Chapter 40
Rulin
I know it’s you.
When I rushed back from Nine Heavens, you were gone, but I found a single drop of your blood — Yi Nuo’s blood — had settled on the dark lacquered bedframe when you birthed our child alone. It glistened there like a ruby tear against the midnight wood, half-hidden in the grain’s shadow, as if the grief itself refused to dry. When I pressed my fingertip to it, the drop smeared across my skin like a wound passed from you to me.
No one else noticed it, but I did.
A mere crimson speck, but to me, it was a raging river that carved canyons through my heart. When I pressed my fingertip to it, the drop — like a ruby of blood — smeared across my skin, and I tasted your despair: sharp as copper and salt, tinged with the sweet rot of crushed peach blossoms. And I tasted my failure — bitter and endless as wormwood and gall, like drinking from a poisoned well whose waters run black with regret that will never run dry.
After that, I tore my own phoenix feathers from my wings—each one a living flame, each extraction like pulling molten metal through my marrow. Blood the color of sunset pearled along the quills as I wrenched them free. I crushed them between palms that blistered and healed and blistered again, grinding them to iridescent dust that clung to my sweat-slick skin. When I fed them to the Cradle of Ash and Flame, the ancient basin’s hunger awakened—its fire leapt up in spirals of crimson and gold, licking at my fingers with tongues that tasted of my essence. The living fire devoured my offering until the air shimmered with heat-haze and reeked of scorched immortality—like lightning-struck cinnamon trees and burning stars. Every ember carried my plea in whispers of fractured light. Every spark screamed your name.
Another name, another face, but only you would hear my echo. Only you could.
And then—just now—I saw it.
The mark of Phoenix Fire between your brows—a sigil etched in living crimson beneath your skin, as ephemeral as celestial script traced by an immortal’s brush upon the surface of the Heavenly Mirror Lake. It appeared for just a moment when your anger flared, answering provocation like a buried ember catching sudden breath—a forgotten constellation revealing itself through parting clouds. A heartbeat of light—there, then gone—but in its wake, the certainty that burns brighter than any flame.
My knees go weak, buckling like rain-soaked paper, and suddenly the orchard tilts sideways—peach blossoms blurring into streaks of pink against the azure sky. The scent of singed feathers still clings to my robes, acrid and sweet. I’m terrified that if I blink, if my breath escapes too loudly from between my parched lips, you’ll dissolve into mist and memory, slipping through my trembling fingers like the years we’ve lost. That your solid form before me is merely some fever dream conjured by the Cradle’s hungry flames, a phantom painted in smoke and desperate longing across the canvas of my immortal madness.
While I’m barely holding myself together — lungs seared as if I’ve swallowed celestial lightning, heart thrashing like a caged phoenix against the hollow bars of my immortal ribs — you are calm, your face smooth as the sacred jade pools of Mount Kunlun beneath the glow of a full moon. You don’t remember. If you did, your green eyes would blaze with the resentment of a thousand bitter winters; rage would twist your peach-blossom mouth into the snarl of a wounded tigress; disgust would hollow your porcelain cheeks until your face became a stranger’s mask carved from cold ivory.
This isn’t uncommon for those who trial by fire — memories become like gilt-edged paper offerings folded into the shapes of butterflies and dragons, surrendered willingly or not, consumed by the nine-colored flames that lick the ancient roots beneath the Tree of Origins.
Maybe it’s a blessing — your forgetting. Because if you remembered, you would have turned from me with eyes cold as winter jade, sealed your heart behind walls of blue-white ice that not even my immortal fire could melt. And I… I would be left to wander that frozen wasteland alone, where every footprint ices over before I’ve taken the next step — just as it has since the moment you vanished.
Maybe it’s a curse. Because now I must coax dying embers back to flame with nothing but the trembling breath from my own lungs, must relearn the fragile pathways to your heart like a blind man tracing cracks in ancient porcelain, must make you fall in love with me all over again while the ghosts of your mortal life watch from the corner of a room you can no longer see.
Either way, you’re here — solid and warm in my trembling arms — and that’s all that matters.
