by Jeannie Lin
There was something different about her. A restless energy simmered beneath her calm demeanour. It was anger, he realised. The slow, quiet kind. She had lost her sheen of innocence to replace it with defiant purpose.
‘You’re the imperial princess,’ he said. ‘They will never stop looking for you.’
‘I will not be used as a bribe. And I’m not really a princess. My father was a different man before he was made Emperor.’
She narrowed her eyes as she looked towards the horizon. He didn’t know how to deal with this side of her. Ailey seemed suddenly willing to turn her back on everything she held dear. Something had happened in Changan between Ailey and her family. Whatever her reasons, it couldn’t be purely for him.
At the first sight of home, Ailey breathed in the crispness of mountain air and her heart opened and lifted. The orange light of dusk filtered through the peaks to fall across the grey-slate tile of the rooftops. Their family banner flew from the mast, dragon-green edged with yellow. She had always thought her home a humbling place. The height of the mountains stretching above reminded her that she was in the smallest corner of the world. But it was her corner.
‘We are here,’ she said simply.
Ryam pulled his mount in front of her, looking tall and confident in the saddle. ‘Look at you. You’re glowing.’
The imperial palace would never welcome her the same way, with the curve of the mountains taking her in their embrace.
She pointed her horse towards the mansion across the valley. ‘I’ll race you to it.’
Ryam’s mouth lifted slyly. ‘What do I get if I win?’
A smile lit his eyes that sent ribbons of delight through her. She dug in her heels and the horse surged forwards. Head lowered, Ailey leaned into the rush of air and the rhythm of hooves pounding into the grass. Ryam appeared beside her, his blond hair whipped back by the wind, the dark head of his stallion nudging ahead of hers by inches. She dug her heels in harder, gripping the saddle with her thighs, and lost herself in the freedom and thunder of the run, each beat bringing her closer to home.
Ryam reached the grounds moments before her and dismounted, swinging one leg over the saddle and landing with confidence. He took the reins from her to help her down. She ended up in his arms as her feet touched earth.
It had been like this for the last several days, light touches against her shoulder, holding her arm, taking her hand when he didn’t need to. Each touch pulled her awareness back to him, but there had been nothing to match the delicious passion he had shown her in the tiny room of the drinking house.
There were times when she wondered if Ryam remembered what had happened between them. He had confessed that he was drunk that morning, after all. But then he would catch her eye, his gaze smouldering and dangerous, and she knew without a doubt he remembered every detail.
‘What would your family think?’ He pulled her closer inch by inch. ‘Finding you out here in the arms of a barbarian?’
His voice slid over her, low and sensual, almost a challenge. They would think she’d gone mad. She raised herself onto her toes and he slid his arm across her back. Her heart thudded as she pressed close, feeling every angle and contour of his body.
‘I meant everything I said to you in the drinking house,’ she replied.
Her arms wound around his neck. His skin was heated and damp. The bronze skin at the hollow of his throat glistened with a sheen of sweat.
‘I know.’
‘I mean it still.’
His eyes turned turbulent as he held her securely against him. He lifted one hand to the nape of her neck, his fingertips twining gently into her hair. She loved how he always looked at her so intensely before he kissed her. He would hold her, seeing her and tasting her all at once. It was the height of boldness, letting him embrace her out in the open. His presence beside her felt more real now that they were in Longyou, in this place that was so much a part of her.
He had just fitted his mouth to hers when a crowd of footsteps marched towards them. She released him immediately, but Ryam let his hands linger, curving unhurriedly down her back before letting her go. His rueful smile sent her heart racing, as if the only thing worrying him was that they had been interrupted.
They were shielded by the horses from the approaching guard patrol. ‘Shen Ai Li is here,’ she called out in answer to the warning shout.
She stepped out into view of ten armoured soldiers who were all reaching for their swords.
‘Lady Shen.’ The captain stared at her in surprise. He signalled to the others to stand down.
‘Where is my brother?’ she asked.
The captain’s gaze darted from Ryam back to her. ‘The commander is out on patrol at the border.’
‘Then I will wait for his return.’
The captain bowed formally and gestured for his men to lead the horses to the stables. He glanced once more at Ryam, but said nothing. Her father’s soldiers made a point of treating her with a detached air of deference, probably under orders. These men would not dare to question why she was here. She was the youngest daughter of the household and fell under the rule of Grandmother and Mother.
Ryam watched the men go. If he felt any apprehension, he hid it well. His thumb was hooked casually into his belt near his sword. He scanned the training fields and the cluster of barracks beyond the main house.
‘How many men are garrisoned here?’
‘A hundred. There are nearly a thousand more stationed along to the western border. Come, I’ll show you the house.’
He shook his head as he followed her. ‘I don’t have a shred of good sense, do I?’
At the front entrance, a pair of servants dressed in dark wool jackets came out to light the lanterns for the evening. They greeted her with muted surprise and then continued with their duties. She led Ryam up the steps into the main room while the servants kept their backs conspicuously turned.
