Mudan

What?

"You want me to join you?" Shen scoffed, heavily insulted. "Do I look like a traitor to you?"

"You were one, apparently," Taro quipped with a mocking smile. "Something about a cliff I heard?"

My stomach was a mess, my heart beating furiously. It was obvious they knew more than they should have. But how? Had they been spying on us or did they have a mole?

Shen seemed to share my train of thought, his face creased in disbelief. "How the Hell do you know all of that?" He shouted. "No one knows about that. No one but my Clan is aware of that."

"We also know how Master Yei tortured you out of your humanity. We know how your Clan Lady got your temple blown up. The Renge's misfortunes are just our average morning news, but you can turn the tides whenever you want. You can join the Ajisai and finally stab that bastard in the back."

Shen's eyes were hardened. There was no way he didn't think there was a mole. There had to be one.

I had no place in this fight. Their eyes were glued on Shen, hungry for his allegiance. They knew he was powerful and wanted him on their side, but where would that leave me?

"Who's your informant?" Shen asked quietly. "Tell me who they are and I'll join you."

Melina laughed. "Oh. Oh, god no. You think we're negotiating? With what's about to go down, you'll have no choice but to join us. We'll be the only ones who can save you."

"Your Master has a list of crimes under his belt," Taro said. "We're just doing the right thing and knocking him off his chair. Once you regain your feelings back, Shen. You'll understand exactly what we mean."

I crossed my arms over my chest. "Well, where does all this leave me?" I questioned. Their heads slowly turned to me.

"You're going to die," Neo—the curly-haired spy who had been silent up until now, hauntingly said to me. No way were those his first words.

"You're still a traitor," Melina said.

"But you're a useful traitor!" Taro said gleefully. "Once your Zen Dragon switches sides, we'll have all the ammo we need to make sure no one is on your father's side after this. Not even his own allies. They'll all turn against him once they realize how unstable the system has gotten under his rule."

"Your mother rat you out to the Moon Rangers," Melina gently hissed through her teeth. "Not even the Imperial government, but the Rangers, every Clan's enemy for centuries. She didn't just pull the rug out on you. She pulled it out on all of us."

I sighed, frustrated that my mother's actions even had this much of a ripple effect. That people she'd never even met were discussing it. "So what? You're going to kill me?" I asked flatly. "You gonna take that pleasure away from my Old Master as revenge?"

"I love the way she thinks!" Taro exclaimed. "She understands us so well. You would have made a great Ajisai."

I was one more word away from smashing my head into the stone walls. Shen had dropped dead silent, the gears in his mind rolling as he tried to think of a plan.

"You only have a day before your destiny becomes ours," Melina told him, tossing him a bag. Out rolled a Projection Crystal, beaming yellow into the sandy ground. The conversation ended there, with all three spies turning and strolling away from the archway.

"Hey!" I yelled after them. "When the Hell is this field going to lift?"

"They're leaving us here," Shen grumbled.  "Make yourself useful and unlock that Projection."

"Don't order me around, asshole," I said sharply, slowly walking to the Crystal. Shen snorted amusedly, still having time to mess with me despite the chaos we were tossed in.

I picked up the Crystal. "I'm not doing this because you told me to," I bit. "I just want to know what the Hells going on."

Shen rolled his eyes as I chanted the incantation. The image burst from the Crystal, displaying Chu and Bhen's worried faces on the other side.

"Look, Young Master, we don't know where you are or if something happened, but if you get this, please come to our coordinates. It's urgent," Bhen spoke first.

"Kai left to go look for you in the town. Just a heads up, he's batshit crazy and determined to kill the traitor. He said he wasn't gonna wait for Old Master, he's on a high road to revenge," Chu said, sounding stressed.

"We're supposed to be a team but one of us is dead and the other has lost their marbles. We don't know what else to do, Young Master, since you're not around either. So Bhen and I decided that if neither you or Kai are back by sunrise tomorrow... we're meeting the Nephatian Royals by ourselves."

The Projection ended as Chu chanted the closing words and I turned to see Shen's reaction. A grimace twisted his features, his arms buckling as they tried to get out of the chains.

A large breath puffed out of him as his arms slackened and he looked at me expectantly. "Can you climb on top of me and free me now?" He asked, that air of entitlement still around him.

"No," I bluntly denied, walked to the wall and slid down against it. "I'm going to take a nap. Sort yourself out."

Shen's jaw clenched as he watched me ignore him and the sounds of his limbs fighting against the metal swallowed the silence yet again.

***

Every few minutes I would hear the chains around Shen's wrists and arms violently clatter, his frustrated groans echoing through the room. I watched him struggle, finding empty amusement in his suffering. His Craft was just as useless as mine now, so we were finally on equal footing.

"Yes!" He grunted, ripping his first arm out. He reached with his free hand to release his other arm, plopping hard onto the ground once nothing held him up anymore. He hissed in pain as he pulled his ankles free, and I spotted red rings around his skin from where I sat.

A smirk stretched on my lips as I snorted. Shen glanced up at me with a glare. "You think this is hilarious, don't you?" He said bitterly.

"Now you finally know what your stupid webs feel like," I said pettily. I pushed up from my seat and walked to him, looming over him for a brief second before he rose from the floor and towered over me.

His eyes stared deeply into mine, as if to intimidate. I noticed his pupils were slightly bigger than usual. His sudden close proximity made my stomach flutter against my will and I stepped back, gulping hard.

