Kai Low can't get over the arrogant man in healer's robes who is apparently Lord Rong's former husband.
Former husband.
Lord Rong was married.
The stick-in-the-mud, infuriatingly confident spy who looked down on Kai Low like he was some bumbling teenager most of the time. It was the rest of the time that made him stick like a burr under Kai Low's skin that he couldn't dig out. Those few, secret moments he probably thought Kai Low didn't notice, when something sad and longing flashed in his eyes, when that flush rose in his cheeks…it was adorable, and it was even more infuriating that it was Lord Rong who was making it adorable.
He'd been the bane of the tribes for so long, and Kai Low had spent years dreaming of his head on a pike, and now he was feeling twitchy after screaming the man's ex-husband on a crowded street, and he didn't know why.
Yuze had married a stuck-up asshole, and it didn't work in Kai Low's mind. How? Why? Had the healer just kept his mouth shut until after they were married? Did Lord Rong have brain damage from some injury long ago?
Why the hell would he think a man like that was a better choice than Kai Low? The moment he'd shown up, Yuze had gone stiff the way prey animals did when they sensed a predator approaching and weren't sure which direction to run.
It was not a natural look on him, and it shouldn't have happened.
Kai Low couldn't figure out why it bothered him so much to see the other man humiliated; he wasn't so hypocritical that he denied he'd tried to do the same thing not that long ago, but he couldn't stop thinking about it now. No one had haunted Kai Low like this.
Not even Kai San.
He carried his anger with Kai San with him always, tucked right up under his rib cage, right next to the heart that still carried him too. At least on those days when he was softhearted enough to acknowledge it.
But Rong Yuze was under his skin and had been since he'd found him crouched behind that tent in the midst of their fleeing tribesmen. Something about the defiance in his eyes, despite looking around for an exit that didn't exist, surrounded by enemies. And he hadn't backed down, hadn't hesitated. He'd looked Kai Low right in the eyes and lied through his teeth and hadn't backed down when Kai Low had called him out.
There are very, very few people who have withstood the whip, and Rong Yuze is now one of them.
And Kai Low was no slouch. He survived the whip once too, after Kai San left, and Apa was buried, and there was no one to blame but the stupid child who'd left them alone, never believing that could have been the outcome. He'd gotten lucky. Beng Shai had interveened when he'd left his mourning and found out what was happening, but it had still taken weeks before Kai Low was fully healed.
Kai Low is just as tough as Rong Yuze, and they're both tougher than that soft-handed healer who looked down so steeply he might as well have been on a cliff's edge and the two of them on the ground below.
What the hell was Kai Low lacking that the arrogant healer was a better choice?
~ tbc