Truth or Dare, naturally, couldn’t be all silence — what would be the point of that? When the Southern Wilderness Demon King asked about certain private matters of the more colorful variety, Yue Yang answered honestly when honesty was possible, reasoning that giving this particular Eastern Demon Clan princess — who ran on curiosity as a primary fuel — a little something to think about wasn’t a bad strategy.

The truth was that since the snow-country hot spring, things between them had moved very quickly.

Everything but the final step.

All the things that lovers do together — those had happened. The Southern Wilderness Demon King, being a woman of some dignity, had maintained the framing of cultivation practice for her own peace of mind.

Now, having discovered a considerable number of small pleasures while also developing a considerable number of new questions and desires, she was naturally curious about the things people normally kept private. Even without the game, she would have worked up the nerve to ask him eventually. Between lovers, what was there to hide? Especially when both people genuinely wanted to understand each other fully — personality, body, preferences, all of it.

“You awful person, I’m not actually interested in your tedious business,” the Southern Wilderness Demon King said, ducking her face away from him, too self-conscious to let him see the expression that contradicted her words completely.

“We’ve been on your questions for a while. Isn’t it my turn?” Yue Yang’s smile had a quality that made her heart behave erratically.

“If the questions violate the rules of basic decency, I reserve the right to refuse.” She was worried about what he might ask. Even if she was willing to be completely transparent with him, saying certain things out loud was a different matter entirely.

“Fair enough. A queen is entitled to some privileges.” Yue Yang showed every appearance of being a reasonable and magnanimous person.

“Hmph. About time you acknowledged that.” She raised a small fist in mock triumph, outwardly playing the role of someone who had won something, inwardly feeling something considerably warmer — the sensation of being thoroughly, helplessly indulged. Why was he so good to her? The Eastern Demon Clan princess felt a wave of affection that she couldn’t entirely account for, and in the warmth of it, she stopped relocating the hand that had climbed somewhere it had no professional justification for being. When his other hand quietly descended somewhere equally unjustified, she only gave him a look that said: greedy.

Yue Yang was, without question, someone who understood how to handle these situations — though he would never have admitted it in those terms. The genuinely skilled never announced themselves the way Sea Fatty did. Subtlety was the actual method.

He’d come a long way from wherever he’d started. Experience had shaped him, and there had been considerable experience. Any man who had traveled this far with this many exceptional women and couldn’t handle one Eastern Demon Clan princess who was new to all of this really had no business operating in this category at all.

Before long, he was murmuring ten questions in sequence into the princess’s ear. The first three produced covered laughter, headshaking, and the expression of someone who was technically denying everything while confirming it completely. The next three produced no more laughter — only a deepening flush, and eventually closed eyes, and absolute refusal to engage, communicating clearly that she was not discussing this. The final three were delivered with the caveat that if she wouldn’t answer and wouldn’t accept the penalty, the game was simply over.

She refused to let the game end.

Her position was: she would not answer, but he was still required to ask.

Perhaps because the hands had become somewhat more purposeful, she pressed her own small hand against his and held it still, communicating through that pressure that she needed to actually breathe.

The other hand, which had gone somewhere even less defensible, was eventually caught and extracted. She bit it — not hard, but with feeling. Then, noticing something she hadn’t intended to notice on a particular finger, she looked up at him with an expression of manufactured outrage.

He found her infinitely more compelling in that moment, and kissed her before the expression could resolve itself into anything more coherent — properly, thoroughly, until the Eastern Demon Clan princess had been reduced to something with no structural integrity. And when the kissing reached a natural pause, she remembered there was one question left, and told him he still had to ask it. He did — quietly, against the curve of her ear — and she immediately hit him with both hands and announced that the question was against the rules and he was a scoundrel of the first order.

“So that’s a yes, then?” Yue Yang laughed.

“No.” She denied it with considerable determination.

“People who don’t tell the truth face the maximum penalty.”

“It’s still no. I would never — there’s nothing to admit — even if I’d wanted to I wouldn’t just — there’s nothing, I’m not refusing to admit anything, it’s just not what you’re imagining, don’t make me sound so terrible, you’re the worst—” The Southern Wilderness Demon King burrowed into his chest and refused to come out, steadfastly declining to acknowledge the question, even with both their Heart-Links active and their inner states entirely transparent to each other, leaving precisely nothing hidden between them. Some things, evidently, she was not going to say aloud regardless.

“There’s nothing wrong with it if you have,” Yue Yang said, offering comfort with genuine feeling. “Sometimes too much suppression isn’t healthy. Being able to release it is usually better.”

“I’m not like that!” She sat up enough to hit him again, which was approximately as effective as being struck by a very small, very indignant cloud.

“Really nothing?”

“Fine. Once. After the World Tree, when I was missing you and it was so hard, I tried once, but I was scared the whole time and I couldn’t figure it out anyway, I’m hopeless, is that what you wanted to hear?” The words came out in a rush, and the Southern Wilderness Demon King immediately looked like she wanted to dissolve into the floor. She’d decided to say it. Partly because she was worried that when the time actually came, she might do something wrong and disappoint him — Fengxian and Xiao Nu both clearly knew what they were doing, and even Wuhen, whose body had always been the most delicate, managed perfectly. The Southern Wilderness Demon King knew her body was fine. She just hadn’t the faintest idea what she was doing, and that bothered her.