Shen smirked deviously, as if smug that he had some kind of effect on me. I clenched my jaw and fist.

"Give me back my stuff," I said. "My mother's flower and my horse figure."

"For someone who claimed to forget the past, you're still holding onto it," Shen said, digging into his pockets.

I held my hand out expectantly, my stomach churning when he deliberately and slowly folded them into my palms, milking our hand contact. I felt heat burn my cheeks and ears, and I ripped the items from him out of spite.

Why do I still feel this way? I hate him.

"Don't ever take these again," I told him coldly. "I'll kill you, I'm not even joking."

"Do you even have it in you to kill me?" He asked wryly.

I chose to ignore him, bumping past him as I walked to the window. Shen suddenly latched onto my arm, tugging me back.

"Mu—" he dropped to the floor just as he tried to say my name, causing me to sink down with him. I tried to roll my arm out of his grip, but he held on, his eyes woozy and cloudy.

"What the Hell is wrong with you?" I asked. "Are you drunk?"

"I missed you, why'd you have to go?" He fell toward me, slurring his words. My face burned with both embarrassment and confusion hearing him. Something was definitely not well.

His head laid against my chest, his upperbody annoyingly heavy and lame.

"Shen, get off me," I said with difficulty.

He raised his head to look at me. His face was devoid of the hard, cocky exterior I had to suffer through for the past week. His eyes were weak and soft, the glossy shine of tears coating them.

The vulnerability of his closeness and helpless stare reminded me of the bitter memory of him begging me to not run away.

I felt my emotions spin into a typhoon. Why was he looking at me like that? He couldn't just switch up after everything.

His cupped my face with his hands, leaving me frozen in my skin once again. "You don't hate me, right?" He asked softly. "You're going to stay with me?"

"Shen..."

"Old Master doesn't have to know, we can keep it a secret. I'll protect you."

He's delirious!

I was about to pull away when suddenly he brought his face to mine, connecting our lips. His mouth moved against mine in a slow, torturous way that set my skin alight. It felt like all my thoughts were melting to mush, I grabbed onto his wrists and pulled his hands from my face, pushing him away.

I stared at him in disbelief. Then, my hand seemed to move on its own, punching him hard in the face.

Shen's face snapped to the side, and he held his cheek for a few seconds, just blankly staring. It's like he was only realizing what he just did.

"How dare you?" I asked him, heaving angrily. "You kill Hassan and then you think you can just kiss me? What's wrong with you!"

He looked like he was about to fall over. "I-I didn't kill him," he drawled. "I wanted to though. So bad."

"What?" My face plummeted.

"I wanted you to think he died, so I poisoned him with paralysis and sleep."

"And why the fuck would you do that?"

Shen stared in confusion at his hands, as if debating mentally if they were real. He let out a pained groan, clutching his head.

"Agh! I can't think straight!" He whined out. "I-I hear Old Master in my head. He's screaming. He's telling me to hurt you. Over and over again."

It was all making sense now. These were the feelings the Ajisai said would flood back. Old Master must have mentally turned Shen against me. And now that the Veil had been weakened, his feelings were all over the place.

"I-I'm meant to make you suffer. In everything I do. Everytime I think of saving you my brain feels like it's going to melt," he said, holding his head in his hands. "I can't think of you fondly. I can't think of letting you do. I'm weak and putty in his hands. I'm sorry, Mudan. For everything."

I tried to move away from him. His hand shot out and nabbed my wrist, holding me tightly.  "Let go of me, Shen," I begged.

"I can't," he sobbed. "I want to. I want to end this, but he won't let me. I'm sorry, Mudan, please forgive me. Please forgive me for being so weak. You're going to die and it's all my fault."

Disappointment ripped through my heart as Shen started sobbing. I hated my father so much. He made sure to punish us both.

I couldn't even be angry at Shen for what he was doing. He was only a puppet.

"It's okay," I said, swallowing my sniffles. "You're just another victim of his control."

"I'm so sorry," he quietly cried, his grip still inhumanely strong. "I should have believed you. Everything you said about him was true. He's cruel and uncaring. He only cares that we're devoted to him like a god. He was angry I chose you over him so he punished me."

"I'm sorry if I made you feel abandoned," my eyes betrayed me by releasing a single tear. "I was just trying to stay alive."

"You're going to stay with me, right?"

I could tell that he barely knew what he was saying. His delirium must have been forcing him through his memories of the cliff and his suffering all over again.

"I can't stay with you, Shen," I said, his face shattered. "We can't be together. While you still have the mark of those flowers on your back, while you still belong to them, we will never see the sun."

"No... no...I don't want to do this anymore..."

His sobs continued, fading out slowly. His head was bowed so I would not see his distraught face, his hair hiding his eyes as though they were curtains. We sat there in suffocating silence, the air filled with both misery and acceptance.

Shen's weeping suddenly stopped and he raised his head. Although his face was wet and red with tears, the cold, hard stare in his eyes warned me. That Shen was back.

"That must have given your broken heart a little hope, huh?" He asked with a malicious grin. "You shouldn't hold onto it, it's not going to save you. It will never happen again."

"You sound sure of that," I replied, defeated.

"I am, Little Bird. I am a Renge, and you will die a renegade."

***

A/N: Phew. A lot of emotions! Do you feel bad for Shen? Don't forget to vote and comment :D!