Several days had bled into one another since the Incident in the grand hall. For Chi Yan, they were not days, but a single, protracted state of panic.
That same, stupid, catastrophic mistake. But this time, it was infinitely worse.
Man with man . How funny.
The heaven and hell was the silent from the above. No reprimand. No notice of censure. Not even a divine memo.
Why the hell not?
He paced the dusty length of his dilapidated temple, a streak of crimson agitation against the grey stone. His eyes, usually the colour of a tranquil sky, were flat and colourless from lack of sleep. If the curse truly had taken root in that arrogant prince…
if men started flocking to him… people would talk. Questions would arise.
A deeper, colder dread whispered: The prince isn't going to let this go.
Why would he? The man had thrown the verdict of heaven itself back in Chi Yan's face. No one did that. No one dared.
'He won't find me. I'm leagues away, hidden. He's a prince, not a bloodhound,' Chi Yan assured himself, pressing his cool fingers to his own temples.
His gaze, drifting in desperation, snagged on his cluttered study table. His heart gave a sickening lurch.
The tiny, glowing Qi-replica of the Love God—his only companion, a cheeky, semi-sentient spark of his former glory—was playing with the sacred Dice of Faith. It had nudged them right next to a name freshly inscribed on a scroll.
Shen Yi.
At first, Chi Yan just stared, the fear a slow-creeping vine around his lungs. He hadn't… he hadn't actually let the dice confirm the cursed match. What if it was just… pending? A theoretical torment?
Terror overrode thought. He stumbled to the table.
"Your Highness!" he snapped at the replica, using the ironic title he'd bestowed upon the copy of his Highness's face. "That is not a toy! Step away from that name this instant!"
The tiny Love God looked up with an expression of perfect, porcelain innocence. Then, it giggled. A soft, suspiciously knowing sound.
With a strangled noise, Chi Yan slapped his hand over the dancing dice, stopping their cosmic spin. He glared at the replica through his pale lashes.
"I mean it. Touch these again and you will cause a catastrophe even I cannot clean up." He breathed out, believing he'd intervened in time. The dice were still. The pairing was unformed.
He lifted his hand, his palm damp.
The revealed dice seemed to mock him.
His own name, Chi Yan, glowed beside Shen Yi with a finality that turned his divine blood to ice. His blue eyes flashed a stark, horrified silver.
"NO!"
The cry tore from him, raw and unfiltered, echoing in the empty temple. The replica squeaked and dove behind a mountain of scrolls.
Him. The curse had boomeranged with poetic, cruel precision and lashed him to the source of all his current misery. He couldn't stand the prince for an hour in a palace.
How was he to endure a lifetime? A lifetime where his own heart still ached with the ghost of another…
"Why would you—?!" he raged at the cowering replica, then covered his face with his hands, fingers pressing into his eyelids until he saw stars. He couldn't blame the little spark.
This was his fault. His temper. His broken power.
He forced air through his nose. "Alright. Alright. Calm down. Breathe. You cannot strategize if you are having a divine meltdown."
His heart, however, continued to hammer against his ribs like a trapped thing. He had to act. He had to find a loophole, a counter-curse, something, before the threads of fate tightened any further.
His moment of grim resolution was shattered by a sound like thunder against wood.
BOOM.
The impact on his temple's ancient door was so violent the very frame shuddered. Chi Yan jolted, knocking a cascade of scrolls from the table.
Who? At this hour? A believer? His temple hadn't seen a sincere believer in years. A creditor?
He had none. The chilling answer came: A hater. Someone who remembers the old scandals.
He rose, his weariness burned away by a sharp, defensive anger. "Who dares?" he called out, his voice regaining its old, glacial authority, though the polite veneer was cracked. "You do not batter down a god's door. Have you no respect for your place?"
Silence.
Jaw tight, Chi Yan reached into his sleeve. His fingers closed not around a calligraphy brush, but around the cool hilt of his Silver Tracer. The replica whimpered and scrambled up to perch on his shoulder, a tiny, trembling sentinel.
"I will not ask again," Chi Yan said, his voice low and dangerous. He flipped the Tracer in his fingers, the movement fluid and threatening. "Answer, or be prepared for divine chastisement. I am still permitted that much."
'Please let this work,' he thought, a bitter tang in his mouth. 'My power wanes. I have only a decade of this borrowed life left. I cannot afford a brawl.'
The door exploded inward.
Splinters flew. The replica shrieked. Chi Yan's blood ignited with pure, incandescent fury. He levelled the Silver Tracer at the figure in the doorway.
"You—" a man snarled, his face twisted with grief and rage. "You call this a perfect match? She left me! For a blacksmith! After all I gave her! Your lies… your Love God is a fraud!"
The man charged. Chi Yan sidestepped, more gracefully than he felt, and drove the Tracer into the man's shoulder. It was a warning sting, not a kill. "I do not control the human heart!" Chi Yan shot back, his own temper flaring. "I forge the connection. Its maintenance is your domain! Accept your fate!"
"Our lives are not your game!" the man roared, grabbing Chi Yan's wrist with terrifying strength. He twisted, and suddenly Chi Yan was off-balance, the world tilting. A hand like iron clamped around his throat.
