Betrayal

The sky had gone blacker with the bruise of new, thick angry clouds. The moon glared down balefully at them. The raindrops seared the fog ripping it apart like a heavy curtain and the bamboo grove gradually reappeared. A fitful wind swirled and carried a faint noise stirring from beyond the scraggy line of bamboo and trees.

While Shufeng tossed his gaze across the wet grassland,  Emika grabbed the leather strap around her neck, and slid out of her dress's collar a small bone whistle used in the hunt for wild animals.

A dangerous gleam came into her eyes.

His jaw clenched. Unease rolled through him like a chilled, dark wave.

Next, she blew out a shrill sound with all her breath, and it echoed a threat.

From amidst the thinning fog came the drumming noise of hurried footsteps. Hazy shadows started to emerge from behind the trees like new-risen ghouls, and expelled a roar. The distant skeletal figures silhouetted in the jagged moonbeams grew taller and fiercer. With glinting swords they jabbed and sliced through the remaining bone-white mist and suddenly the enemy stormed forward and across the field.

Shufeng staggered backwards. His gaze stumbled from the armed men to Emika, and a million thoughts rushed his mind, though he couldn't snatch and hold on to any single one. This was a trap! All along she had been trying to retrieve information about his allies!

He stared at her with eyes widened in shock. He could not comprehend what she wanted and why she betrayed him.

She flayed him with a look.

"What have you done?" His voice was a bare whisper.

All moving in unison towards the river, swords glimmering menacingly in the moonlight, the imperial guards were like a hungry predator encircling its prey.

The Second Prince had nowhere to hide, he was like an animal caught in a snare. But he would not surrender without a fight.

As Shufeng drew his blade ready to defend himself, he looked at her begonia red lips who were once an invitation to collect a kiss. Sword in one hand, he close the distance between them with four long strides. She really thought that he would strike her, but instead he just embraced her with one arm and crushed her mouth with one last kiss.

When they kissed... it reminded her of that evening... the moon was bright, the peonies were fluttering in the light breeze... 

Taizong wanted him alive; but at this moment, Emika could only see the opportunity for revenge. His chest close to hers was like an opening door. Surreptitiously she pulled something out from underneath the sash of her dress. While her lips still lingered on his mouth, she plunged the dagger into his chest. There was a sickening crunch, and at the same moment, his agonised scream; and all the while she pushed the blade deeper and deeper until his scream faded out. 

At last his right hand let go of his sword. Did she think he would hurt her? This was his very first thought as he blamed himself for her action.

His limp and trembling body collapsed into her arms, spewing out blood all over her shoulder. His cheek slid down the side of her neck, and rested on her collarbone. His eyes caught a glimpse of the apricot coloured ribbon floating in her hair. He wondered if it was one of the hundredth of ribbons he had bought her.

She gave him a hard thrust and he sprawled senseless on the ground. "You deserve it!" She bellowed. But as she saw his body sinking into the sludge, it was as if she could sense every nerve, cell, muscle, drop of blood and strand of hair in her body individually.

She tottered few steps back, unsteadily in the matted and slippery layer of grass and mud, looking at her hands. His warm blood covered both her hands and his scarlet blood seeped through her robes.

The next moment, choking, convulsing, and spluttering blood, Shufeng struggled to regain his feet. He could only rose himself up onto his knees. As he watched her trembling sanguineous hands hanging down lifeless by her sides, he was still more bewildered than terrified. He hoped he would wake up and realise that none of this really happened. If it weren't a dream, how could he possibly bear it, killed by the person he most loved?

His mud-spattered hands gingerly touched the hilt of the dagger, daring to look at the blade buried into his chest. He recognised the icy white jade hilt with moss-in-green veining carved in the shape of a dragon—it was his, and given to her for protection.

As he felt his life force leaving his body, yet there was no sign of fear in his glassy and dazed eyes. Just sadness. Was this love only his one-sided feeling after all? He felt an intense blinding agony in his heart, then it grew and travelled through his body. The agonising pain shooting to the tip of his fingers, made him groan in distress.

The sharp-angled blades of moonlight sliced open the heavy clouds above, bleeding silvery splashes of light into his eyes and revealing, out of the darkness, bright tears as he looked up at Emika. She held his gaze hostage, not a single shred of emotion showing on her face.

She squinted at him through hardened eyes that once had been his salvation, but now they brought only the unfounded accusations of an executioner. Their colour which had only yesterday reminded him of the pine tree in summer or the moss on the forest floor, now were simply chilling as the winter winds.

And still, his eyes more vast than the night sky penetrated every inch of her beautiful face as if they silently inspected her soul trapped in his gaze—a lover's gaze. He pleaded for an explanation with just one word, "Why?" 

Emika leaned down and caught her reflection in the unfathomable depths of those black pupils swallowing her whole, never to return again; and her voice was soft as a feather, yet cold as a hungry ghost when she answered him: "Retribution." 

