Page 43 of The Dragon Wakes with Thunder (The Dragon Spirit Duology #2)

Twenty-nine

Everything reminds me of you.

—Liu Sky, in a private missive, undelivered

The moment was fast yet brutal. Sky wrapped his arms around me, positioning himself beneath me to take the brunt of the fall.

Still, when we slammed into the hard earth, the impact drove the breath from my lungs with such force that I couldn’t inhale, couldn’t move.

I lay sprawled in the dirt, my vision flickering at the edges.

I could hear the gentle susurrations of a bamboo grove around us, the clack of bamboo poles and the ominous shushing of leaves whistling in the wind.

Gradually, I felt Sky stir beside me, and I forced myself upright despite my aching bones.

Sky groaned and crawled toward me. I tensed at his proximity, reaching for my blade, but then saw the grudging mirth in his eyes.

As if against his will, he began to laugh, and it was then that the absurdity of our situation struck me.

He smiled at me, and without meaning to, I smiled back.

It was like muscle memory; I couldn’t help it.

His eyes softened as his hands searched for me in the half dark. I didn’t know if he was trying to strangle me or to kiss me. Still, I let him. I was weak and I let him.

His hand slid up my throat to cup the back of my neck. This was madness, I thought, but I did not pull away as he lowered his mouth to mine, gently, tenderly, with none of his former violence.

I let my blade clatter to the ground as I breathed out a sigh of inexorable pleasure, relaxing against him. He tasted like nostalgia, like the blinking stars on a warm summer night. He tasted like the golden haze of all my long-held dreams.

I had wanted him so badly, for so long. He had been mine, and then I had let him go. Why had I let him go? Why had I believed this couldn’t work between us? What if we could try again—what if we truly stood a chance at happiness?

He ran skillful fingers across my shoulders, massaging my neck where I liked, knowing which places were my weakness. I hummed like a cat, leaning into his touch. I let him deepen the kiss, giving in to the present moment.

And then—I heard it. The quiet drag of rope. It was barely discernible against the murmuring bamboo, but my ears were attuned to the threat like the sound of my own name. My eyes flew open as I caught sight of the coil of rope in his left hand, long enough to bind an unsuspecting prisoner.

Anger returned to me like summer rain, needing no preamble.

I shoved him back before grabbing my sword, which had fallen in the dirt.

Furious, I swung recklessly at him. He ducked out of the way, but my sword caught the trunks of several bamboo poles, slicing them in half so that they fell like beheaded men.

Sky’s gaze went from my sword to the sliced bamboo. “I don’t know what else to do, Meilin,” he said, his voice wretched. “I don’t know how else to keep you safe.”

“The difference between me and you,” I bit out, “is that I’ve never tried to own you.”

He tried to speak but I was done talking.

I feinted left, then struck out with the hilt of my blade, connecting my steel to his temple.

Sky crumpled to the ground, the coil of rope abandoned beside him like a lifeless snake.

For a cruel moment, I considered tying him up, to teach him what it was like, to remind him of what he’d done to me.

But my gaze drifted above the bamboo grove to the moon, scintillating in its fullness.

“ When I look at the moon ,” Xiuying had told me, “ I think of you. ”

My stepmother would have loathed tonight’s violence. It would have reminded her of my father.

My father, who I hated to emulate. My father, whose inheritance I’d tried so hard to run from, every day for the past nineteen years of my life.

An inheritance of addiction and violence.

I checked Sky’s pulse—stable—then gathered my belongings and went on my way, the full moon my witness behind me. As I climbed again onto the rooftop eaves, this time, I resisted the urge to look back.

Lei was waiting by the fire when I returned, sharpening his blades. At the sound of my approach, his gaze traveled over me in silent, exacting assessment. When I winced as I sat beside him, he said, “You’re hurt.”

“Only bruised.”

He stared into the fire. “I thought you might go with him.”

I swallowed. “Our time is over. I’m sure of that now.”

The even strokes of his whetting filled the quiet mountain hush, until the stars above seemed to blink in time with the rhythmic sounds.

The hour was late, but I couldn’t sleep, not on a night like this.

In the thin air, I could smell the subtle fragrance of wildflowers, of bamboo groves, of cold running water.

Chuang Ning and the Forbidden City felt far, far away.

Yet somehow, on a night like this, its memories felt so very close.

“Let me look over your wounds,” said Lei some time later, after he’d put away his weapons.

