Chapter Ten:

She was back in Zhou's tent, his hands caressing her shoulders and his lips on her neck once more. He was incredibly warm against her back, and she leaned into him to soak it up. When he moved away from her, the shock of his warm lips and body leaving her made her fall on her side. She cried out in denial, and was stopped by the heat of his mouth on her own as he had followed her down. One of his hands pushed her onto her back–which, surprisingly, didn't hurt–and he positioned himself over her, braced on his elbows so he wouldn't crush her. He pulled his lips from hers and looked down at her, his face framed by the curtain of dark hair that fell around them to mingle with hers, his eyes smoldering with desire.

"Who are you?" he asked huskily.

When she simply stared at him, unable to speak, he asked again, "Who are you? Who are you to make me feel this way?" His lips fell once more to her mouth, which she eagerly opened to his questing tongue. A moment later he wrenched his mouth from hers again, breathing heavily. She whimpered softly, moving under him. "Why am I so drawn to you? No other woman has ever made me feel so...and yet here you are, and I only laid eyes on you the first time two days ago."

"Please..." she whispered, barely knowing she spoke. She was fevered with desire for this man and couldn't think past the heat of his long, lean frame covering her from head to toe.

"Gods," he whispered. "I don't care any more." With that, he covered her mouth with his once more...

...She was wrenched away from the pleasant scene in the tent suddenly and forced into a far less pleasing surrounding. She held a sword in her hands, both it and her body splattered with blood. The blood seemed to be everywhere, and among the bodies men fought and died. She easily dispatched a man that came rushing at her with a quick thrust of the already bloodied blade, hardly noticing in the intense need to find Zhou.

He was in trouble, she could feel it in her bones, and she frantically looked about her as she jogged through the battle, dodging dead bodies and sticking her blade between the occasional enemy's shoulder blades where needed.

As she progressed through the field, the fighting got thicker and it became more difficult for her to move. Where normally the carnage would have sickened her, all she could think of was that she needed to reach Zhou's side.

Suddenly, impossibly, she saw him. He stood alone, and just as she started running towards him, he saw her and stood motionless. She saw just over his shoulder a horseman riding for Zhou, sword held high. The man was covered with blood, and it didn't appear that much of it was his own, from the reddened length of his blade. She shouted to Zhou to be on his guard and look behind him, but knew with a sickening feeling that he wouldn't be able to react quickly enough, and it was all her fault.

She had to do something, would have thrown a couple of her many daggers if she hadn't lost them some time ago. She shifted her grip on her sword's handle, still running, and flung it with all her might–fervently uttering a prayer to all the good gods that it flew true–at the man on the horse, screaming at the top of her lungs as he was even now lifting his own blade to strike Zhou down. She watched the blade spin through the air towards its target, and time slowed down to a crawl. The man on the horse hesitated, hearing her scream and looking straight at her.

Zhou's head turned to her in surprise as well, and inexplicably his eyes widened in fear. He lifted a hand as if to ward off whatever it was, his eyes holding the gut-wrenching knowledge of helplessness.

Time resumed its normal speed once more, and she saw her sword enter the breast of the man on the horse and drive through him like a nail driven into wood by a hammer, forcing him off the horse. The man had a surprised look on his face as he fell from the saddle, dead before he hit the ground.

Zhou didn't spare him a second glance, instead running towards her, shouting frantically. She turned to see what it was that he saw...

and woke up gasping for air, horrible fear gripping her body tightly in its talons. She looked wildly about the dark carriage, trying to get her bearings and convince herself that she wasn't on a battlefield of any sort. Reassured of this fact, she relaxed back onto the bedroll, still breathing heavily and wide awake. Knowing well that she wouldn't be returning to sleep this night, she silently stood up and stepped outside the carriage without waking Da.

He laid awake, disturbed by his dreams. The first one had been immensely enjoyable, but he had been torn away from it and plunged into a dreadful battle. He had a terrible sense of foreboding, much like what he had felt when he had seen Mai Li motionless on the ground after fainting, only this was far stronger, gripping him tightly by the heart. The dream had a horrible sense of premonition, and he fervently hoped that it would not come to pass. It had been awful, seeing Mai Li almost struck down by a son of Wei. It mattered not that she had saved him from the same fate, but he hadn't been able to do the same for her.

