Page 7 of Dynasty of the Wicked (The Wicked Princess #1)

7

For the next few days, Zhi Ruo was kept in a cramped cage atop a wagon as the Kadian army marched onward into Huo territory. She was jostled left and right, the cage shifting and hitting the sides of the wagon with every turn and bump on the road. The cage was smaller than her and she was forced into a balled position with her arms wrapped around her shins and her head ducked low. The Kadians occasionally let her out so she could stretch her legs and eat, and then back in the cage she went.

In the meantime, she didn’t hear anything about Feng Mian, nor the old prisoner; she would have been happy with the elderly prisoner being dead, but her heart ached at the thought of Feng Mian. Had they killed him? He was the son of General Zheng, so he was more valuable than other prisoners. Did that mean they had already bartered him off for their own prisoners of war that Huo had?

Her head was a whirlwind of anxiety and despair. She didn’t want him to be dead, and she didn’t want to be alone here either.

Finally, on the fifth or so day of traveling, one of the Kadians unlocked her cage and dragged her by the arm through the camp they had set up. She didn’t even try fighting; she was worn down, her injuries partially healed, and her weary body sapped of energy.

She kept tripping over her leaden feet. Snow, ice, and slush seeped through her silk shoes, and her breath fogged in front of her like white clouds. She could barely feel her face in the winter chill. If it wasn’t for Wyer’s cloak, she was sure she’d freeze. He had forced her to wear it all this time, and the smell of his sweat and something sickly sweet filled her nostrils whenever she pulled it closer to her shivering body.

The Kadian man hauled her over to one of the tents. “Don’t even think about running this time,” he sneered as he pushed back the flap.

A cage loomed in the center of the tent and lying in it was Feng Mian. His body was curled over, his face buried against the floor, and his silvery-white hair spilled around him like a wreath.

Zhi Ruo’s chest tightened.

He was alive .

The soldier jammed a key into the cage, unlocked it, and shoved her inside. She half-expected Feng Mian to lurch to his feet, tackle the soldier, and try escaping like last time, but he didn’t budge, not even when the door swung shut and the soldier stomped out of the room.

Zhi Ruo dragged herself over to Feng Mian, her hands quivering as she looked over his battered body. His clothes were far dirtier than she remembered. His hair was tinged red near his scalp, likely from a blow to the head, and some sections were crusted together with blood.

Was he dying? Was he actually dead?

“Feng Mian?” She placed a tentative hand on his shoulder.

He didn’t move.

“Feng Mian?” Her stomach twisted and she fought the urge to vomit. “Feng Mian!”

He groaned and moved his head to the side, his eyebrows pulling together and his expression stricken. A knot in Zhi Ruo’s chest eased and she released a shuddered breath. The backs of her eyes burned and she hated how thick her throat felt, like she had drunk syrup and could barely speak through it. Blinking away the stinging, she wove her fingers together tightly to keep from touching him and inspecting his injuries.

“Princess?” he murmured, eyes fluttering open.

“It’s me,” she whispered back. “I thought they—” Her lower lip wobbled and she clamped her mouth shut.

“They can’t kill me that easily.” He pushed himself into a sitting position and then froze, his nose crinkling and a dark look passing over his face. “Why do you smell like him ?” he hissed, snapping his head in her direction.

Zhi Ruo grasped the front of her cloak— Wyer’s cloak. Shame built in the pit of her stomach, swirling there with the rest of her confusing emotions. She shouldn’t have continued to wear it, but she was cold, and despite it being the enemy’s, she had thought … that it was better this way.

“I … He forced me to wear his cloak.” Her words came out like a weak protest.

“That bastard,” Feng Mian spat. “Don’t trust anything he says or does. He probably wants something from you.” He leaned against the bars of the cell and stretched his legs out in front of him with a hiss of pain. His crinkled clothes looked even more disarrayed this way; the front lapel of his cross-collared tunic was blotched with bright vermillion stains, soot, and dirt.

“He does want something from me.” Her voice quivered and she clenched her hands together to keep them from fidgeting. She turned her attention to other parts of the room: to the beige, threadbare walls of the tent, to the sunlight slipping through the thinner sections of the tented roof and splaying against the snow-packed floor, to the dried blood crusting the bottom of their cage. Anything to stop her from staring at Feng Mian.

When she didn’t say anything, he asked, “What does he want?”

“He … wants to marry me.” Saying the words out loud sent a shiver down her spine. She was just a pawn for marriage, whether for Father to marry her off to someone with little influence, or for a Kadian commander to marry in order to better conquer Huo lands. Her existence didn’t matter much, just her title as the princess. “But he thinks I’m Ying Yue. What will he do once he realizes I’m not the favored princess, but the princess everyone hates?” Tears budded in her eyes and now that she was saying the words aloud, they seemed more real, more concrete, more twined with fate. “Will he kill me once he realizes I’m not as valuable?”

Feng Mian’s lips twisted into a dark frown. “He won’t kill you for that. All he needs is a Huo princess to make his claim to the empire, whether that be you or your sister. And that’s only if the Kadians succeed in conquering our lands, which I highly doubt. We’re not even close to losing this war.”

