Qinglan had never refused her in her life, and of course she agreed now. But Lingbo pushed back the quilt and said: “Come lie down with me for a bit.”

Qinglan smiled, but seeing Lingbo’s insistence, laughed and said, “All right,” and changed into her night clothes and lay down beside her, tucking the quilt around her and laughingly teasing: “Look at our Lingbo — she’s turned back into a little child.”

Lingbo only lay with her eyes closed. Qinglan was still smiling, but she was genuinely worried. When she saw Xiao Liu’er come in with the ginger soup, she hushed her with a small gesture, and Xiao Liu’er understood at once — she slipped quietly out, and let down the bed curtains behind her. The warm inner chamber fell into dimness. Qinglan sat up, brought the ginger soup over by the faint light of the lantern, and coaxed Lingbo to drink.

In the dim light, Qinglan looked as she always had — like their mother. In profile, she was the image of her.

Lingbo felt wave after wave of softness wash through her. That wretched Pei Zhao — today she had truly fallen at his hands. When had she ever been like this? She had been the one to comfort Yanyan those nights when Yanyan wept in longing for their mother.

“Slow down,” Qinglan said, patient and gentle. “Drink it all, then lie quietly — but don’t sleep. If you sleep now, you’ll wake up in the middle of the night, and that’ll be harder on your body.”

“It’s already the middle of the night,” Lingbo said, obstinate.

Qinglan could do nothing with her. She watched her finish the soup, and lay down beside her, afraid she’d fall asleep and casting about for something to say to keep her awake: “The Lantern Festival wasn’t bad this year — quite lively.”

“If it was so nice, why did you come home so early?” Lingbo was perceptive even now: “It’s all Cui Jingyu’s fault. He must have been talking to He Qingyi again. He’s an absolute scoundrel — sooner or later someone will have to do something about him.”

Qinglan laughed at that.

“That’s all in the past between us. It’s perfectly natural for him to speak to whoever he pleases — why do anything about it?” She was always so composed.

But Lingbo didn’t believe a word of it.

“What about you — do you truly not like him anymore, not even a little?” she pressed immediately.

If Qinglan said she didn’t, Lingbo would have launched straight into: “Then why haven’t you taken any interest in anyone new in all these years? There were so many people asking to call on you four years ago.”

But Qinglan was not someone who told lies.

She only fell suddenly silent and said nothing at all.

Had this been any other time, Lingbo would have pressed the advantage and turned the conversation toward pushing her forward. But tonight — perhaps truly undone by that scoundrel Pei Zhao — her most urgent concern turned out not to be Qinglan’s future happiness, but something else entirely.

“What does it feel like to like someone?” she heard herself asking. She even turned her face to look into Qinglan’s eyes: “Elder sister.”

In that moment, the world became very simple. She was no longer the Ye family’s formidable Second Miss who schemed and calculated at every turn. She was only Ye Lingbo, lying in a dim, warm inner chamber with her elder sister, asking the question that every younger sister in the world eventually asks.

And Qinglan answered her, slowly, carefully.

“It’s been so long, I can hardly remember clearly,” she said, taking her time with every word — as though each one were a pearl that could only be drawn out by cutting open her own heart: “I only remember that it was very joyful. Light and floating. But also a little scattered…”

“Was your heart in disarray?” Lingbo asked.

“The heart wasn’t in disarray — it felt more like it had settled.” She found at last the right comparison: “Do you remember that year when Mother took us to Jiangnan for a visit, and we went out on the water to pick lotus flowers?”

“I remember.”

Qinglan’s face rested on the pillow, and moonlight and snow-light fell together on her face, making her look like an image of Guanyin carved from white jade.

“That day, Mother brought us to pick lotus flowers in a small boat — Yanyan didn’t come, it was just the three of us, and two boatwomen. We’d had some wine, and Mother said we should rest a while. We lay down on the boat. One of the boatwomen tied a stone to a rope and dropped it into the water, and the boat cast anchor…” She half-closed her eyes: “Liking someone is like that feeling. The boat has cast anchor. You’re lying on the boat, and the current pushes it here and there, and you’re not the one controlling it. But you feel completely at peace, because no matter how far the boat drifts, the anchor is always holding it in place.”