The house looked the same as when she had left. The hall lay vacant and solemn now that most of the household had deserted it for Changan. Only Fifth Brother stayed in Longyou with the border command.
Their ageing housekeeper came out to greet her, shuffling in her slippers. ‘Little Ai Li has come to visit us. So kind of her to remember Amah now that she is a married woman.’
She had known Amah all her life. The dear woman was older than Grandmother, too old to make the journey to Changan. With Amah’s failing eyesight, Ailey was convinced she navigated the rooms by memory and by touch since she had taken care of the household for so long.
Amah reached out with thinning fingers to pat Ailey’s hand and then squinted up at Ryam. ‘Your husband is very tall.’
‘Amah.’ Ryam greeted her with a polite bow, his inflection nearly perfect.
The old woman craned her neck at him, like a bird sensing a disturbance in the air. She leaned close to Ailey, but didn’t whisper as quietly as she thought. ‘He has a strange look about him. He might be mistaken for a Mongolian.’
Ailey laughed and hooked her arm around Amah’s shoulders affectionately. ‘Amah, can you prepare my room for me? And put our honoured guest in Third Elder Brother’s room.’
Amah doddered away to do her duties, calling out in a shrill voice to the servants at the other end of the house. At her age, the others were expected to come to her.
Ryam was grinning at her. Her chest welled with happiness and relief to be back at home, no longer running.
‘She thinks you look Mongolian.’
‘I know.’
‘How much of the Han language do you understand?’ she asked.
‘A little here and there. We barbarians have been out here for over six years. We’re not completely unteachable.’ He turned to look about the chamber. ‘So this is where you grew up.’
‘Here, come to the map room.’
His fingers closed securely around hers as she took his hand. Finally, she was able to let go of her weariness and her anxiety over her father. Li Tao and the hundred other
things that didn’t make any sense were swept away as she led Ryam down the familiar corridors. She would work them out later. For the moment, she was home and she was safe.
The mansion at Longyou was as still as a mausoleum, the servants scarce and the rooms empty. Ailey led him from room to room as she chattered about how Fifth Brother made her paper cranes and the older brothers tormented her.
‘Ming Han was the worst.’ Her brightness flickered for a second. ‘He would pick me up and spin me around until I felt sick.’
‘No wonder you had to learn how to fight back,’ he said lightly, taking her hand to urge her to continue with the grand tour. He hated the look of sadness on her face. It took her to a place he couldn’t reach.
‘Well, everyone, no matter how fierce of a warrior, was deathly afraid of Mother,’ she went on. ‘Except for Grandmother, of course.’
‘Of course.’
Ailey blossomed as she breezed through the house. One moment, he would be content to listen to her. Then, without warning, the need to hold her would overpower him. As if touching her would allow him to absorb the energy that vibrated through her.
She pulled him along. ‘The map room is where Father would meet with his captains.’
In this corner of the house, the rooms were separated by silk screens framed with lacquered wood. She lit the lanterns in the chamber, revealing a rectangular hall with several chairs and tables laid out in the centre. A map of the empire spanned one entire wall.
He stood beside her, looking up at the black and red lines marked with spidery characters. The Chinese empire stretched through the continent, reaching from the ocean into the desert.
‘This is Changan. These lines mark the different defence commands. The flags show where our soldiers are stationed.’
Ailey stretched out her arms to point out the different areas to him. He began to see where she had come from, raised in a guarded mansion as the descendant of exalted generals and warriors.
‘The command at Longyou has long been a target of barbarian raids and attacks from foreign kingdoms since we are so close to the western frontier,’ she explained. ‘One of the most important defence points.’
‘That was one of the reasons the Emperor allowed us to stay at the Jade Gate. Barbarians fighting barbarians.’
His mismatched legion had been stationed in the corridor by the Emperor’s grace. The empire had pulled back its military outposts from Gansu, but imperial rule continued to cast a shadow over the region. His ill-fated mission had likely strained the tenuous truce to the breaking point. And then he’d stolen the Emperor’s daughter. Although Ailey had run away on her own, a father would never see it that way.
‘Where is Yumen Guan?’ she asked.
He tapped a spot at the far left of the map. ‘This is the Gansu corridor. The fortress is situated in this pass.’
She looked at the spot for a long time. ‘That is where you will go from here?’
‘Eventually.’
What else could he tell her? He needed to return to the corridor. He owed Adrian that much.
‘It looks far.’
‘Less than a week, if you know the way through the mountains.’
Just like that, she grew quiet, the light in her eyes extinguished. She stiffened when he rested his hand against the small of her back. Taking a breath, she tried to continue, speaking rapidly into the gap of silence between them.
‘The last year has been an uncertain time for my family. The August Emperor passed away and there were questions about who would rule next. He had no sons to carry on the line.’
‘I remember.’
The August Emperor had sought an unlikely alliance with their barbarian army, mistaking them for a more powerful force than they were. Adrian had been summoned to the capital just as those events began to unfold.
