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Pleasure Slave	By : Capitalist Category: +. to F > Card Captor Sakura Views: 84325 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Card Captor Sakura, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 30
- 31
- 32
Chapter 31
‘sunset’

The armory of Yue’s castle was, largely due to Li’s efforts since promotion, much cleaner and better maintained than it once was. Every man had a lance, sword, and bow in his care, and every man was expected to keep them ready for action. Wood was kept oiled and flexed, blades shiny and sharp. Men grumbled about the chore but Li would hear no argument on the subject, so it was with a particular satisfaction that he gazed at the rows of good-looking weapons this day. He did not care, as so many of the guard insisted on repeating, that this castle was as likely to be attacked as the sun itself. The men were fighters and fighters had to be ready for action, or they weren’t really fighters at all.
Whistling, Li made himself comfortable on a chest and pulled out his narrow whittling knife. Yue had returned to the castle, which meant Ralen was slightly less obnoxious than otherwise, and that was good. He and the men had consequently been paid for the month, and that was also good. The summer weather outside was beautiful, and so was the slave he’d just been kissing in a closet. Li was in a fine mood as he settled in for the task of carving and shaping ends for a new batch of arrows.
A fine mood that sputtered and died the second someone else wandered in. Li’s knife came down wrong in an awkward thunk, almost lopping off the last inch of his arrow instead of delicately shaving off a thin layer. Sakura’s brother raised a cocky, annoying eyebrow.
“You must make arrows differently down here than where I come from. A tail like that and it won’t fly two feet in front of you.”
“My hand slipped,” Li growled, and tossed the ruined shaft at his feet. “Are you even allowed to be down here?”
“Do you care?”
“Not really,” he had to admit. Li loathed the man, but he wasn’t about to go tattling to Yue like Ralen would. Kinomoto smirked and ambled further into the room, prompting a hostile glower on Li’s part. “Well, what do you want?”
“I’m looking for something.”
“Like what, a fight?”
“Hmm, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” There was no mistaking the spark of interest in his eyes, the slightly lifted chin. “I guess you think I wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Last time we fought, I was outnumbered three to one and you had a sword at my throat. The odds were stacked. But if it was just you and me…”
“Just you and me what?” Li stood up when the space between them started dwindling, Kinomoto getting a little too close for comfort. “You think I couldn’t knock you flat? I’ve been training in combat since I was three.”
“Which would make a total of… six years?”
Li’s hands curled into fists and Kinomoto smirked down at him. Curses that the peasant was so tall; he had at least four inches on Li and was using it to his full advantage. At that moment, Li had the stray urge to tell him everything about what he and Sakura had done together – every kiss, every fondle, every whispered word of love under the trees. Just to see that cocksure look wiped off his face.
With considerable effort he held it back.
“Yue… doesn’t like fighting in his castle. You may have noticed that before.”
“Yeah, I noticed it. But you don’t strike me as the type that would run off and tell him if an ‘accident’ happened.”
“Accident,” Li echoed. “Don’t think I would. As long as no one else saw, I think we’d be just fine.”
He was so close now, eyes just watching for an opportunity, and Li’s muscles were as tense as bow string waiting for it. Both of them jumped when Jen sauntered into the room, whistling noisily, and reluctantly Kinomoto stepped back.
“Another time, maybe.”
“I look forward to it.”
Kinomoto gave some sort of curt farewell nod and left, almost brushing past Jen on his way to the door.
“Hey, cap, what’s the slave doing hanging around here? Is Yue alright with that?”
“Probably not. But that’s his problem, not mine.” Li dropped into his seat with a huff, but when he put his hand down he found only bare wood. “Where’s my knife?”

Finally, a tool he could work with. Touya inserted the narrow, almost needle-pointed whittling knife into the lock and sensed the tempered strength of a steel blade that would not easily break. Now he could actually explore, feel out the mechanism of the lock. It took about ten minutes of fiddling around and poking before, quite unexpectedly, he got lucky and heard a loud click. It was so unexpected that he dropped the knife, then scanned the corridor behind him as if anyone could have heard. He didn’t really expect anything when he tried the handle – he’d been fighting this implacable door for too long. But sure enough the lever dropped, and the door moved in by a nudge.
