When the morning light slipped past the lattice window, Qi Silu was already sitting beneath the old pear tree in the courtyard.
From the veranda, Yan Yan stood with a bowl of medicine in her hands. She saw him dressed in plain white robes, grinding ink at the stone table. A breeze passed through, carrying a few pear blossoms into the inkstone. With his long, slender fingers, he picked the petals out one by one. The movement was so elegant it bordered on cruelty—just like the way he'd pushed her away last night.
"Your medicine." She set the celadon bowl on the edge of the table, deliberately avoiding the sheet of rice paper spread before him.
Qi Silu's brush paused; a drop of ink bled across the paper like a tiny sunspot. Suddenly, he reached out and caught her wrist, his fingertips pressing directly over her pulse. "Afraid of me?" His voice was colder than the morning mist.
Yan Yan noticed the fresh pinprick on the inside of his left wrist, a purple bruise marring the pale skin—a trace left by the family doctor's IV drip earlier that morning.
"You should be in bed." She tried to pull away, but he caught her hand again.
Qi Silu fished a damp purple brush from the brush washer and placed it in her palm. "Paint for me." He nodded toward the rain-washed banana leaves in the distance. "Paint that."
By noon, the sunlight had baked the table hot to the touch.
Yan Yan's third painting of the banana plant was once again crumpled into a ball of paper. Qi Silu reclined in the rattan chair with his eyes closed, his lashes casting faint gray shadows on his cheeks. She couldn't help glancing at the fading red marks along his neck—bite marks, left by Zhao Mingyuan in last night's fit of madness.
"Use the side of the brush," Qi Silu said suddenly, eyes still shut. "The turn of the leaf… must show strength."
Out of stubbornness, she dipped the brush into too much ink—and ruined half the page.
He had come up behind her without a sound. His breath grazed her ear. "Your wrist is too stiff."
When his hand closed over hers, the skin on the back of her hand tensed. The faint bitterness of medicine clung to his warmth, seeping through her palm—like a tonic simmered overnight, its bitterness hiding a slow, comforting heat. The loose half-embrace cast their shadows together across the table. She remembered the tremor of his hair against her neck last night, the single hot tear that had fallen on her collarbone—now burning anew in memory.
"Here." Qi Silu's finger hovered over the bend of a banana leaf; the bone of his wrist brushed her shoulder blade. "Like a snapped string." His breath skimmed the fine hairs behind her ear—steady, as if he truly were a disciplined teacher—except for the rough edge in his voice, the faint rasp left from the blood he'd bitten from his own tongue the night before.
The cicadas outside fell abruptly silent.
By the time the sun tilted west, the pear tree's branches cast claw-like shadows across the rice paper. When the butler entered with a black lacquer tray, he found Qi Silu's hand still guiding Yan Yan's wrist as she rinsed the brush. The celadon medicine bowl quivered on the tray, spilling two amber drops.
"While it's hot." The butler lowered his eyes and withdrew, his shoe crushing a dry leaf on the veranda.
Qi Silu lifted the lid from the bowl; the faint bitterness of lily and lotus seed rose into the air. He stirred it with a silver spoon, the engraved lotus pattern on the handle glinting faintly in the dusk. "Taste it."
He brought the spoon to her lips. The reflection on the porcelain's edge caught both their faces, blurred together like an old ink painting dampened by water.
Instinctively, Yan Yan leaned back—but his other hand pressed lightly to the small of her back. The warm sweetness slid down her throat as he said quietly, "I heard when Mingyuan was seven and came down with a fever, he started babbling nonsense…"
The jade spoon clicked softly against her teeth. "…and wouldn't let go of this very bowl."
The setting sun gilded Qi Silu's lashes, but Yan Yan saw that his knuckles had turned white around the spoon. The wedding ring on his finger was smudged with ink—like snow scorched by fire.
A startled flutter of sparrows burst through the courtyard. Ripples shattered the reflection in the medicine bowl.
Yan Yan tasted the bitterness of lotus seed heart—mingled with the sour ache rising in her chest—and in the thickening dusk, her eyes finally brimmed with tears that had been held back all day.
As night fell and an engine's hum drifted in from afar, Qi Silu rose to tidy the painting table. The hem of his robe brushed her leg. "Tomorrow…" he said, "we'll continue with the banana leaves."
In the last ray of light, his pale fingertips were still stained with ink—like an unfinished stroke in a half-dried painting.