Chapter 4 · He Drops to His Knees

The door slams behind Su Qing and I'm alone with him again.

My arm's still bleeding. The cut from her blade isn't deep but it burns like hell, and I can feel the residue of that detection array crawling under my skin. Gu Hanchuan destroyed the formation before it could reach my spirit root, but the damage is done. My back's on fire from the whipping this morning, my sleeve's soaked red, and in less than twelve hours the elders are going to tear this hall apart looking for proof that I'm more than a servant girl.

I press my hand over the wound and watch him.

He's standing by the window, one hand braced against the frame. His shoulders are tight. His breathing's off.

Good.

The thread of spiritual energy I planted in his shadow is working faster than I thought. I can feel it now, a thin line connecting us, vibrating every time his fire poison flares. It's hooked into the poison like a root digging into cracked stone, feeding on his desperation, amplifying it. By dawn he won't just need my scent to stay functional. He'll need me.

And that's when I'll make him beg.

"You should bandage that," he says without turning around.

I don't move. "Why?"

"Because you're bleeding on my floor."

I almost laugh. Three years ago I bled in a dungeon and he walked past like I was part of the furniture. Now he's worried about his floor.

"I'll clean it up," I say.

He turns, and I see it—the way his eyes track to my arm, then snap away like he's forcing himself not to look. His jaw's clenched so tight I can see the muscle jump.

"Don't," he says. His voice sounds rough. "Just sit down."

"I'm fine."

"You're not." He crosses the room in three strides and grabs my wrist. Not hard, but firm enough that I can't pull away without a fight. His hand's hot. Too hot. The fire poison's worse than it was an hour ago.

I let him pull me toward the table. Let him push me into a chair. He's moving like he's got a script in his head—get the girl bandaged, keep her alive until the elders leave, figure out what the hell to do after that. He doesn't realize he's already losing.

He disappears into the back room and comes back with a strip of cloth and a jade bottle. Healing salve, probably. Expensive stuff. The kind they don't waste on servant girls.

He kneels.

I freeze.

Gu Hanchuan, Sect Leader of Qingxiao, is on his knees in front of me, uncorking the bottle with shaking hands. The fire poison's eating him alive. I can see it in the flush creeping up his neck, the way his pupils are blown wide, the sweat beading at his temples. He's not kneeling because he wants to. He's kneeling because if he doesn't focus on something other than my scent, he's going to do something he can't take back.

He peels back my sleeve. The cut's shallow but mean, a clean line across my forearm where Su Qing's blade bit in. He spreads the salve with two fingers, touch clinical, impersonal. But his hand's trembling.

"She's going to come back," I say quietly. "With the elders. With Lin Yuan. They're going to search this place and if they find out what I am—"

"They won't." His voice is flat.

"You can't stop them."

"I can delay them."

"For how long?"

He doesn't answer. He wraps the cloth around my arm, tight enough to hold but not tight enough to hurt, and ties it off. Then he just stays there, kneeling, staring at the bandage like it's the only thing keeping him tethered to the ground.

I lean forward. Just a little. Just enough that my hair falls over my shoulder and the scent of my skin, my blood, my sealed spirit root—reaches him.

His breath hitches.

"Gu Hanchuan," I say softly.

He looks up. And the look in his eyes—it's not control. It's not authority. It's hunger and panic and something else I don't have a name for.

"You need to leave," he says. His voice sounds wrecked. "Now."

"No."

"Lin Wei—"

"You brought me here." I tilt my head, watching him. "You forced the contract. You tied me to you. So now you get to deal with it."

He closes his eyes. His hands curl into fists on his thighs. I can see the veins standing out on his forearms, the way his whole body's locked down trying to hold something back.

And then he breaks.

It's not loud. It's not violent. He just—crumples. His head drops, his shoulders fold in, and he sways forward until his forehead's pressed against my knee. His breath's coming in short, jagged bursts. His hands are still fisted but now they're shaking so hard I can hear his knuckles crack.

"Yue—" he whispers.

I go cold.

"Yue, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't—I couldn't—"

Yue.

That's my mother's name.

He's not talking to me.

He's talking to her.

My heart's pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat. I don't move. I barely breathe. He's still pressed against my knee, his whole body shuddering, and he's whispering her name like it's the only word he knows.

"I tried," he says, voice breaking. "I tried to get back. They held me down. They—" He chokes on the words. "The poison—they put it in me and I couldn't move. I heard her screaming and I couldn't—"

No.

No, this doesn't make sense.

Three years ago my mother died in the dungeon. I screamed for help and nobody came. Gu Hanchuan walked past. I saw him. I saw his shadow through the bars and I begged and he didn't stop.

But now he's saying they held him down. That he was poisoned. That he tried.

"Gu Hanchuan," I say. My voice sounds far away. "What are you talking about?"

He doesn't answer. He's too far gone. The fire poison's stripped him down to nothing but raw nerve and memory, and whatever he's seeing right now, it's not me. It's not this room. It's three years ago and he's somewhere else, failing someone else.

I reach down. My hand hovers over his head. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know if I want to push him away or pull him closer or—

His hand shoots up and catches my wrist.

His grip's weak but desperate. He looks up at me and his eyes are unfocused, glassy, pupils blown so wide there's barely any color left.

"That wasn't me," he says. His words are slurred. "In the dungeon. That wasn't—"

And then his eyes roll back and he collapses.

I catch him before he hits the floor. Barely. He's dead weight, burning up, his skin so hot I can feel it through his robes. The fire poison's fully flared now, out of control, and the thread of spiritual energy I planted is tangled so deep in it I don't know if I could pull it out even if I wanted to.

I lower him to the ground and kneel beside him. His chest is rising and falling too fast. His lips are cracked and there's blood at the corner of his mouth where he bit his tongue.

He said that wasn't him.

He said they held him down.

I look at the man who's supposed to be my enemy, the man I swore I'd destroy, and for the first time since I set this trap, I don't know what I'm doing.

Because if he's telling the truth—if someone else wore his face that day, or if he was poisoned into immobility, or if there's any world where he actually tried to save her—

Then I just infected the wrong man's poison.

And tomorrow, when the elders come, I won't just lose my chance at revenge.

I'll lose the only person who might know what really happened to my mother.

I press my hand to his forehead. He's burning. I don't have the skill to purge fire poison and I don't have the spiritual energy to spare. But I have to do something or he's going to die right here on his own floor, and I need him alive.

I need answers.

I bite my lip hard enough to draw blood and lean down, letting a single drop fall onto his lips.

Pure Yin spiritual energy, even a trace, even sealed—it'll stabilize him. For a little while.

His body shudders. His breathing evens out. The flush fades just slightly.

I sit back on my heels and stare at him.

"You better not be lying," I whisper.

Because if he is, I'll kill him myself.

And if he's not—

Then I just made everything so much worse.