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“I cannot tell you what you wish to hear.”
“Then perhaps you’ll show me?”
Through the low-hanging branches of the trees, Bao saw Lady Yen draw closer to the Commander, who did not move away. They were only ten feet from the water and would certainly notice if Bao tried to escape, but this wasnota conversation for anyone else’s ears. He found Lan’s eyes, mortified, but she shook her head again, gesturing for him to stay put.
“You know what I’ve told you about my past,” the Commander said, low and desperate.
“I don’t care about Xifeng.”
“Not about her,” he said sharply. “I meant my childhood. My poverty. I know what it is to be hungry, to want for basic necessities, and it is something you have never known and neverwillknow. Your fate is to be comfortable, and you must follow your father’s wishes in order to be so.”
“What aboutmywishes? Why must I forever bow my head and do what others tell me?”
Something flickered in the Commander’s face—a memory, or the ghost of someone he had once known. “You would never go hungry in Lord Nguyen’s house.”
“And you think this is a better existence for me? Living without you?”
He remained silent.
“Will you live out your days alone? Doing what someone else commands you to?”
He turned away. “I will live as a respectable man of honor and serve my Empress.”
“But why should that have to end if you are with me?” Yen cried passionately.
“If I stole the woman I loved away from her rightful husband, I would be breaking their alliance and failing in my duty. I would forfeit my position.”
“You would not.”
“I would lose Her Majesty’s respect and the goodwill of my men. No soldier would follow a dishonorable, unprincipled man. I would be sent away.”
“Empress Jade loves you! She would never do that to you!”
The Commander turned back to her. “Jade was the one who gave me this second chance. She was just eighteen when I first saw her,stumbling in the desert with dusty clothes and shorn hair, and even then I knew who she was. I owed it to her brother, who gave me myfirstchance, to serve and protect her, and I won’t turn my back on my duty to them.”
They stood in a charged silence, looking at each other.
“You said you loved me,” Yen said.
The Commander went still. “What?”
“You said, ‘If I stole the woman Ilovedaway from her rightful husband.’”
His nostrils flared. “No, I didn’t. You misheard me.”
Yen just crossed her arms and stared back at him.
She has you there, Bao thought, smiling as he watched the flustered Commander struggle for words. He glanced through the bushes at Lan, but her eyes were on the trees, starry and unfocused as she witnessed the love story playing out before them. It reminded him of her leaning out of her window toward the river, her face alight.
“All right,” the Commander said at last. “Idolove you, you irritating woman, more than I ever thought I could love someone again. But I’m bringing you to the man you’ll spend your life with, and I see no point in voicing something that can never be.”
“I will not spend my life with this stranger.”
He threw up his hands. “So you’ll go against your family’s wishes? You’ll defy Her Majesty’s hope for continued peace between the Great Forest and the Grasslands?”
“Oh, burn the Great Forest and the Grasslands!” Yen shouted, and Commander Wei reared back in shock. “What do I care for Feng Lu? There are plenty of other noblewomen they can find. I have my own life and happiness to worry about, and I want to share them with you.”
The Commander closed his eyes.
