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“Fei, we can’t…I want to do this right.” Though he said this, he did not push me away. He only held me tighter, his lips claiming mine between breaths.

“As long as it is with you, it is right.” I pulled myself away so I could look at him, so he could see that I meant these words. “I want it to be with you.”

I moaned and my whole body quivered when his fingers finally touched me where I wanted him to. My breath hitched as I felt his fingers enter me, so much bigger than mine, so much stronger. He moved slowly at first, then quicker.

Harder,I wanted to beg him. My hand wandered lower like the concubines said to do when pleasing a husband. When my fingertips reached between his thighs and brushed him, the mighty Siwang mewed like a kitten, the softest sound I had ever heard him make.

“Fei,” he whimpered, pulling me closer, lips trailing my jaw, neck. Kissing, biting, sucking. “I love you.”

There it was.

The unspoken confession from earlier. The words I’d almost heard him utter before self-control got the better of him. Always controlled. Always composed. So much had changed between us, yet so much was the same.

I kissed him harder. With every aching want inside me, I kissed him. He was the temptation I had resisted for too long. But just because Lifeng Fei and Crown Prince Rong Siwang could never be happy together, it didn’t mean we couldn’t have this moment.

“I love you,” he whispered again.

I love you, too,I wanted to say. Especially now, as I invited him closer, guiding him toward all of me.

“I love you, Fei!” he cried as he entered me, and I flinched. It hurt, but I wanted him so much I didn’t care. I needed him more than I had ever needed anything. I was desperate for more.

Siwang moved slowly, cautiously, as if I were a delicate vase he didn’t want to break. I smiled at the thought of me, breakable.

I grabbed his waist and pulled him in, until I felt like my world was consumed by him.

I wanted him to remember me.

If anything happened, I wanted him to die not with the echoes of me leaving him under snowfall, but with this memory of our embrace.

Siwang’s touch was soft, his lips sweet and heady like the plum wines we used to steal from his father’s feasts, two giggling kids running through the gilded halls. His eyes were always on me, even back then, and he did whatever I told him to.

My prince.

My Siwang.

His teeth brushed my neck as we moved, our raspy breaths the most beautiful symphony I had ever heard. Back arched, my hand tangled inhis silky hair to keep him close, I felt myself growing hotter, lighter, higher.

The warm candlelight in Siwang’s tent flickered as the world turned darker, darker, darker, until I was standing in the middle of a bloodied battlefield, stained crimson. Half-dead men and severed limbs were scattered at my feet. Swords and axes and arrows flew from alldirections.

And at the center of the chaos was Siwang, on his knees, a bloodied gash in his torso and another one in his leg.

“Siwang!” I tried to run, pumping my legs furiously to close the distance between us. But no matter how hard I forced myself to move, he was always beyond reach. Blood pooled around him, crimson as winter roses.

Before him stood a young man swathed in silvery white, too pristine to belong on the battlefield. He raised his sword, and—

“No!” I gasped awake to the interior of Siwang’s tent, a white tiger’s pelt draped over my body.

It was a vision. Magic lingered like a hum on my skin, Fate’s touch ringing in my ears.

“You can’t go to Changchun,” I said as I reached across the bed for Siwang.

Only to find it empty, except for a piece of paper.

Stay safe. Wait for me,the note read.I love you.

He was gone.

I leaped to my feet and quickly gathered my robes. By the time I ran outside, half the camp was either gone or in the process of packing.