He was in.
All at once a chill crawled up Touya’s spine, like the tingle of foreboding. He could still shut the door, walk away- but no. He’d come this far, and his curiosity was too strong. He would only look, after all. He couldn’t possibly hurt anything by looking.
So, as cautiously and quietly as possible, he pushed the door open. The smell of stale air and dust hit him immediately, and he had to hang back coughing for a few minutes just to allow some mingling with the fresh air of the hall. Holding a sleeve to his nose, eventually he ventured in. Right away he noticed the floor wasn’t a creamy white marble like most of the castle, but some darker shade. Midnight blue, possibly, though it wasn’t easy to tell under all the dust. Absently he set Li’s knife down on some tiny alcove housing a statuette, and moved further in.
This little passage, if it could even be called that, didn’t go on for very long. Indeed, it wasn’t much more than a landing for the staircase that began a few steps in from the door, curving up and out of his sight. He’d expected as much, from peering out the nearest window. These stairs led up into a tower of the castle, the tallest of them all if he was estimating correctly. More dust plumed into the air with every step, but Touya ignored it and began to ascend.
Up and up they went. Something other than the stale atmosphere was making itself known to Touya, a sort of… feeling, for lack of a better word. It wasn’t anything like the threatening shadow he’d sensed before, which was some comfort, but it wasn’t cozy and pleasant either. He could swear the walls were watching him.
“I am alone here,” he muttered, just to hear himself say it. The stairs spiraled three times within the tower walls before he reached their end, broadening and leveling into the entrance for the room that nestled here at the very top. And when Touya saw it, the feeling of being watched only redoubled itself.
“It’s a bedroom.” And a study, lounge, and bathing room, by the looks of it. A very large, lavishly furnished bedroom that stretched across the breadth of the tower, vast windows showing off the view from every angle. Though it all looked ancient, the place was stuffed with stuff, trinkets and bric-a-brac piled on the shelves and even on the floor in places. Even the gigantic bed, bigger than Yue’s, had an old robe thrown over it as if the owner had simply stepped out and then never returned. Somehow, this managed to make the place alive and depressingly dead all at once.
“Okay…” Touya breathed, and crept away from the stairs as if something would fall apart at his footsteps. The dust didn’t seem so bad up here, and he blew away a thin film of it covering some books. “Books. Lots and lots of books. Why aren’t these in the library?”
He picked up one and saw it was written with a script he didn’t recognize. Another one he could read, only to find the pages packed with incomprehensible formulas and theories. Sorcery? Delicately he returned the book to its shelf and continued on. A curious assortment of things ranged the shelves, like this delicately crafted model of three spheres. He touched one and the little globe moved a short arc around the bigger one, smallest spinning in a circle.
“That’s the moon,” he decided, watching it orbit its planet, “and that’s the sun.” He tapped the Earth a little more strongly, and watched it complete a rotation around the gold filigree sun, fascinated. So many strange instruments, so many exotic works of craftsmanship. Touya had the feeling that many of them hadn’t even come from this valley, not with those foreign scripts engraved into so many of them.
“Somebody traveled a long way. And was a pack-rat.”
At one of the windows, a long tube rested on a three-legged stand, tilted up to the sky. “Telescope,” he realized aloud, remembering the word from one of Yue’s books. Without touching it he knelt to look through the narrow end and was startled to see the clouds so close and in such detail. To look through this at the stars must be an amazing experience.
“And a clock… still ticking?” The ancient grandfather clock’s pendulum was still swinging back and forth in a gentle motion, never mind that most clocks needed to be wound every night. It made Touya nervous to stand near it and he hurried on. The fireplace was dark and cold, of course, the white rug spread before it dingy with neglect. It reminded him of Yue’s room, right down to the single grand armchair, but this chair was deep crimson instead of blue. He brushed his fingers along the arm, absently, and some of the ancient fibers fell apart.
