Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 117167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 586(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117167 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 586(@200wpm)___ 469(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Yichen is free at last…sort of.
He has escaped his imprisonment, but he’s still blood bound to the crown prince of the fae.
Oh gods, how is he going to explain that to his clan?
Finding a way to break the bond might not be too hard. Killing the king of the fae even seems possible.
But there’s no way he can let go of the elf who protected him, risked everything for him for a hundred years?
Rei is the breath in his lungs, the blood in his veins, and the beat of his heart. Somehow, he has to find a way to keep him.
An elf can fall in love with a vampire, right?
Two Thousand Tears is the second novel in the Kings of Chaos series, which is a spin-off from the Lords of Discord series. This book contains a somewhat broken vampire falling in love with an elf who should be his enemy but is actually his everything, shifters, meddling witches, other non-human surprises, snark, angst, car surfing, found family, brotherly bickering, magic, chaos, pouting, vampire cuddles, and an endless love that crosses lines drawn by war.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Prologue
WU YICHEN
91 BCE
Luoyang, Zhang clan home
Why were they returning at night?
Wu Yichen marched down the path to the gate, stones crunching under his feet. As he neared the front wall that surrounded the Zhang clan property, he launched himself upward, the toe of his left boot catching on a stone lantern to push him toward the right, where his other foot caught and pushed off the wall. He bounced back and forth, each time climbing higher, until he was standing atop the wall, staring at the well-worn road before him.
Servants had gone out hours ago and lit the neat row of stone lamps leading to the clan manor, beckoning their new master home.
He frowned and glanced over his shoulder, his gaze skimming the white bunting and meters of white silk draped everywhere. The same stark white wrapped his waist as a sash while another length of white cloth served as a headband. All of the clan was in mourning.
Shifu1 Zhang Shi Lei was dead.
It had been two weeks since the news had reached them, and the thought still tightened his throat and reddened his eyes.
How? How is this even possible?
No, he understood how.
Maybe it was more that he needed to know why. Why did Shifu have to die? He had been a strong, kind-hearted man full of wisdom and patience. Because of him, Yichen had never felt as if he were being held prisoner. This had become his home. A warm, loving place of belonging—something he’d never found in Guangling.
Shifu should have lived for another twenty, thirty years. He should have become a creaking, hunched man with hair as white as snow and a thin beard that dragged the ground as he walked.
Instead, he died stopping Crown Prince Ju’s revolt against the emperor. Shifu, along with many other elders of the Sword of the Heavenly Garden Sect, would never walk through the clan gates again.
What was to become of their sect now? Their home?
Everyone was looking to Zhang Xiao Dan to lead them through this tragedy and plot their course forward. If anyone could do it, Shixiong2 could. Everyone teased Xiao Dan that he was a little shifu, following so perfectly in Zhang Shi Lei’s footsteps. He was as compassionate and wise as Shifu, with a warm smile and endless patience.
But no one was going to feel secure in their future until he and Chen Bo Cheng were home safe from Chang’An. The Sword of the Heavenly Garden Sect helped to quell the revolt, but nothing good came from lingering too long under the emperor’s gaze. Shifu had worked hard to keep the sect away from the imperial capital.
Especially Yichen.
A chill trickled along his spine, and he tamped down a shiver that tried to grip his body. Hiding from the emperor was going to be even more difficult without Shifu there to shield him.
Or should he use this opportunity to return home to Guangling and his family?
The idea didn’t fill him with excitement. Of course, King Wu Shen had always been a bit of a tyrant, exerting tight control over his ministers as if to make up for the fact that he still had to answer to the emperor. Any sadness Yichen had felt about leaving Guangling had been about a loss of the familiar rather than the loss of a “loving” family.
King Wu had beaten into his head that he was a prisoner, and everyone in the Zhang clan would treat him as such. He should consider himself no better than a slave. Not that his father had even lifted a finger to keep him in Guangling. No, that might have required him to put his own limited power at risk.
Yichen had arrived in Luoyang fearing the worst, only to be welcomed and loved like any other disciple. To them, he wasn’t some captive prince but another student.
He’d forgotten that he was a prince.
But Shifu’s death brought his tenuous situation into sharp clarity.
What would happen to him?
A soft scrabbling noise rose from the gravel, and Yichen turned in time to see another student take the same path he’d used to reach the top of the wall. Cao Zimo wavered as he came to stand beside Yichen, losing his balance on the rounded tiles. Yichen reached out a hand, catching Zimo’s elbow to steady him.
“Thanks.” Zimo breathed a sigh of relief and flashed Yichen a bright smile. “I figured I’d find you here.”
Yichen grunted and turned his gaze to the dark, empty road. Cao Zimo was two months older than Yichen and loved to lord those precious months over him, although he’d joined the sect two full years after Yichen.
There was also the matter of Cao Zimo’s martial arts skills not being as strong or developed as Yichen’s.
He wasn’t all bad. Just annoying and too chatty when all Yichen wanted was silence. Especially now.