Page 43 of The Nightblood Prince

When Siwang came to watch us practice, I kept my head low.

In the evenings, I ate with him.

I never mentioned the kiss, and neither did he.

Instead, we talked about more important things, like war and strategy.

He bounced ideas off me, told me the dire situation of the front lines, and I told him about my year in exile.

About the people I had met on my travels, and the everyday struggles of a normal civilian, far from the palace—this interested him more than anything else.

Days passed.

After our evening combat practice, I was tasked with cleaning up. So I gathered all the wooden swords and took them to the armory. On my way back to the barracks, I spotted Siwang in the stables.

Foolishly, I approached without invitation, and his guards stopped me at first sight.

Siwang smiled, waved the guards away. “That’s Little Li. He is allright.”

Guards were not in positions to question princes, so they stepped aside.

By now, people were used to seeing me talking to Siwang, and rumors were spreading like wildfire: that the prince had found a new lover in a foot soldier.

This gave me a newfound fame around camp.

People stared and whispered everywhere I went.

I felt like Lifeng Fei again, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about this.

We are not lovers, I had tried to tell my comrades whenever they asked.

Then what are you?

I didn’t know how to explain things without exposing the truth: that we had grown up together and he was my best friend. Though he did kiss me a few days ago, neither of us ever brought it up, so was it really a kiss?

A year ago, I would have fought these rumors tooth and nail, declared that I felt nothing for him. But the more time we spent together, the more I longed for more.

“You were at camp when I arrived. I remember seeing Beifeng on my first day here.” I leaned against Beifeng’s stall doors as Siwang tended to the horse.

“I was.”

“And you didn’t say anything, because…?”

Siwang shrugged, turning the full heat of his gaze on me. Degree by degree, my skin grew warmer. “I wanted to bide my time, see why you came, how you were doing.”

“Did you recognize me immediately?”

“How could I not? I think about you every day. After you left the palace, I pictured your face every night before I went to sleep, and hoped I might see you again in my dreams.”

I should tell him that I had done the same, that I’d missed him the way he’d missed me. However that would be a lie, and Siwang’s heart was not something I should toy with, not anymore.

I turned to Beifeng instead, picked up a carrot from the bucket and fed him. “You’re not going to tell anyone my secret, right?”

“As long as you don’t tell anyone the classified military information I divulged.”

“I wonder how much Lan Yexue would pay for such information.” My lips twitched. “You shouldn’t tell people Rong’s military secrets so easily, you know.”

“I trust you.”

My heart did its cursed flutter again, but I couldn’t tell if this feeling was good or bad. There was a sour taste on my tongue, a seeping dread that I didn’t deserve Siwang’s unconditional trust.

Did he ever stop to think that I might take advantage of his feelings? I looked away. Perhaps we shouldn’t be spending so much time together after all, regardless of how much I enjoyed it. “I’m honored by the credence you give to my character.”

A silence befell us. Siwang’s attention shifted to the silver brush in his hand as he ran it through Beifeng’s mane. “Was everything…worth it? Did I make the right choice by letting you go?”

I thought of my sister’s eloquent smiles, my parents’ tender warmth when they looked at each other in the cottage’s flickering candlelight. All the things I couldn’t see when I was Lifeng Fei, the girl betrothed to a prince, trapped inside a gilded cage.

But I also thought of my mother’s squinting eyes, my father’s slouched back, and the blisters that marred Fangyun’s hands.

“In some ways, yes. Though in other ways, no…. I am happy. Happier than I was inside the palace. I only wish this happiness didn’t cost my family their life in the capital.

I was the one who wanted to leave, yet they are paying the price.

They never complained, and never blamed me. But I blame myself.”

Siwang didn’t say anything else. I couldn’t read his expression once his princely mask fell into place. This mask used to be something he wore around the court officials, never around me.

Another reminder that things had changed. We had changed.

The next day, Beifeng was gone from his stall, Siwang from his tent, and Caikun from the morning roll call.

The camp suddenly felt empty.

“The prince returned to the palace,” I overheard one of the commanders say. He didn’t say why, and I didn’t ask. Anyone important enough to know the whereabouts of the crown prince would never tell a nobody like me.

Rong Siwang was allowed to do what he wanted, when he wanted.

He didn’t have to explain himself to me.

Not anymore.