A Taste of Rose and Lychee Sushan - Chapter 3

Something felt wrong.

But I had no time to dwell on it.

In the carriage, the aphrodisiac wine the keeper had secretly given Chongdie suddenly took effect.

He bit his lip, refusing to make a sound. By the time I noticed, he was drenched in cold sweat on that late-autumn night, his ears red enough to bleed.

He looked at me, his lashes trembling, tears glistening in his eyes, his head pressed against the carriage wall.

In that instant, I seized the hand clenched at his side with something close to panic.

I opened it and checked it for wounds, over and over, then locked it tightly in my own, our fingers intertwined.

I forgot all propriety. Holding him in my arms, I offered him my neck.

“Don’t hit your head against the wall. Don’t bite your tongue. If it becomes unbearable, bite me.”

“There’s a physician at the residence.”

“Don’t be afraid.”

Yet I knew perfectly well that I was afraid too.

So afraid that even the hand gripping his was shaking.

When I found him in my last life, he had already endured more than a year of torment. He was like a jade vase webbed with cracks.

Unhealed lash marks and bites, bruises left by chains, broken bones and torn sinews—his visible wounds alone were too many to count.

The household physician shook his head. Harder to heal than his body, he said, was the mind those beasts had destroyed.

I did not understand then.

I only thought of caring for him better: the finest cooks, the finest doctors, a clean name for his family.

Then I would have those bastards subjected to the harshest punishments.

Sooner or later, he would recover.

Until the night the craving seized him.

That very day, he had stood before the court and testified to every injustice his family had suffered.

He had seemed as pure and graceful as the breeze and the moon, almost his old self.

Yet that night, he smashed his head against a wall.

When I broke down the door, he lay curled on the floor, clutching himself desperately.

Blood covered his pale face and his clothes.

He was no longer aware of himself. He shook all over, his skin unnaturally flushed.

“Chong Jingheng. Kill me.”

He gripped my robe, his shoulders heaving beyond his control.

“Please.”

A few breaths later, as if his soul had left him, he knelt before me and leaned forward to kiss me.

In an instant, his shifting gaze filled with practiced allure.

“My love.”

“Give it to me. Please, hurry.”

But I knew he could not tell who I was.

Perhaps, in that existence worse than death, this was the last way he knew to protect himself.

I did not evade the kiss.

But he came back to himself first.

His breath stopped a hair’s breadth away.

“I’m sorry.”

He closed his eyes. His sigh scattered into the wind.

“So filthy.”

“If only I had met you sooner.”

As though I had foreseen what was coming, I reached for his jaw in alarm, trying to pry it open.

I was still too late.

Blood soaked his lips as he choked and coughed.

It stained my vision red as well.

The physician said that if he had not already been too weak when he tried to destroy himself, not even an immortal could have saved him.

He truly did not want to live anymore.

The memories of two lifetimes twisted together.

“Chong Jingheng.”

The man before me suddenly raised his hand. Cool fingertips touched my brow.

The nightmare of blood shattered, revealing eyes filled with concern.

“Look at me.”

His fingers brushed the damp corners of my eyes.

“I’m right here.”

My wildly beating heart suddenly found a place to rest.