I Sealed the Demon Lord for a Hundred Years, Now He Wants His Jailer novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Shard

Chenjue did not sleep.

He lay on his back in the great black bed, with the lanterns turned low and Wuhen's weight warm on his chest.

The white-streaked head lay under his chin.

One thin arm was flung across his ribs, and the breathing was slow and even.

He had cleaned the claw marks on Wuhen's thigh with warm water and bound them with clean linen, and Wuhen had let him.

Wuhen had said, half asleep, "Don't make a face about it."

Chenjue had not known he was making one.

Now he lay looking at the dragons on the ceiling, and he heard the sentence again.

You said you would rather rot than be saved by me.

Saved.

He did remember saying something like it.

He remembered the black hall and the roar in his ears.

He remembered the shape of a man in front of him, whose face he could not make out for the red.

He remembered a sword.

He remembered ice.

He did not remember what he had been saved from.

Wuhen shifted and murmured, and his hand slid lower on Chenjue's side.

"Mm. You're thinking."

"I'm not."

"I can hear it." His voice was thick and slow. "Stop."

"Go back to sleep."

"Can't. You're too loud."

Chenjue felt the shape of a smile against his collarbone.

He slid a hand through the long hair and let his thumb rub the base of Wuhen's skull.

Wuhen sighed, and the sleepy weight of him pressed closer.

Chenjue turned his head.

He had not said anything to the man in all those hours about the scar.

He had touched it, and kissed it, and pressed his palm over it, and every time Wuhen had gone rigid.

Tonight he slid down the bed, slowly, so as not to wake the body that lay against him.

He lifted the edge of the sheet from the left ribs.

There it was, pale and puckered, four ragged lines from armpit to hip.

It was a very old wound, and it had never healed clean.

He put his mouth to the top of it.

Wuhen's breath caught, and the hand in his hair tightened.

"Don't."

"Let me," Chenjue said.

"It's ugly."

"It's mine," Chenjue said against the skin. "I'm sorry."

He felt the whole body above him stop moving.

"What did you say?"

"I said I'm sorry. I don't know what for. I will."

He kissed down the first line, slow, and then the second, and Wuhen shivered.

"Chenjue."

"Mm," Chenjue replied.

"That's not an apology. That's a seduction."

"It can be both," Chenjue answered.

Wuhen laughed, a small, breathless laugh, and the hand in his hair pulled him up.

They kissed, slow and open, without hurry.

It was the kind of kiss Chenjue had dreamed in the dark of the seal and never once believed he would have again.

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