The war between Kadios and Huo had already been ongoing for a little over a year, neither side relenting to the other. How much longer would it take to push Kadios back into their barren lands? What if Wyer married her and she was stuck with him for many years to come?

A cold chill settled over her bones. He would never have her.

The fear and panic she had felt the past few days dissolved into pure, unadulterated rage .

“He called me his war prize,” she said through gritted teeth. Her fingers turned white with pressure as she clenched them tighter on her lap. “I will never be his war prize, or his bride, or his little pawn.”

Feng Mian tilted his head to the side, his silver eyes straying in her direction. He almost looked like he was staring straight at her. The corner of his mouth twitched into a smile, and her heart raced at his beauty.

“Good,” he said. “I would never let that bastard have you, anyway.”

Sitting here in daylight, he looked even more enchanting than he had down in the dungeon. Here, she could make out the pure whiteness of his hair, the shimmer of his lashes, the symmetry of his handsome face.

Maybe that was what spurred her confidence. His words, his actions, and the way he appeared so … perfect. “Why did you save me like you did? Back in the dungeon.”

She could still remember the way he had protected her. His anger at the men who’d hurt her. The way he had flown into a rage when they touched her.

“You are a princess of this empire,” he said after a moment. “I could never let them do anything to you.”

It was something she should have known—that it wasn’t so much because of her, but her status as a princess—but it still felt like a slap to the face.

She stared down at her hands, hating the way her chest tightened painfully. It was fine, she told herself. They barely even knew each other. She shouldn’t have been so caught up with what a stranger thought of her. Of course he wouldn’t care enough.

“I … understand,” she said with a tightlipped smile. “We worked well together, didn’t we?”

He paused. “We did.”

It was better this way. She tried to organize her thoughts without emotion, trying to get everything in order for what she was going to ask him.

“I … I want to know if your offer still stands.” She breathed out deeply, trying to appear and sound as diplomatic and unemotional as possible. This wasn’t a decision made out of love, or passion, or because she felt a stirring of emotion whenever she looked at him—though he was easy on the eyes. This was a calculated move. A long-term strategy. “I would like to marry you and use your magic so that we can—” She glanced around herself, her voice dropping in case anyone was outside their tent listening in on them. “— you know .”

Feng Mian nodded slowly. “My offer remains. But I thought you said you would rather wait for your father’s men to save you than to bind yourself to such a foul beast such as I.”

A foul, beautiful beast, but a beast nonetheless.

“I don’t know how long my father and his men will take,” Zhi Ruo said after a moment. She didn’t want to face the possibility that father wasn’t going to save her, that she had been abandoned, because there was no way that could happen. “They likely don’t even know where I am. I … I am sure of it.”

An ugly, niggling thought in the back of her mind told her she was wrong , but she suppressed it.

“So you would rather free yourself than wait for them?”

“It might be too late if I wait for them.” Her throat tightened as she thought about Wyer’s threat. “Anyway, I think it best if we try to find a way ourselves. We worked well together.”

Feng Mian’s smirk was equal parts annoying—as if he was gloating I told you so —and alluring. To the point that she wanted to lean forward and touch his bruised face to see if he was real, because how could a human look so devastatingly beautiful?

Zhi Ruo reined in her messy emotions. “I understand it’s forbidden for a woman to wield magic, so all I ask is that you not tell anyone once we’ve …” She waved her hand, and then dropped it on her lap when she remembered he couldn’t see the small action. “Well, you know.”

“Yes. Escaped.”

Her eyes widened. “Not so loud! Anyone could be listening.”

She quickly turned to the entrance of their tent, half expecting a horde of Kadian soldiers to rush in enthusiastically and punish them, but nothing happened. The only thing she could hear was the howling of the bitter winds and the faint chatter of soldiers speaking.

“Most Kadians don’t know our language,” he said with a shrug. “But I understand your worry. I will try to be more careful, Princess. I’ll also keep your secret.”

“Good.” She didn’t want more rumors of her wickedness to spread. What would people think if they realized she knew magic? She would be further ostracized.

“Are there any more conditions you’d like to make?”

She cleared her throat, hating the way heat rose up to her cheeks. “What will happen after we’ve … you know ? Will we still be married?”

A slow smile spread over his face. “After what? After we consummate? I’d imagine we’d be even closer as husband and wife then.”

She gasped, her blush deepening. “I didn’t mean that . I meant more like … We will have no reason to remain—Wait, do we have to consummate in order to share our magic?”

“No, but it will be stronger if we do.”

“It—it is probably best we don’t.”

“Why?” His grin sharpened, and there was something mischievous about the way his eyes twinkled. “You don’t think you’ll like it?”

She was too stunned to speak. Too embarrassed by the possibility and too … overwhelmed. She could almost imagine it, his muscular arms around her, his face close to hers, their bodies tangled together. Something stirred in the pit of her stomach—a desire she had never felt before—and she quickly quashed it, her mortification rising.

