A Great Escape

Chapter 17: For real

Shen stood there staring out in the direction that Lanying had fled, even after she had long since vanished from sight. For a minute or so, he wondered if he was in shock. After all, he should have felt anguished, heartbroken, disappointed, something…but all he felt was empty.

However, that emptiness didn't last long before something hot and livid rose up in him, scorching his throat and clenching all of his muscles tightly. He bit back a snarl with some effort, his feathered fingers coiling into fists as he tore out of the kitchen and into his bedroom.

"Xun!" he barked, yanking open the door.

The wolf, who had been completing the last of his packing for tomorrow's journey, started. "What – huh?"

"What in the gods' name have you done?" hissed Shen, finding himself instinctively trying to slip a knife that wasn't there from the sleeve of his robe.

"What are you talking about?" Xun scrambled to his feet, taking an involuntary step backwards. He'd heard the soothsayer and Lady Biming say a few times that Shen's control of his temper wasn't perfect yet, that sometimes in the most emotionally high-strung situations he could still slip into an incoherent rage. He had known that the potential for these episodes had existed…but he'd never actually seen one before.

As Shen advanced, it was clear to see that there was something not entirely sane in his eyes. The muscles of his face were stretched taut, causing his eyelids to twitch irregularly, and the rest of his body had twisted into a predatory stance. "You told Lanying that I was using her?" he shouted. "You told my fiancée a blatant lie to turn her against me?"

Xun straightened his shoulders and drew himself up, making up his mind that he wouldn't be intimidated. After all, this was the Shen he knew, not the monster who had dominated his friend's mind for decades. "On the contrary, I told her the truth! And she's not your fiancée, remember?"

"Well, not anymore!" Shen lashed out and struck the wolf hard in the chest. Xun staggered back slightly, stumbling against the wall. "Now she's gone – because of you!"

"Well, I'm sorry, but it's not that big of a deal!" Xun rubbed his chest, unable to stop himself from remembering the knife that had sliced through his armor long ago. "I know you wanted to help her, but you should have told her the truth! I didn't like seeing the two of you making googly eyes at each other when I knew it wasn't real! Besides, it's not as if you were actually…" Which was when he realized what must have really sparked Shen's anger, and he squeezed his eye shut. "Oh, no."

Shen narrowed his eyes suspiciously, his head darting forward a bit.

"You…you actually fell in love with her!" Xun tried to lean forward, only to find a lithe wing pinning him against the wall. "I can't believe you! You were going to marry her, weren't you? That's why you never told her about your plan!"

"Shut up!" Shen snarled, shoving a bared beak into Xun's face.

"I will NOT shut up! You weren't supposed to fall in love with her! That wasn't what we came here for!"

"I said SHUT UP!" Shen slammed the wolf against the wall, and Xun winced, allowing a sort of muffled fear to poke through his unfazed guise. "Who are you to tell me what I'm not meant to be doing? For as long as I've known you, all you've ever done is cause trouble for me! Every time I get close to one of my goals, you're that one extra piece that causes me to trip at the finish line! Well, I finally found someone who trusted me, who could look at me without having to remember what I was before, and I lost her…because of YOU! I've got a mind to – "

"Sheng Li, control your temper this instant!"

Both of their heads snapped towards the doorway. The soothsayer was standing there, hooves tightly clutching her walking stick, glaring at her "children" fiercely. Shen stared at her for a long moment, before blinking rapidly several times, looking at Xun with an expression of mild surprise, and releasing his grip. Xun sucked in a shaky breath, rubbed his chest, and scampered out of the room.

Shen raised a wing to his head. His flash of anger departed him as quickly as it had overtaken him, leaving only tangled, murky memories of violence and screamed threats. The soothsayer continued to gaze at him sternly, waiting for him to regain his bearings before she scolded him further. She knew that Shen's little episodes were close to rage blackouts, and that he never remembered much of what he'd done or said during them after they ended.

After a little more than a minute, when her chick seemed somewhat less disoriented, she asked, "Better?"

"No." Shen squeezed his eyes shut and slumped against the wall, looking utterly defeated. She studied his face carefully to see if there was any trace of tears trickling out between his eyelids, but there was no dampness that she could see. "This is the worst night of my life…"

"Nonsense, dear, you've had far worse…" The soothsayer approached him carefully, placing a somewhat tentative hoof on his arm. "What on earth were you shouting about? I can't remember the last time I saw you get so…furious…"

Shen heaved a resigned sigh. "Xun told Lanying that I wasn't actually going to marry her."

She blinked, startled. "Well, that wasn't very tactful of him…but you do realize, the truth had to come out eventually…"

He glared at her. "Well, considering you've been prancing about with your matchmaker predictions, you should know that it wasn't the truth anymore!"

She flared, reaching up to grab and painfully twist his crest. He yelped. "Don't you speak to me that way, young man!" Then she released him and tried to summon a stoic and wise expression. "But, yes, anyway…" She exhaled slightly. "Yes, I did assume that you would find more than a charity case in Miss Xifeng. How did she react when she found out?"

Shen dropped his eyes to the floor. "She…she thinks I was using her the whole time. That all that time we spent together, where I tried my best to act gentlemanly and supportive, was just an act. And really, considering what she's heard about me, I can't blame her…"

The soothsayer reached up and squeezed his shoulder gently. "Shen, you know that when people are upset, they do and say things that they don't mean – you're living proof of that. Just give her a bit of time to calm down, and then explain what's really going on. The two of you have been together for weeks and weeks now. I'm sure that deep down, she doesn't truly believe that you would play her this entire time."

