As he drew me to him, his eyes darkened with an intent that stirred my blood. No, I would not let doubt taint this moment; such joy was both precious and scarce. I leaned against him, inhaling his clean scent. It had been a long time since he held me so. As his other hand slid around the curve of my waist, fire surged through my veins, a sudden hunger consuming me as my arms wound around his neck to pull him closer. His lips found mine—firm and tender, soft yet relentless. How I had missed this sweetness, this tantalizing sensation of our bodies pressed together. His hold around me tightened as we fell, as one, onto the billowing folds of the cloud, its coolness a balm to my heated skin.

Closing my eyes, I drifted away upon a tide of dreams, glittering as brightly as this river of stars.

Chapter 4

A ringing through my mind yanked me from the embrace of slumber. Someone had come through the wards. My eyes flew open as I probed the intruder’s energy. Familiar to me, yet fury flared hot and bright.

Wenzhi.

I would not see him; I would ignore him as I had done all the times before. He came more often now, disrupting the wards with careless abandon when he could have unraveled them with ease—just as he had done with those of the Celestial Kingdom. Perhaps it amused him to have them clang through my mind like a gong newly struck. Perhaps it saved him the trouble of rousing me himself. He never ventured to my chamber; maybe he did not know where it was, though I preferred to think he did not dare to. After the initial disturbance, silence would ensue. Yet his presence on the balcony of my home irked me relentlessly like dust in my eyes. Wenzhi was ever patient, only leaving with the approach of dawn.

From the beginning, I resisted the urge to chase him from our grounds. Ignoring him would be the best recourse, denting his iron pride. And I did not like the bitterness and rage his presence roused in me, the memories that seared. Those were sleepless nights as I tossed until the silken coverlet was twisted around my body, my only solace imagining his own futile wait.

The lilting strains of a zither drifted into my room. Beautiful and haunting, yet played so softly I would not have noticed had I not been awake. Each drawn-out note melded into the next, reverberating with restrained passion. The melody stirred an ache within me, an image sliding into my mind of the last time I had heard it—of Wenzhi plucking the strings of his qin just before I had drugged him to make my escape. Rage seared me. How dare he come here? How dare he play this now?