“S-stop teasing me,” she breathed. She scrambled further away from him on numbing legs and pulled herself into a tight ball. “We don’t need to do anything more than what is necessary. You teach me how to wield this magic, and then we leave and we can forget this all happened.”

He chuckled softly, and she appreciated the way his harsh features seemed to soften. “All right. But keep in mind that my magic is … terribly volatile at times. You’ll likely get hurt on many occasions.”

“It’s fine. So long as we can leave this horrible place.”

“Very well.” Feng Mian held his hand out toward her. “Come here. I need to touch your hands to form the marriage bond.”

She crawled over to him, all too aware that she likely smelled like sweat and grime and blood, that she was dressed in bloodstained and ripped clothes that exposed too much skin, and that her hair was greasy and stringy. She looked nothing like what a bride should look like. But it wasn’t like Feng Mian could see her inappropriate attire anyway, so she supposed it didn’t matter.

“Take that bastard’s cloak off.” Feng Mian’s nostrils flared. “I don’t want to smell him on you while we do this.”

She obliged wordlessly, shrugging off the cloak and tossing it toward the entrance of the cell. The wintry air brushed over her shoulders and she shivered.

Feng Mian shifted on the floor until he was sitting on his knees in front of her, and she mimicked his position as well. He slowly took both of her hands into his. Her heart pounded loudly, the blood rushing to her face. He was too close.

His hands were calloused, rough, and scabbed from earlier, the fingernails cracked and crusted with blood, but she found herself leaning toward his warmth, toward his touch. She curled her small hands into his large ones.

“Will you be my wife, Princess Zhi Ruo?” he murmured, soft enough to send a tremble over her flesh.

He sounded so sincere, and if they weren’t trapped here in this cage, she would have thought he meant it. “Yes.”

“Now ask me the same.”

“Oh … will you—” She felt embarrassed for a moment. This sounded too intimate to be said between two strangers, but she pushed through her messy thoughts and murmured, “Will you be my husband, Zheng Feng Mian?”

“Yes.” He closed his eyes and exhaled softly. “Now I’ll use my magic to form a bond. I can’t spread magic out of my body because of these cuffs, but I can create a marriage bond with you. With this, we’ll be married. We’ll share magic, and we’ll … be one step closer to freedom.”

A tingle zapped through her fingers, so abruptly that she almost wrenched her hands back, but Feng Mian’s hold on her tightened, stopping her. All at once, a warm sensation bloomed in the center of her chest. A gasp escaped her mouth at the unexpected liquid heat that coursed through her veins.

She lifted her head to stare up at him, her mouth parting to ask him if this was his magic, but whatever words she wanted to say were cut off when he leaned closer to her and crushed his lips against hers. Her eyes widened, her body freezing in place. His mouth was soft, and warm, and a rush of heat bubbled up the surface of her flesh despite the winter coldness all around them.

All at once, her eyes fluttered shut, her mouth moving in tandem with his. He groaned softly, grasping the sides of her face with his rough, calloused hands and kissing her harder. The gentleness disappeared as he deepened their kiss with his tongue. Zhi Ruo felt drunk on the feeling, her inexperience showing as she melted in his arms. She didn’t know what to touch—his arms, his chest, his face?

He tasted like wicked temptation. Like blood and sweat and sweetness. Like something out of a fable; a taste that made her lightheaded. A taste that made her want more .

Her back arched without meaning to, her body leaning closer to his naturally. Like they fit together. A soft moan escaped from her lips.

That was all it took for him to pull back.

All at once, the warmth she had felt disappeared, and she stretched her fingers forward to grab him and pull him back. But something stopped her as she peered up at him. Embarrassment, maybe? Or abandonment? She wasn’t sure.

He was breathing heavily still, but that was about it. Nothing else on his shuttered face told her what he was thinking. Did he enjoy the kiss? Did he … want to kiss her?

A wave of embarrassment flooded over her. She had enjoyed it too much. She had to remind herself it was all a part of the marriage bond. Nothing more, nothing less.

“W-was that a part of the … ceremony?” she asked, breathlessly. She cleared her throat and smoothed down her frayed skirt with trembling hands. She still couldn’t believe she had moaned . Over a kiss? She was mortified.

He licked his lips, as if tasting her, and nodded slowly. “Of course.”

“I … see.” She pushed herself a foot away from him, hating the way her whole body trembled and was on fire. Whether it was from his magic, his touch, or the kiss, she wasn’t entirely sure. “When should we practice the magic?”

“It will take some time for your body to acclimate to my magic,” he said after a moment. “Maybe in an hour or so.”

She nodded, and then realized he couldn’t see that, so quickly said, “Yes, okay.”

An awkwardness filled the space between them, heightened by their staggered breathing. She hesitantly brushed her fingers over her lips. She had never kissed someone before and she had never thought it would feel so … passionate, so right .

But it was all for freeing themselves from this Kadian prison. There was no way she could develop feelings for him, no matter how beautiful or tempting he was.