The trees opened into a clearing that shouldn't exist.
Lianyin stopped so abruptly that Mochi walked into her legs with an indignant mrow. Before them stretched a perfect circle of dead grass, and in its center sat a cage made of light. Not metal or wood, pure, crystallized light that hummed with power and made her shadow-touched soul recoil.
Inside the cage knelt a young man.
He couldn't have been much older than her, maybe nineteen or twenty, though it was hard to tell with cultivators. Black hair fell loose around a face that would have been handsome if not for the hollowness in his cheeks, the dark circles under closed eyes. His robes might have once been fine silk, deep blue embroidered with silver, but now they hung in tatters. Iron chains wrapped his wrists, each link inscribed with binding runes that glowed faintly in the darkness.
Well, well. The Demon King sounded delighted. The Seventh Prince of Tianyu. They actually did it.
"Did what?" Lianyin whispered, unable to look away. There was something wrong about this scene, something that made her chest tight with an emotion she couldn't name.
Caged him like a beast. Though I suppose that's what happens when you refuse to kill your own mother, even if she did turn out to be a demon spy.
The prince's eyes snapped open.
They were grey like winter storms, and they fixed on Lianyin with an intensity that made her want to run again. His lips moved, but no sound came out. The light cage flickered, and she realized it was eating his voice, his strength, probably his cultivation too.
"We should go," she said, but her feet didn't move. Mochi had already padded forward, sniffing at the cage's edge with curious chirps.
The prince's gaze shifted to her throat—to where the jade pendant used to rest. His eyes widened slightly. Then, impossibly, he smiled. It was a broken thing, that smile. Like he'd just recognized an old friend at his own funeral.
He can sense me, the Demon King mused. Interesting. The Tianyu bloodline always was sensitive to demonic energy. It's what made his mother such an effective spy.
"Stop." Lianyin pressed her palms against her temples. "Just stop talking for one minute so I can think."
You want to free him.
"I don't—"
You do. I can feel it, little lotus. That pull in your chest, like a thread connecting you to him. The Demon King's voice dropped to a purr. How delicious. The universe does have a sense of humor.
She did feel it. A tugging sensation, as if an invisible line ran from her heart to his. When he breathed, she felt an echo in her own chest. When he shifted slightly, trying to ease the strain on his chained wrists, her own wrists ached in sympathy.
"What is this?" She took an involuntary step forward.
Fate. Destiny. Or possibly just very bad luck. The Demon King laughed, and the sound made shadows dance at the edge of the clearing. That's a soul-bond forming, my dear vessel. Quite rare. Usually only happens between...
A horn sounded in the distance. Then another. And another.
The Celestial Dawn Sect had found their trail.
The prince's eyes flickered with urgency. He mouthed a single word: "Run."
But Lianyin was already moving, not away but toward the cage. Her shadows surged up without conscious thought, wrapping around the bars of light. Pain lanced through her as holy energy met demonic power, but she gritted her teeth and pulled harder.
"What are you doing?" She wasn't sure if she was asking herself or the Demon King. "This is insane, I don't even know him.."
You know enough. He's caged. You're hunted. Both marked as monsters by the righteous sects. The Demon King fed more power into her shadows. Besides, you'll need allies for what's coming.
"What's coming?"
The end of their world. The beginning of ours.
The light cage cracked. Just a hairline fracture, but the prince's eyes went wide with shock. He shook his head frantically, mouthing "no" over and over.
Too late. Lianyin's shadows found the weakness and poured through like water through a broken dam. The cage shattered in a burst of light and darkness that sent her flying backward. She hit the ground hard, ears ringing, vision swimming with spots of color.
When the world steadied, the prince was free.
He stood slowly, as if remembering how to use his legs. The chains on his wrists remained, but without the cage draining him, color was already returning to his face. Power radiated from him, not demonic, but not entirely human either. Something in between.
"You," his voice was hoarse from disuse, "have no idea what you just did."
"Saved your ungrateful ass?" Lianyin struggled to sit up, wincing as various injuries made themselves known.
He laughed. It was a sound like breaking glass. "Saved? You just bound us together, you beautiful fool. Your soul to mine, your fate to mine, your death to—" He stopped, studying her more closely. "You're the vessel. The one they're hunting."
"And you're the prince who wouldn't kill his mother." She met his gaze steadily. "Guess we're both disappointments."
Something shifted in his expression. The broken smile returned, but this time it held a edge of genuine warmth. "Xie Yunhao." He offered a slight bow, chains clanking. "Seventh Prince of Tianyu, exile, and apparently now soul-bonded to the Demon King's vessel."
"Mo Lianyin." She didn't bow. Couldn't, with the way her legs were shaking. "Orphan, fugitive, and very confused about this whole soul-bond thing."
Mochi chose that moment to rub against Yunhao's legs, purring like a tiny thunderstorm. The prince blinked down at the panther cub.
"Is that...?"
Tell him Mochi says hello, the Demon King suggested. They're old friends.
Before Lianyin could relay the message or demand an explanation, the horn sounded again. Much closer. Through the trees, she could see the first flickers of white robes and drawn swords.
Yunhao's expression hardened. He held out one chained hand to her. "Can you run?"
She looked at her shredded feet, at the blood seeping through her torn robes, at the approaching death dressed in righteous white. Then she looked at his outstretched hand and the thread of fate pulling her toward him.
"I can try."
His fingers closed around hers, warm and solid and real. The soul-bond flared to life properly, and suddenly she could feel his exhaustion, his pain, his desperate hope. He could probably feel hers too.
How romantic, the Demon King drawled. Now run before they turn you both into very dead lovers.
They ran, hand in hand, into the deeper darkness of the forest. Behind them, the Celestial Dawn Sect found an empty clearing and a shattered cage.
Ahead lay the unknown.
It had to be better than what they left behind.