On the vermilion birthday card, he had written her name and his wishes in characters as beautiful and clear as his face: “Wishing Miss Ye Lingbo of the Ye family: peace and joy on this birthday, year upon year without harm, season upon season without sorrow — and may all that you wish for, without exception, come to be fulfilled.”

Snow-light from the window fell across his face — a face that swept all before it, yet remembering, with such care, a birthday she had mentioned only in passing, and having prepared a gift for it. To her, this was already far more than too much. She had never sought love for herself; this year’s Flower Viewing Banquet had not been prepared for her own sake. She only wanted Qinglan to have what she wished for, and wanted nothing of fulfillment for herself.

Yet fate chose to mock her, and sent her a Pei Zhao. Already far beyond anything she had asked for — in many eyes, Pei Zhao was even better than Cui Jingyu, otherwise the silence that had fallen over the viewing tower that day could not have been so complete.

Only she had no fortune to enjoy this.

Lingbo could almost feel her heart hardening, degree by degree. On a winter this cold, the heart does grow a little harder.

“I won’t accept your birthday gift,” she said calmly. “I heard that today the Emperor went in person to the Chen family’s camellia banquet and had all of you compete in mounted archery — and set a prize for it. Handsome rewards. Rather than giving me a birthday gift, you’d do far better to strive for the top. Claiming that bird would make me far happier.”

Lingbo did not need to look to know that the light in his eyes had gone dim. Plays always had something to say about women like her — mercenary, shallow, obsessed with wealth. In those plays, such women never got good endings; they always schemed and schemed, only to find it all for nothing, the basket drawn from the water with nothing inside.

Lingbo had been watching those plays since she was twelve. But she had chosen her path long ago. She could not be the heroine of a play — she had no gentle or yielding nature, no willingness to meekly endure whatever fate placed upon her. She would fight, and seize, and strive to rise, and scheme with every resource she had to hold back the current of fate and build a shelter for her family. She would scheme until her last breath and feel not a moment’s remorse.

The happy ending was for Qinglan. She only wanted to keep tying her red threads. When the happy reunion arrived, to stand among the crowd with her maid — a small, unremarkable blossom in the golden-red background.

She did not need Pei Zhao.

But Pei Zhao refused to make his exit.

He seemed entirely unbothered by Lingbo’s “mercenary shallowness,” and only smiled faintly and said: “I thought it was catching Cui Jingyu that would make you happy?”

Lingbo understood what he meant: you want me to strive for the top — that means you still hope for a future with me, doesn’t it?

But Lingbo refused to follow the thread he offered.

“Of course it would be best if you caught it. Cui Jingyu’s position is already high enough to be out of reach. If you caught the bird, claimed the prize, and rose higher — that would be useful to me as well. By the way — did anyone catch the bird today?”

“No one did.” Pei Zhao still only smiled. “Everyone came back empty-handed. The prize sits at the Chen household unclaimed, and the palace has already sent a eunuch to inquire.”

“What a waste.” Lingbo was dismissive. “Weren’t you so impressive that day at the viewing tower? Why didn’t you shoot it down and go claim the reward?”

“That isn’t a bird — it’s a peregrine falcon. Beautiful creature. What a pity to shoot it dead.” Pei Zhao smiled.

Lingbo immediately looked at him with sharp suspicion.

“You didn’t see the falcon and just… not shoot it, did you?” Her eyes went wide. “If you let a chance at a reward slip by because you couldn’t bear to kill one bird, I’ll…”

Her voice cut off again — because Pei Zhao had simply pulled away the brocade covering her birthday gift. The brocade, patterned all over with curling flowers, fell away like water. Inside a cage of gilded copper stood a grey, nondescript bird. A strip of cloth was bound over its eyes, and it turned its head restlessly, seemingly alert to everything around it. It looked entirely ordinary — nothing that would seem worth giving as a precious gift.