She pulls her coral gown up over her shoulder. Her fingers tremble against the fabric, pale against its sunset hue. Her gaze fixes on the worn path beneath her, where twilight shadows stretch between scattered petals. She sits among fallen blossoms, their soft pink forms crushed beneath her weight, releasing waves of sweetness with each small shift of her body.
All around, the peach orchard sighs, branches swaying overhead as more petals spiral down to join her in the dimming light. Her breathing is uneven, shallow — as if she’s afraid to inhale too deeply, afraid the moment will unravel in the gathering dusk.
I reach out before I can stop myself. My hand closes around her wrist — the bones delicate as a bird’s beneath my fingers, her skin cool despite the lingering heat of our spent passions. “You can’t go yet.”
My voice cracks on the last word, a sound like parched earth splitting open after drought. My throat burns raw. “Stay longer…” A pause while I swallow hard against the dryness. “Better yet… never leave.”
I rise from my knees; Close enough now to see the fine wisps of hair at her temple dampened by sweat, to count each uneven breath that makes the coral silk tremble against her collarbone. Her scent — not just peach blossoms but something deeper, like rain-soaked earth and crushed herbs — fills my lungs until I’m dizzy with it. My fingers press into the blue veins beneath her wrist, memorizing the flutter of her pulse against my thumb.
She stiffens beneath my touch—tendons tightening like silk threads pulled taut—but her tone is soft when she finally speaks, her hand lifting hesitantly to rake her fingers through my loose hair. The motion is tentative, reverent, her fingertips leaving trails of gentle fire across my scalp, disturbing strands that fall like black water around my shoulders.
“Ruilin…” My name leaves her lips like a sigh caught between seasons—summer’s warmth and autumn’s uncertainty—unsteady as a peach blossom clinging to its branch in the wind.
“I’m not sure what happened.” she begins, her voice uncertain, threaded with shyness. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it.…” She falters, cheeks flushing deeper. “We’ll have plenty of time to… get to know each other better after we’re married—”
But I cannot let her finish.
My lips find hers, silencing whatever she meant to say. The taste of her is layered — peach blossoms, honey, something salt-edged like the memory of tears. The warmth of her startled breath mingles with mine, and I taste in her kiss a sweetness that soothes my soul — like cool jade pressed against fevered skin, like a single drop of rain falling on parched earth, like a lantern rekindled in a temple long abandoned.
And yet, even as I hold her, I feel the fragile edges of this moment, as if one careless breath could scatter it to ash. Her kiss is my tether, my prayer, my return.
My tether — because without her, I have been unmoored, adrift among ember-choked ruins where even time lost its meaning.
My prayer — because I have begged the heavens for this, bled for this, burned for this, and now every soft tremor of her lips feels like the answer to a thousand supplications.
My return — because in her, I rediscover the map of myself, the boy I used to be and the man her absence has forged, colliding in the space between our heartbeats.
And yet, beneath the sweetness lies something rawer, hungrier — the terror that this is still temporary, that if I let go, she’ll vanish into smoke again. So I kiss her deeper, coaxing, pleading, trying to carve this truth into her skin, into her breath, into her bones. You are mine. You have always been mine.
My hands trace the curves of her flesh, fingertips mapping the gentle rise and fall of her collarbone, the hollow at the base of her throat where her pulse flutters like a captured sparrow. The soft swell of her breasts yields beneath my touch, pale as moonlit jade, gentle as brushstrokes on silk, offering both shelter and escape. Her breath feathers warm against my cheek, shallow and uneven, while mine comes ragged, drawn from somewhere deeper than lungs — from years of longing starved into madness, from periods of empty chambers in an immortal heart that never stopped searching for her.
When her lips part beneath mine to breathe, yielding instead of retreating, a shudder rakes through me so violently I nearly fall to my knees. The tremor begins at the base of my spine and climbs upward like nine-colored fire licking along a dry branch, spreading through each vertebra until it reaches my skull where it explodes into fragments of gold and crimson behind my closed eyelids. My fingertips tingle with electricity, skin hypersensitive to every whisper of contact between us—the damp heat of her mouth, the flutter of her pulse beneath my palm, the sweet pressure of her breasts against my chest through layers of silk that suddenly feel too thick, too constraining.
