Chapter 39
I hadn’t wanted to come.
Princess Changying’s summons arrived at dawn — inscribed on iridescent parchment that shimmered between jade and sapphire, each draconian rune pulsing faintly, as though alive. When I unfolded it, the characters slithered like silver-scaled serpents, rearranging themselves before my eyes until the message burned clear:
Meet me in Zhe Yan’s orchard at twilight.
My former betrothed. The same woman who once promised to return in three short months, only to vanish for three years without a word, ending our engagement with a letter cold as frost and vague whispers of “another.”
What could we possibly have to speak of now?
Once, I would have set fire to the heavens for even a scrap of her handwriting. Now, I cast it into the brazier — but the flames recoiled, hissing, their orange glow curdling to a sickly green before extinguishing entirely. The parchment remained untouched, glowing brighter in the shadows of my chamber. My father found it there and accepted the summons on my behalf with the empty formality of a man who no longer sees his son. He does not know me anymore.
Perhaps he never did.
For three years, I have wandered the jade corridors of the Eastern Palace like a ghost, fingertips brushing cool stone veined with gold while my soul drifts elsewhere — amid ember-choked ruins, always, since Yi Nuo vanished.
Every breath since that night feeds the Cradle of Ash and Flame — the forbidden Phoenix rite older than our bloodlines, a copper basin veined with living fire and crowned by the soul-gathering orchid whose petals drink my life. Never meant for love or lunacy, and yet I burn myself into it, night after night, pouring my essence into its veins until the bloom pulses with my heartbeat. Each spark an echo, cast into the void between realms, desperate for her to hear me and answer.
Yi Nuo.
My beloved, my undoing.
The mother of the child I failed to protect.
The peach blossoms are falling again. Once, I loved this orchard — a sanctuary where peach petals rained like summer snow and the air carried whispers of the ancient god, my godfather, who planted these trees ten thousand years ago. Now, the sweetness sickens me.
Pale petals drift in lazy spirals, settling on my shoulders, melting in my unbound hair. It’s a sight that once would have inspired days of poetry, brush ink spilling to capture each delicate imperfection. Now it feels like mockery — beauty wasted on a man who has none left within him.
What good are blossoms when she is not here to see them?
I steady myself against the gnarled trunk of an ancient peach tree, the cool bark grounding me against thoughts that threaten to scatter like ash in the wind. I ask myself, not for the first time — why am I here?
And then I see her.
Beneath the oldest bough — its bark twisted like a celestial dragon’s spine — Princess Changying waits. A simple wooden swing cradles her, swaying lazily in the wind. Her coral silk robe shimmers like captured flame, plum blossoms embroidered in threads of living gold blooming across her wide sleeves. Tassels of pearl and spun sunlight trail from her waist, swaying softly with the rhythm of the swing.
Her long black hair falls unbound, cascading past her waist like ink spilling through water. And against her lips rests a black serpentine flute — the very one I carved for her, what feels like lifetimes ago, from the shed skin of a river god.
The first note falls like moonlight on still water.
Then another, purer.
And then I hear it.
Perhaps grief has finally devoured me.
I step forward, slow as a man approaching a mirage, afraid one breath will dissolve it into nothing. My boot crushes a fallen blossom, the soft crack loud as thunder in the orchard’s hush.
That melody. I know every rise, every pause, every delicate breath between notes. Yi Nuo’s lullaby. Our unborn daughter’s cradle song.
The Phoenix Song.
My knees nearly buckle. The melody claws open wounds I’ve buried beneath fire and ritual, unraveling me note by note. I can’t breathe. My throat tastes of blood and memory.
“Yi Nuo…” Her name tears from me like a sob, tasting of blood and salt. Every syllable splits open wounds carved by lifetimes, penance etched into bone and soul — yet still, shamelessly, I breathe her name, a prayer the heavens will not answer, a thread of fate I cannot sever… and would never wish to.
Changying’s lashes flutter like disturbed moth wings. Her emerald gaze sweeps over me — once, past me, then back again — settling with a faint crease between her brows. “Ruilin?” She murmurs, soft and polite, like greeting a stranger.
Perhaps she is.
I know what she sees: Gone is the polished Crown Prince, cloaked in gold-threaded robes and jade-bound duty. What stands before her is ruin in human form. My robes hang loose from shoulders that have forgotten how to bear weight, their crimson edges frayed like banners abandoned to endless rain. Once, the hems were white as untouched frost — before my blood-tears stained them. The embroidered phoenixes along the hem no longer blaze; they bow their heads in silent mourning.
