The palace prepared the finest dowry for me. In one month, I would leave with the Fanjiang envoy.
After that night, Qian Wu stopped coming to see me. Every request I sent was refused. I knew it was because he couldn't bear it—but I hated this kind of not-bearing-it. Every remaining day meant one fewer chance to see each other. How could he still shut me out?
The day I left, the procession stretched nearly half a mile long. I sat inside the carriage, through the palace gates, through the city gates. Then I called for the carriage to stop. I stepped down and took one last look at the walls of my homeland.
Qian Wu stood on top of those walls. They were too high for me to make out his expression, but I knew he was watching me. I imagined his face—imagined the way he always looked when he told me I was still too young.
"Imperial Uncle," I whispered. "Qian Ling has grown up."
* * *
Qian Wu stood with his hands clasped behind his back. Wind lashed across the rampart. Eunuch Lin draped a sky-blue cloak over his shoulders. For the first time, he understood what it meant to stand at the summit and find only cold.
He couldn't see her face from this height. All he could make out was the vivid scarlet of her gown—and in his mind, he paired it with that face he knew so well: always bold, always bright, always more radiant than she had any right to be.
"I have never despised this throne as much as I do now." His hand pressed against the frozen stone of the parapet. The cold seeped through his palm, crawled into his chest, and settled like frost over his heart.
Eunuch Lin could only sigh and shake his head. "Your Majesty did this for the people."
Qian Wu said nothing more. He lowered his gaze and watched the familiar figure climb back into the palanquin. Farewell—the word was too heavy. He couldn't speak it. He hadn't even dared to see Qian Ling face to face. Because if she had looked up at him and said, just once, I don't want to go—he would have become a tyrant on the spot. Consequences be damned. He would have kept her at his side and let the world burn.
He stood there for half the day, until the tail of the procession vanished from sight. Only then did he slowly descend.
* * *
After returning to the palace, Qian Wu fell gravely ill. In his fever dreams, the past came back in pieces that cut—things he thought he'd buried, whole and gleaming and raw. The nights he sat at her bedside when she was sick, refusing to change his robes, refusing to leave for even a moment. The little rattle-drum she'd broken and tossed aside. All of it rushed back. He murmured in his sleep, but the only word on his lips was a single name—and anyone who heard it would have known exactly whose.
* * *
Consort Jing sat at his bedside for two days before another consort came to relieve her. She stepped out of the hall looking haggard, but there was no defeat in her bearing. If anything, there was a quiet satisfaction—the look of someone whose long game had finally paid off.
Her personal maid took her arm and walked her slowly back toward her quarters. "Your Ladyship, His Majesty's been ill for days and shows no sign of improving. Could it truly be that he misses the little princess so terribly? What are we to do?"
"What are we to do? This is the best outcome." Consort Jing's voice was steady and low. "If Qian Ling had stayed, what happens the day His Majesty discovers she's not his blood niece? Given how he dotes on her—he'd probably take her as a consort on the spot. But then he'd start to wonder: did I know all along? Did I keep it from him?"
The maid nodded quickly. "Your Ladyship has endured so much."
"My sister had an affair. She bore a daughter and passed her off as the Second Prince's child. She even took labor-inducing medicine to make the birth seem early—and died in childbirth for it. The Second Prince fell in battle. Qian Ling lost both parents before she could remember their faces. But the Emperor took her in, showered her with more love than if she'd been the most precious jewel in the empire. That was her good fortune." She paused. "If only she'd been content with that—grown up quietly, married well as a princess should. The trouble started when..."
She didn't finish.
The trouble started when this girl fell in love with her own uncle. And Qian Wu, for all his restraint—Consort Jing had shared his bed long enough to see what others couldn't. His feelings had crossed the line. If the girl stayed, sooner or later the truth about her blood would surface, and all of Consort Jing's careful silence would unravel with it. Killing her was out of the question. A marriage alliance across the border—that was the cleanest cut.
* * *
It took nearly a month of stop-and-go travel to reach Fanjiang. Desert scenery—harsh sunlight, dry air, sand dunes rolling like golden hills all the way to the horizon. I lifted the carriage curtain and peered out. All I could think was whether Imperial Uncle had ever seen anything like this.
Two days into the desert, we arrived at the Fanjiang capital. That was when I learned I wouldn't be marrying the aging king. I was to wed his sixth son.
