Chapter 31 · He Called Her Name

His eyes aren't his anymore.

I'm still kneeling over him, my hand on the jade pendant now burning against his chest, and those black-red eyes are staring straight through me. Not at me. Through me. Like I'm a ghost and he's looking at someone standing behind my shoulder.

"Yue," he says again, and his voice scrapes like metal on stone. "Yue, you said you wouldn't come back."

I yank my hand off the pendant. The array under us flares white-hot for a second, then goes dark. The chains of light that were wrapping around his wrists and ankles snap and dissolve into nothing.

Oh no. Oh shit.

"Gu Hanchuan." I grab his face with both hands. His skin's burning. "Look at me. I'm not—"

He moves so fast I don't see it coming. One second I'm leaning over him, the next I'm flat on my back with my head cracking against the stone floor and his hand locked around my throat. Not squeezing. Just holding me there.

"You said," he whispers, and now his voice is shaking, "you said if I survived three years you'd let me go."

I can't breathe. Not because he's choking me.