My once-proud hair, previously bound high beneath jade crowns, now falls unkempt past my waist, tied carelessly with a single strip of scorched red silk — the last remnant of our marriage bond. Through it, I’ve knotted a faded blue ribbon, edges frayed by time, once tied into my braid by Yi Nuo beneath flowering plum trees. Her laughter had rung like temple bells that day. Even now, I feel its phantom warmth. But I am cold. Colder than starlight, yet endlessly burning within.
The Cradle’s passage has etched itself onto me. Beneath my eyes, hollows yawn, heavy shadows where restful sleep used to linger, but never deep enough to lose myself. My knuckles, cracked and raw, throb with a dull ache, the skin scorched close to the bone. Cresent shaped scars there burn a memory of fire. A chilling silver threads through my temples, a sudden frost unheard of three years ago. My fingertips, forever stained a faint amber, retain the phantom scent of smoke and ash and the dry, brittle feeling of crushed phoenix feathers I pressed into the bloom.
I’ve given it everything: blood drawn from my heart at midnight, bone shavings ground to dust, my life force bled into petals carved from immortal flame. Anything. Everything. If the heavens demanded ten thousand deaths strung upon the Tree of Origins, I would burn them all if only to hear her voice one more time…
And now Changying plays our song.
“What were you just playing?” My voice splinters, unsteady beneath its sharp edges. “Tell me,” I rasp, “where did you learn that melody? Did a woman teach you? Was… was there a child with her?”
She blinks, serene as a still pond, but her eyes flash faintly. “I don’t know,” she answers softly. “Perhaps it’s… a popular court tune?”
Popular. Court. Tune.
The words strike like a blade beneath my ribs. “Popular tune?!” My voice rips from me, hoarse and wild. “Tell me where you heard it!” I lunge, my desperation spilling like wildfire. “SPEAK!”
She rises, the swing creaking once before stilling. Power stirs around her like an incoming storm. “Prince Ruilin,” she warns, voice cold enough to freeze rivers. “Remember your place.”
“My place?” I laugh, broken glass splintering in my throat. “Do I even HAVE a place anymore?! Just tell me!” Madness howls through me, unbridled. I seize her wrist. “LOOK AT ME! WHERE DID YOU LEARN THAT SONG!?”
Her emerald eyes ignite, and divine power blooms in the air like a sun exploding. Her palm arcs. CRACK. White blossoms scatter as birds scream skyward. Blood beads at my jawline where her ring split the skin.
“Insolence,” she hisses, her voice ringing like a divine decree. “Lay hands on me again, Crown Prince, and I will unmake you where you stand.”
I stumble back, breath ragged. My chest is hollow. My world tilts. “You can’t…” My voice breaks, shattering into a whisper. “…you can’t be her. Yi Nuo would never…” But the words die on my tongue. The Cradle’s petals within my sleeve wilt, their faint glow dimming, starving without my blood and life force. I lower my head beneath the falling blossoms, bowing to a ghost who no longer knows my name.
Changying~
I stare at him. The sting still lingers faintly on my palm where it struck his cheek, yet my hand trembles — not from guilt, but from something I cannot name. He stumbles back, shoulders slack, the proud Crown Prince I once knew reduced to a shadow of himself.
Three years ago, when he stole his father’s royal seal to propose to me, his lopsided smile seemed permanent, golden flecks dancing in his eyes. He moved through the world like living fire—bright, untamed, warming everything he touched. Laughter spilled from him too easily, unrestrained. Now he stands before me wearing only ashes. The embers in his eyes have cooled to dull coal. His shoulders, once proud, curve inward like a temple after the earth has shaken its foundations.
I tell myself I should feel nothing for this man. Nothing at all. Yet something inside me twists—a forgotten memory struggling to surface, like a fish trapped beneath winter ice.
We are betrothed. I promised him I’d return within three short months But when I woke from my mortal trial, three years had passed. I told myself he might understand. Perhaps he had hated me for breaking my word, and perhaps that would have been easier. But seeing him now — the hollows beneath his eyes, the lifelessness clinging to his aura — I realize hate was never what broke him. Something else did. Something I cannot touch or name.
I press the heel of my palm against my ribs where an inexplicable ache blooms. Something else stirs beneath my confusion—a sudden, vicious anger that I never invited. It strikes without warning, piercing through my composure like venom spreading through the bloodstream, leaving me dizzy with its intensity. My breath hitches before I smooth it away. I let the swing’s rope slip from my fingers and stand straight, letting my sleeves fall gracefully to hide the tremor in my hands.
“You should go home, Crown Prince Ruilin,” I say, my tone carefully measured, cool as glacial waters. “Rest. We can… speak of these matters another day.”
