Sealed in the Secret Realm with My Rival novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: The Sash
"It's my lungs," Lu Baichuan said. "I breathed smoke for ten years in the forge halls. They're old."
"You're twenty-eight."
"Old lungs."
Qin Heyan stood in the hall in the grey dawn and looked at the long new crack in the sky.
It ran over the lake from the east wall to the west, black and ragged, wide as a road.
Thirteen wicks of the great lamp were dark.
He had asked one question at the lake, and Lu had answered it with "Go back inside. Please."
Qin could keep asking, and Lu could keep deflecting, and the crack would stay open.
He wanted it closed more than he wanted to be right.
"Tonight," he said.
"Tonight what?"
"You're in my bed. You do what I say."
Lu looked at him.
Something moved behind his eyes, relief and hunger and a shadow of something older.
"Yes, Young Master."
"No jokes."
"No jokes."
"And you don't leave in the night."
"I'll be tied down, will I?"
Qin took the pale blue sash from around his waist, and held it up in the light.
Lu swallowed.
That night, the lamps burned low and gold.
Lu lay on the wide bed on his back with his arms stretched over his head.
Qin knotted the sash around both wrists and looped it through the carved slats of the headboard.
He tied it in the knot he used for his sword hilt.
He checked it twice.
"Pull."
Lu pulled.
The wood creaked, and the knot held.
"Tighter than I thought," Lu said, a little breathless.
"Good," Qin said.
He kissed the inside of one tied wrist, where the pulse beat hard.
"Then this is how it goes. You don't speak unless I ask."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Sealed in the Secret Realm with My Rival are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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