Because of all this, at the night banquet that evening, Pei Zhao became the center of attention. The Emperor had been genuinely frightened as well. He was the kind of person who always had a calculating edge — he could never resist putting Pei Zhao in his place, but whenever things truly went wrong, he would look as though it had all been thoroughly unexpected. And he truly had been afraid: if something had gone even slightly amiss, he could forget about ever seeing the Grand Princess give him the time of day again for the rest of his life.

And so the Emperor’s manner shifted completely between morning and evening — the contrast was striking. Fearing Pei Zhao would refuse, he waited until he had arrived before presenting the gifts: a brocade robe and a fine, powerful bow, awarded formally. He also had him seated at the place of honor, saying: “Tonight, Yingzhen is the true hero — a man of genuine distinction, worthy of his ancestor the Duke of Ying.” And then there was Yuan Xiu, broadcasting his deeds to anyone who would listen — how he had brought the panicked horses under control, how he had reformed the group into a proper formation, how he had wrested the reckless second son of Prince Ying straight from a bear’s jaws, and how he had then led the entire group in finding every last scattered young man of rank throughout the dense forest — not one missing. If he had not been there, the stragglers on their own would likely still be out there now.

Even his horse received praise from Yuan Xiu, who declared to all: “No wonder they say a great horse is worth more than its weight in gold — even the bones of a great horse are more valuable than any living ordinary horse. Don’t let the Duke’s horse fool you with his age — he’s truly a magnificent animal. When that bear stood up a full ten feet tall and every horse in the forest was panicking — blood horses, supposed champions, all of them went down screaming — the Seventh Prince’s horse, said to be a king among horses, was just as useless, sent him flying and pinned him underneath, took several of us to pull him out. But the Duke’s Qingshi stood steady. His mane was on end, yes, but he fixed his gaze on where the bear was and didn’t bolt or flinch. If not for him, how would any of our horses have been able to regroup? What a shame he’s old now — otherwise, he’d truly deserve to be put out to stud properly…”

The attendant ladies all broke into laughter at that, and one of the senior palace women gently cautioned: “Young master, there are ladies present…”

It was not until Lingbo was actually at this banquet that she learned Yuan Xiu was in fact the posthumous son of Marquis Zhong Wen, who had died defending the gate at Jade Pass — he had been raised in the palace ever since, serving as a study companion to Zhao Yanze.

While everyone was busy celebrating Pei Zhao, it was only the Grand Princess who felt truly shaken. Yuan Xiu had already embellished things a little, and the bear had grown from nearly ten feet to twelve or thirteen by now. Lingbo sat at the Grand Princess’s side and saw that the Grand Princess’s hands were clasped very tightly in her lap — she was still frightened, with good reason. Lingbo quietly reached out and covered her hands with her own in comfort.

The Grand Princess’s expression shifted slightly in surprise. Lingbo knew she had overstepped in propriety and was about to withdraw her hand when the Grand Princess reached back, holding it, and patted it gently in reassurance.

At just that moment, Pei Zhao returned after changing his clothes. He rarely wore crimson, and so it was striking on him: the gold and red python-patterned robe, ornate and magnificent, made his jet-black hair and snow-pale face all the more luminous.

“Since Marquis Cui is also here,” Lingbo said suddenly, “let’s set aside the talk of bears for now. I’ve always been curious about the Mingsha River — why doesn’t Marquis Cui tell us about it?”

In the lamplight of the night banquet, Pei Zhao looked at her from across the gathering darkness and gave her a helpless smile.

She knew Pei Zhao did not compete — he felt no need, knowing that no matter how much competing was done, nothing would change. What could any subject ever contend with the Duke of Ying’s household? Whose merit had matched Han Xin’s? Who had married the Empress’s own-born princess? In the stories told among common people, it was said that when the Great Zhou founding Emperor had held the grand ceremony at Lingyan Pavilion to bestow honors upon his generals, he had elevated the Duke of Ying to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Emperor himself.

And yet a household that stood so close to heaven had been ransacked with a single order.

Not even the Emperor could be blamed for it. No one had won. Not even the Emperor himself had won. That day at the hunting grounds, Pei Zhao had seen clearly: before him stood only a weary, puffy-faced middle-aged man — worn down by suspicion and shadows into this state. In the field of power, everyone was a loser.

But Lingbo insisted on fighting.

She not only fought for herself — she fought for him.

She wanted the Emperor to hear it directly from Cui Jingyu’s own mouth: the story of what had happened then. The ice-bound Mingsha River. The great sluice gate at the confluence of three rivers. How Pei Zhao had seen through the Northern Rong’s scheme, and how he had committed his own five thousand soldiers to that place — to buy Cui Jingyu half a day’s time.

