Yourong - Chapter 3

Gu Fengchun did stop, though it wasn’t for my sake. The sight of that window had clearly left its mark on him. I watched him glance toward the freshly repaired paper, look back at me again and again, and finally put his clothes on with evident regret.

While we were struggling, I caught a faint, familiar scent on him. I chose my words carefully. “Gu Fengchun, perhaps you should give up hunting this particular demon.”

He stared at me. His ears went scarlet, and his words stumbled over one another. “Why do you care? Are you worried about my wound? Afraid something might happen to me on this mission, and then you’d never see me again? I’m telling you, I’m not happy about that. I was born thin-skinned. That’s why I’m blushing.”

I studied him for a long moment, then told a lie that was half true. It might persuade him to go home and keep himself safe, and it might let me leave.

“Unless I’m mistaken, the powerful demon behind the one you’re hunting is my husband. Chu Ci’an, the third prince of the demon race. I caught the scent of the spirit-butterfly powder he always wears on you. You’d better leave him alone. He’s no soft lump of cotton like me; he’s an iron wall. Besides, this is demon territory… Oh, and you’ve seen those three children. They’re his and mine.”

The color drained from Gu Fengchun’s face. He sat upright and pushed me against the headboard, gripping my shoulders hard. A mist rose over his gray eyes.

“Your husband? Hu Yourong, do you really not want me anymore?”

He looked ready to break. My heart was thumping. A sweet-faced young priest like Gu Fengchun was devastating when he cried. My resolve softened. I puffed out my chest and pulled him against my shoulder. He was rather big, which made my attempt to look imposing rather difficult.

“Ow. Are you a dog, Gu Fengchun? Why are you biting me?”

He rested against my neck, utterly aggrieved. “What have you been doing all these years?”

Feeling guilty, I met his eyes, only to hear something that stunned me.

“Hu Yourong, I won’t be your lesser husband.”

I had thought Gu Fengchun was a very traditional Daoist priest. I hadn’t realized how restless his heart was, or how much he was willing to put up with. To be honest, the last time I’d been this surprised was the last time something surprised me. That wasn’t long ago—about six months, perhaps.

I am the only daughter of the fox clan chief. I loved medicine, not demon arts, and had gone to cultivate beside Golden Pool, near the forbidden lands, to improve my skills. I swear it wasn’t because I was shy around people and wanted an excuse to laze about somewhere secluded.

Decades after running away pregnant, I somehow acquired a childhood betrothal. My mother, dead for hundreds of years, suddenly became an old confidante of the demon queen, and I turned out to be the fiancée promised before birth to her son, Prince Chu Ci’an.

As an unmarried mother, terrified that my three cubs’ mixed blood would be discovered, I brought it up plainly.

“I have children out of wedlock. I’m not a respectable woman.”

“Bold enough to love as she pleases before marriage? I’ll marry her,” Chu Ci’an said.

“I have three little burdens trailing after me.”

“Three times the joy of being a father, without the pain of childbirth. I love it.”

“I’m afraid of marriage. I can’t do it.”

“What a coincidence. So am I. We can marry and spend the rest of our lives discussing how to overcome it.”

I fought him off with everything I had. In public, I picked my nose, played in the mud, scratched my feet like a clown, and even shaved bald patches into my tail. Chu Ci’an was unmoved. He insisted on marrying me because someone so refreshingly different was rare.

Faced with the choice of giving in or accepting my fate, I chose to run. Eight gates, thirty-six squads of guards, countless demons watching—and I escaped with all three cubs. I couldn’t marry him. I really couldn’t. If the truth came out, I’d be roasted alive.

So, in a manner of speaking, I did have a husband. We hadn’t completed the wedding rites, but that didn’t make my words to Gu Fengchun an outright lie.

The only question was how Gu Fengchun had so readily gone from a cuckold to demanding the rightful husband’s place. If he weren’t human, I might actually want to marry him. Chu Ci’an, on the other hand, wasn’t human, but his relentless flirting was more than I could handle. I was exceptional, of course, but his determination to marry me suggested he was up to something.

While my thoughts wandered, Gu Fengchun pinched my cheek with distinct malice. “Ow, ow!”

“Did you know that whenever you’re thinking up a lie, your tail slips out?” He leaned over me and reached behind my back with a long arm.

I hastily tried to stop him, wondering how a fox spirit of several hundred years could make the kind of foolish mistake only a little cub would make. Then I met his knowing gaze.

Oh no. He’d learned to trick me.

Gu Fengchun brightened all by himself. I was exhausted. I felt hollowed out.

My eldest, rested after a hearty meal, appeared at the familiar window again. “Mother, I have bad news and worse news. Which would you like first?”

“The bad news.”

“Little Sister isn’t feeling well. She’s lying on the floor all stiff. I think she’s dead. Second Brother rushed out to find you, ran straight into a wall with a thud, and hasn’t been warm for a while.”