The desk dominated its corner of the room, every bit as piled up with junk as everything else but so big that it managed to look stately and elegant anyway. Even through the dust Touya could see the glow of dark, expensive wood. It rose high against the wall, and spread wide too, full of cubby holes and shelves and little nooks and crannies ideal for hiding trinkets. A built in shaft was still holding several writing quills, all the feathers long since rotted to just the spine. A dried and crumbling candle stood next to the little tray that would have held wax for sealing, and there was the large seal itself. Touya picked it up to examine the underside, and saw this too was carved with a motif of the sun and moon.
“Must have really loved astronomy.”
Much of the desk was covered in stacks of yellowed papers, but something shiny attracted his attention. A gold pocketwatch had been left here, still in beautiful condition after all this time, engraved with the sun on the front and a winged crescent moon on the back. Touya popped it open, relieved to see that this, at least, wasn’t ticking, and saw that the interior had been engraved too.
…to my beloved Clow…
Touya’s stomach twinged with nausea when he saw that, for a reason he couldn’t quite explain. He closed the watch and put it aside, turning to the leather bound notebook that had been underneath. Carefully he lifted the cover and was startled to find himself face to face with Yue – sort of. It was only a drawing, someone’s idle sketching with lead stylus and parchment, but it was exquisitely done. The artist had captured the way his hair flowed and fell across his shoulders, and the haughty lift of his chin. Something seemed different, however, and Touya lifted the paper to examine it more closely. He looked younger, though Touya was hard-pressed to identify the cause when everything about his face and build was the same. It was the eyes, he eventually decided, something about them seemed kinder, more gentle. It was a Yue that hadn’t yet learned to be cruel.
Very, very carefully Touya set it aside and went looking for more. The papers that had been stored in this leather portfolio were a little better preserved than those left out in the open, the ink not so faded and the edges less fragile. Touya tried to read some of them but the writer had a truly awful script, words bunched and squeezed together as if he couldn’t wait to get them on paper and could not bring himself to even lift the quill. Scribbles and half-doodles speckled the pages, some looking like the sun and others like the moon. Touya was going through the stack a little less carefully, a little faster, some urgency nagging away inside him as if he were looking for something now, something he had to find before his time ran out –
His heart nearly stopped when he found it. It was another drawing, much more elaborate and detailed than the first, so perfectly rendered that the subjects seemed almost alive. A man that Touya had never seen reclined in his armchair, firelight dancing on his spectacles, hint of a smile lurking about his mouth. Hair as black as Touya’s had been twisted and tied into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, and trailed over one shoulder. A goblet was in one hand, slightly askew as if he were in the process of swirling about his wine, the other hand sketching on a pad. A self-portrait?
Sitting at his feet – head resting against the knees of the other, book open in his hands – was none other than Yue. He’d paused in his reading, for whatever reason, and twisted slightly to speak to this other man, face tilted upward. The adoration in his eyes was obvious – nauseatingly, horribly obvious. Touya was looking at their nightly ritual, looking at Yue in his place on the floor, looking at Yue’s wine glass in some other man’s hand. Something sour bubbled up in his mouth, but he was distracted from being sick by a flash of someone else’s presence. When he turned around and saw Yue standing there, as angry as he’d ever seen him, he could not even bring himself to care.

Yue’s eyes glittered with cold fire. It was as if frost itself was sweeping from him, chilling the air around them, even his fists were clenched in fury. For several long seconds the room was utterly silent, neither one in a condition to even speak. It was Yue that found his voice first.
“How,” he snarled, “how dare you?”
“What is this place?” Touya demanded, ignoring the danger signs. He thrust the picture forward, almost accusingly. “Who is this? Is it Clow?”
“You think you have a right to questions? You are in the most terrible trouble of your life, I will see you screaming in pain for this -”
“Who WAS he?” Touya barked, stomach twisting into desperate knots. “It is Clow, isn’t it? You lied, you said he wasn’t important, that he didn’t matter! Did you love him? Were you lovers?”
Yue’s expression twisted with such pain and wrath that it was almost unrecognizable, and he advanced upon Touya. “You will get out -”
“One more step and I’ll rip this in half!”