The soldiers who had leapt into the water to fight among ice shards and floodwaters. The soldiers who had used their own bodies to block the sluice gate. The soldiers who had been crushed between two massive breaking slabs of ice, coughing up blood by the mouthful. The bone-piercing cold. The surface of the river stained red with blood. The soldiers who had died, pressed beneath ice and rock on the riverbank, frost in their beards and brows, yet their expressions strangely serene — let the Emperor hear this story.

Let the Emperor know, too, whose hands had kept the Zhao family’s empire standing. And who it was that had loved his soldiers like his own life, yet sent every single one of them to their deaths — who had earned merit that touched the heavens, yet because of the Emperor’s suspicion and coldness, could not even petition for recognition, returning to the capital a commoner. So much so that even the young men of rank he led did not respect him — which was what had invited this bear disaster in the first place.

She did not even care whether anything could be won back. She simply wanted to set an example for the Grand Princess. This mother and son had missed each other across far too many years, and though she knew the warmth of imperial family bonds was thin, having a mother was still better than having none.

But compared to these two — who could be resolved with relative ease — there were two other people who were truly, stubbornly, impossibly beyond reach. And Lingbo, the more she was rebuffed, the more resolved she became. Halfway through the banquet, she spotted the moment when Cui Jingyu stepped away from his seat and moved to follow — but she rounded the back of the tent and found Pei Zhao already there, blocking her way.

“Miss Ye is picking at my wounds again,” he said. He had been drinking tonight, and when he put on his helpless act, it landed with particular effect — his peach-blossom eyes softened and shimmered, yet his frame was tall and broad as he stood there, blocking her path. He tilted his head down with a smile: “How will Miss Ye make it up to me?”

The palace incense he wore was the winter-dispelling fragrance from the palace, adding another layer of elegance. Lingbo’s own heart was beating like a startled deer — but she put on her most composed expression and said fiercely: “You must want to be beaten.”

Pei Zhao only smiled placidly, knowing Lingbo would not actually hit him. After the fright of today, she was still too shaken for that. So he simply reached out and pulled her close, burying his face in her shoulder, and spoke in a lazy murmur.

“This python robe doesn’t suit me at all,” he always said the palace’s things were inferior, and then asked in a voice tinged with drink: “When will Lingbo wear red for me?”

What else would a woman wear red for, but to be a bride?

Lingbo felt only a softness spreading through her heart. After today’s ordeal, she too was still frightened even now. And what, in truth, was so important? Beside this person in whose arms she now rested — all wealth and glory had already been settled in this lifetime. She had long since wanted to be his bride.

But she was Ye Lingbo, after all.

“Stop saying foolish things,” she said, giving him instructions: “Go and bring Cui Jingyu here for me. Tonight is the Crabapple Banquet’s evening gathering — the girls are releasing flower lanterns on the Flower Stream, enjoying the flowers by moonlight. Have him come over. I have things to say to him.”

—

Cui Jingyu had not expected Lingbo to be so direct. He had assumed she would be working out yet another scheme to bring him and Qinglan together. But when he arrived, he found her waiting for him at a water pavilion above the Flower Stream, her maidservants holding up lanterns while she taught Yanyan and A’Cuo how to fold flower lanterns. When she saw him come, she sent them all away.

“What story does the future Duchess of Ying wish me to tell this time?” he asked, his tone cold.

He had reason to be annoyed. The Ye sisters — one after the other — deployed him without the slightest restraint. One had him take Dai Yuquan along on a day’s hunt; Wei Yushan had at least been charmed by the fine thumb ring Dai Yuquan gave him and taken him along properly, though between them they had only bagged two pheasants. The other had simply called on him in the middle of the banquet to tell stories — both of them treating him without the least hesitation, because they both knew he could not refuse.

But this time, Lingbo’s reply was calm. The pavilion was surrounded on three sides by water, with maidservants standing guard — no one from outside could enter, and no words from within could escape. And so she simply spoke plainly: “I am not my mother’s biological daughter.”

“What?” Even Cui Jingyu froze.

“I am not my mother’s biological daughter. She found me and raised me. Only my mother, father, and a few old servants know. So after my mother died, it became a weapon they could hold over me. At any moment, Ye Daren could cast me out with nothing.” She told Cui Jingyu calmly: “Before she died, my mother told Qinglan this secret — along with Concubine Pan’s deed of sale. So if Ye Daren tries to sweep me out the door, Qinglan can use those to hold him in check. But because of this, Qinglan cannot marry — there is no precedent for a married woman returning home to protect a younger sibling.”

