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Jingnu’s heart breaks as it is made whole. And seeing this happen in front of her eyes, Qi Yan is frozen in place. She can’t move, and she can’t look away— she just bears the pain in her chest, hoping it will subside, but knowing better.
“Qi Yan...why?” She clutches desperately at the lapel of her Qi Yan’s robes, hands curled up into tiny fists. Her eyes gleam under the candlelight of her bed chamber, illuminating ever dark eyes.
“Your Highness…” there’s a mist in her eyes she knows, one that should have cleared away long ago. But this time, the mist bursts, and a single teardrop is let free. How could she have possibly been so careless as to let Jingnu see the mark on her she had been hiding for years? This was the thing that bound them together eternally.
Truly, she deserved a thousand deaths for falling for her enemy, and another thousand for plotting to kill her soulmate.
“Why did you hide this? Answer me!”
Denial, or guilt or perhaps shame. Constant unrest at these characters written in everlasting ink at her skin, slowly forming and revealing her morbid fate. You weren’t born with a mark— on some part of your body, whether it’s a wrist or a forearm or somewhere else, the name of your soulmate will gradually form. Qi Yan’s had fully formed years ago, at the early stages of their marriage, and now the truth was beginning to unravel.
“This subject has been dishonest, I…I never intended to hurt you.”
Jingnu’s shaking, grip looser now and she cries quietly. Qi Yan only wants to soothe her, to pull her into an embrace and apologise as many times as it takes.
“It was always you,” she sniffles. “Why would you make me think otherwise?”
“To be bound to someone for life, for eternity...it’s no small matter,” says Qi Yan quietly, pries Jingnu’s hands off her robes. “This subject worried it may be too much for you, that you may not be prepared after how I've hurt you in the past or…” she hesitates. “That you may not be matched with me as I am to you, that it would be one sided.”
Qi Yan is not selfish. But Qiyan Agula was.
The hold Jingnu has on her hands is almost too tight, gaze unrelenting in its irritation. The ghost of tears once fallen stains her face, but there is such beauty in her vulnerability. She takes a step closer. “We’re married, you’re my husband, how could you think such things.”
It isn’t a question, and had it been one Qi Yan would not have answered. Because deep down, behind the mask she wears of the perfect Fuma and the frail scholar, there’s bitterness and grief all entangled with her love for Nangong Jingnu, and there’s shame that she is not the person who Her Highness has fallen for. Could she possibly love her after all she's done? Could she possibly love a woman, one who has sought out to destroy her, since the very beginning?
“In future,” Qi Yan wraps her arms around Jingnu, hugs her fiercely like making a promise, strokes her hair, fingers slow and methodical, and breathes her in. Savour this, she says to herself. One day, this will all be gone. “In future, I won’t hide from you.”
There's a bitter meaning laced in her words, and it makes Qi Yan ache.
Jingnu sighs into her arms, finally relaxes. She breathes slowly, but so close against her Qi Yan can still feel the unsteady beat of a heart. Maybe it’s not only Jingnu’s heart that beats erratically. Dimly, she realises she too has a heart-- one which is not encased in ice alone.
“Stay for the night please?” comes the small mumble against Qi Yan.
“Of course." Qi Yan closes her eyes. "Anything for Your Highness.”