The room was dim.
Li Ce had been laid flat on a crude wooden couch. Without the slightest ceremony, Jiang Yuejian lifted his black, subtly patterned robe, exposing his strong lower back, slick with cold sweat.
Beside them, the guard commander gripped his sword hilt, his breathing heavy. “Daoist Jiang, if any harm comes to His Highness—”
“Shut up.” Jiang Yuejian cut him off coldly. She was washing her hands in warm water, her concentration almost as clinical and merciless as it was at an operating table. “Get out. Stop using up the oxygen.”
The guard had no idea what “oxygen” was, but the professional authority radiating from her shook him so thoroughly that he actually retreated outside without another word.
Only Jiang Yuejian and Li Ce, who was in so much pain he was nearly leaving his body, remained.
Li Ce clutched the edge of the couch, gouging deep white marks into the wood with his nails. He felt a slightly cool hand settle against the left side of his lower back—soft, yet utterly precise.
For the first time in a long while, the prince regent who commanded the entire court felt a faint, inexplicable sense of... reassurance.
Before he could savor it, however, Jiang Yuejian's voice drifted into his ear.
“Your Highness, don't hold your breath. Relax.”
Li Ce clenched his teeth and forced out a single word. “...Hurry.”
Jiang Yuejian said nothing. Standing just behind him to one side, she laid her left hand flat where his waist met his ribs, curled her right hand into a fist, and struck.
Thump!
The dull impact against flesh sounded particularly alarming in the silent room.
“...Fuck.”
Li Ce's body jolted upward. Like a fish stranded out of water, he arched violently on the wooden couch.
For an instant, it felt as though a red-hot iron rod had driven straight from his lower back through his groin, sending half his body into spasm. The immense physical agony robbed him of breath. His vision turned white. The air in his lungs seemed trapped in his throat. All the curses he had wanted to unleash dwindled to one faint, trembling sound, heavy with limitless resentment.
“You...”
Jiang Yuejian withdrew her fist and regarded his pain-contorted face with perfect composure. Even like this, he remained infuriatingly handsome.
“Never mind ‘you.’ It's supposed to hurt.” Turning, she took several clean silver tubes from the cloth bag she carried, her voice still completely level. “Positive kidney percussion tenderness. Diagnosis confirmed. Li Ce, that stone inside you is having a party in your ureter. Would you like to keep clinging to what's left of your dignity, or would you like my help?”
Li Ce lay limp on the couch. Half a minute passed before he could breathe again. Drenched in sweat, he turned his head. Alongside the fury in his eyes was something else now: profound alarm.
He had never experienced pain like this in his life.
“...Kill...” he gasped.
Jiang Yuejian raised a brow. “Kill me? Then who'll get the stone out? Your incense-burning Daoists? Or those imperial physicians who know nothing but how to boil tea with salt?”
Li Ce closed his eyes, his Adam's apple moving painfully.
He forced out another word. “...Bastard...”
“Thank you for the compliment.” Jiang Yuejian had already lit a small oil lamp and was passing the tip of a silver tube through the flame. “If you've still got the strength to curse, Your Highness clearly has a strong will to live. Now, to save your life and your kidneys, I'll have to begin a rather more ‘invasive’ treatment. Will you relax on your own, or do I need to knock you out with an anesthetic?”
Li Ce opened his eyes and stared at the silver tube in her hand. He had never seen such an instrument: slender, cold, and gleaming strangely in the lamplight.
It suddenly dawned on him that, in the moments to come, his august person might be left utterly... exposed before this woman.