Shen Biwei had connections everywhere; while the ladies and misses at the front of the house were still being introduced to Pei Zhao, she had already pieced together the rough shape of things and rushed over to confront Lingbo.

“Oh, well done, well done!” she fumed, gesticulating wildly. “Not a word of my advice got through, you sent me away, and then you went and eloped with someone — so I was just the spare all along, was I? One Pei Zhao and your soul flew right out of your head — oh wait, not Pei Zhao, Huo Yingzhen! You told me not to provoke Zhao Yanze. And what about you? Look at you now — I can’t even hit him, I can’t even scold him properly!”

Lingbo was being pinned down on the sleeping couch, dodging her while laughing.

“Who says you can’t hit him — go right ahead; I still want to hit him myself…” She even deliberately mimicked Shen Biwei’s earlier tone of voice: “‘Let me get my hands on that male fox spirit — I’ll beat him to death!'”

Shen Biwei immediately took offense.

“Oh, so now you’re defending him!” She pressed down on Lingbo demanding an explanation. “All our past closeness was fake, I suppose — and now you’re helping him laugh at me.”

Lingbo saw she was truly upset and coaxed her with a smile: “Nothing of the sort — you will always be my dearest Weiwei; Pei Zhao or Huo Yingzhen, he can step aside for all I care.”

“Really?” Shen Biwei was unconvinced. “Then you’re not allowed to marry him.”

Lingbo broke into a smile at that.

“Why on earth should I not marry him?” she said, so openly and unabashedly self-interested it was almost refreshing. “What a shame Lu Wanyang isn’t here anymore — otherwise I’d get married today, and pay her a visit tomorrow, watch her bring her whole family out to kowtow to me. After the way they bullied Qinglan back then, I’ll have it back from each and every one of them.”

“I’d suggest you hold yourself in a little,” Shen Biwei said. “Look at the Grand Princess’s household — a den of hidden talents; they are truly not to be trifled with. Those of us who know you understand what’s in your heart, but outsiders may not. Rising high is always treacherous. Don’t talk like this anymore — you’ll give others handles to use against you.”

“I’ll say it anyway — why shouldn’t I?” Lingbo stretched lazily on the couch, reaching her arms above her head. “I haven’t even started making trouble for Pei Zhao yet — why should he be allowed to hide his identity for so long, putting me through all that suffering, when I nearly missed him entirely? No wonder that fortune-teller said it: flowing water and peach blossoms bode great danger, nearly missing your destined match.”

“You’ve gone past saving — you’re believing fortune-tellers now.” Shen Biwei might look down on her, but her concern was entirely genuine. “And don’t push him about the past either. You know the story of the Duke of England’s household — the waters run deep, it’s a tangle of knots. He had his own reasons for going off to fight under a false name. And the Grand Princess these four years must have been beside herself with worry, not knowing where he was. That he came back for you — if that feeling is real, that’s enough. How you move forward from here, you’ll need to work out together.”

Speak of the one you’re speaking of, and there they are. The two of them were mid-conversation when Xiao Liu’er came in with a barely contained smile, looking like someone trying to hold in a burst of laughter, and said: “Young Miss, the Duke is here.”

She had switched forms of address with remarkable speed — like the matchmaking little maid of an opera stage. No telling how many rounds of gleeful jumping she and Xiao Yue had already gone through in private. Not waiting for Lingbo to answer, she had already led Pei Zhao right inside.

Shen Biwei would have none of it. She planted herself in the doorway: “Well then. Men of the Huo family — is this how you conduct yourselves? Charging straight into a young lady’s inner chambers, are we?”

Pei Zhao only smiled: “Then I’ll trouble the young lady to announce me.”

“Don’t waste words with me.” She might not be able to hit him or scold him as she pleased, but she carried herself with all the hauteur in the world. “If you have any ability at all, arrange another polo match — I still don’t believe I can’t beat you.”

Pei Zhao smiled pleasantly: “Polo breeds bad feeling — better to prepare a matchmaker’s wine and invite Miss Shen to drink it.”

“Now that’s more like it — you have some discernment after all.” Shen Biwei, insufferably imperious, finally stepped aside. “Go on in — don’t stay too long. Your household has strict rules; don’t let anyone speak ill of Lingbo.”