Dark spots bloomed before Chi Yan's eyes. He choked, clawing at the hand, driving the Tracer deeper into the man's arm. But his strength was leaching away, a profound weakness born of celestial decay. His vision tunneled. 'Not like this. Not so… mundanely…'
SHING!
A blade, clean and swift, cut through the chaos.
The pressure on Chi Yan's throat vanished. He stumbled back, gasping great, ragged drafts of air, as the assailant's head thumped to the floor, followed a moment later by his body. The scent of blood, copper-strong, flooded the temple.
A voice, laced with familiar, stubborn arrogance, cut through the ringing in his ears. "No one is allowed to kill him," it stated, cold and possessive. "Until I'm through with him myself."
Chi Yan straightened up, one hand braced on the table. His gaze dropped to his own chest.
There, against the dark silk of his robes, a single, glowing red thread had manifested. It was faint, like a seam of light, but it pulsed. It stretched out from his sternum, across the blood-spattered floor, and connected directly to the breast of his saviour.
'No. No, no, no. It's already active.'
He followed the thread up, and his breath truly left him.
Prince Shen Yi stood amidst the gore, looking like a storm incarnate that had deigned to dirty its boots. His white-gold robes were spattered with crimson, his handsome face set in lines of profound annoyance.
"Y-You…" Chi Yan managed.
Shen Yi wiped his blade clean on the dead man's tunic with a casual disdain that was almost more offensive than the violence.
"Me." He sheathed his sword and finally looked at Chi Yan, a humourless smirk touching his lips. "So. Could you have handled him, Matchmaker Kùnsūn? Is that why you were turning such a fascinating shade of violet?"
Chi Yan swiped a hand across his mouth, his pride prickling. "I had the situation in hand," he lied, his voice still hoarse. "State your business. I am not in a festive mood."
Shen Yi took a step closer. The red thread between them seemed to hum. He leaned in, his golden-brown eyes burning with a fury barely contained. "You cursed me," he said, the words flat, final, and searing. "Didn't you?"
Chi Yan pressed his lips into a thin, stubborn line. He saw Shen Yi's gaze flicker down to them for an instant before snapping back up. 'Oh, for fate's sake, not already.'
"It was…" Chi Yan forced out, looking away, "an… unfortunate accident."
"Accident?" Shen Yi's voice cracked like a whip. "You call turning my entire court into a pack of lovesick hounds an accident? I had to flee my own palace! My guards sigh when I walk by! The stable boy tried to serenade me! Do you have any idea what you've done?"
"Mind your language," Chi Yan retorted, his own irritation sparking. "Such crudeness is unbefitting a crown prince. It's… uncouth."
"Fuck 'uncouth'!" Shen Yi exploded. A tremor of real, frantic horror ran beneath his rage. He lunged forward, grabbing the front of Chi Yan's robes with blood-smeared hands, paying no heed to the corpse at their feet. "You will undo this. Right now. You will take it back, or I swear by my ancestors, I will live in your shadow until you do."
Chi Yan's head spun. The secret—that he was the destined match—burned on his tongue. He couldn't say it. "I can't!" he snarled, shoving at Shen Yi's chest to no avail. "I make matches! I don't unmake them! Now get out, before I show you what this 'tracer' can do to more than just arms!"
The colour drained from Shen Yi's face at the finality. "No," he whispered, then his voice hardened into imperial command. He shifted his grip, pinning Chi Yan's wrist with the Tracer against the table. "You will do it. That is an order."
"Let go!"
"Fix my fate! Then I'll be thrilled to never touch someone as infuriatingly stone-headed as you again!"
"You are not listening! I cannot! Not without the permission of the Love God himself!"
Shen Yi froze. Blinked. "…What?"
"The Love God," Chi Yan repeated, the lie taking shape as desperation fuelled it. "I need his authority. For something of this… magnitude."
"Then get it," Shen Yi said, as if asking for a cup of tea.
"I don't know where he is."
Shen Yi stared at him. "What do you mean, you don't know? You're his assistant."
"I am," Chi Yan hissed, feeling the edges of his sanity fray. "And he has been… absent. For years. I've been managing the celestial backlog on orders from the other ministries. He's… gone."
The prince's fiery anger banked, replaced by a slow, calculating burn. His eyes scanned Chi Yan's face—the genuine frustration, the pale exhaustion, the shadow of something like fear.
He released Chi Yan's wrist and took a step back. Then another. He walked over to Chi Yan's simple, worn couch as if it were his throne and sat down, arranging his bloodied robes with deliberate calm.
"Then it's simple," Shen Yi announced, his voice dropping into a tone that brooked no argument.
"You will find him. And I," he added, meeting Chi Yan's horrified gaze, "will be accompanying you. To ensure you don't get conveniently lost. Or stabbed by another disgruntled customer."
Chi Yan's jaw went slack.
The stubborn, arrogant, cursed storm had just moved into his temple. And now, it was insisting on becoming his travel companion on an impossible quest to find a god who didn't want to be found.
A matchmaker who was, in fact, currently having a silent panic attack three feet away.
The red thread on his chest glowed a little brighter, a mocking, inescapable tether.
The hunt was on. And the quarry was himself.