She was staring with the expression of soone who has just watched her most competent family mber completely lose an argunt with their own body, and was recalibrating everything she had assud about both her sister and the nature of the situation.
Zhen Ying, from her position at a slight remove, made a low sound that was not quite amusent and not quite comntary.
It was the sound of a woman who had been through this particular experience herself and was watching the pattern repeat with the recognition of soone reading a book they’ve already finished.
iling was watching too. She had pressed her back against her tree again.
Her arms had folded over her own chest in the unconscious protective gesture of a woman who felt sothing happening in her own body that she did not want to examine closely.
He released Song i.
She stepped back. One step. Her hand ca up to her own mouth—not in shock, in the particular quiet of soone taking inventory of what had just happened.
Then he reached sideways.
His other arm hooked around Xiao Hua’s waist before the younger girl could process the direction of the motion, pulling her in against his other side, and suddenly both sisters were held against him—Song i still catching her breath on his left, Xiao Hua going rigid with surprise on his right—and he looked at them both with the dry, satisfied expression of a man who has successfully arranged sothing to his preference.
"From this mont," he said, "you are both mine. Harem. Together." He paused. "Try not to fight about it. You’ll lose."
Xiao Hua made a sound.
Song i made a different sound.
Neither was precisely objection, because they were both already in his arms and their bodies were already doing the thing bodies apparently did in his vicinity and language had not yet arrived to assist.
From behind them, Zhen Ying said: "Pervert."
She said it with perfect composure. The tone of soone cataloguing a known quantity.
Xiao Hua turned her head toward the sound.
The serpent matriarch stood with her arms folded, white skin lit by fragnts of forest light, expression occupying so private region between amused and forbearing.
Xiao Hua stared.
"Who is that?" she asked. The question was addressed to nobody in particular and ca out softer than intended because she had rembered her manners at the last mont. "I an—" She searched for appropriate phrasing. "Who is the... the beautiful lady?"
Zhen Ying’s expression shifted by exactly one degree.
It was not a softening. It was the precise recalibration of a three-hundred-year-old entity who had just been called beautiful by a nineteen-year-old in a ruined wedding dress and found the experience unexpectedly disarming.
"Zhen Ying," she said. "First Wife."
Xiao Hua processed this.
"First—" She turned to Cang. "She is also—"
"Yes," he said.
"How many—"
"Several," he said.
Song i, from his other side, had put her face in her hands.
Zhen Ying moved toward Xiao Hua with the unhurried deliberation of sothing that did not particularly need to rush because nothing in the forest was going anywhere. She stopped at a range that could have been threatening if she’d angled it that way and instead chose inspecting.
"Pure Body Constitution," she said.
Xiao Hua blinked. "How did you—"
"I can sll what isn’t there." Zhen Ying’s dark eyes moved over the younger girl with the frank assessnt of a species that didn’t share humanity’s discomfort with being observed. "No corruption. No residual qi. You took everything he put into you and filtered it clean." A pause. "You’ll cultivate quickly."
"I don’t know how to cultivate," Xiao Hua said.
"You will." Zhen Ying’s gaze moved briefly to Cang with the expression of a woman making a note. Then back to Xiao Hua. "Has he been feeding you?"
"I—what?"
"After. Has he been giving you food? You should eat imdiately after. The energy expenditure is—"
"Zhen Ying," Song i said from sowhere behind both of them, voice muffled by the hands still over her face.
"She should know," Zhen Ying said, without turning. "I had to learn it myself and nobody told either."
Song i said sothing that was not printable in the formal registers of cultivation etiquette.
Zhen Ying said: "Exactly."
Xiao Hua looked between them with the careful, asuring attention of soone watching a dynamic that was too complex to fully decode but contained information she was going to need.
iling had been walking.
She had been doing this quietly, at a slight remove, since the landing—following the group through the trees without asking what direction they were going, because the alternative was standing in a forest alone in yesterday’s silk and asking herself questions she wasn’t ready to answer. She had watched Song i’s reunion. She had watched the serpent woman erge. She had watched Cang fold both sisters against him and issue declarations with the ease of soone describing the weather.
She had kept walking.
It was the only thing she was certain about.
Ahead of her, the four of them moved through the old-growth forest in their own orbits—Xiao Hua beside Zhen Ying, listening with the absorbed expression of a young woman cataloguing entirely new information, asking questions in a low voice that iling couldn’t fully hear. Song i a step behind, watching her sister with the focused protective attention of soone who has accepted a situation they fundantally cannot fix and is reconfiguring their role accordingly. Zhen Ying answering with the unhurried authority of a first wife who has decided that bringing new additions up to standard is simply a managent function.
And Cang.
Walking slightly ahead of all of them. Hands loose at his sides. Back to her. Not looking at anyone, apparently, but she had lived fourteen years with a man she thought she understood and had learned nothing about. She recognized the quality of attention that looked like inattention.
She stopped.
The others continued. The gap between her and the group opened—five feet, ten, fifteen—and nobody turned around, and the forest was very large and very quiet.
"What do I do?"
She hadn’t ant to say it aloud. She had ant it as an internal question, the kind that orbits and doesn’t land. It ca out at conversational volu anyway, directed at no one in particular and at the back of a cultivator’s head specifically.
He turned.
Not the whole group. Just him—a half turn, reading her over one shoulder with the sa mild dark eyes that had been reading everyone and everything since he’d walked into the compound yesterday.
The others moved ahead through the trees.
He stood, waiting.
iling kept her arms folded over her chest. Her silk was wrinkled and travel-worn and she was forty-one years old in a forest she didn’t recognize with a man whose na she had learned last night and whose hands she had been learning for much longer than that.
"I don’t know where I’m going," she said. "I don’t know what you want from . I don’t know what—" She stopped. Pressed her lips together. "What am I supposed to do."
Cang looked at her for a mont.
Then he said: "I’m entering the Trial grounds."
She waited.
"I’ll be gone for so days. Perhaps a week. Perhaps more." He tilted his head. "Before I go—I thought I’d give you sothing."
"What," she said carefully.
His eyes moved briefly downward. Back up.
"Sothing to keep," he said. "While I’m gone."
User Comments
0 comments from readers