The next day he woke before the maids came
not like he had a choice
His fingers were trembling again.
Shen Yao looked at them in a daze quiet — hands that had learned to be steady, that had run a company and signed documents and shaken hands with men who wanted things from him built a whole empire and now — trembling like they belonged to someone else it was laughable.
That dream again.
He pushed his hair back with those unsteady hands and stayed where he was for a moment, not moving, letting the room reassert itself around him. Wood panels. Silk hangings. The smell of old incense.
Here. Not there.
But his mind was already rolling through his mind the way it always did when he'd just woken up keeping him aware — quiet, insistent, attached to faces he could still see clearly enough to hurt.
Mom.
Yanyan.
The temperature in the room felt like it had dropped several degrees. He wasn't sure if that was real or something else entirely but for now chose not to examine it too closely
The footsteps in the corridor arrived before he'd finished examining his hands.
The door opened.
He turned.
The four maids who had entered at the sound of their young master waking stopped as one — the kind of stopping that happens when a body receives information that the brain hasn't finished processing yet. They were scared. They stood in a neat frozen row, eyes dropping immediately to the floor, making themselves as small and unobtrusive as possible.
Xi Shu, who had stepped in directly behind them to announce that preparations were complete, took one look at his young master's expression and felt his prepared words dissolve entirely.
That look again.
He had no name for it yet. Just the feeling it produced — the specific sensation of standing in a space where something very large was also standing, something that hadn't decided yet whether he was relevant. He wanted to know but he knew better than that so he remained quiet.
The maids, apparently operating on the same instinct, had redirected their eyes collectively toward Xi Shu with the unified energy of people assigning responsibility their combined expressions all screaming
You're his personal guard do something
Xi Shu looked at the four pairs of eyes aimed at him like accusations.
I hate all of you, he thought, with great feeling and no ability to act on it.
As much as he wanted to avoid his young master's gaze at this time there was just too much to do and too little time to do it.
He stepped forward. The nervousness of a man approaching something he wasn't certain was safe. He bowed slightly.
"Young master."
The words landed in the room and did their work.
Shen Yao blinked.
The expression — whatever it had been, whatever temperature had been behind it — shifted. His eyes moved across the five figures arranged before him in stances in the corner of the room attempted invisibility. He blinked for a second time then something in his face did something that none of them had seen it do before or at least since he woke up.
He looked, for approximately two seconds, genuinely awkward.
Did I scare them, he thought. am I really that scary...... but I haven't done anything yet
He ran a quick internal review of his recent behavior and found nothing that explained the four maids currently trying to act as decorative statues behavior. The conclusion was unsatisfying. He filed it under unclear and resolved to examine it later.
He cleared his throat.
"What." he asked trying to brush away the awkward situation
Xi Shu, who had involuntarily taken a full step backward at the sound of his voice, stopped himself and tried to recover his dignity. He glanced at the maids. The maids glanced back. A brief silent conversation occurred in which everyone established that they were equally confused and equally reluctant to be the one to say so.
There it is again, Xi Shu thought, watching his young master's expression move through something complicated and then settle back into the familiar blankness. Gone. Like I imagined it.
He hadn't imagined it. He was becoming increasingly certain of that.
But certainty and usefulness were different things, and right now he had no time to ponder about it, he had to finish the mission he came here for.
"Everything is prepared for the palace visit, young master," he said, in the tone of someone completing a task and leaving the interpretation to others.
Shen Yao looked at him for a moment.
Then he stood up.
The maids moved immediately — the choreography of people resuming a function after a brief interruption though still a bit stiff that didn't slow down their efficiency — and the business of getting dressed proceeded with the quiet efficiency that they had mastered over years of taking care of their young master.
He went to the courtyard anyway.
The sky was still the dark grey of very early morning, the kind that promises a nice sunny day with unexpected events, and his breath misted faintly as he moved through the forms. His body responded better than it had a week ago — the weakness almost unnoticeable steadily under the daily routine of the drills, the muscles beginning to remember what they were supposed to be capable of.
Better, he thought, assessing with the detachment of someone taking inventory.
He paused. Looked at his wrist.
The memory arrived before he'd consciously invited it — the unnatural angle, the sound, the bleeding that hadn't stopped him from keeping his eyes on Shen Ran's face. He felt the echo of it in his bones for exactly a moment.
Then he cleared his mind and continued.
That was then, he told himself. This is now.
The palace visit cut the training short. He changed into clean robes — the appropriate ones, as Xi Shu had specified approximately eleven times yesterday — and walked to the front hall.
He had expected to leave alone as everyone else was still asleep he didn't want to wake them up but turns out
Old Shen was already there. Awake
And Shen Miao, standing slightly behind her grandfather with Bai Yue and Bai Yin standing right behind as they usually did, her hands folded in front of her holding something small.
It's still early, Shen Yao thought, looking at them. They should both be asleep.
Old Shen turned to Xi Shu with the comfortable authority of someone who had been giving orders for decades an old habit he hadn't put away even now as he retired — running through the preparations one final time, confirming details, the thoroughness of a former general who had never entirely stopped being one. Then he turned to Shen Yao.
"Be careful," he said. "Especially of the one in the palace."
He didn't specify which one.
Shen Yao filed the vagueness carefully. It was the kind of vagueness that meant you'll understand when you see it and soon he would.
He nodded.
Shen Miao stepped forward.
She held out the basket with both hands — small, neatly prepared, the kind of thing that had required waking up before dawn to arrange — and met his eyes for approximately one second before looking at a point just past his shoulder.
"For the journey," she said. "Morning court normally runs long..... here some snacks I had the kitchen prepare for you."
'They'll help pad your stomach" she added
Then she turned and walked away at a pace that suggested she had somewhere very important to be and had just remembered it.
Shen Yao looked at the basket.
He looked at the retreating figure of his sister, her back very straight, her handmaids hurrying to catch up with her.
She woke up early, he thought. For this.
He sighed then stood with that for a moment longer than was strictly necessary.
Then he turned to Xi Shu and shoved the basket into his arms with no ceremony.
"We're leaving."
"Be careful," Old Shen said again, to his back.
He nodded without turning and walked out.
Behind him he heard his grandfather's quiet exhale — the sound of a man revising something he'd thought he knew.
My grandson really has changed, the old general thought.
He stood in the empty front hall for a moment after the footsteps faded, hands crossed behind his back and looked at the space where the boy had been. Then he turned and walked back to his courtyard, his steps steady and unhurried, the posture of a man who had seen enough of the world to recognize a shift.
"Just like his parents" he sighed in relief disappearing out of the front hall