GAN YUAN XIAO (干援霄)

  Day 8, 4th Month of the Lunar Calendar, 6000th Year of the Yun Dynasty, Taishan Province, Tian’an Sect

  Twenty guards patrolled Princess Changping’s quarters tonight. Twenty to one. I could’ve fought them all, sure—but bruised egos and flying teeth tend to leave a trail. I had a better idea.

  Concealing my immortal essence, I darted through the courtyard shadows. The banquet had stirred up enough chaos in Taishan to keep the guards on edge. On paper, it was about the assassination attempt. In practice? Just an excuse to slap another leash on Ah Qi. One more set of eyes. One more shackle.

  I slipped into her estate, shutting the pavilion door behind me with a soft click.

  I had to see her.

  After her brutal beating at the banquet, she had been half-carried, half-dragged by her maid without so much as a second glance.

  “Take care,” her maid had said. Take care? Of what, exactly? How was I supposed to take care when Ah Qi was whipped raw, and no one else seemed to care if she lived or bled out in silence?

  No. Think clearly. I pressed a ceramic jar of medicine tighter in my pocket and walked up to her door.

  “Ah Qi?” I knocked softly on the bamboo. “It’s Xiao. Are you alright?”

  Silence.

  “I brought medicine,” I added, lifting the jar even though she couldn’t see it.

  No response.

  I shuddered at the sounds of shuffles nearing me. Rough cloth shoes scraping stone. The Imperial Guards. Were they already doing another round? They're fast tonight. I tugged my cloak lower over my face.

  The door remained shut. For a second, I wondered if I had angered Ah Qi and perhaps she was getting revenge by letting me get caught for trespassing. Only this time, I wouldn’t be caught for trespassing. Rather, my head would be rolling at sunrise.

  Surely, she wouldn’t. Would she?

  I rapped again, a little more urgency in my voice. “Ah Qi, if you can hear me, I—”

  The door swung open mid-sentence, and I lost my balance, stumbling forward gracelessly.

  And crashed straight into her.

  We hit the floor in a heap, a tangle of limbs and startled breathing. Something soft landed on my chest, and I looked up, blinking through surprise. Her wide eyes stared down at me, equally confused.

  Her cheeks flushed pink.

  She’s always cute when she’s flustered.

  I tilted my head, smirking slightly. “I didn’t know you wanted me that badly.”

  “You—!” she sputtered, red creeping up her face like a tide as she shoved me off.

  She scrambled upright and shut the door behind her with a slam. Then she patted her face twice before leaning on the door.

  Her face twisted in pain. She’d leaned too hard on the frame.

  She jerked back instinctively—

  —right into my arms.

  My breath caught. Irregular splotches of red soaked through the back of her clothes, fresh blood blooming across fabric. Her body trembled. Her fists clenched tight enough for her nails to break skin. She wheezed with each breath, a high, whistling sound. Her eyes shimmered with tears she refused to let fall.

  She needed treatment now or she’d be feverish by morning.

  You keep all your pain inside sometimes I feel that I am no use.

  “Come. You can do it,” I said, hoping I sounded encouraging.

  There was no point of freaking out over the evident pain that was etched into her skin. Taking her hand, I guided her forward, helping her hobble her way to safety. Her maid trailed behind quietly, sniffling, trying not to cry.

  The moment Ah Qi reached the mattress, she collapsed face-down, her body limp with exhaustion.

  “I’m okay,” she mumbled. “It’s just lashes. The pain will go away. Eventually.”

  She always did this, downplaying it. Like she wasn’t allowed to feel hurt. Like her suffering needed to be digestible to others. Like she had to apologise for being the one in pain.

  Her hair was tied up in a tight, formal bun. Without it falling across her back, her frame looked even smaller, so slight, like she might fold under the weight of her own silence.

  I sat beside her, the bed creaking under our weight. I pulled the jar from my sleeve and reached for the back of her robes.

  Slender fingers caught my wrist. Strong and unyielding, even as her strength was sapped with every movement.

  “What are you doing?”

