No Light: 3 Lives, 3 Worlds , Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms AU

Part 2: Wife

It was daytime, but it seemed that Mao, the Sun God, was taking a day off. There was no sun out today, only dark and threatening clouds. Steady rain was falling from the skies, making the world dark and dreary. Wind blew in through the open slats of the window, dropping the temperature in the room to icy cold.

She sighed morosely. It seemed a fitting morning after to a wedding that hadn't happened. Bai Qian dropped her face into her hands, rubbing at her aching eyes. "Just what did I do yesterday?" she whispered to herself, not wanting to wake the slumbering man beside her. She was not ready to deal with him on top of everything else.

Scooting back, distancing herself just a little from this current problem, she rested her head against the wall with her eyes closed. As far as she remembered, she had been drinking under the peach blossom trees. And now, she was in bed with a strange man with no recollection of how she had gotten here. She tilted her head to the side. That would normally lead one to think that too much wine was bad for you. After a moment of silent contemplation, she resolutely shook her head. No. She had been drinking almost her entire life. One mishap would not sour her on her much beloved wine, she decided resolutely.

Squaring her shoulders, she opened her eyes and carefully looked around. It was her bedroom in Zhe Yan's hut. She hadn't been wrong about that. The wind at her back from the open window, and the shadows in the corners of the room were all too familiar to her. She certainly hadn't gone far in her drunken haze, but the fact that she didn't remember getting here made her wonder if the stranger had helped her. But . . . how had he known where to bring her?

Her eyes flickered over him, noticing the imprint of her head on the pillow near him. She'd spent the entire night inches away from him and never suspected a thing. An unknown feeling awakened inside of her, but it was so new . . . so different, that she couldn't identify it.

She froze as another thought occurred to her. What if, while she was unconscious and vulnerable, he had done more than help her to bed? What if they had done more than sleep together? She hesitantly looked under the blanket clutched to her chest, her mind going blank when she saw an undertunic different from the one she had worn yesterday.

How had she . . . that man . . . she raised a shaking hand to her hair, pushing it back from her face, furiously wondering what he had done to her. She began to breathe hard, fire welling up inside of her as her anger grew. Her hand reached for her Jade Purity Fan; it took her a moment to remember that she wasn't wearing her own tunic. But even if she had been, she hadn't thought to put her fan in the sleeve of her wedding dress; it was lying in her room at the fox den.

Closing her eyes, she hit at her head with an open palm, cringing at the inadvertent pain that action caused. With that pain though came a moment of logic, clearing away some of the feelings of enraged humiliation. There had to be an innocent answer; things like this didn't happen to her.

She couldn't have slept with him. She didn't feel any differently. Fate could be a bitch. Everyone knew that. But it wouldn't be such a bitch that if she finally lost her virginity after 140,000 years, she wouldn't even remember the event itself? It was a good thing that she wasn't as impetuous as she had been in her youth. "Blowing up and destroying Zhe Yan's hut won't solve anything," she cautioned herself.

She squinted balefully at the man in her bed. It was his fault that she was sitting here having to wonder about things like this. Shaking her head, hoping to shake loose some of these worrisome thoughts, she turned her focus onto the wedding clothes lying on a chair by the door. Her hair ornament rested on the table next to her bed. Everything was there. Well, whoever he was, at least he was a conscientious pervert. She wouldn't have to worry about finding any replacement items for her wedding.