Reluctantly, I unbuttoned my tunic and lowered it from my shoulders, exposing my back, which had taken the brunt of my fall, to him.

The night air chilled my bare skin, but I embraced the cold, feeling as if I deserved some punishment for the stupidity of the night.

Yet Lei’s hands were warm as he assessed the cuts and bruises littered across my back.

“This one may need disinfecting,” said Lei, uncorking the last of his wine supply.

As the alcohol met my open wound, I hissed at the pain, though I had endured far worse. In fact, it was nothing, nothing more than a scrape. Nothing more than a boy, a boy I’d known for barely a year, really, a boy that I’d thought I’d spend my entire life with.

Instead, we’d tried to kill each other. More than once.

Was this who I was? Incapable of love, engendering violence and hate in those I tried to cherish?

The dragon had chosen me for a reason. Because I was filled with greed, never satisfied, always craving more than I deserved. That was the darkness within me, the hunger that could never be sated.

My eyes ached at the corners. I felt a single tear roll down my cheek, then another.

Silently, Lei dressed my wounds. When he was done and I’d retied my tunic, he handed me a handkerchief. It was a women’s handkerchief, embroidered with yellow and pink peonies in bloom. Briefly, I wondered who had given it to him.

“Have the rest,” he said, offering me the remnants of his last bottle of baijiu. “We’ll need to pick up more supplies in First Crossing anyway—I couldn’t find much in Kuntian.”

I took a generous gulp, grimacing as the liquor burned my throat. “It was stupid,” I said, answering a question he hadn’t asked. “I was stupid.”

He shrugged, passing no judgment. He was unusually reticent on the subject, I noted. Almost as if he didn’t want to influence me. I offered the bottle to him, and to my surprise, he hesitated.

Considering him in the half dark, I asked, “You knew where I was going tonight.” Aloud, it sounded less like a question than a statement. “Why did you let me?”

A different prince certainly would have stopped me.

“You’re allowed to make your own stupid decisions,” he said, voice light and teasing. Then he took the bottle and drained it. Without his usual confidence, he said, “But next time, let me come with you.”

I shook my head at this. I didn’t need a chaperone, especially not one to bear the brunt of my mistakes. “I can handle myself,” I told him. “And if I can’t, it’s my problem.”

A memory from the war surfaced, and a bitter smile tugged at my lips. “ You’re a good fighter, Ren, but you’re a terrible soldier ,” Sky had told me. “ You think for yourself. You don’t obey orders. And you look out for your own agenda over your platoon’s. ”

He’d been right, all along. I had never followed orders particularly well. Not in my father’s house, not in the army, and certainly not in the imperial palace. I had never worked well with others. I had never known how to see them as equals and partners in my plans.

“I know you’re strong,” said Lei, his eyes ruminative in the firelight, “but being strong doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be protected and taken care of.”

I couldn’t meet his gaze. Looking away, I swallowed the sudden emotion rising in my throat. “Who gave you that handkerchief?” I asked, changing the subject. “Lady Tang Liqing?”

“She had little reason to make me cry,” he said, in his mocking way.

“Then who?” I asked, wondering just how busy he’d been around the palace.

He appeared ready to crack another joke, but at my warning look, he said instead, “My sister.”

I hadn’t even known he’d had a sister.

That was when I remembered—Zihuan, Lei’s brother, had once mentioned another girl. “Rea,” I recalled, and Lei nodded reluctantly. “Where is she now?”

“Tzu Wan.” A pause, and then, “She was married this past month.”

“I’m sorry you missed the occasion,” I said, and I meant it. “Did you approve of the match?”

He nodded with a certain arrogance. I would’ve bet money he’d orchestrated the entire affair himself.

At his reserve, I asked, “What’s she like?”

He sighed, reaching for the bottle before finding it empty. “I’m not drunk enough for this.”

I shook my head at him. “I need you clearheaded, Lei.”

“I know,” he said with a sigh. “But it doesn’t make me miss the taste.”

He spun the empty bottle against the dirt. “What is she like?” he wondered aloud. “Rea…Rea is insatiably curious. She asks more questions than a constable, and solves more cases than one too. People come to her with all sorts of problems, and she loves to help them, no matter how small the issue.”

I watched his face, the way his eyes grew soft as he spoke of his sister. He looked young then, and I was reminded of the fact that he’d been a boy not too long ago. We had all been children, once—before this war had consumed us.