At that moment, a light blazed up in the far-off night sky.

This was the first time Qinglan had seen a signal arrow from a distance — so this was how it looked. A shade of violet-red, not particularly striking; perhaps because the wind and snow were so heavy, it appeared for only a moment in the night sky, a flash and then gone. Cui Jingyu had clearly noticed it before she did.

“That’s Shen Biwei,” Qinglan said hurriedly. “She’s sending us a message — something must be urgent. Let us go down the mountain quickly.”

In truth she had barely stopped to think. She simply needed a reason to escape the moment she was in.

But Cui Jingyu caught her wrist.

“You have already told Luo Yong everything he needed to know, and he will certainly have delivered the medicine by now. Shen Biwei is using the signal arrow to let you know exactly that — so that you can rest easy. Madam Shen may already have taken the medicine and turned a corner. And even if the prescription fails, you have already done everything you possibly could.”

“The prescription will not fail,” Qinglan told him stubbornly.

Cui Jingyu smiled.

“All right. The prescription will not fail.” He said it as though coaxing a child, still holding Qinglan’s wrist — but only to set a small ceramic jar of badger oil on the stone railing of Qingyun Temple and apply the medicine to the back of her hand.

Only then did Qinglan realize what he had been pursuing her for, and despite herself her cheeks grew warm.

Cui Jingyu had courted her all the way to a formal betrothal — he understood perfectly what was going through her mind.

“Don’t worry. I’m not as terrible as all that.” He kept his eyes lowered as he spoke, and here was this heroic, distinguished Marquis, in this moment so unexpectedly disarming.

Qinglan understood his meaning. He thought she had been retreating step by step because she feared some other possibility — after all, they were an unmarried man and woman alone together.

He no longer knew that the image of him in Qinglan’s eyes had never changed.

Her throat tightened, as though something were caught there. But she only said: “I never thought you were anywhere near that terrible.”

Her Cui Jingyu was a young general — unruly and magnificent, possessed of the proudest of hearts. How could someone like that possibly take advantage of helpless circumstances? He would only be like her — trapped within his own sense of responsibility and his own pride, suffering in silence.

“You simply don’t want to give me an answer,” Cui Jingyu finished the rest of her thought for her.

He still kept his eyes lowered. Though they were both soldiers’ figures, he and Pei Zhao were utterly different in appearance — he was more like the invincible general of the heroic tales: hair ink-black, brows like drawn swords, eyes like cold stars, keeping the world at a thousand li’s distance. No one could see that when he lowered those eyes to apply medicine, he was so inexplicably easy to care for.

Qinglan’s skin was fine and pale as the finest silk, which was precisely what made the wounds so startling to see. Fine raw splits, barely even showing red, and yet one could imagine how much they must ache.

How many times had wounds like these covered his hands in the Northern Frontier?

“Honestly, I no longer know what it is I want,” she said, with a vague bewilderment: “Isn’t that absurd? Jingyu. I don’t know why I did what I did — it couldn’t have been of any use at all, and yet I couldn’t help myself…”

In truth she did know.

In that moment, all she had wanted was to bear some fraction of his pain — even knowing it would accomplish nothing, she still could not stop herself from reaching out.

That day when she had spoken on behalf of the women of Yanglin City — those women who had followed their husbands to the frontier at the ends of the earth, who had placed their very lives at nothing — she had said that what they sought was not wealth and rank, and wealth and rank was not the proper way to repay them. She had hit upon the truth of it, yet the Grand Princess had not asked her: if not wealth and rank, then what were they seeking? If asked that day, she would not have been able to answer.

But today she knew.

She sought only to bear some portion of his danger and his suffering — even if only a thread, even if it was utterly beyond her power. She wanted to follow him to the ends of the earth anyway. So that even if he died on the battlefield, at least she would be in the place closest to him.

And Cui Jingyu had heard what was beneath her words.

He smiled as well.

“If Qinglan says so, then what I did can hardly be counted as out of bounds.”

“What do you mean out of bounds…” The question was still forming on her lips when her voice cut abruptly short.

Because Cui Jingyu had produced that letter — the one written in haste on paper from Qingyun Temple, folded into an envelope and sealed with wax — the letter she had written to Dai Yuquan.

Qinglan’s face instantly blazed crimson. She immediately reached out to take it back — even she, such a poised and proper young lady, had moments where she lost all composure.

Cui Jingyu simply raised his hand above her reach, which made it look very much as though Qinglan were throwing herself toward him. She realized this at once and immediately stopped reaching, only staring at him with a set expression and saying: “Intercepting someone’s correspondence is not the conduct of a gentleman!”

She was, at heart, gentle — it was beyond her to steal or to snoop. And she knew he would never do such things either.

Cui Jingyu was not angry on account of this.

Perhaps the timing tonight was simply too favorable. Since his return to the capital, through these several months, they had in truth never once had time alone like this. There were always maids and matrons following along; Ye Lingbo and Han Yueqi threading needles nearby, invoking every manner of allusion and anecdote; Wei Yushan and the officers of the Northern Frontier Force openly fuming on his behalf; everyone around them frantically busy with their affairs.