A boat with its anchor down. Lingbo pressed her lips together and turned this comparison over in her mind, not knowing quite which knot it had loosened, but feeling something in her open up all at once.

There had been a few times, late at night, when Qinglan had gone to the Shen household to keep Han Yueqi company, and Yanyan and A’Cuo were already asleep. She had been alone with her account books, thinking through what came next, how to keep tying the red thread — and without knowing why, her thoughts always found their way back to Pei Zhao. She had thought it was because she needed information from him. She understood now that it was not.

It was like tonight, in Han Yueqi’s booked teahouse upstairs — she had been thinking all along that she would go and find Pei Zhao afterward, call him out to watch the lanterns. As to exactly why she had wanted to do this, what concrete good it would bring, she hadn’t known. There were even many times when she would be talking about something else entirely and barely remembering that she’d been planning to find Pei Zhao — only a vague warmth, a sense of something delightful waiting to be done. The feeling was like being half-asleep as a child on the night before the first snow of winter, waking in the morning, and the very first thing she did was look toward the window for the glow of snow-light.

To her, Pei Zhao was that glow on the window. The last sweet kept in a box through the New Year, savored in secret. The unknown secret that no one else knew. All of this vast capital, and all its countless inhabitants — everything seemed to orbit around him, and wherever Lingbo’s thoughts wandered, they came back to circling him, like a boat drifting but always near the same center.

So that was how it had happened to her, and she hadn’t even noticed.

Lingbo lay on the pillow and felt wave after wave of something wash over her, until she was almost dizzy.

“Is it also like being drunk on wine?” she asked Qinglan seriously.

Qinglan thought about it seriously too.

She had never been as quick-thinking as Lingbo — leaping from one thing to three — and she thought Lingbo was simply recalling that afternoon on the boat, drunk on wine.

“Like, and also unlike,” Qinglan said carefully. “When I was little, I always thought clouds were made of cotton, something you could step onto. Liking someone is like that — your body suddenly becomes very light, as though you’re stepping deep into soft clouds, not quite touching solid ground, a little floating and insubstantial, sometimes wanting to leap up, sometimes unable to hold back a smile. It does have some similarity to being drunk — but you’re clear-headed the whole time.”

“Sinking in lucidity,” Lingbo said.

Qinglan nodded.

“You know in your own heart, actually. Sometimes even seeing a character that resembles his name makes you flustered — but then you can’t stop writing his name anyway…”

Lingbo did not forget to keep tying the red thread, even now.

“No wonder I once saw a flower pattern with a few names inked over — three characters each. So it was Cui Jingyu’s name all along.”

Qinglan was caught in the act, and immediately, no matter what Lingbo asked, refused to say another word.

The night had grown late by now, and Lingbo was talked out as well — or perhaps it was the ginger soup. She felt a warmth rising in her heart, wave after wave.

She hadn’t lied to Qinglan. It truly did feel a little like being drunk — she was lying in bed, still feeling a faint sensation of the world turning gently, and that feeling kept washing up from somewhere, again and again.

Pei Zhao — even just thinking those two characters made her heart quail. Where was he right now? Back in that drafty courtyard of his, probably, going back to his sword practice. He surely wouldn’t be as helpless as she was right now — and she had no idea how much trouble he’d managed to stir up.

How could Ye Lingbo be the sort of person who was liked?

Ye Lingbo was better suited to being feared, to being guarded against — to becoming a name that every lady and young miss in the capital held in wary regard, with her deeds spoken of in whispered stories: the daughter who refused to bow to a father who favored his concubine over his wife, who carved her way out from under a harsh stepmother’s hand, exacting every debt owed her and wielding connections that reached places no one could account for. How did word always reach Lingbo?

Ye Lingbo was also someone people relied on, someone they looked up to. The梧桐 Courtyard held hundreds of servants: the household stewardesses, maids, and matrons of the inner chambers; the handful of elderly nursemaids long since retired and now doting on grandchildren; the stewards, gatekeepers, and errand boys of the outer yard; the shopkeepers and apprentices in her businesses; even the few boats hired on the canal — all of them lived depending on her. Qinglan’s future, A’Cuo’s and Yanyan’s futures, were all held within her plans.

