Chapter 2: Steam and Defiance
The Sunset Wing’s bathhouse was a vault of quiet, broken only by the soft drip of water from a carved spout. Steam rose in lazy curls, catching the light of a dozen floating lotus candles and making the air taste of jasmine and wet stone. Taichi sank into the milky, heated water up to his waist, his head tilted back against the porcelain rim. The golden chains from his performance lay in a careless, gleaming heap on the marble floor beside the pool, discarded like a snake’s shed skin.
He heard the heavy door slide open, a whisper of wood on stone, but didn’t open his eyes. He’d been expecting him.
Emperor Van’s footsteps were measured, solid, the sound of soft-soled boots on damp marble. The steam seemed to part for him. Taichi felt the shift in the air, the displacement of pressure as the most powerful man in the empire came to stand at the edge of his bath.
Only then did Taichi lift his lids, his brown eyes meeting Van’s piercing blue through the haze. A droplet of water traced a path from his temple down the column of his throat, over his collarbone, and vanished into the opaque water.
“You summoned me,” Van said, his voice a low rumble that filled the steamy space. It wasn’t a question.
“You said you would send for me,” Taichi corrected gently, his painted lips curving. “I merely assumed ‘send for’ meant ‘come to my bath before the water grows cold.’ It’s more efficient.”
A muscle in Van’s jaw twitched. No one corrected him. No one. He should have been furious. Instead, he felt a spark of that same bright heat from the pavilion. He crouched down, bringing himself eye-level with the young man in the water. Up close, without the glitter and the crowd, Taichi’s beauty was less theatrical, more disarming. His skin was smooth, bearing a few faint, silvery scars—tales of a life before chains. His shoulders were surprisingly broad for his slender frame.
“You’re impertinent,” Van observed, not unkindly.
“I’ve been called worse,” Taichi replied with a shrug that made the water ripple. “Usually by better men.”
Van’s bark of laughter surprised them both, echoing off the marble. “You think there are better men than me?”
“I didn’t say that.” Taichi lifted a hand from the water, examining his nails—still dusted with the rose-gold powder from his dance. “I said they were the ones who called me names. Their opinion of their own superiority is not necessarily fact.” He glanced at Van. “You, for instance, don’t seem to need to call me anything. You just look. It’s much more honest.”
Van reached out, stopping just before his fingers could touch the droplet on Taichi’s throat. He let his hand hover there, feeling the heat from the water, from Taichi’s skin. “And what do you see when you look at me?”
Taichi’s gaze didn’t waver. “A man who is very good at playing emperor. Who is bored with his own game. Who saw something today that didn’t follow his rules, and who is now wondering if he wants to break it or play with it.”
The accuracy was like a needle to a nerve. Van’s hand finally made contact, his thumb brushing away the droplet. The skin was impossibly warm. “You think you’re a toy?”
“I know what I was sent here as.” Taichi’s voice dropped, lost its teasing edge for a moment. “A diversion. A beautiful thing to momentarily capture the attention of a jaded eye. I’m good at that.”
“And if I want more than a momentary diversion?”
“Then you’ll have to decide,” Taichi said, his eyes flicking down to Van’s lips and then back up, “if you’re here for a dance, a song, or just a warm body.”
Van’s control, a thing of iron and will, frayed at the edges. He stood abruptly, casting a long shadow over Taichi in the water. “I told you at the pavilion. I intend to unravel you. Layer by layer.” He began to undo the complex fastenings of his own outer robe, the heavy imperial silk embroidered with constellations. “Starting,” he said, letting the garment fall to the wet floor with a soft, disrespectful thud, “with that sharp tongue of yours.”
Taichi watched him, his expression unreadable. He didn’t look away as Van stripped off the rest of his clothing, revealing a body as formidable as his reputation—powerful, scarred from old battles, pale where Taichi was bronzed. Van stepped into the bath, the water sloshing heavily, and sank down opposite him.
The space between them in the large pool was suddenly intimate, charged. The scent of jasmine clung to Taichi, mingling with the clean, masculine smell of Van’s skin.
“So,” Taichi said after a long moment, his light tone returning. “Unraveling. Is this the part where you ask me about my tragic past? My lost family? The cruel master who first discovered my… unique talents?” He swirled a hand in the water.
Van leaned forward, bracing his arms on the submerged seat. “No. I have spies for that. They’ll give me a dry report. I don’t want your story from you. Not yet.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to know,” Van said, his voice dropping to a whisper that vibrated in the steam, “why you weren’t afraid today. In front of everyone. You should have been trembling. You should have been fawning. You did neither.”
Taichi was silent for so long Van thought he might not answer. He just looked at him, those chocolate eyes dark and bottomless. Then he shifted, moving through the water not with the seductive grace of his dance, but with a simple, natural economy. He closed the distance between them until their knees brushed under the milky surface.
“Maybe I was tired of being afraid,” Taichi said softly. It was the first thing he’d said that sounded entirely unguarded. “Maybe I saw a man on a throne who looked just as trapped as I felt. And maybe,” he reached out, his hand finding Van’s beneath the water, his fingers lacing through his with a boldness that was both an offering and a challenge, “I thought if I was going to belong to someone, it should be to someone who actually sees me. Not just the chains.”
Van turned his hand, gripping Taichi’s, feeling the strength in the slender fingers. He used that grip to pull Taichi closer, through the resistance of the water, until their bodies were almost touching. Heat radiated between them.
“I see you,” Van murmured, his lips inches from Taichi’s ear. “And I’m keeping you.”
The kiss, when it came, wasn’t gentle. It was possession and curiosity and pent-up frustration, a clash of teeth and tongue. Taichi didn’t yield; he matched Van’s intensity, his hands coming up to slide over the emperor’s shoulders, his nails digging in just enough to be felt. The water swayed around them, sloshing against the porcelain.
When they broke apart, breathing ragged, Taichi’s smirk was back, but it was softer now. “Good,” he breathed. “That’s a start.”
Van laughed again, a rough, genuine sound. He buried his face in the damp curve of Taichi’s neck, inhaling the jasmine and the scent of his skin. For the first time in years, the weight of the crown, the empire, the watching eyes, felt distant. Here, in this steam-filled room, there was only this intriguing, maddening, utterly captivating man.
He knew, with a sudden, cold certainty that cut through the warmth, that this would complicate everything. Anya’s cracked goblet was just the beginning. The court would whisper. Plots would thicken.
He lifted his head, looking into Taichi’s face. “They will come for you, you know. The others. They will hate you.”
Taichi’s expression was calm, resolute. He traced a finger over Van’s lower lip. “Let them. I’m not afraid of them.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Taichi said, his voice dropping to a whisper that was for Van alone, “you see me. And I see you. That makes us even. And that makes us dangerous.”
Outside, in the corridors of the Sunset Wing, a shadow lingered briefly by a latticed screen, listening to the quiet lap of water and the lower, indistinct murmur of voices. Then it melted away, silent as a breath, carrying its report back to the moonlit chambers of the Empress.