Sealed in the Secret Realm with My Rival novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Door That Wasn't

Qin Heyan broke the kiss and put both hands flat on Lu Baichuan's chest.

"No."

Lu blinked at him, lips red and wet.

"No what?"

"No more of this. Not until I understand it."

"Heyan, you just ordered me to live."

"And you will. I'm going to find a way that does not cost you wicks."

The pearl beat above them, slow and red.

Boom.

Boom-boom.

Qin looked at the veins in the roof, and at his own pale hands on Lu's scarred chest.

The lamp had run five wicks ahead on the night he tied Lu up and used frost-qi on him.

He had been thinking about it since the wall.

"My qi is cold," he said. "Yours is fire. Every time I put mine into you, something burns faster."

"That's not how it works."

"You don't know how it works. You said so."

Lu's face went still.

Qin dropped his hands and stepped back.

It was the hardest thing he had done in twenty-six years, harder than losing nine finals.

"I'll sleep in the hall," he said. "On the floor, under the lamp. I'll count the wicks every dawn, and I will think."

He walked out of the cave without looking back.

The sky was bright and pale over the pines, with a long black crack across the north.

Qin kept his eyes on the ground all the way down the slope.

He lay awake that night on the hall floor, on a folded blanket, under a hundred small flames.

Twenty-six of them were out.

He heard bare feet on the boards a long time before midnight.

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