“Very easy to learn. And going forward, you won’t need to manage alone — you have me. We’ll figure it out together.” Yue Yang expressed great willingness to conduct research with the newly crowned Gentle Breeze Queen. What a dedicated student.

“It’s going to hurt so much—” She wasn’t afraid of pain exactly, but she was afraid that pain might make her tense up and ruin everything.

“I promise to be gentle. Don’t be afraid.” This particular worry was universal — he understood it completely and said so quietly.

“Did it hurt the others? The first time?”

The question came while something like a tide was moving through her, and as she asked it, she realized her mind had quietly changed. She’d been planning to extend the cultivation practice a little longer, to stay in the warmth of this early stage. But she didn’t want that anymore.

Better to do it now. Become his today.

Short pain rather than long anxiety.

If Wuhen, with her fragile constitution, had come through it fine, she certainly would too. She was sure of it.

The Southern Wilderness Demon King gathered her courage and reached out, touching him lightly, then immediately felt a flutter of doubt — she knew rationally that Wuhen and Luohua and Inan had all managed without any difficulty, but the doubt arrived anyway. Too much. What if she was too small? What if she couldn’t—

Yue Yang knew exactly what she was thinking. He kissed her forehead.

Said nothing. Let the silence reassure her.

Then gathered her up. “Your Majesty, bath time. Kindly disrobe.”

Whatever happened during the bath, neither of them could have recounted it in sequence afterward. The Southern Wilderness Demon King only knew she felt wonderfully, entirely at ease, and couldn’t be persuaded to open her eyes. She held on to him with boneless arms, her heartbeat doing something that strongly resembled a small deer running into walls, too shy to meet his eyes when his were burning the way they were.

She knew the important moment had arrived.

Today would be a significant day in her life.

The day she stepped from girlhood into something more. The day she ceased to be only herself and became part of his life — joined to him, no longer separate.

“Don’t be afraid. In the hot spring — you managed just fine then, didn’t you? This will be all right. I promise.”

“That was different. Below is too small. And honestly, my mouth got so tired—”

“Trust me. Close your eyes and just feel it.”

He led her through it, gently and with patience — the full practice of cultivating together, all its techniques, one by one, and she sank into it almost immediately, body and spirit both, the Heart-Link resonating between them so that she could feel his desire and his delight as clearly as her own. She followed his guidance. Clumsy at first, but willing — genuinely eager to learn, to improve — and something like natural talent opened in her. She got better quickly. Became more confident in herself.

When she felt his pleasure responding to what she was doing, a warmth spread through her that she hadn’t expected.

This person is mine. And I can give him the greatest happiness in the world. I am not any less than anyone.

The final moment.

The sacred ceremony of union — and after it, she would be his wife. An irreplaceable part of his life. She’d had so many worries and hesitations and small fears, but the gentle progression of everything that had come before had carried her past all of them. She wasn’t afraid anymore.

“It’s all right. Do whatever you need to do. I can handle it.” She ended up being the one to reassure him, worried he might hold back out of concern for her.

“Ha — you really are something.” He couldn’t help laughing.

“Laugh again and I’ll bite you.”

Not anger — pure shyness.

When the crucial moment came, she felt a pain that defied description — nothing like combat injuries, nothing like anything she’d encountered before. It went somewhere deeper than the body, into the soul itself, the kind of pain that becomes memory and stays permanent. It was pain and happiness simultaneously, sorrow and pleasure at once, shame and beauty together, rejection and belonging in the same breath, roughness and tenderness braided so tightly they were indistinguishable, damage and completion meaning the same thing—

No language was sufficient. Not even close.

In that moment she knew nothing else, only one thing: she would remember this forever. This singular happiness that hurt. It would be with her for the rest of her life, burned into the deepest part of who she was.

Because this was where one life began to merge with another.

From this moment, the scoundrel holding her was no longer the overgrown boy who’d invented stripping Truth or Dare to avoid honest answers.

He was her husband.

Tears came without permission — not only from the pain, but much more from a happiness that had no other outlet. She couldn’t explain it. Some contradictory feeling, very full, that made her sense she had grown up in an instant, and become more in one moment than she had been in all the years before.

He bent down and kissed away the tears.

Very softly. As though any more pressure might cause another kind of hurt.

She was moved past words, and smiled, and locked both arms around him and bit his lip — hard enough to matter — and then, in the moment of his surprised discomfort, released him and let her tongue soothe the small mark she’d left.

“There. Now we’re even. Scoundrel. I’m perfectly fine — do your worst. I am your Gentle Breeze Queen. I am your princess. And I am your most devoted and gentle little wife.”

When he took her at her word and actually did his worst, she immediately furrowed her brow.

“This is practically assault, how is this even legal, it hurts so much, who told anyone this was supposed to feel good, at this rate I am simply not going to survive—”

“Should we stop and rest a while?”

“You let it hurt this long before suggesting that, and now you want to act considerate?” She wiped her eyes and scolded him, but even as she did, the message was clear: the queen had not ordered a stop. And what the queen had not forbidden, continued.