He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even look at me. His gaze has fallen to the flute at my feet — its lacquered black surface glinting faintly between us like a splinter of the past neither of us dares touch.
I feel his grief like a weight in the air, thick and bitter as resin. And yet, somewhere beneath my stillness, a longing blooms faintly in my chest — wild, unwanted, familiar in a way I cannot understand. I crush it ruthlessly. I am Changying. I force myself to turn back toward him, reaching for composure I don’t quite feel. His silence sits between us like a stone, heavy and unmoving.
“You look terrible,” I blurt before I can stop myself. The words hang there, sharp and unpolished, and I almost flinch at how… familiar they sound, as though I’ve said them before — though I’ve no memory of when or why.
I clear my throat, softening my tone. “Has Zhe Yan checked you lately? You look like you’ve been chewing on smoke and swallowing ashes. Perhaps you need a revitalizing elixir.”
Before he can answer, I crouch beneath the swing, sweeping aside a scatter of petals as though hunting for something unseen. “A nice worm-and-grub tonic would do you wonders, make you a pretty boy like before,” I continue absently, my fingers combing the moss-soft earth. “If we add a pinch of Silver Quick-Step Blossom,” I glance up at him casually, “it’ll restore your immortal fire… though too much of it will give you loose bowels.”
The words leave me without thought, tumbling from some buried place in me I do not recognize. I hear his sharp inhale before I look up. Ruilin stands utterly still, as though rooted to the orchard floor. His gaze is fixed on me — no, through me — a dazed confusion sparking behind his exhaustion, something bright and dangerous stirring beneath the ruins of his composure.
The longer he stares, the air thickens like a humid summer afternoon, a silent pressure building. An odd discomfort flowers beneath my skin, a prickly heat crawling up my neck. Without realizing, I lift my hand, the soft pad of my finger rubbing between my brows, pressing at the faint sting I feel occasionally—a subtle throb. And his eyes widen, the dark pupils expanding as if I’d sprouted another head from that burning spot, a grotesque sprouting right there between my brows.
Almost imperceptibly, his breath catches. I don’t understand what he sees, but his gaze locks on that spot — my forehead — but I cannot bear the weight of it. I turn away, my back to him, drawing in a slow, steady breath to chase the heat rising under my skin.
Then I hear it.
A faint echo — softer than falling petals, older than wind. A low, resonant hum threading through the air like a pulse beneath the earth. My head snaps up, every sense sharpening. “What was that? You heard that echo, didn’t you?” I turn back toward him, breath uneven.
Ruilin isn’t looking at me, his intense gaze fixed on something in his hands. He cradles a relic shaped like an unfurled lotus carved from dark crystal veined with fiery red. Its petals faintly smolder, a low, crackling hiss accompanying the sight, as if breathing. Blood from the fresh cut in his palm drips onto it, each drop a soft *thud*. Threads of power curl from the relic, shimmering the air around him with visible heat, carrying the faint scents of sandalwood, cinnamon and lilacs but it’s not coming from the lamp. It’s possible I’m the only one who smells it.
This must be the Cradle of Ash and Flame. Zhe Yan once warned me of its dangers — how it feeds on a Phoenix’s very life force, demanding pieces of the soul in exchange for whispers from the void. I had never seen it before, but now… now I understand. Ruilin has been using it. Is this why his body looks carved hollow by grief, why his eyes burn like dying embers clinging to the last flicker of light? He’s been feeding himself to the flame?
Was it… to call me back?
I know nothing of soul-calling rites, yet something buried deep beneath memory stirs — a faint tremor under my ribs, as though an echo, long dormant, has been awakened. The air itself hums around us, low and insistent, and my breath hitches before I can hide it. The vibration deepens, sinking into bone, threading through blood, until it feels as though the orchard itself is breathing in time with my heart.
And then… we meet each other’s eyes.
Ruilin’s gaze locks onto mine, those gold-flecked phoenix eyes blazing with something wild and raw, as though he’s not just looking at me, but through me — into every hidden place I’ve tried to guard, every hollow I cannot name. I open my mouth, but no sound comes. The orchard falls silent except for the low thrum coming from the Cradle of Ash and Flame between us.
Suddenly, he moves. His arms are around me before thought can surface, crushingly tight, the heat of his fire bleeding through his touch. My feet leave the moss-soft ground as he lifts me clean off it — strong, unyielding, desperate.
“There’s only one person who would hear that,” he breathes, ragged, tears sliding unchecked down his face. “I knew you weren’t gone. I knew it.”
