Things heat up in this chapter, and there is sexual content.
Falling Apart
When I was on fire
No one could save me but you
[Wicked Game: Chris Isaak, cover by Emika]
"Oh, dearie, he's a handsome boy," Tai Yi Jun said knowingly, sending Marin a sly glance as Zifeng's arm went around her possessively. "But he's trouble, that one. Don't throw away everything you came here to do just because of a wicked smile and a pair of hazel eyes."
Tai Yi Jun patted Marin's hand gently, and Marin felt herself blush, shooting a swift glance at Zifeng. The young lord's face remained impassive, but she felt his fingers tighten on her shoulder as they followed Tai Yi Jun through another doorway deeper into the palace.
The old woman waved a hand at a shrine surrounded by four huge jade statues.
"Go on, dear. They'll be safe there," her voice crackled with a rough chuckle. "Anyone tries to take them from the shrine, and my jade pets here would rip them limb from limb."
Marin made her way slowly to the marble dais and climbed the shallow steps. It felt as though the hard green eyes of the statues were watching her as she slid the locket of Genbu's priestess from around her neck and placed it carefully on the glass-smooth lacquered surface of the shrine.
She bent to take Natsumi's hairclip out of her pack. For a long moment, Marin stared at it, her fingers brushing over the cheap diamante star pattern, then she gritted her teeth and put it firmly beside the locket. She turned back, and walked briskly to where Tai Yi Jun was waiting with Zifeng and Zhang Yong.
"You look like you need a rest before the evening meal, dearie," Tai Yi Jun said, those twinkling, deep-set eyes regarding her. "I'll have Lai Lai take you all to your chambers."
Maybe it was something about Daisuke's odd, abrupt warning, or maybe it was something in the rarified air of the mountain itself or the way it felt like the old woman was watching her a little too closely, but now that she was here at the palace Marin was suddenly feeling strangely reluctant to bring up the subject of the Record of the Four Gods. She needed that information, though, and she needed the steadying feeling of being surrounded by books. The thought impelled Marin to take a deep breath and turn to Tai Yi Jun.
"I've heard legends about the archive collection," she said with a smile that felt strained. "I'd love the opportunity to see it."
"Now, why would you be wanting to waste your time among the shelves and the dust when you could be spending it with your handsome young man here?"
"Our Priestess has never been able to resist a book," Zifeng said almost playfully over Marin's head, and she resisted the urge to shrug his arm off her shoulder.
"I may not get another chance after the ceremony tomorrow morning," Marin told Tai Yi Jun. "I couldn't pass up the chance."
Tai Yi Jun eyed her thoughtfully, but she turned her cloud and floated back the way they'd come. Marin, Zifeng and Zhang Yong followed the old woman out of the huge central hall past reception rooms and treasure rooms and rooms hung with sacred tablets. As they stepped out into a long, open corridor of pillars that led to another pavilion, Marin said as casually as she could, "I've heard you keep the scroll of the Records of the Four Gods here."
"So that's what this is all about," Tai Yi Jun rasped. She shot Marin a twinkling look. "You want to see the Records?"
The old woman led them over the threshold and into a library that seemed to stretch on forever. In spite of herself, Marin gasped at the sight of row upon row of bookcases in the soft light of the bronze and glass lanterns that hung from the ceiling. She pivoted on her heel, turning to look as Tai Yi Jun led them through the library, but Zifeng's hand on her arm kept her from drifting off to examine the volumes of folios and scrolls closely.
"Later, dearie," Tai Yi Jun chuckled drily. "Let's find you that scroll first."
At the far end of the endless rows of shelves, Marin caught the glimmer of light on polished metal and when she paused to look closer she could make out a huge bronze mirror. The patterns around the frame, as far as she could see, looked a little like the frame of Zhang Yong's hand mirror.
When Tai Yi Jun realised that Marin had fallen behind, her wrinkled smile disappeared and she herded Marin past the mirror without a word. The old woman came to a stop at a table in the heart of the library. She tapped briskly on the table, and one of her little handmaidens seemed to pop out of the air clutching a huge scroll in a beautifully inlaid box.
Tai Yi Jun gestured, and the girl unravelled the scroll across the table.
"This is what you're looking for, dearie. The history of the Universe of the Four Gods and the complete adventures of the priestesses and their Seishi." She shot a knowing look up at Marin from her wrinkled face. "How they've each proved their worth to their gods."
Marin leaned over the scroll, trying to ignore the old woman hovering just behind her.
