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Lan lifted her eyebrows. It sounded so convoluted that she wondered, disturbed, whether it could really be true. “What did she mean about you losing your physical form?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Look at me!” He gestured frantically at his own body, which looked like a column of smoke in the dark whenever he moved.
Still confused, she poked him with the flute. Or rather, she attempted to do so, because as soon as the instrument touched his chest, it went right through his body. They both stared at the spot where it should have made contact with him.
“What is this?” Lan whispered. The panic on his face mirrored her own as she tried once more to poke him with the flute. Again, the bamboo passed through him as though he was air. He flinched when she reached for him with her free hand. The air around him was warm, but when her fingers came close to his chest, she felt a gust of pure, terrifying cold. “Are you a ghost?”
“It’s the spell. Do you believe me now?” he asked hopelessly. “The witch said my mother would be able to break the spell. But if she’s been alive all this time, why didn’t she ever try to find me? Surely that means she doesn’t love me, so she couldn’t help me anyway.”
Lan’s heart gave a tug at the devastation in his voice. “Don’t think like that. You don’t know that for sure.” She stared at him in fearful wonder. Even with protective parents who never allowed talk of the Serpent God, she knew from books that spells and magic wielders existed, but ithad all seemed like mere stories, far away from the realities of her own life. “I believe you,” she said tentatively. “At least, I think I do. When is the next full moon?”
Bao’s shoulders slumped. “Two weeks. Barely enough time for me to get to the Gray City. And if she was deceiving me and my mother doesn’t live there, I will have wasted all of that time. And yet the witch knew my name...” He touched his shoulder again. Lan watched his fingers make contact, and it gave her an idea.
She reached for him again. He didn’t stop her, so she pushed through the cold and laid her hand upon his chest. Slowly, the chill dissipated and the shimmering around the edge of his body vanished. His muscles tensed where she touched him, but his face was full of revelation. His wide, shocked eyes locked on hers, and his chest rose and fell beneath her fingers with his quickened breath. She could feel his heart galloping against her bare skin as they looked at each other. Hastily, they broke apart, Bao stepping backward and Lan removing her hand.
Lan looked down at her fingers, aghast. “I did it. I brought you back to your physical form, but how? You said the witch told you it had to be someone you loved... oh.” Blood rushed to her cheeks as Bao turned away, but not before she saw the pained look on his face. “Bao, I apologize for what I said the other day. I spoke to you out of anger and hurt toward someone else, and it was wrong of me. I deeply regret the awful things I said.”
“Are aristocrats capable of regret? That’s new to me.” He kept his back turned and his voice was taut, like a rope about to snap in half. But Lan ached at the sadness she heard, too—the sadnessshehad caused. She laid her hand on his back, now warm and solid, but this time he jerked away. “Please,” he said in a strangled voice, “please, Miss Vu. Don’t touch me.”
For some reason, that hurt more than his rejecting her touch: his reversion to addressing her formally after her given name, Lan, had slipped from his lips that terrible day he had told her he loved her.He certainly doesn’t anymore, she thought, and the hurt sharpened. “I can’t change what I did or said,” she told him. “I can only tell you how desperately sorry I am.”
Bao turned around, but still didn’t look at her. “I think you mean it,” he said gruffly, “but you’re not apologizing for me.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“You’re apologizing for yourself. You’ve been consumed by guilt for days, something you’re not accustomed to feeling. You want to say sorry and have me absolve you, and then we can part ways forever and you’ll sleep well again. You can go back to your life of painted fans and expensive weddings, and you won’t ever have to care what becomes of me.”
“This is what you think of me?” Lan whispered. Every muscle in her body had frozen during his speech, and now she fairly shook with cold.
“It is, now that I know the truth.”
“And what is the truth?” she asked, though she didn’t want to know.
“I thought you were perfect.” He looked over her head, a muscle working in his jaw. “I thought if I ever married, I would want someone who was just like you. Well, that’s changed.”
The cold seeped into her gut, filling her with shame and hurt and rising anger. “It is not my fault you made me into some ideal that never existed,” she told him, struggling to keep calm. “It is not my fault you created some version of me that I wasn’t.”
“The way you did to Tam?”
“Don’teverspeak that name to me!” she half shouted, half sobbed. “I never want to hear about him again!” Her shoulders shook as she fought to regain control, telling herself that Bao was mostly scared and upsetabout the enchantment. He was only doing to her what she had already done to him—venting his feelings, except Lan actually deserved his anger. She took a few deep breaths before she spoke again. “Whatever you may think of me, I did you wrong. I wish to make amends.”
“How?” he asked, running a hand over his exhausted face.
Another memory flashed through Lan’s mind: a small Bao, unkempt in hand-me-downs, standing in the courtyard while Tam and her brothers teased him. Everything about the other boys, from their clothing to their well-fed bodies, had an air of being cared for, and little Bao ran a skinny hand over his face, already conscious of being different. He had always been held apart when he had only ever wanted to belong.And in my anger toward him,I emphasized that isolation more, Lan realized.
“I’m coming with you.” She spoke quickly, before she could change her mind—before she realized the absurd impossibility of her decision. “To the Gray City to find your mother, or wherever your search takes you. You shouldn’t be alone, and you won’t be. I’m going to stay with you until you figure out how to break this spell. I mean every word.”
Bao’s stunned eyes met hers. “I—I can’t ask you to do that for me.”
It was a rash decision. Impulsive. It was everything her parents had taught hernotto be or do, and yet with each passing second, Lan knew it was the right thing to do. “You didn’t ask me. I offered,” she pointed out. “Let this be my way of showing you how truly sorry I am.”
He rubbed his face again, and when his hand fell away, Lan saw the utter relief he was trying to hide. “The road is dangerous. It’s swarming with soldiers.”
“And bandits smuggling black spice. My father told me, and he also forbade me to go south unless I got the Commander of the Great Forest to escort me. His exact words,” Lan added, and detected the corner of Bao’s mouth lifting ever so slightly. “But I accept this danger, andshould anything happen to me, you are not to be blamed. So don’t worry about that.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How will you ensure that I won’t be blamed?”
“I’ll leave a message telling my parents I left of my own volition. They know I’m strong-willed,” she said, and again, the corner of Bao’s mouth twitched. “And I can also keep you from turning into a ghost, or a spirit, or whatever that witch did to you. I’ll let your mother break the actual spell, of course, if she can,” she added hastily, seeing the pain flash across his face again. “But I can help you in the meantime. Do you accept?”
