Page 48 of Dynasty of the Wicked

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Regardless of how you meant it, I’m not dropping the issue. Feng Mian, you’re injured badly. You took an arrow to your shoulder and you’re not showing me, or allowing me to help you. Is it because you’re scared of me seeing you when you’re weakened?”

He closed his eyes and flexed his hands. Black veins protruded from his pale skin; it was even more haunting in the firelight. “No, that’s not why.”

“Thenwhy?” Zhi Ruo felt like she was losing her mind with him; she didn’t understand why he didn’t want her to help him. She walked over to the hearth and dropped down to her knees beside him. She reached for his hand, but he snatched it away before she could even touch him.

“I’ll deal with it myself.”

“Feng Mian?—”

“It’s ugly to look at,” he finally snarled, his hands balled together tightly. His unseeing silver eyes flashed with a mixture between anger and shame. His lips curled back into a scowl, andhe turned away from her, his voice dropping low. “Why would I want you to see my mottled, cursed flesh? I have been told it’s disgusting. The curse has ruined my body, Princess. I would rather deal with my wounds myself than have you see me in that light.”

The flames continued to flicker and sputter, casting an orange glow on them both. Zhi Ruo opened her mouth to say something, to tell him that she would never find him ugly, or that he shouldn’t feel that way with her, but she found she couldn’t. So instead she placed her blood-spotted hand on top of his.

“Let me see,” she murmured.

He didn’t push her away, not even when she shuffled close to him and began pulling off the cloak he had taken from one of the corpses. It puddled onto the floor, and then she grasped the lapel of his tunic and slowly began peeling it away from his body. The material was stiffened with blood in some sections, and wet in others. Feng Mian grimaced, his teeth grinding together tightly as the material fell down to his waist.

Zhi Ruo bit the inside of her cheeks to keep from making any sound—particularly, any gasps or shuddered breaths that might give away her horror. Black, thick lines jutted out from his skin, some smaller and spidery and less pronounced, and others swollen with dark magic. His skin was partially pale and snow-like, while other sections were bruised black and purple—both from injuries and the curse. He was a patchwork of shadowy lines, splintering and cracking in different directions around his body. They spread down to his hands, and down his waist, where they disappeared beneath his clothes.

The flesh around the arrow wound was mangled, with congealed blood crusted over the opening, and fresh blood oozed out with every movement.

“This needs stitches,” she said quietly.

He didn’t answer, just sat there, head hung low. Zhi Ruo hesitated, and then began her work. She took one of the kitchen pots, filled it with snow from outside, let it sit by the fire, and then searched the cabin for a thread and needle. It didn’t take her long to cut down strips of cloth from the small clothes she had found in the trunk, dunk them in warm water, and clean the wound. Feng Mian remained tense the entire time, even after she stitched the wound and bound it with strips of clean fabric.

“You should clean your whole body now that I’m done.” She placed the rag on his shoulder, her gaze skating over to the hard planes of his chest, his lean abdomen, and then to his muscular arms—the shadowy curse did nothing to hide his beautiful physique, and she found herself blushing. “It … um, I’ve read that infection spreads faster when you’re dirty.”

“You should also bathe,” he said, taking the wet rag off his body and pressing it over his arm.

More heat spread to her cheeks. “But … that is … improper.”

Her voice was barely a squeak. Back home, it was unimaginable for anyone to see her naked, or be anywhere near her whilst she changed or bathed. She shouldn’t have been too aghast—they had been imprisoned together with virtually no privacy—but this feltdifferent, somehow.

Feng Mian tilted his head to the side. “It’s not like I can see anything.”

“That’s true …” But just knowing that she would be naked while a few feet away from him sent a ripple of warmth over her otherwise chilled body. “But?—”

He dipped his hands into the warm water and ran it over his face and hair. Water clung to his lashes and eyebrows, dripping down the sides of his face. He only lifted an eyebrow. “This will probably be our only night of being able to clean ourselves before we have to flee again. Might as well use it.”

Zhi Ruo tentatively touched the front of her dress. “Well, I’ll turn around to offer you some privacy.”

“Suit yourself.”

She grabbed one of the fabric trips and dipped it in the water carefully, setting it down on the rim of the pot before she carefully undid the front of her dress. Her hands trembled, and she tried to keep from staring at him. In the corner of her vision, she could see him scrubbing off the dried blood from his stomach.

He wasn’t even able to see her, she reasoned with herself as she quickly let the dress drop to her ankles. She shivered, one arm wrapping around her heavy breasts and the other snatching the sopping rag from the pot. She inched closer to the fire and swiped the rough material over her grimy skin.

At first, she tried to wash herself quickly, not wanting to be naked for too long in front of him, but then she slowed her pace and worked on cleaning every aspect of her body. From the roughened patches of skin on her knees, the dirt between her toes, the sweat that had collected beneath her bosom, to the crusted blood in her hair. She was so focused on the methodical task that when Feng Mian spoke, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

“The fire is running low.”

“Huh?” She had just finished dunking her whole head in the pot and water dripped down onto the floor, sopping against her shoulders. She glanced sharply at the fire; it was now flickering softly, the sparse firewood more than halfway gone. “We might need more wood.”

It was then that she noticed that he was impeccably clean, his hair wet and his body free from all the blood and grime that had accumulated over the past few weeks. He only had a blanket wrapped around his waist; his dirtied clothes were neatly folded beside him.

“We’ve burned maybe half of the wood,” she told him, averting her gaze to stare at the flames. They had been in a hurry to collect wood, so she wasn’t surprised that they had miscalculated how much they would need to keep the cabin warm.

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