Now was not the time for Pei Zhao to be difficult. He smiled and went in. Xiao Liu’er came forward, pulled Shen Biwei away, brought tea, and quietly posted herself in the outer room to stand guard by the doorway, not letting anyone come in.

From the moment he entered, Lingbo had been sitting up and fixing her hair. When she saw him she immediately said with pointed mock-formality: “The Duke has arrived. This commoner offers her respects.”

“If Lingbo speaks like this, I will be hurt,” Pei Zhao said. He had always been masterful at looking wounded. Lingbo, utterly without self-control, immediately took the bait and regretted having misspoken at once. After all, the past of the Duke of England’s household was hardly a pleasant story — as Shen Biwei had said, he had hidden his name and gone to fight a war for his own reasons. The Grand Princess had probably been terrified these four years, not knowing his whereabouts.

If Shen Biwei were here, she would certainly be laughing: Well, look at you, Ye Lingbo — talked such a good talk when he wasn’t around, but the moment you see him, your soul leaves your body, and you’re feeling sorry for him too. No wonder he has you completely wound around his finger.

But the Second Young Miss of the Ye family did not feel in the slightest that she was the one being wound around his finger. She probably felt she was the one protecting Pei Zhao.

“How did it go — did you see Her Highness?” She couldn’t bring herself to say anything soft, so instead she asked: “Did she scold you?”

“No,” Pei Zhao said. He was looking down, his peach-blossom eyes holding no smile. Seeing this, Lingbo’s heart softened further; she was born proud and stubborn, and couldn’t manage words of concern either, so she could only ask again: “Did you eat any lunch?”

“A little.”

Pei Zhao lowered his head and leaned toward her. Lingbo instinctively said: “What are you doing?” But she couldn’t quite bring herself to push him away either, so she only leaned back. She had that look she always got at such moments — flustered and trying hard not to show it — and Pei Zhao, with his genuinely wretched personality, took particular pleasure in seeing her like this.

But he was, in the end, someone who respected propriety. He didn’t push further than he should. Only then did Lingbo think about where that air he always carried had come from. She had always taken it for sheer laziness; thinking back now, it was remarkably similar to the quality about Shen Biwei. And indeed, they were the two youngest people in the capital who stood at the highest point of its order.

Having received the finest upbringing, trained in the strictest propriety. So they went about every day looking careless and unconcerned, yet when truly placed in a solemn setting, they were more proper than anyone, in a way that others couldn’t imitate no matter how they tried.

The answer had been written right before her eyes, and she still hadn’t seen it.

Lingbo was feeling stifled thinking about it, and seeing Pei Zhao looking like this, she didn’t have the heart to scold him, and could only say: “Hmph. You put me through a great deal of suffering with all your deceiving.”

“I didn’t want to either.” He only looked at Lingbo with a smile. “Please forgive me, Ye Miss.”

Lingbo would never say she forgave him, of course — that would be entirely without dignity. She could only keep a neutral tone: “What exactly happened in your family, and why did you go and enlist, and why did you change your name? Didn’t Her Highness do anything about you all these four years?”

“She never managed me much,” Pei Zhao said. “But I didn’t need managing. Does Lingbo truly want to hear about my family’s affairs?”

His eyes, looking at her, were so beautiful. Lingbo had noticed long ago that the reason he was so charming without being cloying was because beneath his smile there was always something else hiding — unlike Shen Biwei, whose world-weariness showed on the surface, making her cold as ice. He kept it deep inside, like a deeply bitter tea paired with honey-sweet confections, which meant it never cloyed at all. It made one want to explore what person lay hidden beneath that smiling mask.

And Lingbo, soft-hearted as always, immediately retreated: “If you don’t want to say it, never mind…”

“I won’t tell others who ask.” He smiled softly at her. “But if Lingbo doesn’t ask, I’ll say it anyway. That day in the peach blossom grove, I already wanted to tell you — but Lingbo didn’t give me the opportunity…”

That was Lingbo’s fault as well. She had lived twenty years believing she was not pretty enough, had never applied her considerable intelligence to matters of the heart, had absolutely no experience whatsoever — which was how a single sentence from him was enough to make her heart go soft and aching. Even knowing that he was not as gentle and harmless as he seemed, she was still willing to walk into his trap one step at a time.

