The adrenaline had faded, leaving only the cold, biting ache in my shoulder.
I sat on the edge of the cot in the Shadow's quarters—a room that was little more than a stone cell beneath the palace floor. I had stripped the plum silk gown to my waist, letting it hang by the ties of my trousers. The arrow had only grazed me, but the wound was angry, a jagged red line weeping across the pale map of my skin.
I reached for the jar of medicinal salt and a clean linen rag. My hands, usually steady enough to thread a needle in a windstorm, were shaking.
It wasn't the wound. It was the memory of his hand on my waist. The way he had leaned into my ear, his voice like velvet over a blade. I have too many questions for the dead.
A heavy thud echoed against the door. I didn't have time to reach for my mask.
The door swung open, and the Emperor stepped in.
Zhenkai didn't look like the regal statue from the ballroom. His black outer robes were gone, leaving him in a simple white silk tunic that was damp with sweat. His hair was loose, falling over his eyes in dark, messy strands.
I froze, clutching the linen rag to my chest to cover the curve of my breasts, my heart slamming against my ribs.
"Your Majesty," I rasped, dropping my gaze. "This is a breach of protocol. I am a guard."
"You are a guard who took an arrow meant for my throat," he said. He didn't stay by the door. He walked into the cramped room, making it feel half its size. "And you are a guard who refuses to let the Imperial physicians touch her."
He stopped a foot away from me. The scent of rain and sandalwood intensified, suffocating me. He held out his hand. "Give me the salt."
"I can tend to myself," I hissed, tightening my grip on the cloth.
"Forty-Seven," he said, and the way he spoke my number sounded like a curse. "I have spent five years surrounded by people who lie to my face. Do not be the first one to do it tonight. Give me the salt, or I will call the guards to hold you down while I do it."
I looked up at him then. Without the porcelain mask, I felt flayed. My amber eyes met his dark ones, and for a terrifying second, the world fell away. He didn't look away. He tracked the line of my throat, the scar on my collarbone, and finally, the bleeding gash on my shoulder.
I slowly opened my hand.
He took the jar, his fingers brushing mine. The contact felt like a spark to dry kindling. He sat on the narrow cot beside me—so close our thighs touched. The heat of him was overwhelming.
He dipped the rag into the salt and water. "This will sting," he murmured.
As he pressed the cloth to my shoulder, I bit my lip to keep from crying out. My hand instinctively flew out to steady myself, landing on his forearm. His muscles were like corded steel beneath his tunic, taut and alive.
Zhenkai paused, his breath hitching. He didn't pull away. Instead, he set the rag down and reached for my wrist. His thumb traced the white, puckered scar there—the mark left by a jagged rock during my escape from the palace invasion.
"The night of the Red Snow," he whispered, his voice dangerously low. "The night the South fell. I saw this mark on a girl who vanished into the river."
My breath caught in my throat, a sharp, audible hitch. I tried to pull back, but his grip tightened—not enough to hurt, but enough to anchor me. I closed my eyes, the darkness behind my lids filled with the orange glow of a burning home.
"Many soldiers have scars, Your Majesty," I said, my voice trembling.
"Not this one." He moved his hand from my wrist to my jaw, his touch identical to the one in the burning palace five years ago. He tilted my face up toward the flickering candlelight. "You fight like a South-born noble. You smell like the orchids that only grow in the Inner Gardens. And you have the eyes of a woman who was supposed to be at the bottom of a river."
He leaned in until our foreheads touched. I could feel his heartbeat—fast, erratic, and terrified.
"Who are you?" he breathed against my lips. "Tell me you're a ghost. Tell me I'm hallucinating. Because if you are real... then I am truly a dead man."
I should have pushed him away. I should have reached for the dagger under my pillow. But for one heartbeat, the Shadow died, and the Princess Meilin wanted to lean into the only warmth she had felt in five years.
The door echoed with a sharp, frantic knock.
"Your Majesty!" General Fang's voice cut through the air like a blade. "The assassin has talked. We have a name. We must move now."
Zhenkai didn't pull away immediately. He lingered for a fraction of a second, his eyes searching mine one last time, before he stood and donned his mask of Imperial ice.
"Stay here," he commanded, his voice once again the cold iron of an Emperor. "If you leave this room before I return, I will treat it as treason."
He vanished into the hall, leaving me alone in the dark with the scent of sandalwood and the salt stinging my blood.