Chu Yun was so startled he almost fell off the bed. Only Xiao Zai's arm around his waist kept him in place.
"You heard that?" Chu Yun asked, his heart beating a vicious rhythm inside his chest. The relief coursing through his blood made him dizzy, but the embarrassment of Xiao Zai hearing such a sentimental confession made him burn.
Xiao Zai chuckled, the sound raspy and gritty. "I heard everything."
Chu Yun went several shades paler. He had said some genuinely embarrassing things that he would never have admitted if Xiao Zai had been awake.
Eyes glinting in the dim light of the room, Xiao Zai nodded with a smirk. "Everything," he said, and before Chu Yun could react he climbed on top of him, careful not to put weight on his abdomen, and pinned his wrists to the bed. "I think I heard you very colourfully threatening the poor physician who saved my life?"
Chu Yun glared at him, which was asking a lot order considering just how unbelievably giddy with happiness he felt. "I also said I would reward him."
Xiao Zai chuckled again, nuzzling Chu Yun's neck affectionately. "There was also something about you not knowing how to live without me?"
"You must have hallucinated that one," Chu Yun said, trying and failing to keep a scowl in place.
In the end his features smoothed out into a relieved smile and he wrapped his arms around Xiao Zai's neck, pulling him down into a kiss. "I'm so glad you're awake," he said, when they broke away for air.
Xiao Zai's hands drifted from his wrists up his arms to cup his jaw. "Thank you," he said, looking deeply into Chu Yun's eyes. "Thank you for taking care of me."
Chu Yun ducked his head. He never knew what to do when Xiao Zai looked at him like that.
"How long have you been able to hear what people were saying?" Chu Yun asked, changing the subject non too subtly, and shifting around on the bed so he was lying mostly on top of Xiao Zai instead of the other way around.
Chu Yun agreed. Xiao Zai's case wasn't at all similar to what the physician had described.
"Convenient, isn't it?" he said aloud, his mind coming up with possibilities. "I mean, we've been assuming the arrow was meant to kill you, and the corpse powder to ensure that happened..."
Xiao Zai interrupted him. "Yes, I think so too. It all seems tpo perfectly orchestrated to be the result of happenstance."
The fact that Xiao Zai had been conscious the whole time changed everything. It felt like the point was never to kill him, but instead to trap him in his own body in some kind of perpetual state of stasis.
"And your symptoms weren't even similar to the traditional effects of the corpse powder," Chu Yun mused, worrying at his bottom lip. "I think Ru Long hoped that with corpse powder not being common in Zui, and your condition not displaying the usual symptoms, that we would never risk using the antidote on you."
Now that he was looking at all the evidence in front of him. It seemed obvious that that had been the plan from the beginning.
"If you had died that would generate a succession crisis," Chu Yun said, looking up into Xiao Zai's eyes. "Perhaps that wouldn't be convenient for Ru Long's plans."
Xiao Zai's arm tightened around Chu Yun's waist. "What even are his plans?"
That eluded Chu Yun for now. Usurping the Zui throne, due to likely being Xiao Zai's uncle's son? Wouldn't that be more convenient if Xiao Zai was dead? And what about his own "legitimate" claim to the Su throne?
The actual legitimacy of his role as Crown Prince of Su was dubious. What would happen if that information was revealed?
There were many unanswered questions swirling around Ru Long and the attack on Xiao Zai.
"I don't know what he's planning," Chu Yun said, looking up at Xiao Zai from under his lashes, his gaze intense, "but he has another thing coming if he thinks I'll make it easy for him."