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‘I can do it, Cha Cha.’
Aranya held the cool, damp cloth to her forehead in spite of her maid’s protests.
‘But Aranya Dian Xia*, Shen Ye Daren specifically told me not to let you do it all by yourself. He insisted I help you and not allow you to refuse being cared for,’ Cha Cha protested.
Aranya’s lips curled in a wry smile as she handed the cloth over to a very-anxious Cha Cha. ‘Shen Ye said that?’
Cha Cha nodded. ‘He looked like he wanted to tend to you himself, but then his face closed up as usual and he left.’
His face closed up as usual.
A stoic huff slipped from Aranya’s lips and her smile deepened. While Cha Cha gently cleansed the wound on her forehead and applied a cream to speed the healing, Aranya let her thoughts wander.
Yes, this was how Shen Ye was.
Ever since he had returned from his studies, a grown man and ambitious mage, Shen Ye’s face had been closed to her. Not generous and caring, as he had been when he had found her in the python formation and taught her how to live as a person instead of a snake. When they had both been children, he had smiled at her so openly. His eyes had brimmed with youthful kindness and encouragement.
Aranya’s heart had melded itself to Shen Ye then. At first, she had simply doted on him as a savior. He had been first person to treat her with kindness since her own mother had cast her aside.
When Aranya was older, she recognized the blossoming of her gratitude into unconditional love. No matter how indifferently Shen Ye treated her, no matter how brusque or heartless his words, Aranya loved him.
And yet, in her lifetime, she had come to understand a few things.
The most important being that she didn’t think she was fated to see any of her heartfelt wishes fulfilled. Aranya loved Shen Ye so much that it hurt sometimes. She grasped at even the tiniest signs that he returned her affection. But Shen Ye gave her so few to cling to.
Which had helped Aranya accept that Xize Daren was actually a great husband – the best she could hope for in this life.
He didn’t love her and she didn’t love him.
Their marriage had been orchestrated by Aranya’s mother, to shove her aside once again since Aranya had managed to crawl out of the snake pit alive.
But Xize was kind and thoughtful. He showed his consideration of her in many more ways than Shen Ye ever did.
Today was a good example. Xize Daren must have gone to a great deal of trouble, and possibly endangered his own safety, to capture the Quanyin Beast. If it had been solely to protect the people of the Fanyin Valley, he would have killed it. That would have been the easiest. But he held it captive in a ward and showed it to her, knowing how much Aranya enjoyed hunting. He also didn’t shelter her as if she were too frail to hunt. Aranya felt his respect, his confidence, when he offered her a chance at shooting the Quanyin Beast. She could tell that Xize believed in her ability to hit it.
It wasn’t exactly a token of affection, for that wasn’t how they felt about each other. But Aranya considered it a truly thoughtful gift between friends.
Xize cared to make her happy.
Who else had ever treated her with such thoughtfulness?
After all that she had endured – a mother who hated her, sisters who schemed against her, and a man she loved who treated her so coldly – this wasn’t so bad.
Aranya hadn’t even wanted to kill the Quanyin beast.
She even felt a little kinship with it. Aren’t she and the Quanyin beast the same, after all?
People reviled it as a monster. They called it terrifying, vicious, and fierce.
Everyone reviled her, too. They called her dirty, even Shen Ye, who had once cared for her.
And like the Quanyin Beast, people kept trying to kill her.
Aranya and the Quanyin Beast were both tough and hated. Her smile grew hard and determined as she thought of her kindred spirit. They each survived fiercely because no one made life easy for them. If she had wanted to hunt this beast, it was so she could test herself against one who had lived as harshly as she had. An outcast, loathed and driven away from the community of others.
Aranya respected it. Fighting the Quanyin beast was her way of showing that.
If she couldn’t kill it, the beast would simply have even more of her respect for proving itself such a tough survivor. And if she could…
…then at least one of them would have escaped from this life of misery. The beast would have a special place in her heart, as the one who helped her prove that she was tougher than any adversary. No one could hurt her and her life was hers to live as she will.
Except that there was just one person who could hurt her.
Only Shen Ye. The one she had let into her heart, into what little softness was left inside her.
Aranya’s hopes had briefly stirred when Shen Ye had saved her from a vicious mauling and bloody death at the jaws of the Quanyin Beast. He had held her with such tenderness. Through the ringing in her ears and dazed throbbing in her head, Aranya had thought she heart him scolding Xize for endangering her.
‘And where were you when this was happening?’
It might have been her own, famished heart betwitching her with what it yearned to hear, but Aranya had believed she heard passion in Shen Ye’s voice. As if he had truly worried for her.
But, then, hadn’t Xize thought the same?
Aranya had come to know Xize Daren a little during the course of their paper marriage. He was a wise, insightful man and good judge of character. Aranya knew he had withdrawn from the affairs of the Biyiniao kingdom out of disdain for the corruption in the royal household. So, didn’t it mean something when Xize pointed out the obvious to Shen Ye?
‘Anyway, you came to lend her a hand, right?’
Aranya clearly heard Xize’s prod to Shen Ye. How could Shen Ye scold Xize without also looking at himself and his own actions? Hadn’t he just rushed in to rescue another man’s wife?
Didn’t that show that Aranya occupied even a small place in Shen Ye’s heart?
It was that flicker of hope, stirred briefly like dying embers, that had spurred Aranya to tease Shen Ye with such a bold declaration.
‘You have fallen in love with me, Shen Ye. You are falling in love with me, Shen Ye.’
All she had done was say more clearly what Xize had prodded Shen Ye to discover through self-examination. Xize Daren was, after all, Shen Ye’s shifu, and used to speaking subtly in order to force his apprentice to grasp a matter on his own. Sadly, Aranya realized, Shen Ye had closed himself off too firmly towards her.
‘Stay still,’ he had told her, pulling his hand away from hers.
Shen Ye was simply too committed to his position and too respectful towards his shifu for such an impropriety as chasing after Xize Daren’s wife. But Aranya had also noticed that he didn’t deny what she had said.
And it had flustered him so deeply when she had playfully chucked him beneath the chin that he couldn’t even look at her.
Shen Ye felt something for her, Aranya was sure of it.
But he didn’t dare to show it.
‘How does your head feel now, Dian Xia*?’ Cha Cha asked, interrupting Aranya’s thoughts.
‘Like I hit it with a rock,’ Aranya teased her.
Her maid’s eyes flickered with relief. Aranya knew that Cha Cha would understand her teasing as a sign that Aranya was feeling better. But as she refreshed the cloth in cool water and pressed it lightly to Aranya’s head, Cha Cha also scolded her, ‘Dian Xia, don’t joke about that. You were in such danger. Xize Daren worried enough that he prepared a salve to heal the wound and prevent scarring. He applied it while you slept.’
Aranya smiled. Of course Xize had done that.
‘Xize Daren is really thoughtful,’ she acknowledged.
Even though she didn’t love him, she felt grateful to her legal husband.
Fate was strange. Her defiant heart could not let go of Shen Ye, even though he insisted on being indifferent toward her. Deep in her spirit, it felt as if she had chosen him from the moment she had been born. And perhaps he felt something for her, too. Hadn’t he rushed to save her? But Shen Ye was so mysterious, so guarded, Aranya feared she would never know whether she was in his heart as well.
In this life, it seemed, Aranya simply had no love destiny. Or, if she had one, her love destiny was an unhappy one. She felt she was doomed to love Shen Ye all her life without receiving his affection in return.
Xize Daren’s kindness was likely the best she could hope for.
But deep in her heart, Aranya hoped even more strongly that in the next life, she and Shen Ye might have a chance.