The first time I saw Shen Yan, he was chained to an iron execution rack in the dark dungeons. A freshly peeled human skin hung from the rafters, dripping blood. He lowered his head, and beads of blood seeping from between his fingers struck the bluestone floor, blooming into scattered petals of crimson plum blossoms.
"Number Thirty-Seven, he belongs to you from now on," the head eunuch tossed a bunch of keys to me, the smell of rust mingling with the stench of blood rushing into my nostrils. When I unlocked the shackles on his wrists, he suddenly raised his eyes. The skin around them was bruised and dark as ink, yet he possessed a pair of exceptionally bright eyes, like unfrozen ice springs in a mountain ravine on a snowy night.
We were the lowliest living corpses in the Shadow Guard Camp. What I learned was the "Shadow," specializing in stealth and assassination; what he cultivated was the "Kill," the desperate techniques of a hitman trading life for life. On the fifteenth of every month, the steward would mix poison into our porridge, and only by feeding each other the other's antidote could we survive.
"A-Yan, open your mouth." When I poured the medicinal brew down his throat for the third time, he suddenly gripped my wrist, his thumbpad brushing over the light calluses on my palm. "You always save me like this. Aren't you afraid I'll turn around and kill you one day?"
I lowered my head to avoid his gaze, staring at the ferocious knife scar on his Adam's apple—left behind last year when he blocked an arrow for our master. By the rules of the Shadow Guard Camp, those who survived three years would have their scars carved into totems. The wolf head on his chest had already bitten onto its third rib, while the serpent shape on my lower back had only coiled to my tailbone.
On the night of the Winter Solstice, I was ordered to kill a scholar. Moonlight spilled over the snow outside his window as he held a brush, writing "Qingqing Zijin" on paper. The fragrance of ink in the inkstone mixed with the scent of charcoal, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the smell of Shen Yan's room. When my dagger pressed against his throat, he suddenly smiled, "The young lady's hands are truly cold. Did you come from the far north?"
The instant blood splashed onto the Xuan paper, I remembered how Shen Yan always spent the depths of night massaging my stiff finger joints. His palms were warm year-round; he said holding a blade steadily required that warmth. Upon returning to the camp, I soaked in the cold pool for three hours. Even when my fingertips turned white, I still felt stained with the scholar's ink.
"Does it hurt?" Shen Yan was crouched by the pool's edge, tossing me a piece of charred, fragrant venison. When I bit into it, I discovered it was stuffed with candied fruit inside—he had used his military merits from last month to trade for it. He said watching me stare blankly at the pantry's sugar jar always made me look like a cat stealing cream.
Three days before the beginning of spring, the master ordered us to assassinate the hostage prince of the Northern Frontier. As Shen Yan tied the heart-protecting armor on me, he suddenly pressed me against the stone wall. The smell of blood on his body mingled with the scent of cedar, making my eyes burn with sour tears. "A-Xue," his Adam's apple pressed against my forehead, "after this mission, let's run away."
I tightly gripped the jade pendant at his waist—a piece of Suiyu I had ground down, bought with half a year's savings, with a crooked character for "Yan" carved into it. In the distance, the watchman's wooden clappers sounded—three long beats and one short one, the assembly signal of the Shadow Guard Camp. I pushed him away, my fingertips brushing across his brow bone, "Wait for me to return, and I will take you to see the plums of Jiangnan."
The ambush at the hostage prince's mansion was far more ruthless than anticipated. When I blocked the third crossbow bolt for Shen Yan, I finally saw the blood in his eyes. He carried me on his back, fighting his way out of the encirclement. Amidst the sound of horse hooves shattering the frozen river, I heard my own blood dripping one drop after another onto his dark robes, blooming into dark red flowers.
"Don't sleep," his voice trembled violently as the candied fruit he pulled from his embrace rolled onto the ground. "You said you were going to take me to see the plum blossoms..." I wanted to raise my hand to wipe the blood from his face, but I saw the cyan hue on my fingertips—the new poison the steward had switched to would begin to rot from the fingertips when it took effect.
Shen Yan's wolf head totem finally bit down onto its fourth rib. On that snowy night when I died in his arms, he knelt holding my corpse the entire night, until the morning light froze his shadow into an ice sculpture. Later, some people said that on the execution racks of the Shadow Guard Camp, a male corpse appeared out of nowhere. Clutched in his palm was half a piece of Suiyu, and tied around his wrist was a woman's hair ribbon. His body was covered in knife wounds, yet not a single one was fatal, as if he had been tortured to death purely by pain.
The plum blossoms of Jiangnan bloomed and fell, but no one would ever know that once, there was a shadow guard named A-Xue who hid half a piece of sugar beneath her tongue, waiting for spring to arrive so she could feed it to her hitman.