Page 84

“It’s all nonsense,” I interjected.

“If you truly thought it nonsense, you wouldn’t have spent the past year searching for the stargazer who first uttered your prophecy.”

My eyes shot up to meet his. “You werestalkingme?”

Yexue smirked. “You think too highly of yourself, Fei. I have eyes everywhere, and you simply happen to constantly fall within my line of sight.”

My hands balled into fists. “If your men aren’t the monsters people say they are, then why did you attack that village where the stargazer’s mother was hiding?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I never attacked Duhuan. When my men found out someone had murdered the stargazer’s mother, they rounded the villagers up to find out what had happened. That was it.”

“Really?”

“Swear on my cold, cold heart.”

“Did you find anything?”

“Nothing of use. Even if I did, do you expect me to just hand it over? Knowledge is power. Do you think I will go soft and just tellyou?”

I glared at him. “Don’t think I don’t know how much you love to gloat. If you knew something, you wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret longer than a few hours before you start taunting me.”

Yexue laughed at this, his head tilted back, eyes gleaming—the kind of laugh that lit up his whole face. Not for the first time, his beauty sparked something inside me.

But the light left his eyes as quickly as it had come. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, fragile like I had never heard it. “While your prophecy foresaw such greatness that burdened you with men who wish to possess you, mine was something crueler. Something that befits not a man or a prince, but the sort of monstrosity that would make our continent shudder. Thankfully, my mother slit the throat of the prophet as soon as they uttered it.”

My breath snared on something sharp.

“To this day, I don’t know what exactly was said,” Yexue continued. “But it drove my mother to end her own life because she couldn’t stand the monster she’d shepherded into this world. I guess I’m lucky that my father was a coward, too soft to do what should have been done. He had tried his hardest to love me, but love is fragile, not nearly enough to overshadow something as primal as fear. That prophecy is the reason my uncle sent me to Rong as a prisoner after my father became ill.” His gaze fell on me again. “When I left, my uncle told me that if I knew what was good for me, I’d die in Rong. And when I couldn’t find the stargazer or any of the answers I was looking for…that became what I wanted, too. Because if I couldn’t change my prophecy, the world would be a better place without me.”

In the dying amber light, Lan Yexue was a sculpture of ivory. His pale skin seemed to glow. In his eyes, as they gazed upon me, I saw a reverence rapt as the devotion that holy believers reserved for gods.

His eyes were haunting. Something inside me rattled harder like a chord struck, refusing to be silenced even as I pushed it down.

Once, years ago, when I was a child barely taller than a tea table,I had snuck into the stargazer’s tower and watched her stand among moving platforms of metal and wood, decorated with ornaments that were supposed to represent the stars in the sky. The spellbound focus she had then was the same that Yexue held for me in this moment.

My cheeks burned, and I tore my eyes from his to stare at the city beneath us, at its people and the lanterns that were slowly beginning to glow. I looked at anything and everything that was not Lan Yexue.

His cold fingers caressed my chin, ever so delicately. “I never intended to make it out of those mountains, Fei,” he continued. “I thought if I were to die, I would die by my own hand, when I wanted and how I wanted. But…then I met a girl who saw me as a life that deserved to be saved, not an abomination who had no right to exist.” He laughed. “Even if she did drive a dagger through my chest, she had also risked her life to protect me.”

I turned to face him then. “That day in the mountains, you were planning to…” I couldn’t finish the thought; my heart was beating so hard in my chest I thought it might break as more words welled up to my lips.

No sound came from them.

What kind of life had Lan Yexue lived, to make him want to leave this world so young? And what was the prophecy that was bestowed upon him, to make his own family fear him so?

“Fei…” My name from his lips was a chilling brush of satin against the nape of my neck.

I didn’t think when I saved you from the tiger,I wanted to tell him. Whatever he felt for me, I could not reciprocate. I wasn’t worthy of the way he looked at me, with the vehemence of the very stars that marred our destinies.

“Once, I believed destiny was a thing dictated by gods, writtenin the stars. But that was before I met you. The girl who didn’t care about prophecies and what the world expected of her? The girl who was brave enough to venture into the winter mountains and hunt the mighty Beiying tiger for a mere chance at freedom? Before you, I had never thought it possible to defy my destiny. Now it is all I think about. To defy the gods who think themselves worthy of dictating my life.” Gingerly, his fingers touched my hairline, brushing away the stray strands that danced with the evening breeze. “Whatever happened to the girl I met in the mountains? The girl who knew what she wanted and would stop at nothing to get it?”

“Perhaps she’s changed.”

“Because she finally fell in love with her prince?” There was an edge to Yexue’s tone.

“Because she grew up and learned responsibility,” I replied. “If you are looking for the girl who was reckless enough to send her entire family into exile, then I am not her anymore. I have learned that being selfish has consequences. Perhaps you should, too.”

“I liked the selfish you,” he whispered.