Page 67 of The Nightblood Prince

My heart was pounding when I approached his tent. I bowed to the soldiers stationed outside, half expecting them to shoo me away for daring to venture this close to the prince’s quarters without invitation and during this time of crisis.

They didn’t.

“The prince has been waiting for you,” one said to me, and stepped aside.

The day was gloomy. Pale clouds covered the sun, leaving everything tinted in teary gray. The tent was dimmer than last time, the candles unlit.

He sat at the same table where we’d shared our meals, a teacup in hand. I smelled the wine on him.

“I was waiting for you to come to see me, of your free will.” He letout a soft sound, a cross between a laugh and an exhale. “You were taking so long, I feared we wouldn’t get to say goodbye before I left.”

“You were avoiding me because you wanted me to come to you?”

He shrugged. “I’m always the one chasing after you. For once in my life, I want you to chase me.”

I stared at him for a moment, unsure of what to say. “We are not kids anymore, Siwang. I have been worried sick. If you wanted to see me, you should have…” I sighed. This wasn’t worth it. Neither of us wanted to argue with the other. “You’re leaving?” I added after a moment of silence.

“Tomorrow.”

My heart sank. It was so soon. “If I hadn’t come, would you really have left without saying goodbye?”

“Just as you tried to leave me without saying goodbye?” Siwang snapped. Something he had never done with me, and as soon as the sharp words were out, he seemed to deflate. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you punishing me for what happened a year ago?” When he didn’t answer, I asked another question, perhaps the first question I should have asked: “Are you leaving for the palace, or the front lines?”

“Do I look like someone who cowers in the face of danger?”

“You are your father’s???,the flesh of his heart, the center of his world.He will want his heir and favorite son to be safe, not on a battlefield infested with monsters.”

“Are you talking about my father, or yourself? If you don’t want me to go to the front lines, then tell me, Fei. Don’t go around in circles and waste what little time we have left.”

My lips parted. However, no words came out.

He waved me closer. “Sit down.”

I did as he asked, knelt by the table as he flipped over another porcelain cup, poured a suggestion of wine, and offered it to me. There was something so captivating about the way Siwang’s long, elegant fingers held that tiny piece of porcelain. The way his head tilted back with each drink, delicate strands of inky hair framing his face like he was a painting.

Siwang wasn’t one to indulge in alcohol. He loved control too much to relinquish it for something as trivial as wine. I remembered the state dinners with envoys and high officials—his wine pitcher was always filled with water.

He drank alcohol only when the stately visitors pushed wine onto me and he would step in and drink for me.

Perhaps this was why he drank from teacups instead of the bronzejuemost men of nobility used. Or bowls, as many of the hunters I’d encountered on the road did.

There was something so ineffably Siwang about this moment; if this had happened at a winehouse in Yong’An, every man in the city would have grabbed the nearest teacup and started imitating in hope of re-creating his effortless grace.

He was so unfairly perfect. Right up to my departure from the palace, my etiquette teachers had slapped my hand for the way I sat and walked and ate, constantly comparing me with Siwang and all his charms.

The same went for the scholars, who had taught us poetry and history and novels and proverbs, which Siwang could recite in perfect rhythm after one read. Whereas it often took me two or three times to remember the words, and when I tried to recite it was never as lyrical.

Siwang was perfect. Everyone who’d helped raise us would agree. And I was just…well.

Why would a goddess reincarnate as a peasant girl from the middle of nowhere?The slander they used to say behind my back echoed, because they were right. If I really was a goddess reincarnated, then why was I so…ordinary? Why was I so unworthy of this impossibly perfect prince?

Compared with Siwang, I was never good enough.

I took the cup in my hands but didn’t sip from it. Rice wine gave me a headache, and I didn’t like the way it made me feel. A blurring numbness that made my hands and feet seem fragile and my heart heavy. The wine also had a way of interfering with my visions, either blocking them entirely or propelling them into an intense mirage of nightmares, impossible to outrun.

If Siwang noticed that I didn’t touch my drink, he didn’t comment. He kept tilting his cup back, then pouring himself more. His face was already red, but his eyes were still sharp as ever.

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