The Prince Want Me But I’m A Demon

The Second Stitch

The moon came up over the moon-door, and she stood in the middle of the chamber and did not know what to do with her hands.

She had known what to do with her hands for three hundred years. There had always been a next thing: a blade to clean, a route to memorize, a mark to study, a death to deliver. Now the next thing was a bed, and a man, and a night, and she had done this once, she had done it and it had unmade her in the best way, and she did not know how to begin it again, and she stood with her hands useless at her sides, and he watched her from the bed with his wolf-gold eyes half-lidded and patient, and he did not move to help her.

"You're thinking," he said.

"Yes."

"Stop that."

"I don't know how."

He laughed, the boy laugh, and it undid something in her chest the way it always did, and he said: "Come here, love, and I'll show you. It's the same as yesterday. You were good at it yesterday. I have witnesses."

"The Moon," she said severely, and he laughed harder, and she crossed the room and stood at the foot of the bed, and he looked up at her, and the laughter went out of his face by degrees, the way the sun went out of the sky, and what was left was the other face, the open one, the one he wore only for her.

"I want to see you," he said. "All of you. Is that allowed? Tell me if it's not allowed."

She considered it. The question was real; she had learned that about him, that every question he asked her was real, that he would stop at the first word, that he had stopped at a door night after night because she had not said yes. She was not used to being asked. She was not used to being allowed to answer.

"Yes," she said. "It's allowed."

He rose, and he undid the fastenings of her robe himself, slow, the way he did everything that mattered, and she stood in the lamplight and let him, and she watched his face as the cloth fell, and she saw him see her, all of her, the body that had been a tool for three hundred years and was only now beginning to be a body, the scarless pale skin, the ribs that had never known fat, the flat small breasts, the hands that had killed, and his face did not do the thing she had braced for. It did not flinch. It did not look away. It did the other thing, the thing she had no name for, the thing that made her want to cover herself and made her want to be seen forever, both at once.

"You're beautiful," he said, and she did not believe him, and he saw that she did not believe him, and he said: "No. Listen. I buried three beautiful women. I know beautiful. You're not that. You're better. You're real. I have been looking at masks for a year. You're the first real thing I've seen since I was a boy, and I will spend the rest of my life looking at you and I will die still hungry."

She did not know what to do with a sentence like that. She filed it, the way she filed everything, on the shelf that had no shelf, and then she stopped filing, because he was looking at her the way he had looked at the wine on the night of the rite, like a man at a feast he had been told would never come, and he said, very quietly: "May I?"

It was the same question he had asked at the Hawk Tower, at the door, at the mirror. It was the question he asked with his hand a finger's width from her skin, always asking, always stopping, always giving her the door.

"Yes," she said. "Xiao Jin. Yes."

His breath went out of him. His hand came to her face, and then her shoulder, and then her waist, and he drew her down onto the bed, and the lamp burned low, and the moon climbed the moon-door, and he was patient the way he had promised he would be patient, learning her the way she had learned the city from the window, district by district, street by street, until she knew herself by the map of his hands.

It was different from the first night. The first night had been a door opening. This was a house being walked through room by room. He found the places that made her breath catch and returned to them like a man reading a favorite page; he watched her face the whole time, all of it, her real face, the plain grave face no one had ever looked at with want, and she watched him watching, and it was that, more than anything, that undid her: not the pleasure, which was new and strange and good, but the being seen. She had been invisible for three hundred years. She had worn a dead girl's face like a hood. No one had ever seen her, the actual her, the number made woman, and he saw her, and he wanted what he saw, and he said her name, her real name, the one the Moon had written, against her throat, against her breast, against the hollow of her hip, until her name was not a name anymore but a place she lived.

"I want," she said, and stopped, because she had never said it, and the word was enormous, and he went still above her, and he said: "Say it. Whatever it is. Say it and it's yours."

"I want you to stay," she said. "That's all. I want you to stay, and I want tomorrow to come, and I want... I want to want things. I want to be allowed to want things. I want to be a person who wants and is not punished for it."

"You're allowed," he said. "Love. You're allowed. I'm going to spend this whole month and the next fifty years teaching you that. You're allowed to want. You're allowed to have. You're allowed to say no, and you're allowed to say yes, and both of them are yours, do you understand? Not mine. Yours."

She understood, or she began to understand, and she pulled him down to her, and the moon reached the center of the moon-door, and the silver thread turned once more around their wrists, and set, and she counted, two, and she did not need to look to know that he was counting with her, and she slept.

She woke alone, which she was learning was the shape of mornings, and the sun was up, and he was at the window with his back to her, and the thing was on the landing where it had been, and the city was below, and she lay in the warm sheets and listened to her own heartbeat and did not move, because she wanted to remember what it was like to wake without fear. It was the first time in three hundred years she had woken without a target, without an order, without a clock. There was no clock. There was only the sun, and the hunger, which was already stirring below her ribs like a creature she was learning to feed, and the man at the window, and the month, and the thing, and the road.

"You're awake," he said without turning. "I can hear you thinking. It's very loud. The city can hear you thinking."

"The city is very loud," she said. "It has been loud all night. I heard it in my sleep. I have never heard things in my sleep."

"What did it say?"

"It said... " She stopped, and listened to her memory, and it was strange, the memory of a sound heard sleeping, like a letter from a stranger. "It said doors. And water. And a bell. I don't know. It was not a dream. It was the world, coming in."