He spoke and acted without thinking, fingers rippling on the edge of the old parchment in preparation to tear it. Yue froze where he stood, a heartrending flash of vulnerability in his eyes before they hardened into stone again.
“You – threaten me?”
“I just want answers! This picture, you, me, it’s all the same. Is that… Master Clow you loved? Were you his slave?” The answers were plain on his face as Touya flung the questions at him, and he knew he’d guessed right. Things were falling into place with a horrifying clarity. “Your wings… that birdcage of Sakura’s. It was yours. You were his pleasure slave.”
The final two words reverberated in the stillness of the room, as if they had a life of their own. One furious gaze locked with another over a gulf of secrets and betrayal that no words, at that moment, could have healed.
“Put,” Yue ordered, voice shaking in anger, “that – paper – down.”
Touya didn’t move. He considered using it as a shield to get out of this room, get out of this castle, run away and never see Yue again. But that was impossible, and for now he’d gotten at least a few answers to his questions. The punishment, he knew, was going to be severe.
Slowly, he lowered his arms and turned. With all the care he’d give a newborn baby, he returned the fragile parchment to its place on the desk, not even creasing the edge. He put it down, let go, lifted his hands.
Yue did not even give him time to turn around. He was still looking at Clow’s drawing when the world went black.

Antlers. Sharp and clear against the sunset sky they jutted, pointed and proud. Confused, Touya shifted and felt a lurch in his stomach. He was asleep but upright, and the vague sense that he was in danger curled into his subconscious. Something wasn’t right.
He stirred again and blinked, dispelling the incongruous image of antlers for shapes and colors of the real world. Those cold gray stones weren’t of Yue’s bedroom floor, but he’d seen them before somewhere.
“Finally awake, are you?”
Yue’s voice fell cold and hard on his ears. It hurt his neck to look up and a sense of déjà vu crawled through his body, taking him back to the very first night he ever met the one called Yue. Just as before he glowed against the darkness of the dungeon, forbidding and powerful before a helpless peasant. Touya had been strung up between two stone pillars while he was out, the chains knotted around his wrists so tightly he could barely feel his hands. His shirt was gone. The dungeon was freezing with Yue’s menace. Touya had every reason to be afraid, but he was too angry to worry about that right now.
“I needed to know who he was.”
“Needed,” Yue echoed, spitefully. “You, needed? You are a slave, Toya, you are property. Everything you have is by my whim, you do not ‘need’ anything.”
“Just tell me who he was!”
“You will not demand that I do anything, slave,” Yue spat. “Arrogant, prideful creature, I have obviously spoiled you too much. I’ve given you too many privileges, let you think the run of the castle is yours. And instead of being grateful you violated his room, touched his things! You will suffer for that, slave, you will bleed.”
Touya flinched at the sheer venom in his voice, and kept eye contact only through willpower. “Is this how Clow treated you?”
For the second time in his life Yue slapped him, the back of his hand hard and impersonal against Touya’s face.
“You will not speak his name again.” He had to spit out some blood, and get his breath back. “You need more than a simple lashing with the crop,” Yue went on to say, eyes narrowing maliciously. “That much is clear. Have you ever seen a man whipped, slave?”
He flicked his hand outward and in response a long brown whip uncoiled itself from the ground, curving and snapping with a resounding crack. Touya flinched again at the sound. But it wasn’t the prospect of brutal punishment that hurt.
“You really love him that much,” he muttered. “I guess I’m only trash next to him.”
“No more talking.”
Again Yue gestured and this time the whip curled around to strike Touya on his exposed back. Bright pain seared across his flesh and Touya gritted his teeth, struggling to hold in any sound. It didn’t seem so bad at first but within a few seconds the real agony began, burning like fire through his skin.
“I won’t,” he gasped, “forget it. You were a slave too.”
“I said no more talking!” Again the whip struck, again Touya bit back a yelp.
“You can’t undo it. I know…”
“Silence!”
