Book 2 Chapter 87

Willow had a fitful night’s sleep overall. He kept waking up due to the contents of his dreams and each time he had to take several moments to calm himself.

During one such time he decided that a change was needed. Doing a quick round of core training, Willow settled into her girl form. It helped her immensely, either due to the strain of the training, or because it distanced her from the version of herself that had committed those acts of violence.

It didn’t matter, all that mattered was that she was able to sleep through the rest of the night in peace.

It was always difficult to tell time in her grandmother’s cave home. Willow was used to having access to the sun, whether to know it was time to wake, or to see how much daylight was left for her to do the things she wanted in a day.

Whereas the crystals used for light shone the same regardless of the time of day. Making it so that Willow had to go outside in order to know basic things like how long she’d slept.

All of this to say that Willow was quite embarrassed to discover that she’d slept until midday. Something that the farmer’s daughter in her was internally screaming about. You don’t waste half of your daylight on sleep.

No matter how out of sorts she still felt.

Willow carried a small bundle of fine cloth in her hands, remembering that she’d told Li Wanyu that she’d return his outer robe, but being unable to find him in her grandmother’s home.

Had he left already? She knew that her grandmother had been quite harsh to him, but she’d still hoped to still have some time together with him. He’d been through so much and had likely seen many a strange sight while he was on the run.

Which meant he likely had many stories to tell!

She felt a twinge of guilt at being at least partially responsible for what happened to him. She hadn’t fully confirmed that yet, of course, but if he knew that Willow had the twins, then his punishment for failing to capture them stemmed at least in part from not kidnapping her when he had the chance.

Willow was beginning to understand that his refusal to kidnap a child was an anomaly of morality within the Li clan. Then again, she’d heard that the majority of men within the clan were treated as lesser than the women. So perhaps the men of the clan were more likely to be aware of the inherent immorality of a lot of the clan’s actions?

She’d need to keep an eye out for more Li clan men to confirm her theory.

Willow giggled to herself at the silly thought before the crushing weight of yesterday’s events caught back up to her.

She didn’t deserve to be giggling at a time like this.

She shook her head, trying to dispel the negative thought and set out to find where her grandmother and Li Wanyu had gone.

The fact she couldn’t find either of them, even when she’d poked her head out of the cave to check the time, was beginning to make her worried.

Had more members of Li Wanyu’s family come to attack him? Was her grandmother going to execute him for putting her in danger?

She didn’t think her grandmother would be that cruel, but she had seemed awfully upset with him for not dealing with his pursuers by himself. Which Willow didn’t feel was fair. She’d made the decision to do what she did all by herself.

Her body briefly locked up as the memory sent a jolt of panic through her. She pinched her arm hard to snap herself out of it. Now wasn’t the time for that.

Willow finally found both of them at the edge of her senses, and was confused by what she was sensing.

She was initially upset to find them fighting each other at the training ground that her grandmother had set up for her. Yet she wasn’t sensing any of the emotions she would associate with a genuine fight.

It felt much more like a spar than a battle to the death. There might’ve been a touch of vindictiveness in her grandmother’s core, but overall, from what she was sensing, this was a normal enough practice bout.

By the time she’d physically made it to the training area the bout seemed to be over.

It had not gone in favour of Li Wanyu and Bingxin.

The two of them were battered, and in the binder’s case, quite bruised.

And yet her grandmother seemed almost entirely untouched. Which made it all too clear what she was doing.

“Grandma! Stop bullying Mister Li!” She hurried over to the ragged man and gave a quick check of his injuries. No skin or bones were broken, and the bruises he had seemed to look worse than they should due to his pale skin.

Which was good. She had seen enough accidents from sparring in the training yards of Acerorazon, and they had treated them with deadly seriousness whenever they’d occurred.

Willow let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

He was fine, they were all fine. The tension that had been mounting within her since she had been unable to find the two of them finally dissipated.

“No need to worry, Willow. I know how to hold back, even if it did wonders for my mood to give him a bit of a thrashing.” Grandma Thea called out as she drew closer to them. Bingxin seemed ready to continue the fight, but her binder held her back, and even bowed to her.

“Thank you for the instruction, Senior Thea. Apologies if coming across us sparring like this upset you, Willow.”

Her grandmother chuckled. “If you call that instruction, then I worry you haven’t had a proper teacher.”

“Most of my lessons these past couple years have been at the hands of spirit beasts or my family’s pursuit, so it was refreshing to face a style of fighting unfamiliar to me. I’ve hopefully learned a lot from that brief bout.”

A note of discomfort echoed in Grandma Thea’s core at his statement, but she quickly changed the subject, gesturing to the bundle of cloth in Willow’s hands.

“What do you have there, dear?”

Oh right! She offered it to Li Wanyu whose eyes flashed in recognition as he took it, shaking it out and revealing the silken outer robe that he used to wear.

“Thank you, Willow. It’ll be nice to have some fresh clothes for a change.”

Her grandmother looked from the robe to Willow, clearly questioning why she had such a thing.

“He wrapped me in that robe when he found me in the woods the time we first met. Kept it around as a memento, but I felt it would be best to give it back to him.” She left out the part where she had been planning on wearing it herself when she was older since it both looked and felt nice, but neither of them needed to know that.

Grandma Thea slowly nodded to herself, and seemed like she was considering asking a follow up question, but then a loud and prominent noise interrupted her.

It was Willow’s growling stomach, and the two adults chuckled at her embarrassment, while Bingxin nodded knowingly.

“Let’s get some food in you. I tried to wake you for the morning meal, but you were sleeping like a stone.”

The four of them made their way back to the cave, and Willow was feeling at least a little optimistic about returning to some form of normalcy.

She wasn’t better yet, and she might never be the same, but she was on the road to recovery.

And while the road was long, she did not walk it alone.