Hidden beneath the shadow of his hat, his blue eyes looked down at me, the rims of his eyes reddened and his breathing heavy, as if he had been riding through the snowstorm for hours, with ice accumulating on his cloak. We stared at each other for a moment, frozen in place. His gaze moved from the top down, inch by inch, as if inspecting me, finally landing on the person who was uncomfortable in my arms.
“Saint, Saint Lord, His Majesty has fainted.”
“I can see that, no need for your reminder.” His voice was cold, each word like ice shards falling to the ground. I shivered involuntarily as he knelt down, grabbing the king’s throat with one hand. I was taken aback, but then I saw him bite his finger, drawing blood, and pressing it to the king’s lips.
After feeding him the blood, he grabbed a handful of snow and wiped away the remaining blood on the king’s lips.
“Don’t tell him about this.”
“Wh-why?” I recalled the king’s words earlier, but now it seemed that wasn’t the case. The Saint Lord didn’t appear to be indifferent to his brother’s life or death. It seemed the king had been harboring misunderstandings toward him, while the Saint Lord seemed unwilling to explain.
The Saint Lord didn’t answer. He simply placed the king onto the back of the larger wolf, removed his cloak, and covered him with it, fastening it with a belt.
With a sharp slap to the wolf’s rear, the wolf swiftly carried the king away.
“Does this wolf know the way?” I asked curiously.
“It’s a wolf I raised, of course it knows the way. It even recognizes people and values relationships, much better than a certain person.”
I felt a pang in my heart, thinking that the “certain person” he referred to must be me. I remembered how the snow wolf seemed to recognize me earlier. Sometimes, these beasts with human-like instincts had better memory than people. A lingering doubt rose in my heart once more.
Could it be that there was truly some past entanglement between me, the Saint Lord, and the King?
Was I once someone from the palace?
Seeing the Saint Lord checking the surroundings of the other tents one by one, seemingly looking for any survivors, I hurriedly followed. However, after checking around, we didn’t find a single living person. It seemed that when the avalanche occurred, everyone, except for the king, had been outside. The reason I survived might have been because the wolf found me in time.
“Saint Lord… If it weren’t for your wolf, I probably…” Seeing the frozen corpses he dragged out, I couldn’t help but feel a surge of fear.
“They died because of me,” he said softly. “If it weren’t for my skill in setting up the campsite, they wouldn’t have sounded the horn and caused the avalanche.”
“What were you here for at that time?” I thought of the large bird that had entered the tent and saved me, and an absurd guess began to form in my mind. He glanced at me sideways, his lips pressed tightly together, his jawline faintly shifting, as if he was gritting his teeth, but he didn’t say a word.
He buried the bodies with snow, kneeling and pressing his hand on the snow. Then, he bowed three times, forming a gesture over his chest and muttering words under his breath. I guessed he was performing a ritual to help guide the souls of the dead, so I also knelt and followed his lead. By the time we finished, the sky had turned completely dark.
It was already very cold by evening, and now it was even colder, biting to the bone. Fortunately, the heater could still be used. The outer layer of the collapsed tent had frozen and could no longer be set up again, and the inside was so small that only one person could fit. The Saint Lord placed the heater inside, glanced at me, and seeing that I hesitated, he furrowed his brow and said, “What are you waiting for? Hurry up and go in.”
“What… about you?”
My wrist suddenly tightened, and before I could react, I was dragged into the tent and firmly trapped in his arms. I was at a loss and struggled for a while, but he held me tightly by the waist.
“Saint Lord?”
“What’s wrong? Didn’t you and His Majesty hug each other like this just now? When it becomes me, you can’t adapt to it anymore?” He stared at me and asked word by word.
“I, His Majesty’s and I were just trying to keep warm just now.” I explained to him subconsciously, but his fingers on my waist were clasping harder and harder, almost tearing through my thin robe.
“Aren’t you and I the same?” He said in a deep voice, “If you don’t want to freeze to death at night, just hold tight.”
I shrank my hands shyly, not daring to do what he said, but he grabbed my hands and forcibly clasped them around his waist. My nose was filled with a cool and subtle fragrance mixed with a pleasant masculine scent, and my heart was pounding. I dared not look up at the eyes of the Saint Lord nearby, so I had to lower my eyelashes, but I could clearly feel his gaze as real as substance, falling heavily on my face.
“How did you get this scar? After you left me that night, you have not been seen for the past fourteen years. I sent people to look for you but couldn’t find you. Where did you go? What did you go through? Tonight, you and I are alone. We have plenty of time. Tell me everything. I want to know everything.”
“I…” I was speechless for a moment. I had no memory of my past fourteen years ago, nor did I remember what happened between him and me. There was no evidence to prove that I was the person he knew, but my intuition made me want to believe it.
As I was hesitating, my chin was pinched, forcing me to look up: “Speak.”
I was frightened by his eyes, and my tongue was tied: “I, I don’t remember. Saint, Saint Lord, to be honest, my brain was damaged before, and I lost some memories. Even if we really knew each other, I can’t remember it anymore. Saint Lord, please don’t make it difficult for me…”
The hand pinching my chin froze.
His pupils shrank and his eyelashes trembled: “How did you damage your brain?”