His voice breaks on the words, a confession torn from somewhere deeper than pride or reason. He buries his face against my shoulder, trembling despite himself, clinging as though he’s holding the ghost of someone who’s been lost too long.
The hum flares in response, resonating like a heartbeat between us, ancient magic answering something it recognizes in me — something I don’t understand, but my ribs ache like memory trying to claw free.
I freeze, stiffening in his embrace, rigid where he’s undone. My fingers hover, not knowing where to rest, as a storm of heat and longing and something older stirs beneath my skin.
His embrace is both too tight, air squeezed from my lungs, and not tight enough, a chasm still yawning between us. I can’t breathe, but the scent of him fills my nostrils, and I don’t want to. Ruilin gathers me closer, his strength unyielding like steel, his body trembling with something deeper than desire—desperation, grief, longing radiating as heat.
He pulls me even closer, his breathing a ragged whisper against my ear, and cups my face, his calloused thumbs tracing my cheekbones as if I might vanish into smoke if he doesn’t hold me to the ground. My spine arches against him, caught between the stiff resistance of a bow and the yielding release of surrender, but when his lips crash onto mine, the world explodes, and every thought splinters like glass beneath a hammer’s deafening blow.
I should push him away. I should remember propriety. My title. My place.
Instead, my hands twist into the loose folds of his robe, pulling him closer, as though my body recognizes something my mind does not. The taste of him is hauntingly achingly familiar though we have never kissed before
Peach petals drift between us, caught on damp skin, sticking to the edge of his jaw and the curve of my collarbone. Each sigh and stolen breath disturbs the still air, setting more blossoms loose from the ancient tree above.
Ruilin kisses me like he’s falling — like I’m the last branch between him and an endless abyss. His mouth moves against mine with aching hunger, tasting of sandalwood and bitter tea, threaded with something darker: Phoenix life force and the metallic tang of exhaustion only breaking the kiss to gasp. Inside me, something stirs.
A melody.
I freeze for half a breath, lips still parted beneath his. A song blooms faintly within me, haunting and familiar, like water slipping through stone. I don’t know why I know it. I shouldn’t know it. But the sound rises from somewhere deep, curling around the edges of my mind until I tremble beneath its weight.
Ruilin pulls back, just far enough for his breath to ghost against my cheek, gold-flecked eyes burning with an intensity I can’t meet. “You weren’t gone,” he whispers, voice raw and splintering. “I knew it. I knew you wouldn’t leave me.”
I never considered how my three-year absence would affect him. The thought lands heavy, pressing against my ribs, and I swallow hard, but no words come. The silence between us is thick, broken only by the phantom echo of the melody — lingering, maddening, unrelenting. It curls around me like smoke, seeping beneath my skin, pulling at something buried deep. My chest aches with a yearning I cannot name, a grief I do not remember choosing.
His breath brushes mine, warm and trembling, and I realize the ache has a name. Hunger. I hunger for his lips.
His mouth returns to mine — achingly sweet, salted with his tears — slower now, but deeper, reverent. My body yields where my mind hesitates, heat curling low as his palm slides along my jaw, down the column of my throat, fingers grazing the edge of my collar. My breath stutters; I feel the fire beneath his skin, restrained, barely leashed.
“Ruilin…” My voice cracks like thin ice over deep water, his name escaping as barely more than a whisper. I don’t know if it’s warning or invitation, this broken sound that leaves me.
His thumb brushes the hollow beneath my ear. “I’ve waited so long to hear you say my name again,” he murmurs against my mouth, and something inside me unravels.
The swing creaks softly behind me as he presses me back against the tree, the rough bark cool through the silks of my robe. His body cages mine, but I don’t feel trapped — I feel claimed, tethered to something inevitable. Ruilin’s kisses trail down the line of my jaw, the hollow of my throat, lingering where my pulse beats too fast. My hands rise unbidden to his shoulders, fingers threading through his unbound hair, feeling the faint singe of fire at his roots. My robe slips at the collar, baring the curve of my shoulder, and he groans low against my skin, the sound reverberating through me.
I should care. I should stop this.
But every nerve sings under his touch. The melody grows louder — only in my mind, yet deafening. Each note threads into my breath, my heartbeat, until it’s impossible to tell where I end and the song begins. And when his mouth returns to mine, fierce and uninhibited, something inside me breaks open like a sealed jar of light.
The petals fall thicker, swirling around us in a hush of color and scent, their sweetness clinging to our lips, our hair, our skin. My name leaves his throat like a prayer and a plea, and though I don’t remember why, I answer with a longing that feels older than memory itself.