  Ah. Right. It hadn’t occurred to me the indecency of the situation until that moment: it was late at night, and I was with a girl who just happened to be in a bloody mess on the bed, and I was about to remove her clothes to put medicine on.

  Compromising to say the least.

  “I’m sorry,” I said immediately, lifting both hands in surrender. “I was going to apply the salve, but if you’d rather…I can wait behind the curtain. Or leave it with you.”

  She didn’t let go.

  “No... it’s not that. I just...it felt weird.”

  Yun Shiqi never stuttered in court, only in front of me. For some reason, it filled me with a guilty but pleasurable feeling, the kind that made me feel somewhat important. Someone like me, Yuanxiao, could elicit such a reaction from her.

  “Then...” I prompted gently.

  She looked like she wanted to disappear.

  “Well, obviously my hand can’t reach my back,” she blurted. “I guess…you know…I guess I don’t mind some help. With the cream. Because I can’t reach. Not because I want you to. Or that I think about that. Which I don’t. I mean—etiquette—and I get it if you’re uncomfortable too and—never mind. Never mind.”

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  Not only had this been the longest spiel that she had spoken to me since I had known her, but it was quite possibly the most unintentionally adorable thing I’d ever seen.

  She held out the jar with shaking hands, cheeks red as beetroot.

  I took it from her with all the care in the world.

  The salve clung to my fingers, thick and sticky like half-dried honey. I looked down at my hand, then at her back, then back again.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Her back was a battlefield. Ribbons of flesh peeled open like torn silk, the deeper cuts oozing slow, dark pools. Dried blood crusted over her pale skin, flaking like ash from burnt parchment. She looked more like a ruin than a girl. This wasn’t something a jar of salve could fix. She needed stitches. She needed the wounds flushed clean.

  She needed An Lingqi.

  But the night was not young, and every second wasted was a second her body fought to stay upright.

  Her maid was still in the corner, sniffling so hard it sounded like she was trying to inhale her own grief.

  “xiǎojie,” she wept, wringing her sleeves. “She’s so sick. So broken…”

  “Don’t cry. It won’t help her now,” I said.

  “But they—what they did—how can this be right?” Her words spilled between sobs.

  “It’s not,” I said. “That’s why we stay calm.”

  Her shoulders trembled, but she nodded.

  “Can you do me a favour?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

  She rubbed at her nose, eyes red-rimmed. “Anything. If it’ll help xiǎojie, I’ll do it.”

  “Bring warm water. Clean towels. Maybe ginger tea, if you can manage it.”

  She hurried off, nearly tripping in her haste.

  I turned back to Ah Qi.

  She hadn’t moved.

  Her breath was shallow; her cheek pressed against the side of the mattress. When she shifted slightly, the motion sent a wave of pain through her body. Enough to make her flinch and curl in on herself.

  I wanted to punch something. Someone. Anyone. Anything that had let this happen.

  She twisted her neck toward me, wincing. The whites of her eyes were glossed over, not from fever, but from pain. And exhaustion. And maybe a bit of humiliation.

  I hated it. I hated seeing her like this.

  Then a hand, her hand, touched mine.

  Warm. Steady. Gentle despite how she trembled.

  “It’s not your fault,” she whispered.

  I didn’t answer.

  She reached up again, fragile fingers gripping the sides of my face and forcing me to look at her.

  “Yuanxiao,” she said, her voice cracking like thin ice, “it’s not your fault. Say it. It’s. Not. Your. Fault.”

  She said it like it would keep the dam from breaking. Like she wanted to believe it more than I ever could.

  But something in the way she said it, stabbed deeper than any blade.

  She blamed me.

  Not directly. Not out loud. But somewhere inside her, she did. And somewhere inside me, I did too.

  I took her hands gently and pulled them away from my face. “I can’t forgive them.”

  I didn’t add the last part.

  I can’t forgive myself.

  ***

  After her maid returned with the water, I got to work. I dressed her wounds as best I could. We didn’t speak. She winced when I pressed too hard. I coughed once or twice to fill the silence, but the quiet hung thick and heavy, like smoke after a fire.

