Chapter 21
Chapter 21
Jiang Youze’s lips stopped less than half an inch above the hand covering her mouth.
Her candlelit face was reflected in his eyes. His throat moved slightly.
“You didn’t.”
He admitted it readily. His lips still hovered above the back of her hand, with no sign of withdrawing.
His hot breath spilled over her skin, bringing a faint tickle.
“Then why are you so close?”
Keeping her mouth covered, Si Yan drew back until she met the head of the bed. She could retreat no farther.
Under that dark, utterly undisguised gaze, her lashes trembled again and again.
Her heart was beating too fast. So fast she feared he might hear.
“I can’t help it.”
His voice was lower than usual, a little hoarse. His gaze moved from her hand to her eyes.
“Qingqing, I want to kiss you.”
So much. So very much.
He had wanted to for days. In the Imperial Garden earlier that day, he had almost failed to restrain himself.
He knew she had opened the window because she was waiting for him. Knew her feigned sleep was giving him a chance.
Knew that covering her mouth did not mean she truly wanted to deny him a kiss. She was still angry and needed him to ask.
Then he would ask.
Si Yan’s eyes reddened at once. She lowered her hand from her lips and seized his collar.
“Jiang Youze, what do you take me for? A cat you keep in the courtyard? Something to kiss when you please and throw away when you don’t?”
Pulled forward, Jiang Youze braced a hand on the bed behind her.
He reached toward the corner of her eye, but she turned her head away before his fingers touched her.
“What do I take you for?”
His hand hung in midair. His fingers curled slightly, then he slowly lowered it.
“I’ve asked myself that question every night for three years.”
Si Yan’s lashes trembled. Her grip on his collar tightened without her realizing.
“And however long I think, there’s only one answer.”
Jiang Youze covered the hand clutching his collar, his fingertips stroking her taut knuckles.
His gaze fixed directly on her face. All the feelings he had stored up could no longer be hidden.
“My heart.”
Si Yan froze.
It was not the first time those words had passed between them.
Lord Jiuqiansui, who held court and country in his power in her dream, had liked calling her his heart too.
He would press her onto a daybed piled with soft, gold-threaded bedding, bite her ear, and call her that again and again.
Only then, his voice had been tender but cruel, his fingers leaving one bruise after another on her body.
The more she cried, the more he called her that. The more she struggled, the less willing he was to stop, often reducing her to broken sobs.
But now, when Jiang Youze spoke those words, his voice trembled.
As though he had cut out his heart and offered it to her, afraid she would not want it, afraid she would scorn it.
Jiang Youze drew her hand from his collar and pressed it against his chest.
“I can give you everything I have to give.”
His voice came from his chest, low and resonant.
“My life, all of me, my heart. They have all been yours for a long time.”
His fingertips gently stroked the inside of her wrist, where her pulse raced.
“But there is one thing I cannot give you.”
Si Yan opened her mouth, but before she could speak, he lightly pressed a finger to her lips.
“Hear me out first.”
A faint rim of red edged his eyes, almost invisible in the candlelight.
“I’m afraid that if I don’t say it now, I’ll never be able to.”
He drew a deep breath. His throat worked several times before he forced out the words.
“I can never give you a child.”
Si Yan went rigid in his arms.
Jiang Youze briefly closed his eyes, trying to suppress the pain in his heart.
But he could not suppress it.
For three years, he had strained every nerve to climb.
From the castration quarters to the emperor’s presence, from the lowest little eunuch to a Eunuch Secretary in the Directorate of Ceremonial.
Through his own skill and ability, he could gain everything: power, status, the awe of others.
But he could not do this.
It was not that he had failed to try hard enough. Not that he had failed to want it enough.
From the moment he had been held down on that wooden board in the castration quarters three years ago, his body had lost that ability forever.
This was the one debt he could never make good.
“For all the years to come, I can keep you safe, cherish you, spoil you. Whatever you want, I’ll give you.”
Those eyes, always so cool and still, were now full of wary fear.
“But if you regret it, if one day you want a child…”
At last, his voice broke as it fell from above her head.
“I won’t even have the right to ask you to stay. If you tell me to go then, I can only go.”
“Because I owe you that. I always will. I can never make up for it in this lifetime.”
Si Yan’s fingers moved against his chest. She looked at him for a long time without speaking.
No answer came. Little by little, the light in Jiang Youze’s eyes dimmed.
It would matter to her after all.
What woman did not want to be a mother?
Who did not want a child of her own, to watch grow from its first babbled words into an adult?
He had once dreamed of it too.
Even before her coming-of-age hairpin ceremony, he had wondered whom their child would resemble.
Her, he hoped. Then its eyes would be large and bright, curving into two crescents when it smiled.
But now, he could never give her that.
All he had to offer was a damaged body and a worthless heart.
He was just drawing his hand away when, before his fingertips had quite left her, she caught it in return.
“What if I don’t mind?”
Jiang Youze’s breathing stopped for a moment. He looked down at the woman in his arms.
Candlelight danced in her eyes, making them bright and resolute.
His throat worked again and again. His lips moved several times before he spoke, his voice so dry it was barely audible.
“What… did you say?”
Si Yan slipped her fingers between his, lacing their hands together.
Her voice was more serious than ever as she gave him the answer she had carefully considered.
“What if all I care about is you, Jiang Youze?”
She lifted her head and brushed a kiss over his trembling lips, certainty in the smile at her mouth.
“Will you still push me away?”
Jiang Youze’s breathing fell into complete disarray.
All the things he had believed could never be accepted,
she took gently with a few words, a kiss, a smile, then casually set aside.
As though everything that had tormented him for three years, that had torn at him in every lonely night, was no difficulty at all in her eyes.
She did not care about any of it. She cared only about him.
He had not been abandoned. He had been chosen.
Jiang Youze buried his face in the hollow of her neck, his nose resting against her warm skin.
His voice was muffled there, trembling as restraint pushed to its limit finally broke.
“Qingqing.”
He held her so tightly that she could feel his whole body shaking.
Si Yan threaded her fingers through his loose hair and answered softly, “Mm.”
“Qingqing.”
“I’m here.”
“Qingqing…”
“Jiang Youze, how many times are you going to…” Before she finished, he caught the back of her head and kissed her.