Clean clothes for two.”
They left without a sound.
He pushed his bedroom door open with his foot.
Placed her on the bed.
With a gentleness that had nothing calculated about it.
His fingers found the tie of Tianyin’s dress.
Wet.
Tight.
The water-soaked fabric clinging to every inch of her skin.
Like a second skin he should never have seen.
He began to untie it.
And stopped.
He was above her.
His still-wet strands fell in dark threads on either side of his face.
Dripping onto Tianyin.
One drop on her cheek.
Another in the hollow of her neck.
Another on the transparent fabric clinging to her collarbone.
He looked at her.
Intensely.
Without looking away.
Not the way one looks at someone one is evaluating or judging.
In another way.
The one he recognized.
But refused to admit.
What am I doing?
He retied the knot.
Carefully.
With the same attention he had used to untie it.
As though that gesture could erase the previous one.
As though the order of things could still be restored.
He took a step back.
Tianyin’s wet dress clung to her skin.
In the dim lantern light, the thin fabric had abandoned any pretense of opacity.
The silhouette beneath it.
The curves of her shoulders.
The line of her waist.
And sometimes, where the fabric was thinnest, a hint of skin that should not have been visible.
Yanlong searched for the blanket.
Without looking.
With one hand.
His gaze fixed on the wall opposite him.
The silk blanket slipped over Tianyin.
Covering what he was not looking at.
And what he had nevertheless seen.
He exhaled slowly.
Like someone who had just put down something heavy.
And did not yet know whether his hands remembered it.
That was when he saw it.
Tianyin’s ankle protruded slightly from beneath the edge of the blanket.
The little bell hung there.
Motionless.
Held by the bracelet whose metal caught the light for a fraction of a second.
Yanlong crouched down.
His hand approached slowly.
As one approaches something one isn’t sure is harmless.
The tips of his fingers brushed the metal. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
And everything disappeared.
The void first.
Then a light.
Or rather, its absence.
That kind of living darkness that pulses and breathes.
That has a temperature and a texture.
That is not emptiness.
But its opposite.
And Tianyin.
She was kneeling.
A wedding dress.
Red.
Perfect in its folds.
Perfect in its cut.
The dress of someone who had not chosen to wear it.
Her back turned toward the ancient tree.
Whose roots rose around her.
Slowly.
Inexorably.
Arms closing around something that already belonged to them.
Music.
Mournful.
Muted.
The kind of music one does not truly hear.
But feels in one’s bones.
In one’s teeth.
Deep in the stomach.
Yanlong tried to move forward.
Something held him back.
There was nothing around him.
No chains.
No hands.
No visible wall.
Just an invisible resistance.
As though space itself had decided that he would go no farther.
He pushed with all his strength.
He did not move a single centimeter.
Tianyin raised her head.
Their eyes met.
She was smiling.
That delicate smile he had never seen on her before.
But her eyes were sad.
And blood tears appeared.
Slowly.
At the corners of her eyes.
Sliding down her cheeks like ink overflowing.
Tracing lines across her skin that resembled writing no one could have read.
She reached a hand toward him.
Her mouth formed his name.
In silence at first.
Just her lips.
Then she screamed it.
And Yanlong screamed hers in return.
His voice could not cross anything.
His hand reached toward her.
He could feel her.
Physically.
This place had substance.
And weight.
His fingers stretched toward her.
But the distance between them did not shrink.
Something was pulling Tianyin toward the tree behind her.
Slowly.
Steadily.
Like a tide that never doubts itself.
The bell at her ankle rang.
A single sound.
Deep.
The sound of a bond made.
Of a belonging decided long before this night.
Then the sand.
It came from everywhere at once.
Black.
Shifting.
Pulling each of them in opposite directions.
And the resistance holding him back disappeared.
Yanlong plunged into it.
He was swimming through quicksand.
His arms beating against something that was neither liquid nor solid.
And the vision had the texture of reality.
Every sensation screamed that this was not an image.
The resistance in his arms.
The heat.
The weight of the sand trying to swallow him.
His fingers brushed Tianyin’s.
For a fraction of a second.
The sand separated them.
Yanlong fell to his knees on the floor of his bedroom.
His hand extended into empty space. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
The lanterns.
The lacquered wood.
Tianyin on the bed.
Unconscious.
Her breathing calm and steady.
The only sign that she was still there.
Alive.
On his knees.
His hand still open in the air of his bedroom.
Letting the real world reclaim him.
Centimeter by centimeter.
What is happening?
He stood.
He tore a piece from his tunic.
A brief gesture.
Without hesitation.
The fabric gave way with one clean tear.
And he crouched beside Tianyin’s ankle once more.
He carefully wrapped the fabric around it.
The bracelet.
The bell.
Everything tightly covered.
Each layer added with the same care one would use to neutralize something dangerous.
So that it could no longer ring.
So that nothing could come through that way anymore.
He pulled the blanket over her feet.
Straightened.
Remained standing there.
His arms crossed.
In the silence of his own room.
Which did not feel entirely like his anymore tonight.
Three knocks sounded at the door.
“Your Highness.
The clothes.”
He opened it.
Took his.
Took the second set.
“Come in and change Miss.
I’ll turn around.”
He went behind the screen.
He changed.
Wet robe on the floor.
Dry fabric against his skin.
Mechanical movements.
Because the body knows how to do these things by itself.
When the mind is elsewhere.
He should not have looked.
From the edge of the screen, the lantern light cast soft shadows across the far wall.
The silhouettes of the servants leaning over the bed.
And in the space between the two lacquered panels…
That narrow space he could have ignored.
That he should have ignored.
He could see the servants changing Tianyin’s clothes.
He turned to face the wall.
His hands pressed flat against the wood.
He stared at the grain.
A long vein running from top to bottom.
He followed it with his eyes.
Because it was better than the alternative.
He no longer knew how long he had been doing this.
When the burning came.
Sharp.
Instantaneous.
In the palm of his right hand.
He turned it over.
Characters.
Engraved into his flesh.
Like burning ink.
Glowing for a fraction of a second.
Clear.
Legible.
Is she really my soulmate?
And they vanished.
Instantly.
As though the question had been asked.
And erased in the same breath.
Leaving only the burning behind.
As proof that it had existed.
Yanlong kept his hand open before him.
His palm empty.
His skin smooth.
No trace.
On the other side of the screen, the servants quietly left.
The door closed.
And in the silence that returned to the room…
There was only Tianyin’s steady breathing as she slept.
He slowly closed his hand.
What does this mean?