Page 37 of Song of the Crimson Flower

“I know your life has been hard. But what hurts you hurts me.” Yen took one of his hands in both of hers. “Before you, I was just another worthless daughter to marry off. Too old, too outspoken, too passionate to be proper. No one ever looked at me like I mattered until you.”

“Yen,” he said brokenly, but couldn’t go on.

She wiped his wet face with the heel of her hand with infinite tenderness. “I know you’re afraid. You gave your heart once, and it almost destroyed you, but I promise you that it will be different with me. I will never hurt you or turn from you the way Xifeng did.”

For a tense moment, Bao thought the Commander would walk away. The man was a fighter who lived by his sword, who intimately knew death and the dark side of mankind, and yet the fear on his face was palpable. But then something broke within him, and he pulled Lady Yen close to him. His was the face of a weary sailor coming to a safe port glowing with light. Their lips met, gentle at first, and then fiercer, harder. They kissed as though each needed the other’s air to survive, their bodies melding until there was no separation between their hearts.

Through the bushes, Lan jerked her head at Bao. They emerged from the water and dressed in silence on their respective sides, completely unnoticed by the lovers. Bao raised a hand to scratch his cheek and was surprised to find tears on his skin, cool in the heat of the day.

All the pain and the anger and the torture of love overwhelmed him. Ever since Lan had hurt him, he had wondered what the point was of offering his heart to someone who could push it away with both hands. But what he had just witnessed gave him the answer: it was the chance, however small, that the other person would accept his heart instead and keep it safe.

Lan met him on his side of the shrubbery, and they walked back together in silence.

People make mistakes, Bao thought.Hearts get broken, but somehow we forget the pain. Or choose the chance of happiness in spite of the pain.

He glanced at Lan beside him, whose head was tipped in that thoughtful way she had, her wet hair gleaming like black silk in the sunlight.

People make mistakes.

15

Lan and Bao returned to the encampment to find the Imperial soldiers hurrying about, packing the food back up and preparing the horses. Wren was nowhere to be seen, but faint voices emanated from the abandoned village.

“What’s happened?” Lan asked one of the men, alarmed.

“We must leave at once,” the soldier told her, tightening the saddle on his mount. “We will have to find somewhere else to camp for the night, because it turns out the village isn’t empty at all. There is a woman who is deathly ill. Have you seen the Commander?”

“He’s down by the river with... He’s down by the river. Maybe I can do something to help,” Bao said, straightening. “Where is this sick woman?”

The soldier shook his head, looking harassed. “That stubborn Crimson Army woman is with her, but I want everyone else out here. It’s too dangerous. I think it’s bloodpox.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than Bao dove for the cottageswithout hesitation. Lan watched him go with a surge of admiration. She didn’t know many people who would so willingly plunge into danger to help a complete stranger. “He’s had experience with bloodpox,” she told the soldier, who looked nettled at Bao’s disregard for his warning, and went to find her waterskin. Her throat itched terribly, likely because of the dusty air, but the sensation did not go away even after drinking. She coughed and coughed, remembering that Bao had done so when they were separated, and nearly dropped the waterskin in her realization.

Bao had run off to help the sick woman, forgetting about the enchantment. Earlier, he had described it as feeling like hands gripping his throat, and therewasan odd tightness around Lan’s neck. This, then, was how the magic would entrap her—a punishment for trying to save Bao’s life. Would she also be stuck in the flute if they failed to break the spell? She cursed the witch’s pettiness as she hurried toward the cottages in search of Bao, coughing as she ran.

The village looked abandoned, but still the back of her neck crawled with the feeling of being watched. She shivered as a curtain moved at one of the windows, barely imperceptible, and a sliver of a face disappeared beyond her view. She cleared her dry throat and spotted Bao kneeling in front of a cottage, gasping for air, his face pale. She ran to him, aching at the sight of him in so much pain, and the look in his eyes could have stopped her heart: there was such desperation and joy and relief. He gazed at her as though he hadn’t seen her in years.

“I’m here,” she managed to say as the pressure around her own throat eased. She put her hands on either side of his face. “I’m here, Bao.”

“It was stupid of me,” he croaked. His hands found her elbows and slid upward, leaving a tingling trail of warmth in their wake as he wrapped his fingers over hers. “I forgot. But you... you didn’t feel it, too, did you?” For she was also gulping in great breaths of air.

“I think we’ve found out what the witch meant.” Lan forced a laugh.

“This is all my fault,” he said, his eyes full of regret.

“Ichose to help you.”

Shyly, Bao moved one of his hands to her face and tenderly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She lowered her hands to his shoulders and felt the pulse in his neck fluttering against her fingers. The urge to press her lips to it was overwhelming. She knew now that she had never, ever felt this for Tam—this delightful, almost painful longing. She looked up into Bao’s warm, kind eyes, wishing she could express it in words.

But he was already getting up and pulling her to her feet, too. “They’re over here,” he said, and would have let go, but Lan held on to his hand. He looked down at their joined fingers, then up at her, and something sparked in his eyes. They walked over to the cottage together and peered inside to see a motley gathering of people: Wren standing warily beside two Imperial soldiers, one of them bleeding from a gash on his forehead, and a fierce girl of about eleven gripping a cooking pan, which was presumably what had injured him. The sick woman lay motionless on a small bed, and a young man bent over her, wiping the perspiration from her face.

Bao squeezed Lan’s hand and went inside to speak with the man for several tense minutes. Lan stayed by the door, resisting the impulse to cover her nose at the thick, sour-sweet smell of the shabby cottage.

The sick woman was of indiscriminate age, her jet-black hair matted with sweat. She had a curious green-yellow tinge to her warm complexion and lay beneath a blanket with a messy red-brown pattern, which Lan realized with horror was large splotches of dried blood. As she watched, the woman coughed, splattering what little clean space was left on the blanket.

“I don’t care what your intentions are.” The young man suddenly raised his voice to Bao, and Lan’s attention shifted to him. He was small and slender, but his ferocious eyes and the knife-sharp slope of his jaw made his presence seem larger. “I want you and your soldiers to go at once. Tell everyone you see of the sickness here, and maybe they’ll leave us alone, too.”

Footsteps sounded behind Lan, and she turned to see Commander Wei. “Bao, get away from that woman at once,” he ordered. “I don’t want you infecting everyone else.”

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