The whip just kept uncurling itself against his back, cutting into his skin, overlapping the fresh wounds. Something warm and wet oozed its way down his back, the blood that Yue had promised. He lost track of when his stifled grunts of pain became cries, and when his cries became screams. His knees buckled and he fell, held up by only his wrists, and still Yue stood before him with impassive silver eyes, whip never ceasing. He was going to beat him to death for this. Yue was going to kill him.

Li was on his way back from the kitchen when he caught sight of a rather odd picture: Ralen lounging about by the dungeon doors and looking like he was in absolute heaven. Faint noises got louder as he came closer; one of the doors was open a crack. And those noises were the screams of a man – pure, agonized screams.
“Like sweet music to the ears,” Ralen murmured dreamily, eyes half-closed in pleasure.
“What’s going on?”
“Yue’s torturing his slave, from the sound of things.”
“What?” Li gasped, startled. “Why?”
“Who knows? Who cares? All I know is that Yue is finally giving the snotty peasant his due. Maybe he’ll even kill him!”
The dazzle of anticipation in his gray eyes, paired with the hoarse screams from the darkness, was almost too much for Li to cope with. Very casually, trying to look as if he had no interest in this at all, Li backed away and around the nearest corner. The moment he was out of sight, he turned and sprinted, marble flying under his boots. He ran without pausing, and had to gulp for air when he rounded the corner into the empty throne room. Sakura looked up from her stretching, surprised, and broke into a smile.
“Oh hello, Syaoran.”
He could not bring himself to reply, and her smile slipped just a little.
“Is something wrong?”
“Yeah,” he muttered, and closed the rest of the distance between them. Well, as much as he could, anyway; wearily he braced his forearm against the bars of her cage and leaned in. She was already on her feet, taking in his appearance with worried eyes. Ancestors he didn’t want to do this.
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
But if he didn’t, who would? “Something’s… happened with your brother, and Yue.”
“Oh, did they fight again?” Her shoulders relaxed and a grin returned to her face. “That’s alright, they’re always doing that.”
“No, Sakura. This time it’s bad. Yue, he’s- hurting your brother.”
“Hurting?” she repeated blankly.
“Hurting. Physically. Your brother, he was screaming.”
This time, it sank in. He watched comprehension dawn in her eyes, then horror, and when she whispered “no” he could only shake his head.
“I’m sorry.”
Her hand flew to her mouth and her eyes filled with tears; quickly he reached through the bars to hold her to his chest. A quiet sob ripped through her body and her shoulders convulsed, but only once. In the next breath she was pushing herself away.
“No! You have to go, Syaoran, you have to help him!”
“Me?” Now he was the one who looked blank. “Help him?”
“Please!”
“Sakura,” he tried placatingly, “I work for Yue. If he wants to punish his slave, there’s nothing I can do to stop him.”
“But he likes you, you can try. I can’t!” She banged a tiny and frustrated fist against her prison. “Please.”
A pair of tears spilled out and slipped down her cheeks, spelling his doom. How could he abandon her now?
“I’ll try.”
Her voice was so small when she answered. “Thank you.”

Yue had been deep in his meditation, same as any other day, when the unmistakeable presence of Clow filtered into his senses and prompted him to open his eyes. He was sure, at first, that he had to be imagining things. That presence had been locked away for centuries. Yet it would not dissipate, so finally he’d gone to check.
What he found had shocked him. The door that guarded Clow’s personal tower, hiding away all that was his, stood wide open for the whole world to enter. Which someone obviously had, given the footprints in dust leading up the stairs. That someone would have the nerve to enter this sacred place, break into this sacred place, was enough to snap Yue into a murderous rage on the spot. That it was his slave who dared disturb Clow’s things, meddling into the past and demanding to know more, crystallized Yue into blind fury. The interloper must be beaten into repentance for what he’d done. He would scream and bleed for his crime.
And that was exactly what happened. Yue showed his slave real punishment, there in his dungeon, showed him very thoroughly just why Touya should cower and fear him. Over and over again he dealt him pain, relishing the sound of his screams and then when the screams stopped, the sound of the whip cracking and snapping midair. He was raising his arm to strike another blow when someone interrupted, a foreign presence intruding upon him in the dungeon. Astonished, he saw that Li had grabbed onto his whip and was holding it back, preventing it from lashing his slave.