"Master!" one of the little girls called, and Marin breathed in relief as Tai Yi Jun swept away in an impatient flurry to see what the matter was. She could hear Zifeng and Zhang Yong talking softly as they moved away to the library entrance, but she was focused on the scroll. Many of the stories she already knew. Some of the priestess' faces were familiar now. She kept unrolling, skimming over the accounts as the script became more antique.
Get the guy, make the wishes, save the world. Over and over again, the only variation was in the details. Love and war, faith, duty. The priestesses strengthened the gods with their devotion and sacrifice.
Marin was finding it hard to breathe. The pressure of it all tightened and caught at her chest.
She was beginning to suspect that the reason that Tai Yi Jun had been so willing to show her the scroll was because there was nothing here that she hadn't heard before. It was clear the lesson that she was supposed to take from this history – summon Suzaku, save the world – but the analytically-honed mind behind Marin's rising anxiety was more and more aware of what wasn't in these records, and that persistent whisper was growing louder.
Their wishes had turned back armies, fire, flood and ice ages. There had been rare cases, like Daisuke's mother, when the first summoning had been subverted. The priestesses had faced kings and demons who had sought to overthrow the gods, but there was nothing – nothing! – of what happened if the gods themselves turned against the world. The scholar's voice in her head was shouting at her, insisting that this was significant.
Marin found herself frowning. It occurred to her that she had seen nothing about the three priestesses who had come before her. She went back to the most recent additions to the records with an uneasy feeling, skimming quickly through the flowery account of Daisuke's parents being swept up by Suzaku's divine benevolence, and then the text ended abruptly with a vague, fairytale mention of a time of peace and prosperity. There was nothing after that, and no mention of Tomoe or Yuki or Natsumi. Why were their stories not there?
Priestess after priestess unravelled in front of her as she wound the scroll back until the spindle rolled out to the beginning of the history and hit the table with a wooden sound. And there were the words from the beginning of the Universe of the Four Gods of Sky and Earth, the incantation that Tai Yi Jun had spoken to call the world into existance from the void.
"The four palaces of the heavens. The four corners of the earth…" she read out loud, brushing a finger over the almost illegible characters, and yanked her hand back as the silk and faded ink seemed to spark like lightning to the touch. She backed away from the scroll abruptly, and let out a muffled shriek when she found one of Tai Yi Jun's handmaidens watching her silently. She had no idea how long the little girl had been there, and there was no hint of the giggles and fluttering in the child's bleak gaze.
The tiny handmaiden glanced quickly towards the entrance, as if checking to make sure that no one was coming, and drifted off between the shelves, turning to beckon Marin when she didn't follow. It occurred to Marin that Tai Yi Jun hadn't returned after being called away by one of the little girls, and Marin trailed after the handmaiden cautiously. She found herself standing in front of Tai Yi Jun's mirror. The little girl raised one finger to her lips, her eyes on Marin, and reached out to stroke the bronze surface.
The mirror rippled and eddied like mist. As Marin stared at it, the miasma shifted and seemed to make images that moved, and it felt as though she was sinking into them until the mirror was all around her. There were figures running and screaming, blood everywhere. Marin could smell the iron tang of it. She could feel her heart beating faster, her breathing coming harder as she tried to calm herself. This was just an illusion. It had to be an illusion.
And Marin was face to face with a girl about her own age, young and terrified and trying to hide it. She stood in the middle of a vast cavern in front of the rough tortoise and snake carving that Marin remembered from Genbu's cave. The girl couldn't see her.
Then something shifted and Marin was inside the girl's head as the last words of the summoning spell fell from her mouth and the beast god filled the cavern with His divine presence. Marin saw the moment when something darker moved in like a blight and claimed the god.
Genbu rose like an implacable doom, and in His eyes was nothing but an endless, evil darkness. She faced down the malevolent horror that the god had become and Marin felt it as the darkness crashed down, crushed her, ripped her apart. The girl was gone.
The nightmare whirlwind of sand tore at Marin, and she saw another girl shove a flute into the hands of a young boy, screaming at him to Run! before the winds flayed the flesh from her bones and tore her soul to nothing.
Marin was sobbing as she fell into the tangle of black and ominous growth, all light blotted out by the ancient bamboo trees that towered up into the distance, and she reached out desperately even though she knew that Natsumi couldn't see her. Seiryuu's priestess seemed so small in the black, bottomless shadows, and so alone, but she faced the darkness with a stiff spine. Something snatched at her and Natsumi's mouth made a silent scream of terror, and she was gone.