  Eventually, she crawled toward her pillow, moving in slow, painful shuffles, and curled up into herself; a crumpled thing made of bruises and silence. Her eyes, red and swollen, blinked slowly at nothing in particular. There was no anger in her face. Just emptiness.

  I repositioned myself at the edge of her bed. My hands twisted together in my lap. I should say something. I knew I should. But the words wouldn’t come.

  “…thank you.”

  Her voice caught me off guard.

  I hesitated. Then, trying for something light, I said, “That’s what friends are for, right?”

  The shift was subtle, but immediate.

  Something dimmed in her. Not just because her situation was unbearable, but because some fragile thread inside her, something I couldn’t name, had snapped. The light in her eyes retreated.

  “Yuanxiao?” she said.

  I faced her.

  “What am I to you?”

  “You’re…” I couldn’t find it in me to finish the sentence.

  It was not for a lack of words. I always knew the right words to say. The ones with the perfect cadence; the ones that made people draw closer. After some point, I didn’t even need to say anything.

  Just a single smile sufficed.

  And if I wanted to, I could’ve have told her:

  ‘You’re my world.’

  ‘You’re the girl I love.’

  ‘You’re the only soul I want to be near when the sky collapses and the earth gives way.’

  Pretty things. Polished. Poetic. Lines rehearsed and honed to draw out exactly the response I’d long grown used to.

  I didn’t want to make her blush for me. Not like that. Not for something crafted.

  And maybe that’s what made it worse.

  Because I did feel all those things.

  And still, I couldn’t say them.

  Ah Qi broke down into a cough.

  Look at me. Being selfish again. Thinking only about my own feelings when she was the one falling apart.

  I really was a terrible person. Coveting her. Reaching for her heart with one hand whilst keeping the other behind my back. Wanting her affections yet refusing to give her those precious words.

  I wanted so much to be genuine with her. To stay beside her always. To reach for her hand and never let go.

  I wanted to be that one.

  But I had not been made for that.

  My smile, that some described had the sweetness of nectar, was designed to unravel.

  My eyes, dark and unreadable, were trained to observe.

  My voice, silky as honey, existed only to turn people into blushing messes, easy prey for secrets to slip free.

  Every part of my look was a weapon.

  That was my duty as the Grand Chancellor’s heir.

  But her bruises won’t vanish under charm. Her scars won’t fade beneath a well-angled smile. And her trembling won’t stop just because of a man whose looks rivalled a heavenly nymph. She needed someone real. Someone whose strength wasn’t related to their beauty; a fragile currency that would wane with time.

  She needed power. Stability. The kind that came from unwavering truth, not from the performance of it.

  And that someone was not me.

  The day of the banquet only further solidified that truth.

  I had stood there, helpless, as the whip tore into her again and again. I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t forget the look in her eyes as she tried not to cry. Beautiful hazel eyes, rimmed with unshed tears that should never have existed in the first place.

  Someone with power could have stopped them. Someone with strength could have spoken out. A pretty face could never.

  A pretty face only—

  Without warning, she buried her face in my chest. Ah Qi.

  She exhaled softly. Her voice was barely louder than breath.

  “It doesn’t matter if you say it or not. Whether I’m just your friend…or the deposed princess of Taishan…or a pathetic girl trying to hold onto a dream. Whether you’re kind to me just because. Whether this thing I feel is real or just something I made up.”

  She drew a shaky breath, and her fingers clung to my robe.

  “Please. Let me live in this fantasy.

  Her shoulders trembled. Slowly, she tilted her head to look up at me. Her otherworldly eyes shimmered beneath the candlelight, full of hurt and quiet hope.

  “I just want you.”

  I wrapped my arms around her, careful of the wounds, of the bandages, of the weight of everything we didn’t say.

  I didn’t trust myself to speak.

  I’m such a coward. Even now, I can’t respond.

  I held her until her breathing steadied, until her body softened against mine and her eyes closed. Just before she drifted off, a faint memory of a smile touched her lips.

  That was the last time I ever saw her smile.