The world narrows to breathe and heat and silk. Ruilin lowers me gently into the softness of moss and fallen petals, yet there’s nothing gentle in his kiss — his need presses through every movement, every trembling breath he drags against my skin. My hair spills around us in dark waves, catching stray blossoms as though even the trees conspire to wrap us in this moment.
The ancient peach tree above creaks softly, branches swaying as if breathing with us, a silent witness to this sacred madness. When he enters me, pain and then a fullness is both an invasion and a homecoming. My body yields and resists in a single heartbeat. A sharp gasp slips free, tasting faintly of copper and salt, as the first bloom of pain unfurls into something molten, something deeper than thought. Each movement draws me closer, as if pulled by a tide I cannot fight — and the strangest, most terrifying thing is that I do not wish to.
I want to let the current take me.
I want to plunge into the deep.
He cradles my face as I arch beneath him, desperate for more, for all of him, my spine a perfect curve of surrender. The silks around my breasts cascade like water, revealing skin that flushes rose-gold in the dappled light. My body opens to him—petals unfurling, coral-pink and glistening with want—while his eyes, those gold-flecked phoenix eyes, never leave mine.
His hand skims my bare waist with reverent hunger, trailing heat like calligraphy, each touch a character spelling devotion against my skin. His fingers graze the silk tassels swaying against my exposed thigh, sending tremors through me that echo in places he has already claimed. Every stroke steals the breath from my lungs and replaces it with his name, unspoken but filling me completely.
His presence engulfs me, and instead of resisting, I yield to it, as though this surrender had been carved into my fate. I gasp, fingers tangling in his hair, nails catching faintly against his scalp. Ruilin groans low in his throat, the sound rough, almost broken, and his lips find the curve of my shoulder, the hollow of my throat, lower still. His breath scorches me, cool petals clinging where heat blooms.
“Ruilin…” His name spilled from my lips like honey from a shattered comb, slow and molten, each syllable heavy with unspoken weight. My voice, raw with a longing I couldn’t name, caught midway between reverence and sin, turning the sound into something perilously close to a prayer. It trembled as it crossed the narrow space between us — a fragile thread, fraying beneath the weight of everything unsaid, an invocation tangled with an accusation I could neither shape nor swallow.
He lifts his head, tears falling from gold-flecked eyes locking with mine, burning as though he’s seeing not me but someone deeper — someone buried. “I love you,” he breathes, voice reverent and shattered all at once, and for one dangerous heartbeat, I almost answer.
Somewhere beneath the hush of falling petals, the Cradle of Ash and Flame pulses faintly in response to us — a low, resonant hum that vibrates through the air like distant thunder, Phoenix aura threading crimson-gold between our bodies. The music rises, note by forbidden note, each measure unfurling like a scroll in my mind. The song I shouldn’t know wraps around my spine like silk ribbons pulling taut.
My breath hitches, catching on a sob of pleasure; my stomach tenses, muscles quivering beneath skin flushed peony-pink; my chest tightens around the sweet, sharp ache blooming there like a midnight flower. I clutch at him as though he’s the only thing holding me together in this storm of sensation, my fingernails pressing perfect crescent moons into the taut, sweat-slicked muscle of his shoulders, clinging as he drives deeper, taking every measured stroke he gives me and silently begging for more.
We move as if we’ve been lovers for a lifetime—my hips rising to meet his in perfect counterpoint; he pulls me flush against the hard planes of his chest for a deeper connection with an instinct deeper than memory, our bodies finding a rhythm ancient as tides. Each place where his fevered skin meets mine burns like cinnabar ink on parchment, marking me from the inside out with crimson heat that spreads like wildfire through my veins.
My legs wrap around him, ankles crossing at the small of his back where perspiration gathers in the hollow of his spine, drawing him impossibly deeper until I can’t tell where I end and he begins. His face buries in my hair, tangling in midnight strands, breath hot against the shell of my ear, whispering words that dissolve into broken sounds—half-formed prayers and desperate pleas—as the pace grows frenzied, relentless.
The sweet-salt taste of his skin mingles with peach nectar on my tongue, intoxicating as immortal wine. When release finally claims us and he spills his seed inside me, my vision fractures into shards of golden light. My body arches like a drawn bow beneath him, every muscle tensed then surrendering in waves that ripple outward from where we’re joined.
There is no Ruilin, no Changying—only this singular, shuddering moment where two souls collapse into one, where my gasping breaths match his ragged ones, where his heartbeat thunders against my chest as though trying to break through and merge with mine.
We drown together in a euphoria that tastes like returning to a spring I didn’t know had run dry, like recovering a memory etched into bone but stolen from thought, like hearing my own name sung in a voice I have waited lifetimes to remember.