"Welcome to it," he said. "The world. It comes in whether you invite it or not. The trick is learning which doors to hold shut." He turned, and he was holding something, a length of cloth, deep blue-gray, the color of the dawn, and he said: "There's a chest of bride-clothes in the other room. Gifts. The court sent them before the rite, when they still thought they were dressing Shen Xi of the salt house for her wedding. They are yours now. This one is the least offensive. I have opinions about the rest. The pink one has been sentenced to death."

She looked at the cloth, and she understood, with a small strange lurch, that she had never chosen a garment in her life. Clothes had been issued, assigned, sewn onto her by maids who did not look at her face. The idea of choosing, of walking to a chest and taking the color she wanted because she wanted it, was enormous, and she said: "I don't know how."

"Then we learn," he said. "Together. I have opinions. You have none yet. Between us we have exactly one full set of taste, and I warn you, mine is excellent and frequently wrong."

She dressed, with his help and his commentary, and the robe was soft and heavy and the color of the sky before rain, and she stood in it and did not recognize herself, and he stood back and looked at her for a long time, and he said, in the voice he used for weather: "The salt house never had anything this good, and the Nine Abysses never dressed you at all. That color is yours. It was always going to be yours. The chest just didn't know it yet."

She did not know what to do with her face, so she did nothing with it, and he came and adjusted the collar of the robe, and his fingers were slow, and she watched his face, and the thing on the landing watched the door, and the morning went by like water.

In the afternoon he taught her the city.

He stood at the window with her and named the roofs, district by district, the way his hands had named her body the night before: the market ward with its smoke, the river gate where the barges came in, the temple of the Moon with its pale tiles where the Confessor kept his register, the barracks where the wolf guard slept, the great house with the blue tiles and the plum trees, and his voice did not change when he said it, and she knew anyway, she had been a blade for three hundred years and she knew a target when she heard one named.

"The Meng house," she said.

"Yes."

"They planted the pin. Gu Caiwei's pin. At the feast. To ruin your bride."

"They did," he said. "And the bride ruined them instead, and I have never been so proud of anyone in my life. You named the planter in front of the Emperor and you did it without looking at me once. I think about it constantly. It is one of my favorite memories and I have very few."

"The woman," she said. "Meng Shuying. She wanted you."

He was quiet a moment. "She wanted the marriage," he said. "The thing I am. The position. The power of being the one who finally held the storm. I don't think she ever wanted me. I don't think she knows the difference. It's not a crime. It's just not love, and I have had enough of things that look like love and are not."

She looked at the blue-tiled house, and she felt, with the new senses that would not stop coming online, a small cold thread of something that was almost pity, and she did not know what to do with it, so she put it away, and she said: "What will she do?"

"I don't know," he said. "Her father will do something. That house has been pushing her at the throne for ten years. They will not stop because the throne married a ghost. They will find another door." He looked at her sideways, and the corner of his mouth went up. "It's fine. I am very hard to marry against my will. I have a great deal of practice."

The Confessor came at dusk, and the tray was heavier, and there was news in the way he moved before there was news in his mouth.

"The court is quiet," he said, setting out the bowls. "The Emperor has not spoken since the rite. He sits in the Hall of Rain and looks at the wall. His ministers are afraid to ask him what he is looking at." He paused, and she heard the pause the way she heard everything now, too clearly, like a bell in an empty house. "And the West Road is quiet."

She went still. The prince went stiller. The Confessor did not look at her, and he did not look at him; he looked at the lamp, and he said: "A farmer came in at noon with his onions and his hands shaking. He said the dogs of three villages went silent last night, one after another, like a wave, coming this way. He could not describe the man who passed his cart. He said he was not sure there was a man. He said the dogs are still silent."

The chamber was quiet. The thing on the landing was quiet. The whole tower was quiet, and below it the city went to its evening, and somewhere a dog barked, and she heard it, and she counted it, and she knew, with the old knowledge that had never left her body even when the brands had, that it was one of the last barks she would hear for a while.

"He's closer than he should be," she said to the prince.

"You told me he would come," he said. "On the night of the rite, you told me what he is. You told me he collects what is theirs, and that he does not stop, and that he does not pardon. You did not tell me he was already on the road."

"I didn't know," she said. "I told you what I knew, and I did not know the road had him yet. He does not hurry, and he does not stop, and he is two days from this city, and I am afraid." The words came out before she could weigh them, and she felt them land, and she did not take them back. "I am afraid of what he will do to reach me. He will not come with iron. He will come with paper. It is how they collect, down there. Paper and patience, and the world helps them, because the world believes paper."

He looked at her for a long moment, and then he said: "Then we have a month. It's enough. I have unlearned a year of not-loving in a single night. You're a fast learner. I have witnesses."

The Confessor gathered the empty bowls, and at the door he paused, and he said, without turning: "The dogs will reach the city in two days, at his pace. When they do, the city will not know what it is hearing. You will." He went down the stair, past the thing, and his steps faded.

She stood at the window a long time after the lamps were lit, watching the West Road, and the West Road was very dark, and very still, and very empty, and she knew, the way she knew her own pulse now, the new pulse, the one that beat for her and no one else, that it would not be empty for long.

Behind her, the silver thread lay quiet around her wrist, two stitches of thirty, and the moon climbed the moon-door, and the thing on the landing watched the door of the chamber, and she turned her back on it, and she went to her husband, because the only answer she had for the dark was the light, and she was learning, slowly, terribly, joyfully, to live in it.