The last of the fragile tie of her gown—a gossamer thread of coral silk no wider than a calligraphy brush stroke—loosens beneath my trembling hand. The silken folds cascade with a hushed sigh across my knuckles, cool at first then warming instantly from her skin beneath. I feel each individual ridge of her ribs under my splayed fingers, the subtle curve where waist becomes hip, the gooseflesh rising in the wake of my touch. The fabric pools around her ankles in waves that catch the dying light, transforming her skin to honey-gold above them. Her nipples tighten in the sudden coolness, rose-pink and perfect. She makes a small, startled sound—half protest, half plea—that vibrates against my mouth, sweet as plum wine on my tongue. I swallow it with my lips. My fingertips memorizing the texture of her skin—softer than the silk that once covered it, warmer than sunlight, more precious than jade.
“Tell me to stop,” I whisper against her lips, though I pray she won’t.
She doesn’t.
Her silence is its own surrender, quiet as the falling petals outside, and when I lift her into my arms again, she comes willingly this time, her body a warm weight against my chest, her breath a butterfly’s whisper against my neck. The cottage sways in amber-tinted shadows as I carry her deeper inside, past the worn threshold where moonlight gives way to lantern glow, my footfalls hushed against the ancient wooden planks.
The dimness wraps around us like a hush, amber lantern light catching in the dust motes that dance between us. Outside, the peach blossoms sigh against the cottage roof, their petals scraping like fingernails carried by a wandering wind that makes the wooden beams creak. But here, within these walls of weathered cypress, the world has folded into silence — just her breath, warm and honeyed, my breath, ragged and desperate, and the uneven drum of two hearts, reaching for each other across the void of time — one remembering, the other on the cusp of remembering too.
I set her down, her nakedness a pale gleam against the low bed draped in muslin the color of winter moonlight. My knees sink into the woven rush mat before her, the rough fibers pressing patterns into my skin that burn like sweet punishment. I should give her space, let her think, but my hands betray me, sliding along the cool silk of her calves where fine hairs rise beneath my touch. My thumbs press gently into the delicate hollow behind her knee, feeling the flutter of her pulse there, my fingertips tingling with recognition as they trace upward, awakening gooseflesh in their path. The scent of her skin—tuberose with an undercurrent of salt—fills my lungs until I am drowning in it, until my body remembers hers before my mind can catch up.
“Ruilin…” Her voice trembles, not with fear but something unnamed, a quiver that ripples through the syllables like wind disturbing the surface of a still pond. The sound hangs between us, fragile as spun sugar.
My name on her lips carries the faintest husk of longing — and for a heartbeat, it sounds exactly as Yi Nuo once whispered it, breath warm against my ear on quiet mornings when sunlight filtered through bamboo screens and painted gold patterns across her bare shoulders. The echo cracks something in me, a hairline fracture spreading through porcelain. Her eyes search mine, swirling with uncertainty, yet they don’t move away. Her fingers twitch against my sleeve, hesitating where they should push. She should reject me, should turn her face aside. She doesn’t.
I lift my gaze and hold hers — the gold in my irises reflected in her green like sunlight caught in deep water. “I don’t want you to leave me again,” I whisper, my voice breaking on the last word. “I couldn’t bear it.”
Her lips part as if to speak, but no sound comes. Instead, her hand rises, delicate yet sure, and finds the silk of my robe. Her fingers—cool, trembling just slightly—hook beneath the collar as though by instinct, the fabric parting with a rustle like leaves brushing skin.
My breath stutters.
She doesn’t rush. Her thumb grazes the hollow at my throat, then traces downward, slow and deliberate — each inch of contact burning like a brand. Moonlight glances off her knuckles, silvering them as they glide over my sternum, pausing just above my heart. That path… that pressure… even the slight tremble in her smallest finger — I remember it like a fever dream.
