Chapter 114: Only one bed

The small timber house they gave us sat right on the river’s edge, its thatched roof smelling faintly of dried summer grass and old river silt.

It was a quiet place—almost suffocatingly so after the ringing iron and screaming stone of the phoenix hall. The freed prisoners had been taken to the larger longhouses up the slope to be tended by the village healers. Jiang Wei had vanished into a corner of the main square hours ago, hunched over his compendium by the light of a single tallow lantern, muttering about formation nodes and refusing even a cup of water. Lu Chen had been assigned the small room right next door to ours. I had watched him walk inside and drop the latch into place without giving any of us a backward glance.

I sat on the rough-hewn edge of the porch, letting the cool, damp grass prickle against the soles of my bare feet. Somewhere down the bank, a child’s laughter rang out, followed by a woman’s call-and-response shout, and then the brief, lazy barking of a dog before the twilight swallowed it.

It was the kind of peace that made your ribs ache if you weren’t used to it. I hadn’t felt anything like it since the capital.

’The capital, Suzy...’

Soft footsteps came up behind me, and Qing Yan sat down beside me without a word.

The Divine Vermilion Phoenix Robes had shed every trace of soot and travel on their own, the way they always did, and the gold feather filigree caught the last of the sunset. Her long gold earrings swayed as she settled onto the boards. Her hair hung loose over her shoulders, and without the flicker of fire in her palms, she looked softer. Younger. The fierce fighter who had burned through a demon camp that morning had set her pride down for a moment, and the girl who had once practiced stance work under a stern old master had taken her place.

"You’re thinking about home, right? " she said.

I glanced at her. "How could you tell?"

"You get quiet." She pulled her knees up, and the long slit of her skirt fell carefully over her leg. "You stop making jokes. It is very unsettling."

"I’m just tired."

"You do not get tired." She leaned her head against my shoulder. "You told me once that your people are far away. That you cannot go back yet."

"Did I?"

"In the cave. After the poison." She flushed and looked down at her hands. "I remember some of it."

I put my arm around her. She fit against my side as if she had always been there, warm and light.

"I do have people," I said. "Some time I miss badly ."

" You can talk to me about them?." She was quiet for a moment.

"Not now "

"Then i will wait "

"It might be a long wait."

"I waited three years in chains," she said. "I am very good at it."

I laughed, and she smiled against my shoulder, and for a while neither of us said anything. The sun sank lower. The first stars came out over the valley, thin and cold and bright.

"Barry," she said at last.

"Mm?"

"In the cave, with the orb. When your eyes changed." Her voice was careful. "You said it was only the light."

"Yeah"

"It was not."

I didn’t answer. "I am not angry," she said quickly. "I only want you to know that I saw. Whatever it is, whatever it turns out to be, I am not afraid of it."

She lifted her head and looked at me. "I am afraid for you. That is different."

My throat tightened. For a long moment, I couldn’t find a single joke.

"I know," I said finally. "I’m a little afraid, too. But I don’t know what I’m afraid of yet."

"Don’t worry barry we will find out together."

"Yeah, we will" I agreed.

She put her head back on my shoulder, and I rested my cheek against her hair. Out over the river, a pair of birds crossed the darkening sky.

I didn’t notice the figure at the edge of the garden until much later.

He was standing in the shadow of a fence post, half hidden by a hanging vine, and he was very still. When I finally caught sight of him, he turned and slipped away without a sound, and I couldn’t tell who it was. A villager out for a walk, a guard making his rounds.

It could have been Lu Chen. I frowned, and Qing Yan stirred. "What is it?"

"Nothing," I said. "I thought I saw something."

"Do you want me to check?"

I looked at the empty fence post, the darkening garden, the quiet river beyond. The night was calm. Nothing moved.

"No," I said. "It’s fine. Come on, Fire Empress. You should sleep."

"Do not call me that." She said.

Then we keep talking and laughing, and we went inside. I closed the door behind us.

Then I turned around and noticed the problem.

The house had one room. One low table, one oil lamp, one window facing the river, and one bed. It was a wide wooden frame with a straw mattress and a single patched quilt, built for a farming couple who had clearly never expected to host a Meridian master and a Genesis Peak expert in the middle of a war.

Qing Yan stopped in the middle of the small room, her back rigid.

"There is..." Her voice caught, a fraction too high. She cleared her throat, trying to anchor it. "There is only one bed."

"So there is," I said, leaning my shoulder against the doorframe with a slow grin.

"Barry." She spun around, her face instantly matching the fiery crimson of her robes. The gold feather filigree on her chest caught the flicker of the single oil lamp, shifting with her sharp breath.

"You knew. You looked right at it when we walked in, and you didn’t say a damn word."

"I was being a gentleman. I wanted you to have the thrill of discovery."

" You are not a gentleman then!"