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Ming Yu grasped his hands in hers and squeezed. “Moon made the choice freely. He says he has no regrets and is happy as a vampire. What happened to him is not your fault or Rei’s. Neither Chen nor Moon blame you.”
“But his magic?”
His shijie sighed and nodded. “Apparently, his new vampire magic is creating complications with his blood witch side. He loses control easily and becomes a danger to himself. We are proceeding cautiously while we try to find ways to help him. Have patience.”
“Is there another blood witch who could help us? A friend of his?”
Ming Yu was shaking her head even as he spoke. “Blood witches are incredibly rare. Other than Moon’s mother, he’s known no others in his lifetime.” She gave his fingers a last squeeze and pressed a reassuring smile onto her lips. “We should hurry and join the others. I’m sure your Rei is worried about you.”
He didn’t bother to correct her. Not that he was confident that Rei was worried about him, but he wasn’t comfortable leaving Rei alone with his brothers.
Or maybe he wasn’t ready to allow Rei out of his sight, period.
They’d been together so long now and since escaping the royal family, Rei hadn’t been away from him for more than a few minutes. It was easier to breathe when he could see the elf.
And he would not waste a single brain cell on examining why he needed to keep Rei close. Nope. Not a one.
While the house itself possessed soft echoes of his home in Luoyang, the gardens were closer to actual replicas, leaving him stumbling on a step as he moved outside. It was as if he were in China again, wandering through the orchards and along the stone paths that filled his memories for centuries. Some old bit of longing he’d spent a hundred years pressing down climbed into his throat, threatening to choke him.
Rei stepped away from the crowd gathering under a grove of trees and turned to him, one of his sharp eyebrows lifting in question. And like that, the swell of old emotions retreated, slipping away to settle in some shadowy, forgotten part of his body.
The elf looked as if he fit here. Despite being dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, Rei’s regal bearing could not be missed. His otherworldly aura shone through. The slight breeze teased his long blond hair, and his pale skin almost glowed in the moonlight. The quiet garden became something magical the second he stepped into it, all the flora and fauna naturally bowing to his presence.
“Did you forget how to walk? Does the prince need me to carry him?” Rei inquired.
Of course, Rei’s mouth had a magical way of reminding him that he was also a snarky, smug asshole.
With a roll of his eyes, Yichen entered the garden, the gravel crunching under his feet as he followed the path to where everyone gathered around Moon and Chen. The blood witch was smiling broadly while he twirled a small, silver knife between his fingers. Chen appeared far less happy about this arrangement.
The hand Chen had resting on Moon’s shoulder clenched, his fingers digging into muscles. “What is your plan?”
Moon turned his head and brushed a kiss across those fingers, getting them to loosen. “Nothing too serious to start. I’ll take a drop of Rei’s blood and a drop of Yichen’s. It’ll let me get a peek at the tie between them. From there, I might be able to determine a spell to pull them apart.” He tipped his head to grin at his mate. “Gotta see what I’m working with here.”
He turned his attention toward everyone gathered and motioned for Rei and Yichen to step closer. “Everyone else, back up.”
“No,” Chen growled. “I’m staying right here. If this goes too far, I will pull you out of this.”
Moon seemed utterly unperturbed by Chen’s overprotectiveness as he rubbed his cheek against his lover’s fingers. “Thanks, babe.”
Yichen stepped closer with Rei, fighting the urge to grab the elf’s elbow. Something in his gut demanded he be able to move Rei out of the way in the event that something went wrong with Moon’s magic. But he didn’t. His right hand remained at his side, balled into a loose fist while he extended his left hand to Moon. Rei did the same, his frame relaxed while a look of mild curiosity widened his leaf-green eyes.
The silver knife flashed out, pricking one of his fingers and one of Rei’s. The knife spun once in Moon’s hand, catching the moonlight, and disappeared into a holder hidden somewhere on his narrow frame.
A single bright-red bead of blood welled up on the tip of his injured finger. Moon extended his open hands toward his blood and Rei’s. With a backward jerk of Moon’s hands, the blood leaped from his finger and into the air.
But it wasn’t the blood alone. A sharp tug pulled on something inside of his chest, as if Moon had summoned up more than a lone drop of blood but was actually pulling on his soul. The liquid darkened and shimmered dully in the faint light as if Moon had turned it into a gem.
Next to his droplet glimmered Rei’s. To his eye, it appeared identical in every way. For some strange reason, he’d thought the elf’s blood would be different in some small way, but it wasn’t.
“Interesting,” Moon murmured after several seconds. His smooth brow furrowed, and he gnawed on his bottom lip as he continued to move his hands in the air, turning the drops of blood slowly around as if inspecting them from every angle. Yichen couldn’t see anything beyond the blood, but the tug on his chest grew sharper and more insistent with every passing moment.
“What’s interesting?” Junjie prodded when Moon didn’t continue.
“I expected to see lots of Rei’s magical elements in Yichen’s blood, but I didn’t expect to find the reverse. Did you give Rei blood?”
“No,” Yichen gasped. “Of course not. That…that…that’s crazy.”
A blood donation from a vampire resulted in one thing as far as he knew—turning the other person into a vampire. Since things were already so fucked up between them, Yichen felt fairly certain that an elf couldn’t be turned into a vampire no matter how much vampire blood he forced Rei to ingest.
