Chapter One
647 Words
Yue woke with a pained gasp.
Outside, torrential rain hammered the earth without mercy. Damp cold seeped into her bones. A warm, sticky sensation lingered on her fingertips—as if she'd just touched thick blood.
She'd dreamed of Luo again.
The boy had looked at her with tear-bright eyes, as if he might break down any second.
Then, in the next instant, a dagger appeared in his hand. Without a flicker of hesitation, he drove it into her chest.
Yue had deceived him.
She'd promised to marry him—then vanished the night before their wedding.
Even now, the memory of that night was seared behind her eyelids.
Piles of white bone.
Flesh stripped away by gu insects.
Blood soaking into the ground.
And Luo, standing atop a mountain of corpses, smiling with terrible innocence.
Since that day, the nightmares had never stopped.
The obedient boy she once knew bared his fangs and devoured her, over and over, until nothing—not even a shard of bone—remained.
Each time, he asked the same question.
"Why did you lie to me?"
Sunlight sliced through her eyelids.
Yue's eyes snapped open.
She couldn't remember falling asleep.
"Sister."
The voice came from close—too close, his breath brushing her neck rather than her ear.
Yue's spine turned to ice.
It was the same voice that had hunted her through every nightmare these past few days.
She turned sharply.
Luo was there.
He lay beside her, watching her with an expression on the verge of tears.
...Was she still dreaming?
She closed her eyes again, willing it to be true.
"Sister, why are you in a place like this? I've been looking everywhere for you."
As he spoke, he reached for a strand of hair fallen across her chest—an old, familiar habit—and wound it lazily around his finger.
Yue stared only at his fingertips.
Waiting for the dream to shatter.
"You still won't answer me."
His voice dropped lower.
A cloying, sweet weight pressed into her ears.
Yue said nothing. She tried to turn away.
In the next instant, a cold arm locked around her waist and yanked her back.
His chest pressed hot against her spine. His breath scorched her neck.
The grip was a serpent's coil, tightening around its prey.
She could barely breathe.
"Why did you abandon me?"
His voice sounded on the edge of breaking—yet beneath it lay something ice-cold.
Irritation flared in Yue. She fought to wrench his arm loose.
In the struggle, he yanked her hair hard.
"Ah—!"
Pain.
This wasn't a dream.
The realization drained the blood from her face.
Luo had found her.
She opened her mouth to demand answers.
But before she could speak, a flicker of gold caught the edge of her vision.
The gu box at his waist.
Inside it, a golden insect surfaced for one heartbeat.
The Golden Silkworm Gu.
Yue's breath stopped.
Her mind went white.
Only one person in the Miao borderlands could command the Golden Silkworm Gu.
The Gu King.
Merciless.
A demon who reveled in s*******r.
The rumors surged back all at once.
And then she remembered.
That day—the m******e. The flicker of joy she'd seen in Luo's eyes as the village burned.
It hadn't been her imagination.
His obedience.
His gentleness.
His care.
All of it, a lie.
Thud.
Thud.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
Yue held her breath.
Before her eyes, the last trace of tears drained from Luo's gaze.
In its place, a darkness with no bottom.
Without a word, he calmly tucked the Golden Silkworm Gu back into its box.
Then he lifted his face.
His stare was direct.
Deep.
Sharp enough to cut straight to her soul.
The familiar mask of the boy she'd known peeled away, piece by piece.
Nothing of him was left.
- Writer
