Page 99 of Empire's Curse

“Really?”

“Mhm.” She couldn’t reveal to him that she was terrified out of her mind. She hadn’t allowed herself to think too much about the wedding night, forcing herself to gloss over the details and focus on other things—like on Wang Yanlin, the actual wedding itself, and what it meant to be married to the emperor—but now that she was walking to their wedding night room, she wished she had prepared herself mentally.

She knew what was supposed to happen: he was supposed to deflower her. But all the details surrounding it were hazy for her. She had heard her married friends from the village giggle about what happened between a man and a woman, and she knew the anatomy behind it, but that was as far as her modest mind had wanted to know. She never ventured to find outmore.

But now she wished she had more knowledge. More to prepare herself with. More to make her … not make a fool of herself.

After going up a few flights of stairs, they stopped at one of the doors in the hallway. Daiyu barely remembered the way there. She hadn’t noticed the twists and turns they took or the servants who bowed at them from the corridors. It was only when Muyang tugged her hand that she realized they were at their destination.

“Daiyu? Are you sure you’re well?”

“I’m fine,” she whispered, touching the ornate, gilded dragon doors.

When she walked through the threshold of the room, her stomach twisted into a tighter ball of nerves. Jade-painted pillars with gold embossed designs along the columns were erected on the sides of the room, the hexagonal caisson ceilings had dragon carvings engraved in the center, and the gold-stamped gray-tiled floors gleamed beneath the orange glow from the hearth. It was all too luxurious to take in, but the most intimidating feature of all was the giant framed bed sitting in the center of it all.

Muyang pressed a gentle hand on the small of her back. Heleaned forward, his breath warming her ear. “Is the room not to your liking? I can have us moved to my bedchambers if you’d like.”

“N-No, the room is fine,” she squeaked, pulling away from him and entering the room with hurried steps. Her head felt heavy with the gold headdress, which seemed to pull her hair back too tightly against her scalp. Her steps were light, even as her belly seemed to be filled with a thousand butterflies. “It’s as fancy and luxurious as I would expect from the royal palace. I have no complaints.”

She didn’t even know what she was saying, the words tumbling out of her in quick succession. Daiyu brushed a hand over the ruby-colored silk sheets and covers, her fingers trembling all the while. She laced them together and sat stiffly on the edge of the mattress, her smile feeling as strained and painted on as the rest of her makeup.

Muyang shut the door behind himself with a final click and glanced around the room as if he were seeing it for the first time as well. His fingers danced over the mahogany dresser, his leather boots clicking against the polished tiles menacingly. His dark gaze swept over to her and she nearly jumped where she sat—there was such a deep, deep darkness hidden within the black depths that made her feel all the more nervous.

“You’re finally mine,” he murmured, crossing his muscular arms over his chest and leaning back against the dresser. “I knew the moment I saw you that I must have you, and here you are,mine. Finally.”

Daiyu bound her hands together tightly to keep the trembles at bay. “Your Majesty, I thought I was always yours?”

“Muyang. How many times must I tell you to call me by my name?”

“Forgive me,” she murmured, unable to meet his eyes. “I’m unaccustomed to any of this.”

“You had a fiancé at some point, did you not?”

“I did, but …” Heng was different than Muyang in every way. She wasn’t nervous around Heng, she didn’t feel like she had to tiptoe around him, and they never interacted with each other flirtatiously or intimately. The way she felt about Muyang was otherworldly; he was a completely different beast. Every gaze, every touch, every breath she took in his presence made her feel like it would be her last and left her aching for more. “But it’s not the same.”

She could feel him staring at her, but she didn’t lift her head, not even when he crossed the distance between them. It was only when he stopped in front of her that she finally peered up at him.

“You will always be mine, Daiyu.” He kneeled down until they were at eye level. Grasping her chin in his rough hand, he examined her keenly. Searching for something. “You are too beautiful, too free, toomuchto belong to such a villainous monster as me, but I promise to love and treasure you for as long as I breathe.”

She released a ragged breath. “You’re not a monster.”

“You can only say that because you haven’t seen what I’ve done.” Muyang cupped her cheek with one hand. “What I’m capable of.”

“I didn’t marry a monster.” Daiyu stared at him—reallystared at him. At his dark eyes, framed by even darker lashes. At the angular planes of his face and jaw. At the smooth paleness of his impeccable skin. At his impossibly perfect features. And once more, like she had thought the first time she had met him, he was too beautiful for the wickedness he possessed. “You may be a villain to many people, Muyang, but to me, you’re … not that. Not anymore.”

“What changed?”

“Nothing and everything.”

They both stared at each other. Daiyu’s heart throbbed in a way she had never experienced and every nerve in her body seemed to jolt with electricity. He leaned closer to her, his eyes flicking down to her lips. She didn’t know what to do with her hands, or what to feel when his soft mouth brushed against herlips. Her whole body stiffened, her eyes squeezing shut as his lips moved against her frozen ones. He tasted sweet, like a summer’s night, but with a touch of coldness that made her gasp.

She wanted to breathe in more of him, more of his jasmine scent and honeyed taste, but she was as rigid as stone, sitting on the bed and bracing her hands on the edge of the mattress like a lifeline. Muyang grasped her face in one hand, tilted her head slightly as he deepened the kiss, and placed another hand on her hip. Warmth pooled in her belly, her skin tinged with heat everywhere he touched her, and yet she couldn’t move.

Finally, after a few seconds, she broke off the kiss by turning her face away. She was a patchwork of warmth and blushing skin, her head feeling heavy and heady, and her heart hammering like never before. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but lock up.

“Daiyu?” Muyang’s voice was low and dangerous, but his expression was anything but that. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not ready for this,” she blurted out without thinking. She clamped her mouth shut, feeling as though the floor was opening up beneath her feet and would swallow her whole. “I don’t know what to do and I can’t—I can’t?—”

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