That sounded heavenly just then. “I think you’re definitely overdue for a preening.”
“I know I am. And I’d be glad to have your hands on me, wife.” He gave a truly outrageous waggle of his eyebrows.
Sniggering, she smacked him on the arm. “Stop, I’m trying to eat. Let’s do some shopping, too, though. My boots are done in after today.”
“Mine, too. Those rocks were sharp enough to cut feet to ribbons.”
“Truly.”
Shopping with him and preening sounded blissfully domestic. Easy, simple, what her sore heart needed. Shunlei was ever easy to be around, his mild-mannered nature a pleasure to spend time with. Mei Li looked forward to tomorrow.
She blinked a little, tilting her head to look at him from another angle.
Catching the look, Shunlei asked, “What?”
“No, nothing. Sometimes I look at you and I think your skin is changing to green.”
“I’m not old enough for that yet.”
“I know. It’s just sometimes, a trick of the light. Like now, it almost looks that way.” She shook the idea off with a smile.
He smiled too, but the manner was sad. Because he knew, as well as she, that the odds of her seeing him with all of his different skin tones was nonexistent.
And he was right, but not for the reasons he assumed. Mei Li would only see him like this, as a Red, and again as a Black. She’d miss seeing him mature through each stage. It brought a pang to her heart. It would have been so fun to mature with him, instead of skipping ahead and forcing him to wait for her.
But that, too, was a thought for another time. Right now, she only wanted to eat and sit with him. To bask in a victory and know she finally had the answers for the future.
Tonight, she could just spend her time with him.
The time-traveling spell seemed to be taking its own sweet time. She shopped all of the next day with Shunlei, and preened him, and nothing happened. Mei Li got tired of mentally bracing every moment to go, so she finally gave up and relaxed. It would happen when it happened.
People were so tired they didn’t venture far from the inn, most choosing to lay about, drink, or nap. She herself wasn’t much better. But when Hawes approached her in the main room the next morning, she deciphered his expression easily.
“Trouble?” she asked, already resigned.
“Not bad, from the sound of it. A brace of imps has gotten into the bakery down the street, and any attempts to trap them have failed. The owners have asked for aid.”
All things considered, she could do that.
“I’ll go ahead and lay down a restraining barrier around the building while you round people up. This is more than a one-man job.”
“Blighters are quick on their feet.”
Hawes’ expression was sour indeed. But then, they’d run into imps many times, and a man of his size didn’t exactly move quickly.
“Unfortunately.”
Mei Li heaved herself up to her feet and headed out the door. The bakery down the street could only mean one place, and it wasn’t far at all. Maybe she could talk them into a sweet roll or two as her reward.
The bakery had all the signs of an imp invasion—bread and flour covered the floor, and the poor couple that ran the place looked ready to tear their hair out. Mei Li soothed them with the promise of more help coming, told them she’d get a barrier up to trap the imps, and herded them outside so they didn’t get caught in the mix. She then put two talismans up at the front, came around the side alley, put two up on each corner there, and went around back.
The alley back here was quiet and damply cool, the sun not hitting much of this area in the morning. Mei Li felt a funny sort of sensation and she paused, feeling wobbly. Had she eaten something that didn’t agree with her?
Mei Li felt that strange sensation in her gut again, like a hook was embedded in her stomach, and it was the only warning she had before she was jerked forward. She swore viciously as it happened, because she hadn’t even said goodbye to Shun and—wind and stars, she didn’t even want to think of what that had done to her husband, having her suddenly disappear. The letter she’d written in preparation for this moment seemed wholly inadequate.
Five thousand years. Five thousand years with only that letter to explain anything. The only thing he’d have to hold onto. Why hadn’t she written him a book? Why had she let them fall in love at all? Leaving him for five thousand years to wait on his own was the cruelest thing she’d ever done. And to someone she loved more than anything, which made it so much worse.
Pain twisted in her chest, so bright and vicious it brought tears to her eyes. She felt them fall onto her cheeks as she burst through, her balance upset once more as she was thrown out of one time period and back into another. This time, she kept her feet, although it took some fancy footwork to manage it. The room wasn’t exactly familiar—it looked like every other inn room she’d stayed in. It seemed quiet, with no noise about and very little to help orient her. Was she back in the room she’d left from a decade ago?
Then she saw him—Shunlei was no longer Red. His skin was ebony black, dark hair in a loose waterfall over one shoulder, looking precisely as he had when she first left for the past.
Shunlei sat in a chair near the bed, his head down at first. A book had been in his hand, but at her entrance, he let it fall carelessly to the floor as he bolted up to his feet. The hope on his face was devastating to her already mangled heart.
“Mei?”
That only made her cry harder, to hear him address her as he had five thousand years ago. The tears were blinding; she could barely see him through them, and still she reached for him.
“Shun. Beloved, I’m sorry for leaving you like that, I’m so sorry, you waited so long for me—”
He lunged for her, crossing the distance in a split second, his arms latching around her strongly. She held him just as fiercely, burying her face in his shoulder.