Cui Jingyu’s expression deepened in an instant. Lingbo could see he understood.

“So Qinglan intended to get engaged to you — and after several years, once I had married out, she would marry as well. But then the war broke out, and you might die on the battlefield, leaving her a widow — and if she were forced to observe mourning, she would no longer be an unmarried daughter of the Ye household. That is why she broke off the engagement. Not seeing you was because she was afraid she would change her mind. She did not even trust herself — she was single-mindedly set on sacrificing everything for me.”

She finished the account of how four years of missed chances had come to be, then looked at Cui Jingyu and asked: “You don’t believe me?”

“No.”

“Qinglan did not want to explain it to you, because she has her own pride as well. You had decided she was a deserter who fled before battle — that was the person she had become in your eyes. A true scholar dies for someone who truly sees them, and she felt perhaps you had never really known her — that it had never even occurred to you that she might have had other reasons. And then,” she named the knot at Qinglan’s heart: “When you returned already holding the title of Marquis, powerful and of high rank, she was even less willing to go running to you with explanations — it would look too much like a woman chasing a man who had risen to prominence. Like making excuses. And it would expose my identity. So she clenched her jaw and said nothing. However coldly you treated her, she felt she deserved it.”

Cui Jingyu’s expression shifted with something deep and shaken.

“I never thought she was a deserter — I only…”

Only what? Only that the blow she had dealt him had cut so deeply that he had never moved past that day. Titles and power meant nothing to him. Four years of war had been no more than sleepwalking through existence. Sometimes he almost forgot what it had felt like — to have been so full of life and certainty: to have set his heart on one person, to have been utterly resolved to marry her, willing to move mountains and fill seas, and to have felt nothing but gladness in that resolve.

Lingbo watched his expression and knew she had guessed right from the beginning.

She had always guessed right.

Only that even being right did not mean you could win. And winning did not mean you could be together.

“In truth, she did not want to tell you, and I was not planning to tell you either. What Qinglan has chosen to guard — I think it meaningless, but if she chooses to guard it, I will stand beside her…” She looked out at the water beyond the pavilion: flower lanterns drifted on the surface like lotus blossoms in full bloom. The flower name tags had an eerie accuracy — they had read Qinglan’s fate from the very beginning. She was the finest flower. A pity it did not bloom in spring — always just one stroke short of fortune.

“But today, when Pei Zhao’s group was in danger and I was searching for him in the crowd — all I could think of was finding him, getting to his side. Whether he was hurt, whether he was all right — just as long as it was him. Let it be him.” She looked at Cui Jingyu and asked: “Brother Jingyu — you see how small we are before fate. A single accident can take everything away in an instant. I know it is a terribly common thing to urge someone to cherish the springtime while it lasts — but in a sea of people, to meet someone you love, to have the chance to spend a lifetime with them — how rare is that? How rare. What could possibly matter more?” She paused, then said with great sincerity: “There is a question I have wanted to ask you since the Peach Blossom Banquet.”

She looked at him directly and asked: “Why would a person love someone so much — willing to give his own life in exchange for hers when she was in danger — and yet, when both of them are safe and sound, be unable to be with her?”

Cui Jingyu answered her.

The night wrapped itself around him, and there was a faint shimmer on the water — enough only to outline his shape. But he was still the same Cui Jingyu she had known since she was fifteen: upright and handsome, her elder brother of a kind, the perfect match for her sister. The young Ye Lingbo at fifteen — colorless and unnoticed — had quietly watched it all unfold, and believed that this was the finest story the world could offer.

But what he said was: “I think… he must love her very much. And at the same time, he must be deeply, deeply wounded.”

He no longer had the courage to be with her. Cui Jingyu — victorious in a hundred battles — the one and only battle he had ever been too afraid to fight was the one in front of Ye Qinglan. The wound she had left him was so deep he had never recovered. He could not even speak of the story between them in the first person — he had borrowed someone else’s name.

He did not want to admit that he was the one in that story. The young man chasing futilely after the woman he loved. The poor wretch who had been left behind. The general who returned with honors and laurels. Or the prince in Han Yueqi’s story — coming back full of burning grievance to seek repayment, only to find he had mistaken the person from the very beginning.

Still, he was no longer twenty.

He had fought the hardest battles in the world. He had claimed the most difficult honors in all the court. At twenty-four, he was a Marquis who had clawed his way out through mountains of the dead — and by now he knew well enough how to seek victory in any fight.