In the afternoon light, on the sleeping couch in the heated alcove, the sunlight falling through the mica windows made patterns like the shadows of peach blossom branches. He rested against her legs and finally began to tell her about his past — the story of the Duke of England’s household, as seen through his eyes, was entirely different from what people passed on in their tales.

That story was like a temple covered in dust — like crumbling ruins in the last light of a setting sun. Every name in it was a figure of consequence in the history books, and he was the sole living trace they had left behind, a witness made of flesh and blood.

The blue lion was a horse his father had chosen personally; the horse had been only one year old at the time, not even finished teething. The nanny who had been with the household remembered the pride of her young master, the heir: he had said he would wait until it was grown, and train it himself. The old Duke’s wife had laughed at him for being foolish — by the time Yingzhen was sixteen, the blue lion would already be old. His father said then they would let the blue lion’s foal accompany Yingzhen instead.

He had been born the little young master into whom everyone in the Duke of England’s household poured all their hopes and joy — the youngest future of them all, bearing the tender gaze of everyone who loved him. For this future of his, his grandfather had followed Great Ancestor Zhou on campaign for more than ten years, his body bearing over a hundred wounds; his grandmother had worn out her health through countless relocations and lost three children. His father had never had the chance to participate in a flower-viewing season — had been pledged early to marry a princess from the imperial family. His paternal uncles, his paternal aunts, had all once held the infant version of him as they enjoyed the flowers in the sun, argued over who would teach him to shoot his first arrow, to ride his first horse. They had had so much hope, so much love to give him, so many years to accompany him through, and in the end they had looked forward to watching him walk toward a future none of them could reach.

He was the most exalted of children — descendant of the first-ranked general on the Great Ancestor’s Pavilion of Meritorious Subjects, and of the imperial family’s eldest princess, the blood of the imperial family flowing in his veins, alongside that of the greatest military commander. His maternal grandfather was the reigning Son of Heaven, who had also placed great hopes in him, expecting him to become a pillar of the state, to stand watch alongside the imperial line and together forge the indomitable Zhao family’s realm.

Compared with the Zhao family, the Huo family was far more gentle and unassuming. His childhood nickname was not A’Liao, in fact, but A’Fu — blessing. They wanted nothing else for him — only that he be fortunate. At family banquets, they had dipped chopsticks in wine and taught him to drink, his grandmother scolding gently, his father laughing loudly, while he sat in the Grand Princess’s arms and listened to his aunt call him little A’Fu. Little A’Fu, hurry and grow up — learn to ride, learn to shoot, learn to fight, help Imperial Grandfather make this realm secure. There were so many things still to come, so many places they wanted to take him.

All of it had been severed in an instant by that case of treason. The late Emperor’s health had been failing, and to ensure the Crown Prince’s smooth succession, he had of course purged the great meritorious subjects. The Huo family was the greatest threat. And so he became the sole surviving descendant of the condemned — a fish escaped from the net of a household’s destruction, a creature carrying both imperial blood and the blood of a traitor, a living, bleeding piece of evidence proving that the Grand Princess had once been married into a treasonous family.

His grandfather was already dead. His father, the heir of the Duke of England, Huo Xuan — a man of peerless martial skill — had surrendered himself without a fight, yet had been killed by underhanded means at the White Horse Inn. Some said it was the Left Chancellor who had read the Emperor’s will and had his subordinates act; the most beloved Grand Princess had been made a widow, and the late Emperor had been thunderously furious. The Grand Princess had because of this severed ties with the palace, leaving the current Emperor with guilt that had lasted to this day.

And at that time, he had been only four years old. He only knew that suddenly many people in the Huo household had disappeared. He was still exalted, still Huo Yingzhen — only the remaining members of the Huo household seemed to have placed him under a kind of protection, guarding him with vigilance against all who came from the palace, including even Her Highness the Grand Princess. His mother had guilt of her own, and so she always watched him from a distance.

When he was seven, his grandmother died. From that time on, the only family member remaining in the household with him was his mother. The servants who remained had inherited the late mistress’s wishes and maintained a household divided from the Grand Princess’s household, each governing their own domain. He did not particularly mind — there were nurses, and nannies, and inner attendants gifted by the Great Ancestor, and many loyal old servants. Only he almost never went out.

