What was that? The power of a fourth-rank spirit apothecary?
It leapt two grades in an instant. Zhao Xiangxiang didn't even have time to react before she was beaten.
Xie Yu laughed. “See? I invited you into my cabin nicely, you refused. Now you force my hand, and that’s the only way you’ll come along.”
Zhao Xiangxiang, furious and fumbling, aimed a hard stomp at Xie Yu’s foot.
He hissed and bent down to grab it. At the same time his sword flicked in a different direction and slashed across Zhao Xiangxiang’s forearm.
Pain cut through him and she gasped.
“Zhao Xiangxiang, I merely invited you for tea—why are you so touchy? You courting a beating?” Xie Yu’s voice shot out, loud and brazen. The shout drew several heads over the ship’s rail to look.
The cut bled freely. Zhao Xiangxiang pinched her brows shut, snatched a scrap of cloth from her hem, and pressed it to the wound to staunch the blood.
“Master Xie, you’re going too far,” she said between clenched teeth.
Xie Yu’s temper flared. He’d grown used to taking advantage of people; women came to the Xie house from south of the Huai River eager for their favor. This girl—peasant, country-bred—had the audacity to disrespect him.
He wanted only to bind her to a post and whip her until he felt satisfaction.
“You’ve never met a woman so clueless about her place,” he barked.
Zhao Xiangxiang’s rational mind reasserted itself. She had been reckless. She’d never left home much—books said men like Xie Yu were often brigands, men who preyed on girls with tricks. If she stopped resisting, would the tragedies in those stories play out now? Fear fluttered in her chest. In panic, she acted before she could think of her father’s last advice. She stomped again.
Seeing Xie Yu’s face go red with rage frightened her. She didn’t want to cause trouble for Zhao Shuning; she’d come along to protect him, not to provoke the most powerful family south of the Huai.
“Who dares touch me?” she cried, voice trembling. She berated herself for the impulsiveness that had always burned inside her—Zhao Shuning had warned her that such hot temper, without power to back it, would get her badly hurt. She’d scoffed then; reality was proving him right.
“Who dares? I do!” Xie Yu stepped forward. In three brisk motions he had the girl bound—arms and legs secured, tight and artful. The rope and knots were humiliatingly familiar: the whip wrapped at her waist, the bindings looped like a net.
If the whole ordeal ever reached Zhao Shuning, she would be mortified. The things now restraining her were the very Long-Sky Spirit Whip Zhao Shuning had given her—a gift turned instrument of shame.
Several of Xie Yu’s attendants hoisted her up. They paraded her like spoil toward the upper cabins. A crowd followed, but nobody stepped forward to stop them. Who would? Everyone on the ship belonged to the Xie family. One disgruntled move and they could be tossed into the river and fed to the fish. So while the deck buzzed with gossip, no one warned Zhao Shuning.
He woke and found his sister gone. He looked over the deck, but there was no trace of her. The Xie family banner flew over the cabin where she had been taken. Zhao Shuning wasn’t a man who swallowed insults. He hadn’t been then, and he wouldn’t learn to now.
Xie Yu shut the heavy cabin door with a thud behind him and tossed Zhao Xiangxiang aside like an inconvenient thing. He sat down at the table and began to eat breakfast as if nothing had happened. She glared at him, raw with humiliation, but he remained impassive.
Only after he’d finished did he look over. Zhao Xiangxiang pressed against the cabin wall and slid back, teeth bared in fear.
“Now you’re afraid?” Xie Yu said, amusement curling at the edges of his voice. “When you stomped on my foot on deck, you weren’t like this.”
Her glare was vicious.
He leaned in, lowering his head close to her. He smelled the faint, sweet scent of her—“No wonder they call you Xiangxiang,” he murmured. “You really are fragrant.”
She turned her face away. Xinxiang? The Xie heir was a mischievous rogue.
“You despicable—” she spat.
“Me? Despicable?” Xie Yu moved behind her and produced a plain-looking whip, the kind that could be mistaken for many others. He cracked it down hard on the cabin floor. The sound rang out, sharp and commanding.
“Xie Yu—what do you intend?” Zhao Xiangxiang’s eyes went wide. She regarded him like a monster.
He could admit he wasn’t a saint. But he also resented being painted purely as a lecher. Was his look really that lecherous?
“Don’t you know what I want?” He watched the fear shrinking her. It pleased him.
The whip cracked again and again, a steady chorus through the cabin air. Not once did it strike Zhao Xiangxiang herself.
“What—admit your mistake yet?” he taunted.
She bit her lip and said nothing.
“Alright. Then I’ll give you a proper lesson.” Xie Yu’s tone dropped. “I’ll show you what it’s like to have your skin split open.”
The whip came closer. She squeezed her eyes shut, dreading the searing pain she expected. But it never came. The whip’s tip thudded heavily against the boards without flying free; it sounded muffled as if weighted.
He tugged at it and found he could not move it. Frustration rose up in him, words spilling to the tip of his tongue—until a chill swept across the back of his neck.
He looked up without meaning to. Above the cabin door, in the dim space near the rafters, two cold, unblinking eyes were fixed on him.