Page 85 of The Cinders

‘I shouldn’t have done this,’ he said fiercely.‘I’m sorry, Xian.This was a mistake.’

The prince’s tears poured from him, dripping from his chin.

‘It’s too much, Lim.To know…too late.’The sobs overtook him, wracking his slender body, wiping the strength from his knees.

Xian collapsed.Lim threw one arm around his shoulders, the other at his hip, clasping him tightly.

Their descent to the floor was rough and a mess of limbs and grunted effort, all accompanied by the glow of the slipper, clutched in Xian’s hand.Tools fell from the bench, caught up in the folds of Xian’s gown, and the hidden slipper dug into Lim’s side as he went to his knees, setting Xian down on his backside, cradling the prince against him.

The man’s sorrow was devastating, and too long held back.

‘Lim,’ he whispered between strangled breaths.‘Lim.’

‘I’m here…I’m here.Don’t leave a single tear behind now.’

‘She asked so much of you…yet you came…’ Xian burrowed his head against Lim’s chest.‘You came for me.’

A week or two ago, Lim would never have believed he’d simply nod, and acknowledge that a ghost had led him to where he should have always been.

‘It made no sense to be anywhere else but with you.And your carp asked nothing of me I wouldn’t give freely.’

That drew another soft whimper from Xian.

‘I loved her…’ He spoke into Lim’s shirt, his tears dampening the fabric.‘And I knew she loved me too…now, Lim…I know why…’ He sniffed, and Lim waited, sensing where the words would take them, feeling the truth prickle beneath his skin.‘My mother.Her spirit was in the carp’s bones.She watched over me all this time.My mother never left me, even when I felt so alone, she was there.Do you think me mad, now, Song Lim?’

Lim bent his head, his lips a hair’s breadth from kissing the top of Xian’s head before he stopped himself.

‘No, Xian.I know you are not mad.’A ghost, a watchful guardian.A carp who had known before Lim himself where his rightful place was.‘How great her love for you was, to defy the bounds of the afterlife.What it must be, to be so loved.’

The prince pushed against him, not seeking to move away, but the opposite; burrowing into the man who held him.Lim wrapped him tighter in an embrace, shifting his legs so Xian rested between them; holding fast as a storm of old and weighty grief lashed the man in his arms.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

SUNLIGHT TOUCHEDXian’s skin, warm against the side of his face.He blinked his eyes open, their puffiness leaving him feeling as though he were squinting into the light; which was duller than its warmth suggested.

He vaguely recalled Lim guiding him here, out into the garden behind the shoemaker’s workshop, seating him beneath the round roof of a modest pavilion.

Xian had cried to the point of fearing his chi would drain from him entirely.He sat now emptied, slack-boned, and peaceful with his head resting upon Lim’s shoulder, his body held in the shoemaker’s embrace.

Xian shifted, the fading afternoon sunshine against the scars on his cheek, Lim’s arm against those at his hip.He felt no compulsion to shift away, even though his hands rested on the shoemaker’s thigh, and their bodies pressed close.

This type of closeness was not one Xian was familiar with; he thought he’d be more frightened to find himself in such a pose.

But yet again, he found peace with this man.

With such comfort, he wondered if it would be so terrible to allow the shoemaker to see how unnatural he truly was.Mercy, his mother, had chosen Song Lim after all.

He sat up; upended by his own brazen thoughts.

‘Are you all right?’Lim said.

Xian nodded, wiping at his tears.‘Yes, I’m fine.Tired…’

Exhausted by the shedding of years worth of tears; of learning his mother had been close, seeing him, when he thought himself invisible.

But crying on Lim’s shoulder had solved none of their dilemmas.Xian was still part guest, part prisoner and too many parts fox, and Lim was shackled like a slave to Master Chen, to avoid being thrown into confinement, at the mercy of Captain Duan.

Xian shivered.