Yi Nuo always undid me like this: not with haste, but with hunger veiled in gentleness, as if peeling away a prayer one breath at a time.
She says nothing, but my body remembers the words her lips once whispered: I love you, Ruilin. I love you more than life.
The air tightens between us. Her breath ghosts across my skin — warm and trembling, faintly scented of crushed petals and rain. My hands rise without thought, anchoring at her waist, grounding myself in the feel of her. Her thighs press ever so slightly against my hips — a subtle, instinctive tension, too honest to counterfeit.
When her knuckles skim the ridge of my ribs, my spine arches toward her like iron drawn to a flame. The friction of her fingertips against my heated skin sends electricity surging down my limbs, pooling low and heavy like molten gold in my groin. A groan rumbles from my chest, raw and low, as my head bows to her shoulder — lips parting to taste the hollow there, where salt and tuberose bloom on my tongue.
Her pulse flutters wildly beneath my mouth — a trapped butterfly beating against the cage of her skin. Still, she unwraps me, her fingers dances across my abdomen, catching briefly on the trail of dark hair below my navel before sliding away entirely. The cool night air licks at my exposed flesh, raising goosebumps that her palms smooth away with exquisite, deliberate care.
Every motion between us is hesitant, yet laced with an ache so ancient it borders on instinct — as though our bodies remember a choreography etched not in thought, but in muscle and memory. Her hair spills forward over her shoulder, brushing my chest like silk drawn across flame, its dark strands kissing her luminous skin in waves, soft as moonlight rippling across a still lake.
The fall of it reveals the flush rising from her collarbone — a delicate bloom that spreads down her arm like a secret unfurling. My fingers tremble as they follow that heat, not as strangers, but as pilgrims tracing the path home. I map her again — not with urgency, but with reverence — reacquainting myself with the sanctuary I once called mine.
Then she sighs — a soft, breathless sound that slips from her parted lips like a secret too fragile for words. Her head tilts to the side instinctively, baring the pale column of her throat in that same vulnerable gesture Yi Nuo used to make when lost in abandon.
The sight of it sends a shudder through me — slow, reverent, possessive — as if the part of her that knew me best is beginning to stir… just beneath the surface… just out of reach.
“Ruilin…” she whispers. The syllables fracture between us — half protest, half surrender.
“I understand,” I breathe against the corner of her lips, my words catching on her skin. “Nothing happens tonight that you don’t choose.”
When I finally ease her astride my lap, the heat of her thighs sears into mine like twin brands. Her skin, flushed rose-gold in the amber lantern light, glows with a softness that steals my breath. As she settles—slowly, hesitantly—down and around me, a sweet, exquisite pressure pulls a ragged gasp from the depths of my throat. Her body tightens in a fluttering pulse, so intimate and familiar that I have to close my eyes, my hands grasping her hips with reverence and desperation. My thumbs find the ridges of her spine, trembling as she arches slightly, her hair cascading down her back like a river of ink over pale parchment.
She trembles, adjusting her body reacquainting itself with mine—no, remembering mine. I pray.
Her fingernails press into my shoulders, leaving crescent marks that sting like devotion. Her breasts brush my chest with every tentative rock of her hips, and I feel her exhale against my mouth—cinnamon and honey, the way Yi Nuo once breathed when the world dropped away. She finds her balance slowly, her inner muscles pulsing with discovery and déjà vu.
The silk of her hair spills forward, curtaining us as she leans down, her spine arching like a bow drawn to its breaking point. Outside, the orchard stirs, the branches whispering secrets. But inside this cottage, the world narrows to the liquid heat where we join, the trembling in her thighs, the sighs she cannot contain. I taste the echo of plum-blossom oil clinging to her skin—the same scent Yi Nuo wore when she nursed me through fever—and my lungs burn with the ghost of it.
I draw her breasts into my mouth, my tongue tracing the velvet peak until she gasps, her head tipping to one side with a breathless sigh — just as Yi Nuo used to do. Her back arches, the line of her throat offered without thought. Her nipples stiffen beneath my tongue, and her thighs clutch around me with a rhythm that’s unlearned yet instinctive.