‘Before the insurrection, my father was denounced as a traitor by the palace. He sent us into hiding, while he refused to abandon this post. Li Tao could have vouched for my father’s honour, but he said nothing.’ Her eyes sparked with anger. He must have been already plotting then, searching for his opportunity.’
‘Li Tao was your father’s rival?’
‘They were both jiedushi until my father was made Emperor.’
A dull ache snaked through his chest. ‘Your father chose someone for you who was his equal.’
‘Li Tao is nothing like my father. He knows nothing about loyalty.’ Her hands clenched as she looked from one edge of the map to the other. ‘My father has always loved the empire. He would sacrifice anything for it.’
Ailey had grown up in this magnificent home surrounded by wealth and power and deserved someone who could provide the same. If he had any decency, he would leave her now.
But the look of trust in her eyes turned him into a needful creature. He’d suffer a lifetime in hell for whatever moments he could steal with her. He wasn’t a strong enough man to refuse what she offered. The only way he could go was if she turned him away. And she would, when she realised he could give her nothing but heartache in return for all that he took.
Ryam concentrated on balancing the pair of sticks between his thumb and third finger. He could get through a meal without starving, but he’d never feel comfortable using these things.
‘I swear you can only do this because of your years of sword training,’ he remarked.
Ailey’s eyes twinkled from across the dining table. ‘This is the first time we’ve sat down to eat together.’
‘There was that time at Lady Ling’s when you ran off and left me in the clutches of that woman.’
She ran her fingers along the edge of her collar. He wanted to be doing the same, following the silk edge down to the neckline that stopped just shy of her breasts.
‘I was so jealous of her,’ she laughed.
‘You’re ten times prettier than Lady Ling.’
She glanced at him in surprise and there was nothing for him to do but snatch up a morsel from the nearest dish and stuff it into his mouth. Ailey scooped up rice daintily from her bowl. An irresistible little smile tugged at her lips.
What would it be like to end each day this way, sitting beside someone and sharing food and idle talk? Not with just anyone, but with Ailey. He clamped down on the feeling that swelled in his chest at that thought.
‘Try this.’
Ailey darted through the dishes with her chopsticks and selected choice morsels into his bowl. ‘Whatever you think, just tell Amah everything was delicious,’ she instructed.
‘It’s good. Everything is very good.’
They ate in comfortable silence, enjoying the roof over their heads and a hot meal.
‘What does Yumen Guan look like?’ she asked when the dishes were nearly empty. ‘Does it gleam with jade?’
He laughed. ‘It’s a great hunk of rock on the edge of the desert. Occasionally, caravans will cross through that part of the corridor on the northern trade route.’
She looked disappointed that the description wasn’t as grand as the name. ‘Who lives in the fortress?’
‘Other than us, there’s a tribe of mountain people, desert nomads. All wanderers without a home.’
‘And the princess lives among them?’
Ailey’s continued interest in Miya brought his defences up. Her military family might have a great interest in the Jade Gate pass.
‘Miya and Adrian have been married for nearly a year,’ he answered cautiously.
‘I find it strange.’
‘That a princess would marry a barbarian?’
‘That she would willingly go into exile,’ she countered. The thought of exile obviously saddened her.
He’d been away from the fortress for months. It was the return that plagued him. He would have to stand before Adrian and account for his failure. He buried the sobering thought as deep as he could. Much harder to do now that Yumen Guan loomed just beyond the mountains. He folded his hands together and tried to absorb the peace of the surroundings. Harmon
y, the Chinese called it. It eluded him.
This dining room and the feast they’d shared was more civilisation than he’d ever known. He had vague memories of his parents living in a cottage held together with mud and straw on the other side of the world. The tiny hovel had been cold most nights. He remembered running outside in the dirt during the day. The memories were a lifetime away.
‘I want to show you one more thing,’ she said after the servants came to clear the dishes.
They went outside to the central courtyard, a square of earth surrounded by sleeping quarters. A knotted tree stood in the corner, gnarled branches fanning out haplessly. She pulled him into a nook between the branches. Her fingers curved around his and her hair gleamed like black water in the dim light.
‘Here.’ She pressed his fingertips to the characters carved into the wood. ‘This is how we keep score, one mark for every win.’ Her face relaxed into happiness as she traced the characters.
‘Which one is Ailey?’
She circled the trunk, knowing immediately where to go.
‘This is me.’ She tapped her spot triumphantly. ‘Ai Li.’
He traced the two characters that represented her name and the wins marked beneath it. ‘You have quite a few here.’
‘If you were bigger and stronger, you had to fight two against one or with one arm tied behind your back. And sometimes I would fight—how would you say?—dirty.’
‘That wasn’t considered dishonourable?’ he asked with a laugh.
‘I was a girl.’
She smiled sweetly and he remembered the pain of getting kicked where it mattered. A wave of emptiness hit him as he brushed the scarred wood. This was what was important to Ailey. Her family and its memories. He had no such memories, no traditions in his past. Ailey belonged here, in her home. He belonged nowhere.
