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“Only to trap me yourself.” She watched him turn away and run a trembling hand over his head. “I was Guma’s, and now you want me to be yours. I have my own soul and my own destiny, and I’m tired of belonging to someone else.”
The wrath in Wei’s eyes made her take a step back. “I know what this is about. This has something to do with her scaring you into thinking you’ll lose your mind like your mother did.”
Xifeng dug her nails into her palms. He was so close,tooclose to the truth.
“She never thought I deserved you,” he said through gritted teeth. “So she made up some story about how you’re not destined to be with me, is that right? You’re such a child to believe her. The only magic that bitch has, and will ever have, is her foolish lies.”
“You’ve never understood and you never will. Guma decides nothing for me where you’re concerned. Do you know how many beatings I’ve suffered to see you?” She shut her eyes, exhausted. “I can’t give you everything without the risk of losingmyselfin the process.”
“You’re unnatural,” Wei breathed, his voice ragged with disbelief. “You’ll throw away something you have, for fear of losing it anyway. Do you see what she’s done to you? Youareher creature.” He was frightening in his fury and despair, nothing close to the gentle lover she knew. “What if I were to kill her? Is that what I need to do to free you of this obsession? Shall I put my hands around her useless neck and squeeze the life out of her?”
“She has nothing to do with you and me.”
“She haseverythingto do with you and me!” he bellowed. He stormed to the doorway, shoulders convulsing. When he spoke again, he was so quiet she could barely hear him. “You think I’ll always be there and I’ll wait forever. But it’s not true, Xifeng. It’s not true.”
She heard tears in his voice, and it felt like a sword had run her through. “You are why I was brave enough to leave her. You are my reason to live,” she pleaded, desperate to believe her own words even if they rang untrue.
He braced one hand against the doorway, speaking in that strange, choked voice. “But not your only reason. You live to fulfill some destiny she saw for you.”
Xifeng shut her burning eyes and pictured the card with the handsome warrior holding a bloodstained flower. That card appeared in each of Guma’s readings without fail. But how could they be sure of its meaning? And if the sacrifice called forwasWei, would Xifeng have to give him up so soon, before she had even reached the palace?
For if this part of her destiny broke away before it was meant to, who was to say the rest of it wouldn’t disappear, too? She might be left with a future in which she had nothing at all.
“You are part of my fate,” she said, tears choking her voice. “You’ve always been part of it and always will be. If you go, it will be all wrong,Wei.” She flung her words like a rope to keep him with her, but he was drifting and they could both feel it.
He leaned his head against the wall. “I told the Crown Prince today you would accept his offer. He expects you at the palace tomorrow, to be introduced to his mother.”
Xifeng stared at his drooping shoulders and the reddened, curved shell of his ear. “You knew. You knew I wouldn’t say yes.”
“I knew.”
“And you still asked me.”
“I’m done. You’re free.”
His words bled her dry. She sank to her knees, and behind her closed eyes, she saw an endless stretch of meaningless years in which they led separate lives. Years in which she did not occupy his every waking thought, as she did now. He would go on without her and perhaps grow to love someone else, someone unhindered and unafraid to give her whole heart. She believed she understood, in that moment, what her mother had died to escape.
Xifeng felt flames igniting in her breast. She needed him. He was the warrior on the card, and his fate and hers were twin rivers carved into the earth, deep and permanent. She burned with the determination of it. “We will find a way to be together still,” she vowed.
“You’ve got what Guma always wanted now,” he said bitterly. “And you’ll learn it’s more of a prison than marrying me could ever be. You’ll be locked away in thatharemforever.”
“I won’t believe that. I can’t.” She went to him, her heart a scorching bonfire of a storm, lightning raging from within her rib cage as she forced him to face her. “It’s not the right time for us to marry, but that doesn’t mean it never will be.” The lie slipped from her lips as easily as venom. She would not lose him. She would not lose her destiny.
He scoffed and would have turned his tear-streaked face away, but she gripped his jaw, fingernails digging into his skin.
“Everything I do will be for you. I helped you get into the army, didn’t I? I can do more from within the court. Is that not love enough for you? Why do I need to be your wife to prove you are the one I hope and dream for?”
The words spilled out on their own, ringing with seductive power and promise. She would wrap her coils around him in tender confinement and be not his captive, but his captor. She felt him catching the edges of her fire, no matter how badly he wanted to resist.
He gripped her wrist and pulled her close, fierce eyes meeting her own. “I don’t want your hopes and dreams,” he said in a voice like a fresh-hewn blade. “I want you to give all of yourself to me. To be as much under my spell as I am under yours.”
She would not lose him, she thought as she took his hand and led him to the bed. She wouldn’t let him go, no matter how much he wanted from her that she couldn’t give. Their bodies fit together like interlaced fingers. And he need never know that to her, he was a mere possession: a cloak on her shoulders, the feathers on her wings. She needed him, but without her, he served no purpose. She would let him believe whatever he wanted.
Later, he lay with his head pillowed on her breast and the tears drying upon his face.
“I will always find a way to be with you,” she whispered tenderly. “I will break down the gates of the palace if that’s what it takes.”
But he didn’t reply.