My chest tightens with every movement of her hips. I don’t dare break the spell. My hands slide from her waist to the swell of her thighs, guiding but never demanding. I move with her in reverence born of fear — fear she’ll vanish again, fear I’ll never find this closeness again.
I cradle her, her breasts pressed against my heart, her breath catching in perfect counterpoint to my own. She kisses me then — honeyed and urgent. Her tongue finds mine, and she rocks above me with rising confidence, her spine moving like a willow in wind. The sweetness of her mouth nearly unravels me. Her body tightens around me, thighs trembling with every draw and descent. A soft, airy cry escapes against my throat, her breath damp and shaking.
She leads now, and I follow — her rhythm becoming mine, her hunger carving a path I willingly stumble after. She draws me in, takes everything I give, until the pleasure shatters something in me. I spill inside her, trembling and undone.
We cling to each other until I guide her to the bed, where jade-green silks lie rumpled from our passion. She nestles beneath my jaw, finding that hollow as naturally as water seeks its riverbed, her breath warm against my skin like spring winds through plum orchards. I comb through her hair—midnight-dark, temples still damp—my fingers memorizing every curve of her scalp, as though touch might bind her to me more permanently than memory.
Moonlight catches her jade pendant, a single gleam like a frozen teardrop against her throat. Words form and dissolve on my tongue—pleas, promises, anything to preserve this moment where time hangs suspended—but fear weights my voice to silence. The quiet stretches between us until she breaks it, her lips moving against my shoulder as she speaks.
“I wish I hadn’t been away as long as I was,” she whispers, her voice a thread so delicate it might snap if pulled. “I wish I could have spared you that pain.”
I close my eyes and press my lips to the crown of her head, drawing her scent deep into my lungs like a man surfacing from drowning. “The past is ash,” I murmur, each word a warm breath against her skin, my mouth reluctant to part from her even to speak. “You’re here now, in my arms. Nothing else exists.”
I kiss her again, softer this time, inhaling deeply, trying to memorize her — the warmth of her, the cadence of her breathing, the quiet tremor beneath her calm. She moves against me, tilting her face upward so her chin rests on my sternum. Those green eyes—so rare in our realm—peer at me through the dark curtain of her lashes.
“I should ask Mother for the details,” she murmurs, her breath warm against my skin. “Three years asleep in that cave, trapped in scales and claws. Father still won’t speak to Zhe Yan—not since learning he knew where I was hidden all along.”
My fingers freeze in her hair, my body tensing involuntarily beneath her. I feel her notice the change, the slight hesitation in her breathing, but she says nothing more.
My godfather. High Goddess Bai Qian. Both silent. Both withholding.
A sickness coils low in my stomach, cold as serpent venom. They haven’t told her the truth behind her lost years. And suddenly, a darker thought takes root — sharp and insidious. What if this wasn’t an accident of fate or Phoenix Fire? What if her memory of me… of us… was severed deliberately? What if someone decided she’d be better off without me? If that’s true… if someone made her forget me…
What if that someone was her?
The idea detonates in my chest. My breath catches. I see it too easily: her emerald eyes cool with resolve, her voice steady as she whispered some ancient rite to strip me from her soul. Or drank from the River of Oblivion. Choosing freedom. Choosing a life where she could no longer even remember loving me.
A low, hollow ache gnaws through my ribs, leaving splinters of panic behind. My hand tightens at the small of her back without meaning to, dragging her infinitesimally closer, as though keeping her near could keep the truth from unravelling between us. I press a kiss into her hair, hiding the quake in my breath.
I cannot ask. I cannot know. Not yet. Because if I hear her confirm it, if she truly chose to forget me… I will burn the Cradle down to its roots. I will raze every law, every god, every thread of fate that dared make her believe she’d ever be free of me.
But here, now, her weight is warm against my chest, her breath feathering my collarbone. I want to believe she came back to me, even if she doesn’t know why. I want to believe some part of her still hears my echo. So I do the only thing I can — I cling to her as if the orchard itself could vanish beneath my feet.