Then Marin was back in the library on the mountain, standing in front of the mirror again. She gave a shudder, and fled the room, running through the narrow halls past figures who were nothing more than a vague blur. She just managed to make it out of the doors, leaning heavily over the balustrade, before she threw up.
Distantly, she could hear Zifeng and Zhang Yong's voices behind her, asking if she was alright, but they were faded, echoing sounds drowned out by the screaming in her head as the last dying moments of those three priestesses gripped her body and purged her of everything left in her stomach.
It had been one thing to know that they had probably all died, but it was another to have seen what happened, to have felt it happen. They had been girls like her, teenagers like her who had come from the world outside Sky and Earth. She had known Natsumi, they'd gone to school together, and she had felt her die in terrified, tortured agony. All of them scared, brave, determined. And gone.
"Marin?" someone was saying. "Are you alright?"
Marin ignored them, still fighting to get her heartbeat under control. She had to think. She had to think. There was no sign of the little handmaiden.
Someone pressed a cup into her hand, and her fingers closed around the smooth sides. Feeling divorced from the movement, she lifted the cup and rinsed the sour taste out of her mouth, and barely noticed as someone else took the cup from her again.
This was what had happened when the other priestesses had summoned their gods. Whatever she had seen in the mirror could not be allowed to take Suzaku as well.
"Marin?"
She looked up, and found Tai Yi Jun's unwavering gaze on her.
"You look like you've seen a ghost, dearie," the old woman said gently, and Marin lifted her chin, forcing a smile. Instinctively, she looked for Daisuke, but he wasn't there.
"I'm fine. Really. I just… need to be by myself."
"I don't think that would be a good idea right now," Tai Yi Jun said, still in that gentle voice of concern. "You don't look well."
There were Seishi hovering at her elbow, everywhere she turned. She couldn't think. Every time she had a flash of those girls, the priestesses, she gave an involuntary shudder, and then she'd look up to find Tai Yi Jun still watching her with that unreadable expression. Tian Zhen, Zhang Yong and Zhu Yi were there, pressed too close. And there was no sign of Daisuke.
They guided her in to dinner, and fussed over her, putting too much food in her bowl, forcing her with gentle anxiety to eat until she felt ill again. She forced herself to eat, to smile, to respond to what they were saying, because she had to convince them to leave her alone for a few minutes so that she could think.
Zhang Yong and Zifeng escorted her to her rooms, and they finally left her briefly, blessedly alone.
Tomorrow they would be pushing her to summon Suzaku, but she knew now that that would spell disaster. Could she tell the Seishi? Would they believe her?
Oh, gods. Daisuke. She stumbled in sudden horror. If she refused to perform the ceremony tomorrow, if someone tried to coerce her, then Daisuke was the most obvious chink in her armour.
She felt sickened at the thought, but she couldn't trust any of her Seishi right now. If she was right, then Zhang Yong had already proved that he was willing to poison Daisuke to get Marin to fulfil her role as priestess. What would he do if she refused? Or Zifeng? How well did she really know any of them, or what they'd be willing to do if she defied them?
Marin paced the room, her hands pressed together as she tried to think.
She had to end any chance that she would be able to call Suzaku. Think, Marin! For the ceremony tomorrow they would need a sacrificial virgin priestess. And they would need the shentsopao. Two necessary requirements. Remove either of those, and the ceremony would be impossible.
Marin spun on her heel and almost ran to the temple where the shentsopao had been laid out in state. From the doorway, she could see them glittering on the high shrine, the marble dais guarded by the four large jade ogre statues. She shifted uneasily, trying to make up her mind to draw closer.
With a hideous sound of stone grating on stone, one of the ogres turned their head to fix their blank gaze on Marin, and she stumbled backwards. She caught herself on the thick doorway, and there was a grinding noise as the jade creature tracked her movements. Marin steeled herself, and took two firm steps towards the shrine and the shentsopao, and froze as the ogre raised itself stiffly from the dais. One of its fellows came to its feet, jade talons scraping on the marble, and they both watched her blankly until she backed away. They settled back into immobility.
Clearly she wasn't going to get anywhere near the sacred objects, let alone do them any damage before tomorrow.
There was only one option left that she could see. The virgin priestess.
"Marin?"
Zifeng's voice startled her, and she spun around.
"What on earth are you doing here?" he asked suspiciously. "You should be resting."
"I -"
Before she could say anything further, he caught her arm in a firm grasp, guiding her back towards her rooms, and Marin didn't resist. There was no point.