“The thing I remember most clearly is an old deputy general who had served under my grandfather, who came to see me…”

He spoke of a childhood memory — of an old general in his seventies, white-haired, who was the first time he had ever seen what it meant to have one’s hair stand on end in anger. Every hair stood upright, whiskers trembling, like an old hero out of ancient legend. Still wearing the brocade robe bestowed by the Great Ancestor when the Pavilion of Meritorious Subjects was inscribed. The Imperial Guards at the gate blocked his way; he ripped open the brocade robe, bared his chest and said: “Little thing, you dare lay a hand on me — your Old Master Fan! When I was following the Great Ancestor into battle, none of you lot even knew where you were going to come from!”

The setting sun was red as blood, falling on the old general’s body, ancient as a tree, covered in scars. His entire right side was hollowed out — a Western Rong iron barb crossbow bolt, with backward hooks; the iron rust had entered the flesh, the wound had festered on the battlefield, the rotted flesh had been cut away, leaving a bowl-sized wound scar.

Yet that tower of iron, an old general who had come to pay his respects to the Duke of England, knelt before the ancestral spirit tablet and wept. In the ancestral hall, the Huo family’s memorial tablets stood row upon row, candlelight dim, and those tears carried red in them — making one suspect they might be blood.

When the old general noticed him watching, he turned and said: “Remember this — you are a son of the Huo family. Don’t be taken in by the Zhao family’s ways.”

For some reason, he had always remembered these words. During the time he had studied in the Yongning Palace, he had gotten into a fight with the Third Prince — the son of Worthy Consort Hui, who was then greatly favored. By ten years old, he was already taller than other children his age; he had always been a natural warrior, his body resilient and lean. The great bow hanging on the wall, he reached out and drew without effort. The Third Prince was no match for him of course, and was pinned to the ground — and called him a traitor’s spawn, said the whole Huo family were traitors, said he was a wild seed left over from a family destroyed.

He said nothing. He put the bow away and went home. And yet the Emperor himself came to take him back — the Third Prince was made to kneel before the imperial study for an entire day and night, until he fainted, and after that his favor was never regained. He was sent to a distant palace. Worthy Consort Hui also lost rank because of it, reduced to commoner status, blamed for failing to teach her son properly.

In all things, it was always everyone else who was wrong. The Emperor was never at fault.

After that, a few more years passed as though nothing had happened. When Old General Fan died, they had expected him to grieve — but he had not. They whispered behind his back that his heart had gone cold, that he was not like his father, who had once been full of warmth and spirit. At the ancestral rites, an old servant who had lost a leg — one of those left to tend the ancestral tombs — saw his face, so like his father’s as he had grown, and wept clutching his legs. He had remained unmoved.

The old servants of the Huo family died one by one, dwindled in number, and the household grew more and more like nothing but a Grand Princess’s household.

In the end, his leaving the capital was no great dramatic event. It was the autumn imperial hunt; he was seventeen. He led a small detachment of followers, pursued a white tiger through the forest, and when he caught it, the whole camp erupted. Even the Emperor came personally to look, and rewarded him with an eagle-horn bow and gilt-tipped arrows. The Grand Princess was very pleased as well, and sent wine to him; he drank three cups without stopping, and the nanny said the Duke had drunk a little too much. The Grand Princess reached out and felt his forehead, asked if he wanted to go and sleep for a while — just like when he was a child, genuinely happy, happy enough to forget for a moment who she was.

On the way back, for some reason he kept feeling that something was in the forest, watching him. He glanced to the side and saw a young man standing under a tree, looking at him. Pei Zhao did not recognize his face, but by instinct he felt it must be his father. Pei Zhao stumbled toward him, but the figure retreated; behind him there were dense crowds of people, all laughing.

Laughing at how he had, in the end, been taken in by the Zhao family’s ways.

After the autumn hunt, war broke out on the frontier. He set down the eagle-horn bow, returned the gilt-tipped arrows, and on the day he left the capital, took nothing with him — only mounted his father’s old horse the blue lion and rode out of the city.

He was no longer the Grand Princess’s son. He was the Huo family’s Huo Yingzhen. Dying on the battlefield would also be fine — it was the fitting fate for a Huo family person.