“Shh,” he soothed her, stroking her hair in a gentle caress. “I knew what had happened the moment I couldn’t find you. Your letter helped a great deal. Although it broke the rules for you to tell me when to expect you.”
“It was too cruel to make you guess.” As it was, she’d left it semi-vague so as not to violate the rules completely. She’d read of an instance when the world’s history had completely changed because of one innocuous statement. Mei Li couldn’t risk that.
Still, her heart hurt as she lifted her head again. She cupped Shunlei’s cheek and leaned in. Shunlei gasped as Mei Li pressed their lips together. It sounded like a sob, and Mei Li almost pulled back, worried—but then Shunlei’s hands tightened around her, impossibly so, and yanked her into him, and Mei Li was kissed like she’d never been kissed in her life. Hungry, needy, Shunlei’s mouth searing against hers. Mei Li’s knees went weak as he kissed her raw, like he was filling Mei Li with the taste of him. It was all she could do to let her back collide against a wall before her legs refused to support her altogether. Shunlei held her as if he could make her stay there, with him, forever.
And this time, she’d do her best to make sure that happened. She would not leave him a second time.
They lost their heads, clothes yanked out of the way, both of them fumbling as they tumbled onto the nearby bed. Shunlei was not as gentle as he normally was with her, but she could hardly blame him, not after five thousand years of repressed passion. She hadn’t a single complaint, just gave into him with abandon, and it eased the heartbreak still thrumming through her like a heartbeat.
It was new, in a way she hadn’t expected. Because he was different now, the scars on his body collected in the time since he was a Red. The nuance of how they came together was different, too. It was like he relearned her with every touch, every caress, matching memory with reality. She retaliated whole-heartedly, enjoying riling him up in a way she hadn’t been able to do for him in five thousand years.
Shunlei certainly had no complaints.
Collapsing in a panting, sweaty pile
of limbs, she lay pressed up against his side, still vibrating with aftershocks of pleasure. Breathing out slowly, she tried to get her heartbeat back under control. The heart under her ear beat just as fast.
Shunlei’s hand was back in her hair, stroking it, twining parts of it through his fingers. It made her smile, as he’d done that back then, too. It brought to mind all the other things he’d done since she’d met him the “first” time, and a snort escaped her.
“What?” he asked her. His tone was lazy and content.
“I just remembered all the things that puzzled me at first about you. How you knew my exact sizes. What my favorite foods were. All my habits. It was very confusing. I couldn’t figure out how you knew.”
He chuckled a little as well, turning his head to rest against the top of hers. “I knew I should curb those instincts, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.”
“I noticed.” Picking up his hand, she stroked the ring on his left hand. “Is this the same one you wore back then?”
“Yes.”
She tilted her head up to stare at him incredulously. “That ring lasted five thousand years?”
“I didn’t wear it,” Shunlei explained with a casual shrug, the movement shifting the pillow behind him. “I had replicas made, and wore the replicas until they were too bent out of shape or warped to wear. I kept the ring safe until you left for the past.”
“That…makes much more sense. I haven’t asked, but how long was I gone?”
“Three days.”
Three days. Ten years. It didn’t seem at all logical. “Do I look any older?”
“No. You look precisely the way you did when you left. That always confused me in the past, when we first were married. I kept expecting to see some little sign of change or age. Humans age quickly, I knew that, but your appearance stayed perfectly the same. It was only after I understood that you’d time traveled back to me that it made sense.”
“I’m vain enough to be glad about that.”
That amused him, too. She felt the silent laughter more than she heard it.
Very, very reluctantly, he asked, “Should we get up, tell the others you’re back?”
Mei Li rolled so that she sat on top of him, keeping him firmly against the bed. She didn’t feel emotionally up to facing everyone else and their questions yet. What with her abrupt return into the present, she needed a bit more time before she would feel settled.
And her husband deserved a little more of her time, now that they’d been reunited. Leaning in, she murmured, “I’m not done with you yet.”
Mei Li woke up the next morning feeling very out of joint with the world. She lay there for a long moment, trying to get her bearings. It took a second longer than it should have to recognize the room, to remember that she was no longer five thousand years in the past. That she was now solidly in the present once more. The people she had just lost were now long dead. The battle she had just won, the victory of it so fresh in her mind’s eye, was now something tattered and old, something she would have to fight once more.
And soon.
It felt odd to the extreme to be in her own skin.
A hand—one she knew well—reached out and settled on her stomach.
“You’ve got an interesting face just now, wife.”
“I bet it’s a good one.” Mei Li turned her head to look at Shunlei, who was still comfortably stretched out beside her on the bed. And that was incredibly jarring, too. “I’m not quite steady in the present yet. It’s all still settling in my head. It’s odd to realize that what was just yesterday to me is something that happened thousands of years ago. It’s odd to look at you and see black skin instead of red.”
“I bet,” he agreed with an understanding smile.
“Did you go through something like this when I came to you at Dragon’s Peak?”
“Stunningly similar, I imagine. Time was very much out of joint for me that first day. Here was the wife I’d anticipated for thousands of years, someone I’d missed dearly—but it wasn’t her. For all that it looked like her, this woman didn’t know me. Seeing her brought back memories that I’d half forgotten. I felt like my head was spinning the first three days you were with me, one of my feet in the past, another in the present.”