“The, the physician said that I was hit by a rock in the river…” My head started to hurt again. I raised my hand to hit my head, but my neck was grabbed and my head was pressed against his chest.
“How did you fall into the river?”
I shook my head: “No, I also don’t know. I don’t remember anything that happened before.”
The hand on the back of my neck suddenly tightened, fingers embedded in my hair, and a drop of hot liquid fell on the center of my forehead, slid down the tip of my nose, and landed on my lips. I licked it subconsciously, it was salty. I was startled, raised my eyelids, the Saint Lord had his eyes closed, and his thick eyelashes were wet.
He is crying.
“Saint Lord!” Why is he crying? I was panicked and instinctively raised my hand to wipe his tears, but I saw him lower his head, and my lips were covered by something hot and soft.
My mind went blank for a moment, and when I felt the stinging pain of being bitten on my lips and teeth, I finally reacted — the Saint Lord was kissing me!
I instinctively reached out to push him away, but my hands were held tightly and pressed to my sides. The force from his lips also increased, prying my teeth apart and being fiercely entangled by his tongue. My mouth was filled with the taste of blood, I couldn’t breathe, and my head hurt as if a trapped beast was running rampant. I was a little dazed, and when I separated my lips and tongue from his, my face was already covered with tears.
“You are lying to me, aren’t you?” He asked again, “You haven’t forgotten me, have you?”
“I didn’t, ugh, didn’t lie. I dare not deceive the Saint Lord…” The pain was unbearable. I groaned with difficulty and looked at him with tears in my eyes. Against the light, I couldn’t see his expression, I could only smell his heavy breathing.
“Forget it…whatever…” He murmured, “Whether you’ve forgotten or not, you appear in front of me again, I will never let you go.”
His voice was low and full of madness, which reminded me of the smile when he fed blood to those priests in front of me. My heart skipped a beat, he won’t let me go? In other words, he won’t let me leave the palace? When I thought about never seeing my adoptive father again and remembered him shouting at me at the top of his lungs and chasing after me before he left, I panicked: “Maybe, Saint Lord, maybe I’m not the person you know, but I just look a little similar… Oh, I seem to have some impression! My father and I used to live by the sea and have never been to the royal city, so it’s impossible for us to know you, Saint Lord-Saint Lord, you should look…”
I finished talking nonsense, but he just stared at me silently. The air was frozen, and there was a dead silence.
After a long time, I saw him slowly raise the corners of his lips, and his blue eyes smiled darkly.
“First, you said you forgot, but now you have some impression. Which of your words is true?”
His gaze sent chills down my spine, and I shrank back, speaking incoherently, “I couldn’t remember it before, but after Saint Lord’s question just now, I remembered a little. I swear, I didn’t mean to lie to you. Saint Lord must have recognized the wrong person. After I finish painting the portraits of you and Shengzun, please be merciful and let me leave the palace…”
He stared at me, his eyes were bloodshot, and his teeth seemed to be about to break from gritting: “So, just now, you lied to me again?”
The big hands that were clasping my waist tore my clothes, as if they wanted to crush my spine. I shook my head and wanted to explain, but he suddenly grabbed my neck and pushed me down on the snow.
“Saint Lord!” I screamed in fear. I felt that his eyes were murderous, and I struggled instinctively. But the tent was small, and I had no way to avoid him. He pressed me down.
He was kissing my lips and neck madly. My clothes were torn open, exposing my chest to the cold air. I shivered with the cold. I felt him stop moving and saw him staring at my chest. I lowered my eyes and saw an ambiguous tooth mark on my right chest near the nipple.
—That was left by the king.
“Saint Lord? You still dare to call me Saint Lord?” He said hoarsely, looking up at me with bloodshot eyes.
I had a bad feeling in my heart, and I covered the tooth mark in panic. He pressed my hand into the snow again. He lowered his head, and a sharp pain suddenly hit my chest!
“Ah!”
I cried out in pain and twisted my body wildly, but he held my waist tightly, and he bit the tooth marks like a beast. His hand went down my spine and reached into my pants. I shuddered, my waist bounced up, and I kicked desperately: “Saint Lord, I am not, I am not, please forgive me…”
The tent, which was already tilted, shook after I kicked it, and it collapsed and fell on him.
The Saint Lord groaned, obviously in pain, and propped himself up, curled up his ten fingers that were supporting my head, dug into the snow, and took a deep breath. At this time, with an “awoo”, a huge wolf head got into the gap between our bodies, licking my and his cheeks randomly, shivering. Obviously, it was unable to bear the cold outside the tent as well.
I hugged this life-saving straw and looked at him with tears in my eyes: “Saint, Saint Lord, please let it in. Look, it is shivering. If it stays outside overnight, it will probably freeze to death.”
The Saint Lord stood up with a cold face and pulled me onto his lap, so the snow wolf had to squeeze beside us. The tent was narrow, and I moved to make some space for it, but my butt hit a hot, hard object. As a man, I immediately realized what it was and froze.
“Saint, Saint Lord…”
“Don’t move.” He gritted his teeth and said harshly.
“Uh, um.”
Thinking of his crazy behavior just now, I dared not do anything rash, so I just sat there quietly.
Curled up in his arms, I secretly wiped away my tears and also dared not say a single word.