She let him steer her, and she was dimly aware of the concerned glances, and the hurried, whispered conversations that happened behind her. The boys all headed off to their separate rooms, leaving Xuelian and Meixing making bright, inane conversation that Marin ignored as the two girls settled onto the couches in Marin's rooms instead of retreating to their own quarters. If they bothered to come up with a reason for keeping watch over her, she didn't hear it.
For one, brief moment she considered telling Xuelian and the princess what she had learned, but while Meixing could probably be counted on to be sympathetic, Marin knew that Xuelian would spill everything to Zifeng.
She knew that one of the Seishi, probably Zifeng, was waiting outside her bedchamber, listening for her. Xuelian snuffed out the lanterns, and Marin was conscious of the doctor's steady gaze on her as she lay herself down, counting the beats between each breath, making faint noises that she hoped would sound as though she'd fallen asleep. Was it going too far to make gentle snoring noises? In the darkness, Xuelian and Meixing settled into sleep. Marin rolled over with a sigh, and after what felt like forever she heard the sound of shuffling feet, and her guardian moved away from her door, his footsteps striding away down the corridor.
Marin lay there for another long moment, listening, until she was sure all was still. Silently, she swung her feet over the edge of the bed and pattered to the door. Every tiny noise and squeak it made as she slid it open felt like thunder, but there was no one in the dim corridor beyond, and no sound of discovery. Marin gathered up the hem of her voluminous bed-robe, and started down the corridor.
The twists and turns of the palace corridors were a blur, and Marin was going by instinct, freezing every time she heard a faint noise. She hurried out across the dark expanse of the central courtyard and made her way up the narrow staircase to the balcony, reaching up to brush absently at the tears that had started falling. She came to an abrupt halt at the sight of another one of Tai Yi Jun's handmaidens standing in front of Daisuke's door. The little girl was watching her with those same bleak eyes.
"The Great Sage commands me to keep your companion from leaving his chambers," the girl informed her, "and I must do as my master commands."
There was that odd flash of a deeper dread again, and Marin drew a breath. Before she could say anything, the tiny girl moved deliberately aside. Marin stepped carefully towards the door, her eyes on Lai Lai, waiting for a reaction or for the girl to stop her, but the handmaiden simply watched her and then faded out of sight as Marin reached out a hand to the door.
She tapped gently on the frame, and had just raised her hand to tap again when the door opened and Daisuke stood there with one of his daggers in his hand, looking grimmer than Marin had ever seen him. The faint lantern light from his room cast a fiery red shadow across his face and bare chest, and before his hazel eyes lit with recognition Marin could see something dark and old in their depths that seemed out of place with the Daisuke she knew.
"Marin."
He stepped back, holding the door open, and she moved hesitantly into his room.
"I knew you couldn't resist me," he said, with a flicker of his familiar, teasing grin. He sheathed his dagger, putting it aside, and Marin let out the breath she'd been holding.
The bedclothes were rumpled, but Daisuke didn't look as though he'd slept much, and there was a tray of uneaten food on the table nearby.
"You're not hungry?" Marin asked, and Daisuke's grin died.
"Not enough to risk being poisoned again. Once was enough."
Her eyes flicked to the tray and back to Daisuke.
"You think Tai Yi Jun was behind it?"
"Think about it. Someone who would be likely to know an incurable poison out of legend. Someone who could get their hands on it. Someone who's been in contact with Zhang Yong since the day we started, and who could command Zhang Yong to do anything, even murder, and he'd do it."
"But… why would she do that? She's been helping us to get here and summon Suzaku." Marin asked, still trying to put the pieces together.
"You," Daisuke said grimly. "She's been helping you. I'm in the way."
Marin tasted bile.
"Oh dear gods," she breathed, and pressed her fingertips to her mouth. "Oh gods, Tai Yi Jun can't be working with that darkness. I felt what happened to the other priestesses when they summoned their gods. It was evil." Daisuke's hands were on her arms, anchoring her as the world spun around her. "Dear gods, it was evil, and if Tai Yi Jun is involved… She's insisting that I have to call Suzaku, but if I do, then it will take over the last beast god and there'll be nothing left to stop it."
"So what's the plan? What do you need me to do?" Daisuke asked quietly. Marin swallowed, and it felt like glass shards lodged in her throat.
She said hoarsely, "Have sex with me."
There was a long silence.
"What?"
Daisuke was staring at her as if he'd started hallucinating.