“Let go of that, captain,” he snapped. “This does not concern you.”
“Yes sir. I just thought that maybe… you might be finished.”
He hadn’t let go! Didn’t anyone in this castle know his place? “I am not, and if I was it would be no business of yours. Dismissed.”
The whip strained to break free and Li hung on grimly, almost digging his heels into the flagstones. Yue felt a fresh onslaught of rage. “Do you want to know my anger too, captain?”
“No sir.” The boy swallowed, looking nervous and rightfully so. “But, you’re going to kill him. Is that what you want?”
Yue followed his glance at Touya, and for the first time really saw his slave, hanging unconscious in his chains. How long ago had he stopped screaming, stopped trying to stand upright? His head lolled forward, eyes closed, his breathing uneven and skin deathly pale. All except on his shoulders and his back, where scarlet blood flowed freely from the gashes on his back. Large drops welled up and dripped into puddles – there was so much of it. Blood was everywhere. Yue saw at last what he’d done to his precious slave, and in an instant his fury vanished.
“Oh…” he breathed, and felt his knees weaken. Li released his grip, and the whip fell limply to the floor.
“Shall I take him to your room now?” asked the captain quietly. Yue nodded.
“Yes- yes, please do. Take him to my room, see to his wounds too. Take care of him, please.”
If Li noticed he was repeating himself, voice riding on the edge of panic, he gave no sign of it. He simply nodded. “Yes sir.”
He had to struggle some to unwrap the chains from Touya’s wrists, cinched tight by his sagging weight, and Yue cringed when he saw the raw, bloody flesh underneath. Oh, what had he done? He had to look away while his captain freed Touya, pulling him with a grunt onto his back. It was a long journey from these dungeons to Yue’s room, and Yue could not watch Touya be carried for the length of it, leaving a trail of blood across white marble floors. He could not watch, and so he fled the room like a coward. He did not know where to go and in his turmoil he flew right for the soothing presence of Clow. It was habit, the sensation a lifelong magnet to him, but there was no more Clow to receive and comfort him. Only the lingering echoes of his magic, still so potent after all this time, a false promise. Clow was gone. Yue slammed the tower door shut with an angry sob and threw himself out the nearest window, desperate to be away from this castle and its heartaches. If he could, he would never come back.

Li was feeling pretty weak-kneed himself by the time he’d reached Yue’s bed, and was glad to dump the tall and heavy slave onto the sheets. Wheezing, he tried to lay him out on his stomach as comfortably as could be possible, then wiped off excess blood with a wet towel from the bathroom. Already blood was spilling over his ribs and staining the satin sheets beneath; Li knew he must be covered in the stuff. He returned to the hall and found, not to his surprise, most of the castle’s population in servants. Carrying Kinomoto through the castle was not a low-profile activity, and the gossip must have spread like wildfire. Slave torture was too delicious for them to leave alone, apparently.
“Tim, Smith, Raoul, Jen, you are all supposed to be on watch. Go, now. The rest of you, you should be practicing your drills. Go, now. You, stop gawking at my shirt and go boil up fresh water.” In turn he pointed at three females, all staring at his stained clothing like they’d never seen blood before. “You, fetch the bottle in the guard’s medication cabinet marked ‘marigold extract’.”
“I can’t read, sir!”
“It’s the one that’s yellow! And get all the bandages that are in there, go now, I need them right now. And since we probably won’t have enough…” Here Li glanced witheringly at Ralen and then at the third girl. “You find anything you can that’s clean and cotton and start cutting it into strips. I can’t have too much. You got that?”
“Yes sir!”
She scurried after the other two, and Ralen raised a lofty eyebrow. “Awfully high-handed of you, ordering about my girls like that.”
“Yue told me to see to his wounds, you wanna get in my way then take it up with him. Now go away.”
He slammed the door and stomped back into the bedroom, glowering at the still form of the slave. “You lucky bastard. I don’t know what you did, but I would have been happy to let you die in that dungeon. Your sister just saved your life.”