"And…will that work?" She looked at him expectantly.

She spread her hands out in front of her. "You're asking me? You're the one who's gotten to know Miss Xifeng since we've been here, not me."

"But you're the one who can see the future…"

"As if my abilities have ever been an exact science." She rolled her eyes. "I can see the path that the future will take, Shen, but not every single little bump and crack in the road. I saw that you would fall for the Xifengs' daughter, and that much has come true. Whether or not the two of you end up together is yet to be determined. Besides, you ought to stop relying on predictions and take action…sometimes, your destiny can be what you turn it into."

Shen stared off into space thoughtfully, but he didn't say anything more. After a moment of silence, the soothsayer stood up and exited quietly, deciding to leave him to his pondering (and to go and find where Xun had gotten off to).

Shen sat down on his bed mat and shifted into lotus position, but instead of meditating, he continued to chew over this situation with Lanying. He wasn't entirely sure what to do, what he could say to her to ever make this any better. He didn't want to leave her here; in all likelihood, she'd spend the rest of her life alone, entrapped under her parents' rule, suffering from panic attacks and a fear of crowds and cursing his name because he'd broken her heart. But was it crueler to leave her like that, or to drag her along with him involuntarily, forever striving for the forgiveness that she'd probably never give him?

There was only one course of action he could think of: tomorrow morning, he would bring her with him on the journey back to the Valley of Peace, and then he would stop seeing her. She was a smart girl; she could find herself a job, a new life, and probably someone else to give her the emotional support she needed. That was the way it had to be, of course. He should have known better than to hope that a monster like him could win over any girl.

Maybe he had really loved her; maybe it was just an infatuation that would eventually fade. Either way, it was kinder to let her go.

…

Lanying was even more surly than usual on the way home. Yue was too intoxicated to notice that something was amiss, and Jie simply assumed that she was still upset and embarrassed over her mother's words. She didn't tell him about what she knew now. What was the point? Her parents wouldn't comfort her, they wouldn't support her, and they wouldn't even offer to help her figure out how to make things better. She knew from experience that they'd either just stand there gaping at her like idiots, or else they'd delight in her sadness, acting as if it had taught her a much-needed lesson. So she'd just play their little game, and go along with the monster that they had engaged her too.

Was this the gods' way of punishing her for finally deciding to open up to someone? Everything had been going so well, and suddenly she'd learned that the unexpectedly good turn her life had taken was just another lie. And Shen had seemed to sincere, as well! She was normally overly cautious around everyone, and she thought she'd been doubly so around a potentially insane former warlord. How had she managed to let him dupe her?

Finally reaching her parents' house, she stomped upstairs to her room without a word and changed into her sleeping robe with deliberate, robotic movements. Of course, she knew exactly what he'd done to win her over. "I'm not prejudiced against you because of your panic attacks…I have them, too," he'd said. And of course she'd fallen for it. She'd been so starved for empathy and affection, so desperate to believe that someone cared about her, that she'd left all of her common sense behind. Shen had complimented her artwork and expressed concern about her panic attack, and that had been all it had taken to get her to fall for him.

Lanying flopped down on her bed, looking around at her now-barren room. Her painting scrolls and found objects had been densely packed into the crates now stacked by the door; the few pieces of clothing she'd decided to take with her served as padding for her art supplies, save the outfit that she'd wear tomorrow. Tomorrow…

Tomorrow morning Shen would show up here again, and she would be expected to accompany him home. What would she do? She'd probably go with him, submitting herself to an all-new miserable life as the wife of a devious murderer. It couldn't be much worse than living with her parents, except for the part where he'd probably use her for his own pleasure. Then again, he'd already "used" her through manipulating her emotions. She doubted that she could get any lower than she was right now.

The idea of fighting her fate never occurred to her. Lanying had stopped fighting a long time ago, around the time that every printer in the city had rejected her prose. Her last hope for a free life had been dashed back then – she didn't believe that anything would work out this time.

She hadn't wanted to let go of her first chance of experiencing love, but nonetheless, her hands had been pried away.

…

Shen was blind. He waved a wing in front of his face and couldn't see it; he gazed around him wildly and still had no idea what his surroundings looked like. All he could guess was that he was somewhere dark, and cold, and dangerous.

The danger was something that he could feel, like an electrical current in the air. He didn't need to see any physical obstacles to know that he was in dire peril. He was exposed, unable to see, and every fiber of his body screamed at him that something was coming. Something terrible…

He heard rustling sounds all around him. Were they unintelligible whispers, or leaves and branches blowing in an intangible breeze? The noises didn't last long enough for him to figure it out. Suddenly, a solid force struck him hard in the center of his chest, and he toppled to the ground. He squinted into a strange gray light that began to pulse in front of him.

At long last, he could see again…but the sight that awaited him was hardly a comforting one. For towering high above him in a swirling mass of gray and bloody scarlet was her, the enemy who had invaded his dreams for so long. Her deep crimson eyes burned into him as she reenacted the scene he had witnessed so many times before, clasping her hands around a gleaming silver dagger as she prepared to drive it down into his heart…

And suddenly Shen realized that he wasn't dreaming anymore, because the room had slammed back into existence around him, and he was aware of the blankets tangled around his legs and the intense beating of his own heart that so often accompanied his awakening from a nightmare. But one thing hadn't changed. One detail of the dream had carried over into waking, for the first time becoming entirely and horribly real.

Lady Xuilan was standing over him, pointing a knife towards his chest.