"Please." She met his eyes. "I can't call Suzaku if I'm not… not pure. If you sleep with me. It's the only way I can think of to stop everything, short of doing something more terminal. And sex has got to be better than flinging myself off the mountain," she tried to joke, but he didn't laugh.
Daisuke turned away to push the door shut with focused care. His hand remained on the wooden frame as if he'd forgotten it was there.
Without turning around, he said in a strangled voice, "Are you sure about this?"
"Yes."
"There has to be another way. If you say you won't summon Suzaku, they can't make you."
"And how long do you think that would last? If you're right, Tai Yi Jun has already tried to kill you just to get you out of the way. How long do you think it would be before she threatened you, or one of the Seishi, to pressure me into calling the god anyway? It's the obvious move. And I've seen what that… nothingness will do if it claims another god." She shuddered at the memory. "I tried to destroy the shentsopao, and I couldn't even get near them."
"So we run," Daisuke suggested urgently. "You and me, right now before anyone figures out we're gone."
"And go where? How long do you think it would take Tai Yi Jun to find us in this world?" Marin sucked in another breath, trying to think. "I can't leave the Seishi like this."
"Why did you come to me?" It sounded like the words were being pulled out of him, and Marin could see the muscles in his back tense.
"Who else?" she asked, a little hurt at the thought that he was so reluctant. "Tian Zhen wouldn't, and Jing Yun and Zhu Yi only have eyes for each other, in case you missed that. And Xuelian would never do anything that might hurt… our mission."
There was one name that she conspicuously didn't mention, and it hung in the air between them. Daisuke's head bent, and the lamplight flickered like fire over the fall of his hair, and his voice when he spoke sounded drained.
"You kiss me on the bridge and then you go back Zifeng, and now here you are in the middle of the night in my room and not his. Are you trying to wreck me?"
Why not? Wasn't that what she was doing to everyone and everything else?
"I'm not drunk this time and I know exactly what I'm asking, but I've been thinking and thinking and I can't see any other way to end this, and I need…" Marin swallowed down the tightness in her throat. "I need you. There's no one else I can ask."
He came towards her slowly and reached out, his fingertips brushing the back of her hand. He bowed his head, leaning his forehead against hers with a shuddering sigh.
"Don't hate me for this tomorrow," he whispered. "Please."
She closed her eyes.
"I would never," she whispered back.
Almost as if it was beyond his conscious thought he gathered her into his arms. Marin tangled her fingers in the warm fire of his hair as he buried his face in her shoulder.
It was awkward and a little uncomfortable, and Daisuke touched her as if he was terrified she would break. And Marin found her body and her mind at war. Every time the feel of his hands on her lit a spark, every time she began to surrender to the moment, it was doused by a cold feeling of guilt and treachery. When Daisuke hesitated, his eyes dark with uncertainty, she didn't give him a chance to pull away. She reached up to draw him into her and moved against him, squeezing her eyes shut to block out the visions of her Seishi.
When it was over, Marin reached up to touch her fingertips to the slow tears that were rolling silently down her cheek. As her hand dropped, she found Daisuke watching her with stricken eyes.
"Thank you," she said as gently as she could, but Daisuke made a strangled noise, dragging his hands down through his hair to cover his face.
"For what? I couldn't have fucked that up more if I tried."
"It was fine."
Daisuke made another anguished sound, his palms still pressed hard to his face.
"It doesn't matter," she repeated tonelessly. "I know you didn't want this, I know I've taken advantage of you, but you gave me what I asked for anyway, and I'm really grateful for that."
"Of course it matters," he groaned, his hands falling away. "That shouldn't have been your first time. That shouldn't have been any time with you. I was…" he broke off. The word she thought she heard him exhale was terrified. She had never imagined that the reckless Daisuke she was used to could look as young and vulnerable as he did in that moment. "Maybe you should have gone to Zifeng. He's the one you're meant to be with, isn't he?"
Marin laughed harshly. "Zifeng would have had me locked up for my own good before I could even finish talking. Once he gets over wanting to kill me for all this, he'll probably be thanking his lucky stars for his escape – he spent all his life waiting for his Priestess to turn up, and he gets me. I couldn't summon Suzaku, I couldn't make the wishes and save his country, and deep down I never wanted him the way I was supposed to," she confessed on a hiccupping sob. "Why do you think I've been so scared that I was the one who screwed everything up?"
"So you kept on pretending," he said with a sharpening edge to his voice. "Fucking hell, Marin, didn't it ever occur to you that your Great God Flaming Feathers would know if you were faking it?"