Only the two of them — the two people at the center of the whirlpool — watched each other from across a great distance, as if they might hold each other at bay like this for a lifetime.

Fortunately, there was also today.

Qingyun Temple: the wind howled, the snow fell soft as cotton, the Taoist caretakers had long since retreated to the side hall to sit by the fire, ancient trees on the mountain were piled with snow, and in one hall filled with divine figures — all of this bore witness to their very first time alone.

And in this moment, the Marquis Cui whose face was as cold and hard as iron was finally able to speak a little truth from the heart.

He said: “I think I am simply like Qinglan — acting without being able to help myself, and therefore beyond my own control.”

A sound like thunder went through Qinglan’s ears. Her whole face blazed crimson, and she felt as though she had been cast into a fire — or as if a fire had been lit from deep inside her, burning outward through her skin, making it thin and hot and bright, nearly burning through from the inside out.

He knew. He knew all of it.

Why she had quietly laid her hand over his on the reins while on horseback. Why, when she caught sight of him in the hall just now — with no danger whatsoever present — she had kept retreating from him. He knew, because he was the same.

And so he had intercepted the letter she wrote to Dai Yuquan — even though he knew the letter almost certainly did not contain a promise of marriage, because given her thorough and careful nature, it was more likely to contain only a polite expression of thanks, without any reference to that awkward proposal. But he could not stop himself — because he had heard Dai Yuquan propose in the carriage, just as at the Crabapple Banquet he had challenged Dai Yuquan again and again. And even earlier, he had been so furious when she entrusted him with the task of bringing Dai Yuquan along to the hunt.

Because he was still so hopelessly, incurably in love with her — because he was consumed with jealousy — he had intercepted her letter to Dai Yuquan, regardless of what it said.

The most composed young lady in all the capital, and the most accomplished young man of the great families — in this entanglement of feeling, both had in one instant become two children again. Thinking nothing of consequences, nothing of whether it had any meaning, not even caring whether it would do any good — only acting without being able to help themselves, and therefore beyond their own control.

Qinglan immediately broke into a violent fit of coughing.

She looked away from Cui Jingyu’s eyes, skirted around the pillar, and walked straight out into the courtyard, saying as she went: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But Cui Jingyu gave her no opportunity to escape. He followed like the finest of hunters, tracking her every move — not reaching out to seize her directly, knowing that would send her into a panic, yet not releasing her either. In a few strides he was with her in the courtyard, had caught her hand, and pressed her up against a wutong tree.

And of all things, it was a wutong tree.

In her headlong flight she had stumbled back to the very setting of the banquet where they had once pledged themselves to each other. Above her head, the wutong tree was already leafing out in fresh canopy — yet a late spring cold had laid it thick with snow. Likely this tree’s wutong blossoms would miss their season this year.

Just as their betrothal had missed its season.

Like a tree full of buds that had gathered a whole year’s strength to bloom, then been frozen back into winter by a single snowfall. After that, she had refused ever to mention it again, wrapping it in silence. While he had quietly gathered up the wreckage of that old landscape and come back to call in the debt from long ago.

“The day Lingbo released my tiger, I was not actually angry about it — but watching her and Pei Zhao so perfectly content, I could not help but feel a nameless irritation rise in me. I asked her: you say over and over that Qinglan has sacrificed herself for you, and yet here you are with Pei Zhao, billing and cooing to your hearts’ content — what is that about?” he said.

He always had a way of drawing Qinglan out of herself. Just as now — she heard that and immediately frowned, turning a reproving look on him.

“How could you say that about her!” she said at once. “The choice I made back then was of my own free will. The life Lingbo lives now is exactly what I hoped most for her. Whatever she and Pei Zhao choose to do is no concern of ours.”

Cui Jingyu almost thought he could hear the sound of his own sigh.

In the past he would surely have let his expression harden because of this, thinking she had misunderstood him on account of protecting Ye Lingbo. But today he only said: “Don’t you want to know how Ye Lingbo answered me?”

In this moment she was like a watchful rabbit at the edge of a trap, peering warily down. She knew that asking further would certainly be dangerous. But Cui Jingyu knew she would be unable to stop herself.

Because what lay in the trap was her treasured younger sister.

And sure enough, she asked: “What did Lingbo say?”

“She said: Cui Jingyu, the reason you look at me with such displeasure right now is not because I am here with Pei Zhao, happy and perfectly content, and it irritates you. It is because you know that Qinglan is still trapped in what happened between the two of you four years ago. But have you ever stopped to consider — our circumstances as sisters are otherwise identical. The only difference is that I have Pei Zhao, and so I am here enjoying myself and getting under your skin. And the place beside Qinglan that Pei Zhao now occupies beside me — that place was always meant for you. It is you who failed to give Qinglan a good ending, and a happy one. And so she is still trapped here today.”