The door closed.
Silence fell again.
Yanlong stepped out from behind the screen.
The room was quiet.
The lanterns cast their golden light across the walls, the shadows moving gently with the rhythm of the flames.
Tianyin was on the bed, motionless, her hair spread around her, her breathing steady and slow.
She looked like someone who was truly asleep, not someone who had nearly died in a lotus pond a few hours earlier.
He approached.
Crouched beside the bed.
Pulled the blanket slightly to cover her properly.
And stopped.
Something was glowing.
On her shoulder.
Beneath the fabric of the clean dress the maids had put on her.
A faint light, almost imperceptible, but it was there.
Persistent.
Like an ember that refused to go out.
Yanlong hesitated.
He looked at her.
Intensely.
With something in his eyes that he showed no one.
His brows were slightly furrowed.
Not anger.
Something else.
Something more difficult to contain.
What is that?
He gently lifted the collar of Tianyin’s dress with his fingertips.
Very slowly.
Like approaching something fragile.
Or dangerous.
Or both at once, without knowing which one was stronger.
He leaned over her to see.
His strands of hair almost brushed her forehead.
A drop of water slid along his hair and fell onto Tianyin’s cheek.
Tianyin opened her eyes.
The first thing she saw was a silhouette above her.
Fingers approaching.
She screamed.
She suddenly struggled, her arms flailing in every direction, her body sitting up instinctively before her brain even had time to process anything.
Yanlong’s hand covered her lips.
Firm.
Precise.
There just before the second scream could escape.
Outside, in the corridor, an immediate whisper.
“Did you hear that?”
“Shh…”
A dull sound.
Someone hitting someone else.
Muffled laughter that was supposed to be discreet and absolutely wasn’t.
Tianyin, however, was not laughing at all.
She was pressed against the bed.
Yanlong’s hand was over her mouth.
He was leaning over her, so close that his strands of hair almost brushed her long eyelashes, so close that she could feel the warmth of his skin through the fabric.
Their gazes met.
Tianyin’s eyes.
That hazel brown with amber reflections that the lantern light made almost golden.
Yanlong stared at them for a fraction of a second too long.
A fraction of a second during which he thought of nothing else.
Absolutely nothing.
He straightened.
Suddenly.
Abruptly.
Like someone who had just touched something burning and pulled his hand away before even deciding to do so. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
He crossed his arms behind his back.
Looked at the wall.
As though nothing had happened.
As though there were any chance that would work.
Tianyin stood up.
Still a little dizzy.
But her eyes were clear, and in those eyes was a flame that alcohol had not extinguished and sleep had only fanned.
They were face to face.
The room.
The candles flickering in the still air.
Their two silhouettes projected onto the silk screen closed in front of the door, large, clear, impossible to ignore for anyone standing in the corridor.
Outside, the maids were no longer speaking.
They were watching.
“Oh…” one of them whispered, her hand over her mouth.
No one answered.
No one took their eyes off the screen.
Tianyin, however, was not looking at the shadows.
She was looking at the shelf.
A stick resting on the shelf near the window.
Long.
Sturdy.
Exactly what she needed to express everything she was feeling at that moment and had no words to say.
She grabbed it.
Without even looking at Yanlong.
Without warning him.
Without giving him time to understand what was about to happen.
He understood anyway.
He knew that look.
The look of someone who wasn’t finished.
What followed looked like a fight.
It was one.
But from outside, from the corridor, through the silk screen illuminated by candlelight, it looked like shadow theater.
Tianyin attacked.
Yanlong dodged.
Tianyin struck left.
Yanlong was already on the right.
Their shadows chased one another, crossed, separated, fluid, fast, almost graceful despite themselves.
On the silk screen, the silhouettes were elegant.
Almost beautiful.
In the corridor, someone stifled a laugh.
Then another.
Then the laughter burst out openly.
Tianyin couldn’t hear them.
She was thinking only of one thing: reaching that impossible man who moved as though he had no weight, as though his feet did not truly touch the ground, as though the fight were, for him, a slightly boring stroll he was taking merely to humor her.
Which irritated her infinitely.
Yanlong, meanwhile, said nothing.
He blocked.
Dodged.
Let attacks pass.
Blocked again.
He did not hurt her.
He was not trying to win.
He waited.
With the calm patience of someone who knew that time was working in his favor.
That the other’s energy would eventually run out.
That the right moment would come.
Which irritated her even more than everything else.
She attacked harder.
He waited for the right moment.
His chest against her back.
Both her arms restrained in front of her.
The back of her neck only a few centimeters from his chin.
She felt his warmth before anything else.
Before she even understood what had just happened.
From the corridor, the shadow cast on the silk screen was eloquent.
A maid stifled a sound that was not quite laughter and not quite something else.
Tianyin, however, could not see the shadows.
She felt his chest against her back.
The warmth of his grip.
And the silence between them that was lasting too long.
“Let me go!
I’m telling you!”
Her voice.
Furious.
Perfectly clear in the silence of the room.
He let her go.
Tianyin immediately turned around and struck.
He caught her wrist in midair.
One movement.
Just one.
And her back found the wall, both her arms raised above her head, her wrists held in one firm hand.
She kicked at empty air.
Her feet searched for something to hit.
He was out of reach.
On purpose.
Silence fell.
A silence different from all the others that had come before that evening.
Yanlong was leaning over her.
Her wrists in his hand.
Her arms above her head.
Her back against the cold wall.
The candles behind them.
Their two shadows on the silk screen, intertwined, sensual, telling a story neither of them had chosen to tell but that the entire palace staff was reading with great attention.
From the corridor, no one made a sound anymore.
All the maids were watching.
Hands over their mouths.
Eyes wide.
But inside the room, Tianyin and Yanlong could no longer hear anything.
The space between them.
Which was very small.
Far too small.
Tianyin no longer moved.
Her feet had decided to stop obeying her.
Because of that gaze.
Not the gaze of someone who had just restrained her.
Something more difficult to endure.
Stop.
Stop looking at him like that.
Her eyes refused to obey.
Yanlong moved closer.
Slowly.
Instinctively.
Without conscious decision.
Just his body choosing before he did.
He tilted his head slightly.
His eyes locked with hers.
And he said nothing.
He remained there, above her, looking at her with something in his eyes she had never seen on that face before, something she didn’t know how to read and wasn’t sure she wanted to read.
Outside, no one was breathing anymore.
Inside the room, neither were they.