Everyone knew she was reliable. Always clear-headed. Always seeking the most efficient solution. Constantly pushing forward, and if that made her seem too worldly, then so be it.

Elegance — that was Shen Biwei’s concern. Integrity and generosity — those were Qinglan’s. Lingbo only managed for the greatest return, the highest standing. Everyone’s choices might have their own logic, but Ye Lingbo’s were always the most practical.

Even Han Yueqi, when the inner household caught fire with trouble, could let go of Qinglan’s affairs with an easy mind — knowing Lingbo would never let her elder sister come off badly.

And beyond all that, she was not particularly pretty. No one had ever liked her — only praised her cleverness, praised her capability. Even promising but uncertain young scholars, given the chance, still looked straight past her to A’Cuo.

And yet here was Pei Zhao.

The books say: after all the sand has been blown away, what remains is gold — but gold doesn’t fear being buried. The moment it shows even a glimmer, it blinds the eye. No matter how noble Cui Jingyu’s marquisate, those three arrows from the望 Tower had been enough to fix every great family’s daughter in the capital on that one face.

And yet he persisted in this way.

She could not change him — she knew that. She was the one who was changing, pulled along like a needle toward a magnet, hidden in a crack in the wall and helpless, drawn toward him inch by inch.

She had truly invited trouble upon herself.

Lingbo closed her eyes, and still felt the scene in the alley playing out just in front of her. Pei Zhao’s face was like hot iron — something she had no place to put once she’d taken hold of it, that left a brand on contact with sheepskin. She felt like silk thrown into fire, and curled up helplessly inside the quilt.

He said he liked her. And she knew it was true.

It was really quite terrible.

How could it be Pei Zhao — he was beautiful as a silver dragon, a creature from legend, and Lingbo was like a woodcutter who had wandered into a myth by mistake. She had gone up the mountain only to cut a load of firewood, and had trespassed without meaning to into his domain.

He had seen her, watched her — and had been drawn to her. This was already more than she could contain. She felt herself growing as bashful as any nineteen-year-old girl kept within her chambers — and only now did she understand why she had been afraid of him.

Because he liked her.

She had a woman’s instinct. Being watched by him, she had felt danger on some primal level. Because she knew that a man’s affection usually carried something of conquest in it — as he himself had admitted: he had deliberately unfastened his own button, drawing her into the snare. When she had risen on her toes to lean close, he had been studying her face.

And in all those past moments of watching, all those quiet, attentive looks — when she had been holding forth on the city wall, and he had been watching her — what had he been thinking?

It sounded rather self-absorbed, when she put it that way — plain-looking Ye Lingbo, afraid to be near Pei Zhao because she felt in danger. Like a rather embarrassing act of flattery toward herself, the kind that would make even her cringe…

But he had admitted it.

He had even known that she liked him in return. And this hadn’t even required any particular sign from her — who wouldn’t like Pei Zhao? When he had loosed those three arrows from the望 Tower, even Lu Wenyin had felt a moment of her heart going sideways. It was simply instinct, nothing to do with personal preference. Just as Shen Biwei never worried about anyone failing to want to marry her — because she was the one who chose not to marry.

Just as Pei Zhao, with that ever-smiling expression that still held a distance in it, had come to expect the world’s longing for him. There was the answer to her question: what was it like to be that beautiful? It was like carrying a priceless treasure through the middle of a marketplace, and knowing that everyone who passed would reach toward you.

And he liked her.

Of course it might be only fleeting. It might be only an impression — because no one had ever talked with him about Mingsha River. Perhaps he only found her tireless striving amusing…

But that button had been lying in his palm.

If she had not reflexively struck him just then, how would things have unfolded? Of course Lingbo knew he would have remained proper — but even the gentle male leads in operas were usually very proper, and things still moved forward, step by inevitable step. She would slowly stop being Ye Lingbo of the Ye household, would stop playing out the story of vindication and triumph, and could only become one half of a matched pair of butterflies.

And she would not allow that to happen.