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They made their way back down the avenue, passing people who ran by with jackets over their heads. Hideki ducked into one of the teahouses to get his drink, so Xifeng continued on back to Akira’s house alone. She shook out the umbrella on the front step and entered.
Shiro and Akira were still talking in the pallet room, as though they hadn’t moved since the others left. Shiro was sitting up with a cleanbandage on his shoulder and healthy color in his cheeks. So deep in conversation were they that neither of them noticed Xifeng watching from the doorway. The topic seemed innocent enough—they spoke of the merchant ships that sailed between Kamatsu and the mainland—but she was more interested in the way the dwarf leaned toward Akira, and the way the physician’s cheeks turned pink as she responded to him.
The woman’s earlier jealousy had not been that of a physician for her charge, but another kind entirely.
Xifeng flushed, knowing she was witnessing a private moment, but her feet seemed locked in place.This is how love begins,she thought wistfully. The shy meeting of eyes, the exchanged smiles, the tentative brush of hands. A kindling grew in her heart that had nothing to do with the creature within; it was awant,a longing as palpable as hunger for food.
She couldn’t recall how it had happened with her and Wei. It seemed like he had been there forever, a constant in her life, as permanent as the seasons. And though she loved him, she had always maintained a distance. That was what living up to Guma’s fortune meant—guarding herself from falling completely, even when she desperately wanted to. But watching Shiro and Akira made the yearning rise inside her like chilled hands stretching toward a flame.
What would it be like to fall together?
She backed away, feeling cold and alone and hoping they wouldn’t see her. But her footsteps broke the spell. Instinctively, Shiro and Akira moved farther apart. The physician excused herself and left the room, eyes still shining, and Xifeng took her place beside Shiro’s pallet.
“Akira tells me you plan to enter the palace,” he said, folding his hands over his stomach. “I won’t warn you off like Hideki has, but I hope you’ve given it careful consideration. Once inside a king’s court, it’s very difficult to come back out again.”
“You must know that well.” The candlelight lit the elegant lines of Shiro’s face. He seemed too young, Xifeng thought, to wear the sadness she saw on his features.
“My father was our king’s chief adviser. I grew up in the highest circles of the court and married a woman of even greater rank. A daughter of the king.”
“Is she the princess you spoke of before, who wore pearls in her hair?”
“That was her. One of many unimportant daughters the king had to marry off. A spare to give away to a useless being.” He gestured to himself as he would to a beast and not a man merely small in stature. “He did it to please my father, who was keen to be connected to the royal family and even keener to get rid of me. My wife and I moved to a small house in the country.”
Xifeng watched the play of emotions on his handsome face. “What happened?”
“She killed herself. She preferred death to being married to someone like me.”
The sorrow and anger in his voice moved her deeply. “You are good and honorable, and you deserve a better family than the one you were given.”
Shiro raised his beautiful, sad eyes to hers. “Some of us must rely on friends to see the best within us. That is how we find balance.” He made an effort to smile as he changed the subject. “And balance is what you need to succeed at court... like that apothecary’s scale you so aptly mentioned.”
“Balance?”
“The balance between your ambition and your soul. Between being strong and being kind, which some perceive as weakness.”
“It must be like a game,” Xifeng ventured. “Maintaining relations at court and overseas. Allowing other kings to believe they have power when you hold all the cards.”
He tipped his head, observing her. “Do you relish such a life?”
She evaded the question. “I accept whatever the gods bestow upon me, as we all must.” Something in his gentle manner made Xifeng want to tell him everything she could not say to Wei. “There are things I hate to admit about myself. I’m not the kind of person I want to be... the person my mother must have hoped I’d be.”
“We all have our battles to fight, but we can choose to overcome them. I see how much you love Wei, though you try to hide it. Why is that?”
“I’m afraid. My mother loved my father so much, it killed her when he left. Guma wanted to protect me, to avoid my giving someone that much power over me. She wanted me to forge my own path, free of any shackles.”Except the ones she put on me herself.“Perhaps it would be better for him to take his road and I, mine.”
“But you and Wei clearly love each other. Such a love wouldn’t be a risk, would it?”
She shuddered. “I might lose him, and what would happen to me then?”
“Perhaps your mother was never happier than when she had your father. Isn’t it better to give up a fraction of your freedom to gain tenfold in happiness, even for a short time?”
Though Xifeng’s hungry heart lurched at his words, she felt something—like a small, determined hand—tugging it back into place. And when she left to let him rest, Shiro’s question haunted her all the way upstairs.
Wei joined the soldiers every morning for the rest of the week. On the seventh day of their stay with Akira, he announced that the Commander had requested his presence once more.
“He has a proposition for me,” he said casually, though his eyes shone and he hadn’t eaten a bite of his porridge. “I’ll be meeting the craftsman who makes their weaponry.”
Xifeng squeezed his hand, even as her heart sank. A craftsman, after she had fought to win the officers’ support of him. “We can all guess what sort of proposition he’ll make. But I thought you’d be asked to join the army, at least.”
