The Sect Leader's New Daughter Has Her Hands on My Hips novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Clause

Yuxi waited until the sect lamps went out, then took the heir's key from its hook.

The Oath Hall was black and cold, and the wall of tablets smelled of old wood and old blood.

She lit one candle and carried it down the row to the newest tablet.

Her father was not here to step in front of it.

She held the flame close and read the second line.

It was short, in small red characters, and it said what her father had not.

At twenty-four the oath is renewed in blood or it lapses.

If renewed, it is held for life.

The sworn child may not leave the mountain, and may not marry out of the sect.

The mark on her wrist burns at the gate.

The last words were worn almost smooth: release by the Book of Debts, ninth clause.

Yuxi read it three times.

Then the candle shook in her hand, and she realized her hand was the one shaking.

"A small ceremony," she said, to the dark. "A drop of blood."

She blew out the flame and ran.

Wanning opened the cottage door in her sleeping robe with her sword already in her fist.

"What?"

"I read the tablet."

Wanning's face did not change.

She stepped back, and Yuxi came in, and the door shut.

Yuxi told her in six flat sentences.

When she finished, the only sound was the lamp.

"For life," Wanning said.

"For life."

"I could never leave."

"No."

"I could never take my mother and go. I would walk to the south gate and my own wrist would burn me back."

"Yes."

Wanning set the sword down on the table, very carefully.

Then she swept the whole table clear with her arm.

The lamp, the teapot, the cups and the sword all crashed to the floor.

"He smiled at me," she said, in a voice Yuxi had never heard. "He put his hand on my mother's shoulder and smiled at me."

"Wanning."

"And you stood there."

Yuxi flinched.

"I stood in front of that tablet and I did not read it, because he stepped in front of it."

"I know."

"You are his heir. You were raised in this house."

"I know."

"Say it, then."

"I should have read it the first day," Yuxi said. "I'm sorry."

Wanning crossed the room in three steps and seized the front of her robe.

For a breath Yuxi thought she would be struck, and found that she wanted it.

Instead Wanning kissed her, with teeth.

It was not a kiss with any tenderness in it.

It was furious and hard, and it split Yuxi's lip against her own teeth, and she tasted blood and made a sound.

"Get on the bed," Wanning said against her mouth.

"Wanning..."

"Now."

Yuxi walked backward until her knees hit the frame, and Wanning shoved her down.

She landed on the quilts on her back with her robe falling open.

Wanning stood over her, breathing hard, with her fists at her sides.

"Take it off."

Yuxi tore the sash free and threw it aside.

She pulled the robe from her shoulders, and the undershirt over her head, and lay bare to the waist with her breasts rising and falling.

"All of it."

She lifted her hips and shoved the trousers down and kicked them away.

She was already wet.

She had been wet since the door, and she was ashamed of it, and Wanning saw it at once.

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