I didn't see the Sixth Prince until our wedding night. He wore the ceremonial garb of the kingdom—white, nothing like the red of the Guangji court, with no fitted waist, hanging loose like a sack over his frame. It was embroidered with intricate patterns unique to the border tribes. He was tall and long-legged enough to keep it from looking ridiculous.
He studied me with those green eyes for a long time. I'd never seen that colour on a person before. It was so startling that I forgot to feel hostile—just stared back, blank and frozen.
"So you're the princess from the Guangji Empire?" His voice had a cool, minty edge to it—nothing like the warm, low rumble of Imperial Uncle's.
No one had ever spoken to me in that tone. Back home, the servants dropped their gazes when I walked past. The ministers lowered their voices when they saw me coming. I was the Emperor's most treasured jewel, and everyone knew it.
"Is there something wrong with me?!" The words came out louder than I intended—nerves from the strange place, the ache of leaving Imperial Uncle, the fear of what a wedding night meant. I puffed up as fiercely as I could, like a kitten that had tumbled into a wolf den, baring its teeth and praying the predator would flinch.
"Didn't expect this. Scrawny little thing—look like you've never had a proper meal." He reached out and pinched my cheek. Before I could swat his hand away, he'd already pulled back, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. "Soft skin, though."
My eyes went hot in an instant. Tears spilled down my face. "Don't touch me with your filthy hands! Even Imperial Uncle has never done that to me—who do you think you are? How dare you pinch my face!" I snatched a pillow off the bed and swung it at him.
He just grinned, looking thoroughly unimpressed. "Your precious uncle didn't pinch you, sure. But he's the one who sent you here for a marriage alliance, isn't he? I'd say that's a lot worse than a pinch."
That stopped me cold. I stood there with the pillow raised over my head, tears falling like beads from a snapped string, hiccuping between sobs.
"It was my idea—I chose to come! It's not his fault! It's yours! All of you!"
He'd had enough. He yanked the pillow out of my hands. "Nobody wanted you here. Blame my father for suggesting it. Who'd be excited about some underfed little quail from the Guangji Empire? Barely weaned, by the looks of it. Just sit tight, behave yourself, and you'll be fed and watered. That's the deal." He shoved the door open and walked out.
I stood there. Alone.
* * *
The next morning, my two maids—the ones I'd brought from the palace—helped me dress. Fanjiang servants bustled about the chamber as well. That was how I learned the Sixth Prince's name: Xian Yi.
In Fanjiang, my position was peculiar. The servants kept my chambers swept and my meals warm, but they came and went without meeting my eyes. Nobody lingered.
I was the Sixth Princess Consort, but I was nothing like the other consorts. I couldn't do anything useful. I was an ornament on a shelf—proof that two nations had agreed to play nice.
I rarely saw Xian Yi. He was always out somewhere, chasing women—all sorts, the curvier the better. Occasionally he'd bring me trinkets unique to Fanjiang and ask what the beauties of the Guangji Empire looked like.
I propped my chin on my hand and looked at him. "Like me."
He picked up a pastry and bit into it, grease smearing across his mouth. "Never mind. I'm not so curious anymore."
I studied those deep green eyes, clear as a mountain lake. The sharp angles of his face, the high bridge of his nose—all of it unmistakably foreign, startlingly handsome. His skin was pale, and where the sun had touched it, the flush across his cheeks stood out even more. A face like that—and he was using his bare hands to eat, oil dripping from every finger.
I couldn't take it. I grabbed a handkerchief and scrubbed the corner of his mouth. "Can you at least have some basic table manners? There's a civilized way to eat! Back home, people eat with such elegance. My Imperial Uncle—"
The words died in my throat.
I watched him flick his tongue across his lip, licking away what I'd missed. Something shifted behind those calm eyes—a sudden undertow, dark and knowing. He propped his clean hand under his chin, four long fingers curving against his cheek, and stared straight at me. I didn't understand why that look made my face burn and my pulse spike.
A man well-versed in the art of seduction rarely got to see a girl blush like she meant it. Xian Yi leaned in. "Mm? Go on. Your Imperial Uncle what?"
I pressed my lips together and said nothing.
"You're in love with your uncle, aren't you?" he asked.
I knew he was teasing me. I turned my back on him.
His bright, unrestrained laughter rang out behind me.