Kinomoto didn’t twitch. Annoyed and tired, Li dropped onto the edge of the bed with a huff and tried to stem blood flow with the little hand towel. It was soaked through and scarlet by the time the girls finally returned with his required materials, and he was relieved to finally tackle the job with clean cloths. His mother was the healer of the family, but thanks to his lifestyle, Li was no stranger to treating injuries.
With sterile water he flushed out the many gashes across his back, overlapping and so numerous he couldn’t even count them all. There would be permanent scarring for sure. Marigold was a natural disinfectant, and when he poured it on open wounds Kinomoto stirred and groaned.
Li hit him in the head. “Shut up. Idiots that make Yue that angry have no right to complain.”
He hadn’t really woken up, just fought to resist the stinging solution out of pure instinct. With malicious delight Li rubbed it into every bleeding gash. “You didn’t just risk your skin down there, you know, you risked mine too. Not that I should have been down there in the first place. All I ever wanted since I started here is to just mind my own business and do my job as best I could.”
A sigh escaped Li as he unwound a linen bandage. “Your sister turned that upside down. Tearful green eyes and next thing I know, I’m going up against Yue. Great. But it feels like it’s worth it, stupid as that sounds – I really do love her.”
Kinomoto groaned again, and Li stiffened. But he didn’t move, still as the dead, and Li relaxed. “Hmph. I know you’d try and kill me if you could hear me. But you can’t, because you’re unconscious and I’m not, so hah. I kiss her every day.”
It felt amazingly good to finally tell the man that, even if he was unconscious and unable to hear. That out of the way, he embarked on the tedious task of wrapping every gash in a clean bandage. It was difficult because the strips had to be wrapped completely around his chest to stay put, and this meant a lot of lifting and grunting on Li’s part. Sakura had asked, though, so he’d see this through. Hours passed, during which he wondered more than a few times if Yue was ever going to return to at least check on his slave. It was not until the sun had begun to drop in the west that he finally did.
By that time Li had been there for the entire afternoon. It was an awkward place to wait, since he wasn’t about to sit in Yue’s armchair and didn’t feel comfortable sitting on his bed either. This room wasn’t meant for outsiders. He’d been sitting on the floor and leaning up against the bed for some while by the time Yue returned, giant wings flapping, to his balcony.
Li jumped to his feet, but Yue didn’t even enter the room. Instead he hovered in the doorway, as if he was afraid to come in.
“Has he woken?”
“Not really.” Stark horror shot through Yue’s eyes and Li was quick to add, “But his pulse is steady. He’ll be fine.”
Yue exhaled in relief, but he still didn’t come any closer. Uncertainly Li watched his gaze stray to the comatose slave, then skitter away.
“Sir, I’m missing my evening watch. May I be -”
“No. You will stay here and see to my slave.”
The order was given quickly and decisively, with no room for argument. Li set his jaw to repress visible annoyance, and backed toward the door. “Yes sir. I’ll just wait in your study until it’s time to change the bandages.”
Yue’s eyes were starting to bother him, the way they sought out Kinomoto and then looked away, looked back and away. There was no way in hell he would sit in this room with these two. Luckily Yue allowed him to leave, and Li collapsed into a chair in the study for what would be a very long, boring wait. Outside the sky went from blue to pink and orange, the sun falling ever closer to the horizon. Sakura would be having her dinner soon, probably –
Shit. Li sat up straight when he remembered that Sakura hadn’t had any news of her brother since he’d first told her, and that was hours ago. She must be going crazy with worry right now. She wouldn’t do anything rash when let out for dinner, would she? Though he still hadn’t been able to prove she had the ability, Li sent a concerted mental plea to Sakura to stay calm, not panic, and above all not do anything that would upset Yue anymore than he already was.
If she heard it, she ignored it.
The light scuff of running feet were his only warning before Sakura burst through the study doors like a stampeding mare. She was already halfway across the room before he could react, Ralen puffing some distance behind her.
