Pain lanced through him hard enough that it cut off his breath. It was the only choice she could make. The earl was too powerful for either of them to disobey. She had made the bargain she thought would save him.
After all, they’d both known from the beginning that she was headed for the emperor’s bed.
And yet…
And yet…
He looked at her and said the words he knew the earl wanted. They sliced his throat even as he spoke them because they were more true than he wanted to believe.
“I wish we had never met,” he said. “I wish I had turned you away.” He looked to the earl. “I will never risk like that again. Now that I know the price of failure.” Did the man understand what he was saying? Did he know that the pain of giving up Ling Xin would haunt him for the rest of his life?
He couldn’t tell, but she seemed to understand. He could see the pain in her eyes as clearly as agony cut through his heart.
He would never risk loving again. Because losing her ended all color in his world.
Chapter Nineteen
Ling Xin thoughtshe knew pain. Training for her dancing had been painful throughout her childhood. The beatings she’d received from her nanny when she’d been willful had been painful. But this pain was of the heart and mind. This pain was of love lost.
I wish we had never met.
He loved her. She’d seen that in his eyes and in his pain.
I wish I had turned you away.
She loved him with a fierceness that burned hotter every day.
I will never risk like that again. Now that I know the price of failure.
There was nothing more to be done. Even if she had a plan, even if she could think of a way out of this agony, he would not do it again. He would not exercise in the garden, even if her father had not set a guard to watch her. He would not find a way to kiss her again, even if he was in their house for more hours now than ever before.
And he would not even look at her though she and her mother were tasked with teaching Manchu to him and Li Fei. That was the most ridiculous thing of all. Le Fei did not speak Manchu, so Ling Xin was forced to be his teacher. She had to see him every day, had to hear his voice. And she had to sit and hear her father’s grudging praise when he understood whatever task her father set him.
The days ticked by.
Every one of them, she was forced to see him, hear him, even speak to him in Manchu. All while her heart broke over and over again.
And then it was over. She saw him for the last time, whispered, “I love you,” as he left, and then watched the door close behind him. In the morning, she would enter the Forbidden City, never to emerge again.
Misery.
In the darkness of the garden, she turned her back on her packed trunk and began to think desperate, terrible things. Wild schemes, each more fanciful than the last. Crazy wishes that could never come true.
It was late and she was a fool because she was there, hoping to hear the sounds of Zhi Hao’s exercise. She wanted, one last time, to hear his breath, to pretend she felt the wind from his blows, and to remember how he’d faced down her father and said that he loved her.
“Do you think me a fool?” Li Fei asked as she sat down beside her cousin.
Ling Xin jolted. “What? No! Of course not.”
“Then why do you think I would be content to marry a man who loves someone else?”
Ling Xin looked away, her heart squeezing tight at the thought of Zhi Hao with her cousin. “He is a good man. He will treat you well.”
“I do not want ‘well.’ I want the emperor.” Li Fei stretched out her hands. “Everyone thinks that because I am small, I am not fierce. I am, you know. I am strong enough to be empress.”
Ling Xin looked at her cousin. “I understand now how you changed. Your lover was killed. Mine is gone from me forever.” She looked to the garden wall that separated her from Zhi Hao. “Perhaps I, too, will grow hard.”
Li Fei snorted. “I am not hard. I know what I want. Do you?”