Yet on the top of its head, something had been written with what appeared to be a heavy brushstroke — as in the old myths where a heavenly brush touches a carp and it transforms into a dragon. That stroke of cinnabar and gold was a deep, vivid red-gold, and even in the dim light of the carriage, it gave off a faint gleam. Lingbo knew it was the imperial cinnabar ink — made with genuine gold dust.

Lingbo stared at Pei Zhao in stunned disbelief. He bore the expression of someone entirely untroubled — the look of a man past caring — and smiled at her pleasantly.

“You—” she said, furious enough to want to hit him. “Have you lost your mind? You caught this falcon — why didn’t you go and claim the prize?”

“I don’t like collecting prizes.” Pei Zhao lounged against the carriage wall with easy nonchalance. “I don’t need the bow and arrows anyway.”

He even knew the prize was a bow and arrows!

Lingbo wanted nothing more than to give him a good few blows.

“Then you could have released it. Why keep it?”

“A live peregrine falcon is so rare — I caught it for you to play with,” Pei Zhao replied, apparently in high spirits. Seeing Lingbo’s agitation, he smiled and said: “I’m teasing. The real reason is that I couldn’t release it. If I let it go now, someone would shoot it down to claim the prize. This ink can’t be removed by any means — it just has to fade on its own. Once the fuss has died down, I’ll release it. Peregrine falcons fly fast — it’ll be back in the frontier in a single day.”

Lingbo felt dizzy from exasperation.

Of all the people in the world, the ones who couldn’t claim a prize for lack of ability were everywhere — but here was this rare creature who had the ability and simply chose not to claim it. To find two such people in one lifetime was extraordinary. Shen Biwei was exactly the same sort of peculiar, just like Pei Zhao.

Lingbo was angry at herself for understanding him. He must have felt that the peregrine was like him — just as Shen Biwei, that year she went hunting and spotted a white wolf, alone apart from any pack, hunting a deer in the rain, had watched it for an entire afternoon and then come back to tell Lingbo it reminded her of herself.

Lingbo understood them both, and agreed with neither. Just as when she’d heard Shen Biwei’s account, her first thought had been: did no one spare a thought for the deer?

Just as now, her first impulse was to scold Pei Zhao.

“What are you keeping it for? To get yourself into trouble? You don’t even like birds.”

“Who says,” Pei Zhao replied, still lounging at ease, idly teasing the falcon with a feeding stick. “I like birds quite well. The clothes you gave me — I like those too. The embroidery on them is of a blue luan.”

Lingbo immediately turned her head away. “I don’t know anything about any blue luan.”

Pei Zhao was not about to miss this moment. He leaned over to look at her expression, eyes curving in a smile, and said: “Long ago, the King of Jibin kept a luan bird in the mountains of Junqi…”

Lingbo raised a hand to swat him. He sidestepped it lightly, still smiling at her, beautiful as the blue luan of legend — something that did not belong to this world.

But Lingbo could not afford such a thing.

“Pei Zhao,” she said, speaking his name with intention. “Stop playing games with me. I genuinely don’t have time for this. We are not the same kind of people, and we don’t want the same things. You know this as well as I do. The things you like, I don’t like. The things I want, you don’t want.”

Pei Zhao’s smile faded, but those peach-blossom eyes went on watching her calmly.

“What do you want?” He already knew the answer, and supplied it himself: “Our Miss Ye likes power.”

“Yes — power,” Lingbo admitted plainly. “If not power, then money will do.”

“Always striving to rise,” Pei Zhao summarized for her.

His eyes still held a faint, habitual warmth — he was born with eyes that smiled. No wonder every young lady in the capital adored him; a person of this kind of talent and beauty was well-suited to the prime of youth, flowering and bright.

“Yes. Always striving to rise.” Lingbo said this just as calmly.

He understood her, and she understood him. He would never strive to rise — and she was determined to strive to rise. She would never learn to accept things with equanimity; he could set aside even an imperial prize without a second thought.

Neither of them could change the other.