“Sakura! No wait, don’t -”
He just missed snatching her arm and then she was through the bedroom doors too. From just behind her, he could see her view of her brother, lying so still on the bed and half-covered in bandages. They were ready to be changed now, soaked through with blood and nightmarish looking in the glow of sunset. Sakura stopped short, and shrieked.
“Onii-chan!”
Li almost bumped into her when she stopped so suddenly, and now he almost fell forward when she flew to the bedside. Her hands were trembling as she knelt to face him, and gingerly pushed aside the hair over his eyes. Fresh tears spilled down her face, and she choked back a sob.
“I’m so sorry, my lord,” Ralen wheezed, leaning against the doorframe. “She took me by surprise when I let her out, and she’s really very fast…”
Yue hadn’t moved. Literally, since Li left him in this room an hour ago; he was still lurking by the balcony door. With the brilliant sky behind him it was difficult to see his face, and uneasily Li reached for Sakura.
“I think you should go now -”
He was trying hard to be discreet, but Sakura didn’t seem to notice. She jumped to her feet and out of his grasp, stricken eyes on Yue alone.
“You. How could you?” The pure anger in her voice took him by surprise – this was a side of Sakura he hadn’t seen before. She no longer shivered before Yue but faced him with chin held high, eyes blazing. “Look at what you’ve done to my brother!”
Yue said nothing.
“Did he hurt you like this?” she demanded, marching around the bed to face him directly. “Steal from you? What did he do to deserve this?”
Still no reply but silence. Yue might as well have been a statue, watching her approach. “Onii-chan has never been hurt so bad. Not cutting trees, not hunting, not even following me from our home to this castle! Never, but now you’ve hurt him and why? I thought you wanted him to like you!”
Without warning she threw herself at Yue, pummeling his chest with her fists. Stunned, Li and Ralen both took a long step back. “You like him, you told me you did! Why would you do this to him? Why, why, why?”
Her words became broken with sobs, and after a few seconds of abuse Yue caught her wrist. She was no match for his strength, and easily he held her out at arm’s length.
“Ralen, take her to her dinner. And this time, make sure she goes where she should.”
“Yes, my lord.” Li bit back a territorial growl when Ralen moved to steer Sakura towards the bedroom door, arm around her shoulders. It should have been him taking her away from this place, comforting her in private, not that slimy overseer. But he was helpless to say anything, and had to simply stand and watch as Ralen led his hysterical girlfriend away. Could this day get any worse?
The moment they left a fire burst into existence in the fireplace, magically triggered, and it was only chance that Li had just glanced back to Yue. For one unguarded moment, the firelight shed its golden glow on Yue’s face, illuminating him in detail. But his expression was neither angry nor irritated, as Li had worried. Not even after Sakura’s outburst and physical attack.
No, there was only word for Yue’s face. And that word was miserable.

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Disclaimer: I do not own these characters

Northstar gets a shoutout this time, for very accurately commenting that chapter 30 felt like ‘the calm before the storm’ and that everyone’s favorite love-hate couple was due for an explosion. Good call, Northstar! Are you happy you were right, or do you feel too sorry for Touya? I bet everyone here really hates Yue right now. I bet you don’t think you could hate Li just as much. Hmm….
I’m not feeling nearly as bitchy and defensive as I was a couple of weeks ago, thank goodness. The outpouring of kindness and support in this latest batch of reviews has done a lot to make that happen, and I seriously owe an apology to all my readers who have written nothing but compliments. 5% make all the complaints, and I shouldn’t give them my attention.
So just to clear up any doubts, let me assure you that I LOVE it when you guys speculate and debate in the reviews. It is tremendously flattering that you want to analyze and predict my plot, that my suspense and mysteries are really intriguing to you. And you’d be surprised at how many ideas you’ve given me! It’s only when I have already written something and someone feels the need to comment on how things should have gone differently that I get annoyed. So keep reading, keep speculating, and I’ll do my best to keep writing.
PS: There is no way we’re going to be done in nine chapters. So, that stuff about being halfway through back in Chapter 20 can be ignored. Round and round and round we go, where we stop, no one knows.
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Pleasure Slave