The Goddess Who Sealed Him Is His Maid Now novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: What She Remembered

"I think I tied the thread," Luan said.

Cangjue stared at her.

They were in the cavern under the laundry, still wet, with the lamp burning low on the ledge.

His arms were still around her.

"Say that again."

She made herself keep looking at him.

"A name came with the knot."

His face did not change.

It was the stillness that frightened her.

"Say it."

She had not said it aloud yet.

It sat at the back of her mind, and she put it into her mouth carefully.

"Bai Qingluan."

The arms around her went away.

He stood up out of the water, naked and enormous.

For a moment he looked like what the kitchen girls had always said he was.

His eyes burned red.

"The Lady of the Frost Moon," he said.

"I think so."

"The goddess who sealed me."

"I think so. I don't know why. I don't know anything else. I only know the knot."

He turned and walked up the steps.

The lamp guttered in the draft of his passing, and a cracked line ran up the stone behind him.

Luan sat in the water.

She did not call after him.

At the top of the stairs he stopped, with his back to her and his hands curled.

"You laughed with me," he said. "You came into my bed. You said you wanted me."

"I did. I do."

"You were her."

"I didn't know."

"Qingluan." He spat the name.

"Nine hundred years ago you looked at me, and then you drove a thread through my heart."

"I'm not asking you to forgive it."

"Good."

"I'm not asking for anything. Take the thread. It's yours."

She held it out in the water, the loose gold end shining in her palm.

"Take it and pull, if you want. I won't stop you."

She waited.

"Or leave it. Whatever you decide."

He didn't take it.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he walked out, and the door at the top of the stair slammed so hard that the water shook.

She dressed alone.

She went up through the dark courtyards to her own little room at the end of the maids' row.

The other girls never came there, because they thought she was cursed.

She lay down on her bunk in her wet shift and stared at the ceiling.

No tears came.

Her chest was as silent as ever, and she felt, for the first time, what it was to be empty.

It was worse than before.

Before, she hadn't known what she was missing.

The door opened at midnight.

She did not hear him come.

She only knew when the room went dark.

He stood in the doorway, and his broad shoulders blocked the lantern light in the corridor.

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