"What else was I supposed to do? I kept trying." Marin felt the tears rolling again, damp on her palms. "I even prayed to Suzaku to make me fall in love with Zifeng, because the Priestess is supposed to fall in love with Tamahome and I didn't. And then you turned up and ruined everything," she said accusingly. "I wasn't supposed to fall for you like this."
Daisuke fell silent beside her.
Eventually he said, "Wait, what?"
Marin felt him sit up, the bed shifting under her, and she curled in on herself.
"You're in love with me," Daisuke said incredulously.
"Don't rub it in," Marin muttered, rolling out of the bed and coming to her feet. She dried her eyes with the heel of her hand.
"Nope, you said it. Can't take it back," Daisuke said more cheerfully, and Marin could tell by his voice that if she turned around he'd be wearing that grin again, the one that made her want to hit him and smile back at him in roughly equal measure. She didn't turn around.
"It doesn't matter anymore, does it?" She bent to pick up the silken puddle of her robe from the floor. "I'm not the Priestess of Suzaku anymore and I can't fix anything. I'd better get back to my room before Xuelian and Meixing notice that I'm gone," she said wearily. She slid the robe over her shoulders and wrapped the crumpled ends around her tightly.
"Don't go," Daisuke coaxed. The bed creaked, and there was the soft sound of his feet on the floor behind her. She could hear that grin creep into his voice again when he said, "We're all doomed now anyway, we might as well make it worthwhile."
She spun around to glare up at him.
"Are you kidding me?" she said incredulously. "Do you really think that's going to get me back into your bed tonight?"
"You said it yourself, you're not the Priestess anymore," he said. That maddening grin faded. His eyes met hers, dark gold with a sincerity that nearly floored her. "It doesn't matter what you're supposed to do or who you're supposed to be with. The only thing that matters now is what you want."
"I don't even know anymore," she said shakily. "I've been stuck doing the right thing for so long now that I'm not even sure I know what that is anymore."
He was so close now. She could feel the heat of his nearness, and he touched her cheek with hesitant fingers.
"What do you want?" he asked as if it were the most important question in the world, and Marin felt herself fall.
"You," she finally admitted, and the word caught on half a sob. "I just want you."
"Whatever my Priestess wishes," Daisuke breathed, and his lips brushed the corner of her mouth, igniting sparks. His hand trembled against her skin.
"Your hands are shaking," she said softly, and he lifted the hand on her cheek to stare at it in dazed astonishment. Marin lifted onto her toes, reaching up to kiss him back. And as if she'd touched a match to dry wood, she felt him blaze with a sudden fire, taking her breath away as he deepened the kiss.
His hands move like flame over her. The silk robe slid off her shoulder and his mouth followed, drifting over her skin. He brushed his fingertips over the swell of her breast, and she jumped at the touch. He bent his head.
"Red berries grow in the southern land," Daisuke said softly, and his tongue flicked over her nipple. Marin sucked in a startled gasp.
"I…" she was trying to formulate words as his tongue drove her crazy. "I don't think… I've ever heard Wang Wei interpreted like that."
She could feel Daisuke's mouth smile.
"Then you haven't been reading it right," he teased. His hand moved to curve around the richness of her breast. "Gather them 'til full is your hand…"
He tugged at the sash of her robe, his fingers sliding under the silk as it fell open, and his hand rounded over her hip, easing her closer. Then the world tilted under her and she was falling, falling, but Daisuke's arms were there to catch her, bringing her down gently into the sheets.
Marin clutched at the bed underneath her as his hand drifted down, trailing sparks. He outlined the slope of her waist, drifting over the soft swell of her hip and down the length of her thigh, and distantly she heard herself gasp, arcing into him when he bit gently into the curve of her shoulder. His fingers teased between her legs, stroking into the wet heat there, and she fell open to him.
This time there was nothing in her head or heart but Daisuke and the feel of his hands on her body. And Marin gave herself up completely to him, his husky voice whispering poetry against her skin, dissolving all thought.
This time, when he moved deep inside her, there was nothing but Daisuke.
An eternity later, she found him propped on one elbow, looking down at her with something like awe in his hazel eyes. She reached up to touch the line of his jaw with gentle fingers.
"What is it?" she asked.
"You really love me."
"I really do," she told him, and he turned his head slightly to kiss her fingers, lifting a hand to press them against his mouth as he kissed them again.
"Then miracles truly are possible," he whispered against her palm.
Ed notes: The poem in this chapter is Love Seeds by Wang Wei (699 – 759CE; Tang Dynasty). Daisuke has taken a few liberties with his interpretation of the poem.