Having been flashed such an enchanting smile, the prince found himself at a loss for words. He, Li Yu Rong, from the time he was pulled from his mother's dead womb, had never been graced with such a pure and wonderful expression.

He wanted to say something, but remembering she wouldn't understand, moved to pat her head again. Before his hand even reached its destination, the light in her eyes cut out and she crumbled as though her strings were cut.

Swiftly catching her pitching body, Li Yu Rong recalled the blood he had seen dripping down her arm when she had first walked within his sight. Looking down, his heart clenched at the large dark, deep red splotch of blood that had seeped into his white robe from where she laid against him. He couldn't help but wonder how she had come to be so gravely wounded. Neither General Bai nor the soldiers that had appeared with him had weapons wet with blood.

Hefting the strange young woman's weight as he stood from the couch, he swiftly headed toward his own chambers. Her breathing was slight and choppy. The vitality of her body rapidly dropping as her flesh became feverish. Her brow scrunched in pain as sweat collected there and dripped down.

If left alone, her soul would slip away to the Spirit Realm.

As Li Yu Rong rushed along, he called out. "Hui Se Ying!"

Materializing, as if from the shadows themselves, was a dark as pitch robed figure. The person kept perfect stride of the prince. "Your command, master?" Hui Se Ying murmured.

"Go to the Eastern Gate and tell Lu Se Ying to return to me as swiftly as possible." Li Yu Rong commanded and then tossed over a golden jade pass. "Take this and present it to the gate guard for a quicker entry."

"As you command, master!" Hui Se Ying cupped his fist and then vanished into the shadows.

At the same time, the prince crossed the threshold of his chambers and placed the odd woman in his bed, uncaring for the purple sheets that became stained red with blood. A dagger bloomed from his sleeve and he used it to cut the strange thin cloth from the young woman's upper body.

Having been relegated to this out of the way courtyard within this out of the way town in Jin Ang Country at the age of five, the amount of human contact Li Yu Rong had was slim at best. His sensibilities came from the spirits, beasts, and demons kept by his side and therefore he held no sense of the proper distance between men and women for his era.

The cloth was removed, and he even shamelessly fingered the strange lacy material that had a hard underside covering her ample bosom from view in a moment's curiosity. Howbeit, considering the severity of the situation, he decided to leave it for further examination later and brought his focus to the peculiar wound on her right shoulder.

An even circular hole about half a cùn in length was gouged deep into her shoulder. The skin around the hole was puckered and swollen. Most concerning was that blood flowed from it like water. He wasn't as knowledgeable as Lu Se Ying when it came to medical arts, however, he was proficient enough in first-aid to at least help matters while waiting.

Taking the cloth that had been cut from her body, he bunched it up and used it as a means to staunch the blood flowing from the wound. The light blue material became a garish red as the blood absorbed into it over time.

Unfortunately, this was the most he could do with what he had, at the moment.

As he placed a bit of pressure, her brow scrunched up and her body jolted from the pain. Her skin was slick with sweat and was becoming clammy to the touch. Even though she was suffering under his pressing her wound, he could not let up.

Li Yu Rong murmured words of comfort although she was unconscious and could not hear them. He whispered them over and over again although he knew that were she to hear them she would not be able to understand them. With his free hand, he ran his fingers through her red tresses that were incredibly soft to the touch.

By no means did he hold tender feelings for the fairer sex and by no means was he a saint that threw himself out there to shelter the weak. He was aloof from things that did not concern him and primarily stuck to his own affairs.

When he had first laid eyes upon her, he had been struck by the vast contrasts in appearance to any human he ever had the chance to come across. He found himself drawn in by deep curiosity over their difference in language. It had been unknown to him that there were any other languages outside of what he spoke daily.

He had long known that she was being pursued even before An Ying made his report as he dragged the girl into his lap. At first, it was merely to play with this human that was so at odds from all that he had known. Helping her shake the shackles of her pursuers would have been for the sake of staving off his boredom and broadening his knowledge with the mysteries she contained.

That whole plan scattered with the wind, however.

When she looked into his red eye – the scare of his from being born from a dead womb – she did not cower or scream or faint out of fright.

His mind had been thrown from her look of awe and wonder. His heart shuddered and flooded with a strange rush of warmth as she breathed out words with the gentlest of voices. Li Yu Rong did not know what had been said, but the inflection of her voice coupled with the look in her eyes – eyes that were the color of a clear cloudless sky – he felt that the meaning could only be something wonderful.

When her fingers moved out to touch hesitantly, gently, as though reaching out for something precious... Li Yu Rong felt his soul come undone. It gave birth to an unknown emotion that surged and hummed beneath his skin.

He had never felt anything quite like this before.

This was the first time, in his recollection, that he wanted to keep a person no matter the cost.