Chapter 5: The Cold Pond

On the fifth night, the fever came up, and Zhiyi's hands were not enough.

She felt it the moment the pill went down.

Lei Juehan's skin went from hot to scorching, and the bed under him began to smoke.

"Get up," she said. "Up. Can you walk?"

"Yes."

"Then walk."

Behind the Thunder Hall, a pond lay in a bowl of black rock, fed all year by snowmelt from the peak.

The moon was on it, and a thin skin of ice had formed at the edges.

Zhiyi stripped to her inner shift without ceremony and walked in.

The cold hit her, and she gasped.

"Come on," she called, with her teeth chattering. "You first."

He came down the rocks slowly, in nothing but his trousers, with the tiger watching from the bank.

He stepped in to his knees, to his waist, and the pond hissed.

Steam rose around him in a white cloud.

"Better?" she said.

"No."

He let out a long, ragged breath.

"Yes. A little."

She waded to him.

The shift clung to her, and the water was up to her ribs, and she put both cool hands flat against his chest.

Under her palms, the black fern flickered red.

She held him there until his breathing slowed, and then he caught her wrists and pulled her in against him.

"You're freezing," he said.

"You're a kettle."

"I'm a kettle," he agreed, and put his mouth against her cold throat.

The heat of him was shocking against the cold of her.

His mouth moved down to the wet linen over her breast and she arched to meet it.

She had never known cold water could make her this hungry.

"The first bolt," he said against her skin.

"Don't."

"I want to tell you. You've been looking at my chest for five nights and not asking."

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