The Last Dahlia

045

Yuehwa's eyes flew open. She was lying in Shoya's arms, with the latter looking down at her with concern. No bloodstained armour, no sword in his hand. She looked around. She was back in the forest, instead of the Hwa palace.

"What happened?" she croaked. Her hand instinctively went to her throat as she tried to catch her breath. It felt constricted, and it stung when her fingers came into contact with her skin.

"You were trapped in an illusion conjured by dark magic," Shoya explained, helping her back up to her feet. "She was trying to strangle you with this," he held up a long, white cord of silk, "while you were unconscious. When I came, she fled."

Yuehwa took the silk cord and scoffed, throwing it down onto the ground. To think she had almost died at the hands of such an unworthy opponent, and she wouldn't even have known how it happened. It was her own fault for being so complacent.

"What are you doing here? How is the king?" she asked.

"I purged almost all the poison from his body, but whether or not he'll survive depends on the will of the heavens," Shoya replied. He took her wrist to check her pulse. "How are you feeling?"

She reckoned she looked a mess, given how worried Shoya seemed to be. But it wasn't because of the near-strangulation, but the residual fear that was still running through her veins because of what she saw in the illusion.

Was it really an illusion?

It had felt so real. The flames and smoke, the debris, the blood and death.

And Shoya, standing in front of her with that damned sword in his hand, the sword that he had pointed at her. He wanted to kill her, like how he had killed her entire family. Suddenly she felt something inside her snap, like a crack in the floodgates, releasing a gush of unbridled rage that gripped her mind.

"How could he have done that? How dare he!" a voice was screaming at her. A voice that sounded eerily like her own.

"Yuehwa."

"You can't trust him. He's lied to you once, he's lying to you still."

"Yuehwa, look at me."

"He will destroy everything you love. Your kingdom, your home, your family. Everything."

"Yuehwa!"

She was abruptly jolted back to reality, her mind re-focusing on the man standing in front of her. He raised his arm, and she realised that she was gripping on to his wrist, so tightly that she could feel the bone beneath his skin come close to snapping. She immediately let go.

"What's wrong? Did you experience the illusion again?"

Yuehwa shook her head.

"Your pulse feels normal, but there's no saying whether or not there'll be any side effects. We should monitor your condition over the next few days, just to be safe."

Side-effects. Like a voice that had sprung up inside her head, whispering and calling out to the innermost reaches of her mind, reaching towards the locked door behind which she kept her darkest fears and insecurities. She parted her lips to say something, then she shut them again. How was she supposed to tell Shoya that she was hearing a voice that was warning her against him? What if the voice was right?

She plastered a nonchalant smile on her face instead and shrugged her shoulders. "I'm fine," she said. "A little shaken maybe. After all, it's not every day you get to be a victim to dark magic." She brushed some stray flecks of grass off her trousers and began marching back towards the direction of the camp. "At least we have confirmation that Lady Kang is a practitioner of the dark arts, and that she's responsible for the king's condition. We should find Ru Fei and regroup. It won't be so easy to get to the woman now that she knows we're on her tail."