“That is a very good analogy for how it feels. And it’s been long enough I’m not sure if I even know what’s going on here. When I left, Bai, Gen, and Leah were all badly burned. Your hands were scorched and barely usable. Rone and Huan stayed to help with the injured. Everyone else went ahead to help with Zaffi until I could catch up with the answers. And…Prince Pari was here to talk with us all. Has any of that changed?”
“No, that’s the state of things. After you left, I called for more dragons to aid those who are stationed with Zaffi. But not much else has changed.” He looked her over carefully, words slow. “Do you feel ready to go and join them?”
“I don’t think lying here is going to make anything better, if that’s what you’re asking. And we don’t have time to waste. Zaffi and Odom are perilously close to breaking free as it is.”
Mei Li also hoped that getting back into the swing of things would help her settle back into this time.
Abe had always said it this way: When all else fails, choose action. Inaction never helped anything.
It seemed as good advice as any just then.
So, she got up, dressed in clothes of today’s style—another form of minor whiplash—and ate a quick breakfast of tea and fruit. Doing that helped a little more to settle her mentally in this time period. She had things here that hadn’t been available in the past. The clothing style alone reinforced things.
Then she lightly slapped her cheeks, mentally gearing up to rejoin the world. Right. Time to go.
Shunlei had called for a meeting to bring everyone back up to speed. It was in the same room where she’d met them all before leaving—the only empty room available for this purpose. Someone had set it up for a meeting, with tea and food laid out on the table—a mid-morning snack of fruits and water biscuits. It felt incredibly strange to walk back into this room, seeing the same people gathered as before. Another moment that felt very out of joint for her. Mei Li was so used to meeting up with her old friends, of coming into a room with Hawes, Melchior, Kiyo, Nord, and Kare that not seeing them at the table threw her for a loop. She suddenly missed them fiercely, even as she knew she had no hope of ever spending time with them again.
And now, now she had to figure out how to reconnect to her present friends. People she hadn’t spent time with in a decade. Mei Li had stood precisely in this room while arguing with Huan, Rone, and Prince Pari about time traveling. It had only been three days ago.
Ten years.
Time was out of joint—she felt it keenly and was grateful she had her hand tucked into Shunlei’s elbow. It was unnerving enough that she felt her equilibrium thrown off entirely. To them, likely nothing was different, except people were a little better healed now.
To her, the entire world had changed.
She looked up at her husband, saw his returning smile. So different, in many ways. Her Shun wasn’t copper-red but ebony black, an elder of the dragons, and well respected among all the countries. He was no longer the young man with incredible goals and determination; he was the man who had succeeded in those goals and realized them. Mei Li had to wrap her head around it all and felt like it would take a good year for her to really marry the two men together.
What helped were his eyes. Those crystal blue eyes looking down at her were the same, filled with the same love and pride they’d always had—a love that five thousand years had done absolutely nothing to diminish. It was incredible in every sense, and Mei Li felt her heart squeeze every time she met those eyes.
Did anyone else see it? Did anyone else look at them and realize things had radically changed in the past three days? Mei Li was about to find out.
“You’re back!” Rone greeted with surprise. “And you’re intact!”
&
nbsp; “Thank gods for that,” Huan put in, her heart-shaped face scrunching up a little. She looked Mei Li over with a sort of motherly disapproval. It was that fine line of how could you and at least you lived. “I still heartily disagree with you using that spell. But you’re unharmed? Nothing dire happened?”
A roll of memories of how many times she was in danger and injured flashed through Mei Li’s head. No, all of that was best not mentioned here. And it was odd, having to defend herself. She knew they were friends, but to her, the friendship almost felt estranged. Which made sense on her part, with the ten-year absence.
“I’m hale and hearty, as you can see.”
Rone also seemed to be walking that fine line between disapproval and relief. She lifted up immediately, her purple skirts flaring as she rushed over to give Mei Li a quick hug as she demanded, “Did you succeed? You have the records copied?”
Mei Li had to laugh, although it was a bit pained. “I almost forgot. That was my original goal, wasn’t it?”
Rone pulled back and gave her an odd look. “You didn’t do that?”
“The time-traveling spell had a different idea for me, it seems. I went much farther back.”
Mei Li felt like tea was called for. She was parched, and this conversation would definitely take a while, so she’d best fortify herself now. She went for the table, pouring herself a hearty cup, put more sugar into it than usual, and drank it straight down before filling another cup.
Rone followed her to the table, but it was Huan who demanded, “Then how far back did you go?”
“Five thousand years,” she answered.
Shunlei pulled a chair from the table for her, and she took it while giving him a smile. Ever the gentleman, her husband.
Huan spluttered, golden eyes consuming her face. “FIVE THOUSAND?!”
“Yes, something of a surprise. For some of us, at least.” Mei Li gave Shunlei a speaking look that promised they would have words about that later. Many, many words.
He grinned back at her. “I did warn you.”
“No. No, you did not,” she returned levelly. “And you’re going to pay for that, I promise you.”
Master of Tomes Page 2