Chapter 014 · Thunder
271 Words
He spurred his mithril-steed through double ranks of bowing servants, sent honorifics crackling like thunder: “Your Highness, welcome home!”
In a sudden lash, he cracked his riding crop across the helmet of a trembling maid. “Begone!” he snarled, summoning the guard captain.
Within the inner chambers, Qingxia lay pale and ragged upon her bed. At the c***k of the door, she uttered a single challenge: “Then slay me here beside my servants!”
Prince Chu flung off his breastplate in fury. “You mock me, do you? Do you not fear death?”
She fixed him with hollow eyes. “Would you threaten your own life to keep me?”
He roared and struck the bedpost—wood splintered beneath his fists—and then, as though aged by centuries in moments, he settled over her.
The dawn found Qingxia gone. Cloaked in black, dagger at hip, she melted into the capital’s moonlit streets, heading east toward the fortress walls once more.
Night’s final veil lifted as the moon emerged from scudding clouds, spilling silver over the silent avenues of Shengdu. A city normally free to roam after dark now observed a curfew—war drums neared, and fear danced in every lantern-lit window.
Within this ancient capital’s eastern quarter rose the grim bulk of the royal dungeons. Here, only guards and hounds patrolled—no magic sensors awaited Qingxia’s craft. She knelt at the fortress base, measuring the masonry by touch. Its height—fifteen meters—suggested impossible ascent. But at the far corner stood a thirty-meter-high mast, its pennon bearing Chu’s golden phoenix.
- Writer