After that came the northern frontier. The great battles. The battlefield of flesh and blood. Five thousand people died at Mingsha River; he hated himself for being Huo Yingzhen, hated that he had been born knowing he had to hold the Dragon Head Sluice, hated that he had known to use five thousand lives to secure the Great Zhou’s eternal realm, hated that he couldn’t even petition for their commendation. Cui Jingyu may have guessed, or may not have — but he remembered the debt of gratitude, and the survivors of those five thousand men were brought under Cui Jingyu’s regiment and received their honors and posthumous recognition. All except him — Pei Zhao. He had long since decided: he would be Pei Zhao, hiding name and station. He would be Pei Zhao who had nothing. Let all these stories settle into silence along with him. Those enmities and blood debts that could not dissolve — the Huo family’s people, the Zhao family’s people — they all lay quietly in his bloodline, and in the end they would die with him as well.

Until he met a girl. So fierce, so nakedly self-interested, and yet so full of life, always reaching up on tiptoe toward what she wanted. She seemed to be born with a power to turn stone into gold, to transform all stories of regret into blazing flame. When she argued with him over the story of Er Ya, he realized for the first time that the world contained a completely different kind of truth. He stayed close to her side and watched her live like that — throwing herself into life with such force, tearing and fighting without holding back, determined to build a sky for her family to stand under.

In the end, he became Huo Yingzhen again for her sake — only to keep her at his side.

This long story was finally finished. He looked down as he spoke, and in that pose he was like a bird in a golden cage — delicate and noble. Lingbo’s heart ached so much she didn’t know what to do with herself.

Pei Zhao laughed instead. He lay on her legs, turned his head, and looked at her expression.

“Lingbo fell for it.” He made his heartbreaking joke again. “I told you this story precisely to make you feel sorry for me.”

“I did not,” Lingbo instinctively denied it.

Lying there, he looked like the most beautiful deity imaginable — yet there was a heaviness to him as well. Lingbo couldn’t help reaching out to touch his face. She half expected him to turn it into another joke — but instead he tilted his head and rested it in the cup of her palm.

The skin beneath her hand was faintly cool and soft. The way he looked at her was so gentle and so focused. This was her Pei Zhao — like a precious silver dragon she had captured. She often had that impulse: to hide him away, while also wanting to declare him to the world, to carve her mark on him.

There had not been a single moment in Lingbo’s life when she was as certain as she was now. It didn’t matter whether he was Huo Yingzhen — she only needed him to be her Pei Zhao.

She reached up and covered his eyes, not letting him see her expression when she spoke her heart. His lashes were long, and when they swept across her palm, it was like a feather brushing against her heart. Since meeting him, she often felt her heart had grown so soft — like the river ice in spring, melting layer by layer, dissolving at last into a whole spring river, flowing toward him beyond all control.

But she told him honestly and seriously: “It doesn’t matter. I will always be beside you. We will have our own home — not the Huo family’s home, and not the Zhao family’s home, but Ye Lingbo’s home. The girls of our Ye family are formidable. Wherever I go, I bring my home with me. I can build a home even on ruins. So let me, Ye Lingbo, give you a home. All right?”

“All right.”

Pei Zhao rested his head in her arms. His frame was tall and lean — she often felt he was like a beautiful horse. But when he kissed her, he was reverent as a child.

Let him become her new family, then. She was Ye Lingbo; she protected all her family. Having power and standing would be fine; being Huo Yingzhen would be fine; together rising to the peak of the capital’s power would be fine. But even if there were nothing, he would still be her Pei Zhao. She would still only need to be beside him to feel this at ease. She would still be willing to give all her years to him — accompanying him through many fields of peach blossoms, many cups of wine, across countless springs and winters, long and enduring, year upon year.

The fifteenth day of the second month was the night of the full moon, and the proper day of the棣棠 banquet. A great misunderstanding had erupted at the Ye family’s household in the capital that day — but fortunately, Her Highness the Grand Princess was presiding, and Master Dai, who had caused the misunderstanding, stepped out personally to explain.

It turned out that the man seeking to betroth himself to the Ye family’s second daughter was not Master Dai at all. He had only been acting on behalf of Her Highness the Grand Princess to seek an engagement with Ye Second Miss. The one who truly sought to marry the second daughter of the Ye family was Her Highness the Grand Princess’s only child — the capital’s one young Duke: Huo Yingzhen.

And so this year’s champion of the flower-viewing season was at last decided, at a moment no one had anticipated or foreseen. It was that overlooked Second Young Miss of the Ye family — plain-looking Ye Lingbo.

All of the capital was stunned.