Retribution? There was a deep-set frown on his forehead that did not uncrease.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Taizong, Jian had escaped alive from the claws of the soldiers and Emika's betrayal, and succeeded in meeting up with Shufeng's partisans holding their position for immediate deployment.

And under the mean percussions of the rain, a thunder of tuning gallopers had launched a surprise attack against the imperial guards.

Amidst the fighting surrounding them, Emika continued seething, glowering with anger, screaming, clenching her fists. "I saw you that night at the Emperor's banquet plotting with the assassin! My father... I know it is You who poisoned him! I know of all your lies and sins!"

All the while, looking at her lips moving, not a word she uttered had travelled to his ears. The only thing he understood was the hatred in her eyes which had turned ferocious.

The screams of the fighters, and the clanking of the swords swinging all around him had suddenly muted to stillness. Even the beats of his own heart had disappeared.

He couldn't feel neither the rain flogging his skin, nor the dagger in his chest; as though his nerves had been gouged. He felt nauseous, and everything in his field of vision was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror.

The world around him was gone. 

He heard nothing, saw nothing, knew nothing.

Was Hades opening his doors?

His eyes spoke of untold confusion when he grabbed Emika's small hand in a last desperate try to understand the unimaginable. And bringing her hand to his face, he pressed his forehead to her blood-stained knuckles, saying: "I love you... My first love... I have loved you for so many years... Why?" A terrible cough and a sudden spurt of blood gushed into his mouth. 

She pulled her hand away with a jerk. 

Emika wanted to shatter his heart in millions fragments, burn it and crush it to ashes. She whispered into his ear, her breath tickling his ear:

"I never loved you." Her face came to a halt before his, her own mouth inches from his lips. "I love your brother. Always have."

How those cruel words felt like she had just sliced open his chest and scooped his heart out! Except that the latter would have been more merciful. He was unable to withstand this torturous torment.

The rolling growling rumbles of thunderstorms resounded like the charriots of the Four Immortals from Hell springing out upon him to take him away, all unwilling, beneath the earth. Bolts of lightening flashed like the cold silver prongs of Hades.

A crashing boom. A jolting, excruciating pain. His ears were ringing. Shufeng felt his whole body stop. He was surrounded by white light as the world began to move in slow motion. When the lightning hit the dagger, he felt as though being stung by hundred thousands wasps from inside out. The nauseating smell, something like leather being tanned over a flame, was so thick and rich that he almost could taste it. 

His legs felt non existent and his body collapsed on the wet ground, half his face slowly sinking into the mud. The world began to spin and he felt his eyes closing slowly. Before darkness descended on his vision, he stared at the retreating back of Emika. At her slender shoulders, at her thin waist swaying like a weeping-willow, and at the apricot coloured ribbon waving him farewell.

Every fondest memories he had shared with her felt like they were figments of his imagination. He brought his hands to the dagger, closed his eyes and summoned a last breath.

His consciousness began to slip.

But the distorted cries of someone calling out his name yanked him out of his stupor:

"Your Highness! Your Highness!... Shufeng!"

He barely managed to blink his eyes open towards the voice.

Blurry vision—had he just caught a glimpse of Li Ji bestriding a white horse and soaring like an eagle amidst the arrows? He exhaled little by little what was left of his sanity.

Sheets of lightening ruptured the sky with a hellish intensity, like the roar of thousand dragons, repeating over and over and echoing into his skull. And the numbness in his wounded chest subsided into an excruciating pain even more unbearable.

Spitting out from the murky darkness, the underworld chilled rain gnawed at the mud on his face and washed away his blood. And above him, Shufeng caught sight of Hades sitting on a white skeletal horse, staring back at him with eyes smouldering with fire. The menacing shadow slithered across his body, clawed into his chest and started dragging him lower into the ground. The world became doom-black, and the sky collapsed down on top of him.

"Your Highness!... Your Highness!... Wake up!..."

***    ***    ***

PRESENT DAY~ The Forbidden World

Kiyomi gently picked up the cat and cradled her in his protective arms. He smiled, "Are you the pretty kitty who scratched me earlier?" As he hurried back home in the mizzly summer night, he promised the cat some grilled fish. Emika was once more in the warmth of his loving embrace, breathing in once again his scent, refreshing and sweet, similar to the smell of bamboo after the downpour.

When whispers of Shufeng being alive continued to flourish in the Imperial City, Emika's heart swelled with hope. She had searched for him tirelessly, but in vain.

Crestfallen, guilt-ridden, her desperation and bitter cries were at long last heard, and she was sent on a perilous journey beyond the logic of the physical world to save him. 

In the fullness of time, hidden in The Forbidden World, Emika had finally found him.

And he now went under the name of—Kiyomi.

A new name for a new life.

A new life without the memory of his love for her.