He wasn't sure what he would have done if he hadn't woken up just before the blade entered her body, and every time he thought about it, tears and grief threatened to overcome him. Irritated and depressed, he stood up and lit a candle, by which light he proceeded to get dressed and pack up his bedroll.

It wasn't even false dawn yet, and she could tell by the moon's progress through the sky that it would be a couple more hours before light hit the eastern horizon. Too restless to sit down, she paced back and forth in front of the carriage for a time, feeling like a caged animal. Finally, she decided to walk through the camp.

She was only stopped once, and that because she had nearly blundered right into the area where the prisoners were sleeping. The guard that had been set to watch them bowed and asked after her health before seeing her away from the area. The rest of the guards on watch must have been set around the perimeter of the camp, which, as she thought of it, made perfect sense. When she came upon a lighted tent, she immediately recognized it as Zhou Yu's, and wondered what he was doing awake at this time of night. Perhaps he had shared her dreams...? No, she thought, feeling foolish.

Suddenly she felt a crushing loneliness come over her as she watched his shadowed form through the cloth of his tent. He was just sitting there...perhaps he wouldn't mind some company?

A light scratching on his tent flap brought him out of his reverie, and immediately said, "Come in," softly. He drew a sharp breath when he saw that it was Mai Li, and she looked as shaken and restless as he himself was. Impossible, we couldn't have shared those dreams, could we have? he wondered in surprise, and then flushed as he recalled what the first dream had entailed. Nonsense, who is to say that she feels anything for you as you do for her? He was struck with wonder that she had such power over his emotions.

Belatedly, he realized that he was staring dumbly at her as she stood just inside the entrance of his tent, looking immensely uncomfortable. "Sit down," he said, moving over on his rolled up bedroll so she could sit next to him on it. "What has you awake at such an early hour?" he asked.

"It's nothing," she said quickly–too quickly–as she sat down, not looking at him. "Just a dream, and I foolish enough to have let it disturb me. Why are you awake?" Now she did look at him, her eyes boring into him, seeming to ask, Did you dream it too?

He shook off another wave of impending doom, and replied, "Dreams disturbed my slumber as well. I thought since I was awake, I might as well get my things packed early. Camp is supposed to be completely struck by true dawn, so everyone will be up and moving within the hour."

She didn't reply, and was no longer looking at him, so they sat in silence for a few moments. He grew increasingly uncomfortable as the memories of the horrid dream faded and images from the first became ever more pressing in his mind. He glanced sideways at her, struck by the way her hair–down, for once–fell forward over one shoulder, the candlelight producing shadows that played over her flawless skin.

Suddenly she met his gaze. He drowned in the dark pools of her eyes, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt her fingers graze the bruise on his jaw. "It should be gone within a week," she said softly. "The swelling is down, only the discoloration remains." As if of its own will, her fingers moved up to brush a few strands of hair away from his face. "I'm sorry..." she said, her cheeks blossoming with color as she removed her hand and looked down at her lap.

Utterly charmed and with remembered desire still flooding his body, he lifted his own fingers to her face, tilting it up and towards him so she would look at him once more. His fingertips stroked her cheek gently, and he closed what little distance was between them and kissed her softly on her lips.

When he pulled away from her, he had to force himself to breathe, but found that air was slow to come when he looked at her face, mirroring his own desire. It was all he needed, and he leaned forward and kissed her again.

HAHAHAHA, I LIVE! Gods, guys, I'm SO sorry about the long gap between chapters! I hope you can forgive me! If it helps, the story is moving again, and I'll hopefully be posting fairly regularly again until it's finished--though I will warn you that from the 23rd to the 1st I won't be posting because I won't have access to a computer in that time period. Fear not, however, for I WILL have my trusty little writing journal, so I'll be able to jot down ideas while I'm gone.