Hearing this, Li Shu’s expression did not shift in the slightest. Her eyes met Shen Xiao’s directly. “Everything you’ve said may be correct. I have only one question for you.”

“How long will all of this take? Three years? On what basis do you believe you will be able to return to the capital after the triennial review? Even if you produce the most remarkable achievements imaginable, all it takes is for the Crown Prince to nudge someone in the Ministry of Personnel, and you will be mired in local postings for the rest of your life, never able to climb back up.”

“Shen Xiao, there is a perfectly straight path to the heights waiting for you. Why would you choose a road with no end in sight?”

If there were a third option, would she — Li Shu — be so foolish as to drive Shen Xiao to such extremity? In matters like this, there was either the best possible choice, or the worst. There was no middle ground.

She had chosen the best. Shen Xiao had chosen the worst. If that was how it stood, there was nothing left to collaborate on.

Why walk a harder road when a harder one was not necessary.

Shen Xiao’s mouth was full of bitterness. “Que Nuo — no matter how much political calculation lies beneath this decision, when everything is said and done, there is truly only one reason for it… you know what it is.”

Li Shu regarded him with cold eyes. “What would I know? Sir Shen, I know nothing at all. You are a sixth-rank official who dares to harbor impossible hopes regarding this princess. Don’t you find that laughable?”

Shen Xiao went still.

Laughable.

Was this the word Li Shu would use to describe his feelings?

On that day, at that hour, right here in the Golden Jade Chamber, right here on this very daybed — she had nodded. She had admitted that she liked him.

How could she discard her feelings so cleanly, so decisively, without a single thread of hesitation or longing?

Was her heart truly made of iron and stone, free of all emotional entanglement, containing nothing but pure political calculation?

Before this, he had been of use to her, so she had smiled at him. Now that he had lost every shred of his usefulness, she had withdrawn all that warmth, and would not even deign to look at him.

The jade hairpin lay hidden against his skin inside his sleeve. The jade was warm and smooth, and yet Shen Xiao felt a chill seeping through his entire body.

This was a Li Shu he did not know how to face.

He slowly stepped back a pace and laughed at himself. “Yes. This official is merely a sixth-rank county official. How could I dare aspire to a princess?”

He drew the jade hairpin from his sleeve and placed it on the go board. “Your Highness, this is a gift to celebrate your birthday.”

Li Shu looked down at the blood-jade hairpin. Shen Xiao was silent for a moment, then could not help but try once more. “I leave tomorrow. What I am about to say you may not wish to hear — but I still want to say it. Charging forward in the political arena is not always wise. For the three years I am away, try to draw back a little. Too much power, too much imperial favor — they are not blessings. It places you squarely in everyone’s line of sight, and being too visible makes it easy to make mistakes. If it is possible, I would suggest you conceal your strengths, let this affair carry you into a retreat from public life, stop going out, and wait for my return. Otherwise I worry that the Eastern Palace will come to resent you, and that the emperor will find ways to use you.”

Li Shu sat quietly on the daybed, gaze lowered to the hairpin. For a moment she did not speak. The room was very still, and there was something oddly warm about the silence.

This was their last meeting, Shen Xiao thought. For three years, he would have to sustain himself on this one image. If all he carried was the memory of her cold, indifferent profile, how could he endure it?

Shen Xiao stepped toward Li Shu and reached out to take her gently by the shoulder, wanting to draw her into his arms. But Li Shu recoiled as if she had been touched by a snake, and knocked his hand away sharply. She sprang up from the daybed, trying to move away from Shen Xiao — and in her haste, she accidentally caught the small table on the daybed.

The jade hairpin fell straight down onto the carpet. Li Shu stepped back, not noticing where she was going — and stepped directly onto it.

The sound of the jade breaking should have been clear and bright, but buried under her foot and swathed in the carpet, the sound came out muffled and dull.

Li Shu froze. She stepped back quickly and looked down. The hairpin had been snapped in two beneath her foot.

Shen Xiao lowered his head and stared at the floor in a daze. The blood-jade hairpin lay tangled with the Xuancheng red carpet — fallen against the red pile, it nearly vanished from sight.

Shen Xiao walked one step toward Li Shu and went down on one knee, lowering his head to pick up the hairpin from the floor.

The hairpin that had been whole and perfect was now broken cleanly in two. The fractured edge was sharp — if you ran your finger along it, it could cut skin.

He had considered many gifts before settling at last on this hairpin. He had shaped it himself. His craft was poor, so he had not carved any patterns into it — but he felt that something made by his own hands was more sincere than anything that had passed through a jade-carver’s.

He had thrown away everything he had spent a lifetime pursuing — power, rank, position — and in the end, what remained was this: a hairpin, shattered on the floor.

Shen Xiao felt his heart sink completely.

Li Shu opened her mouth but could not find what to say.

By then Shen Xiao had already risen. He stood directly before Li Shu — and did not look into her eyes. Instead, his gaze moved upward, searching for the gold hairpin in her hair.

He looked at her silently for a moment, then said, voice low: “Li Shu, I thought you were different from the rest of them.”

The words landed like a blow. Li Shu’s face went white.

I thought you were different. I was wrong about you.

Li Shu’s lips trembled. She wanted to say something. But Shen Xiao had already moved past her and walked to the door.

“Shen Xiao.”

Li Shu called his name suddenly. Shen Xiao went still at once — but he did not turn around. His back was held rigid, his right hand clenched tight, and from his palm showed a fragment of the jade hairpin, as if a trace of blood.

Li Shu did not know what to say.

This was a deadlocked situation. They had each made a different choice, and those choices made it impossible for them to walk the same road.

He was good. She was simply not worthy of him.

Li Shu finally found her voice again. “Let this be the end of our collaboration.”

Shen Xiao stood rigid, making no reply. He only tightened his grip on the jade hairpin, forcing himself not to turn back.

He stepped over the threshold and descended the stairs.

Shen Xiao did not see what lay behind him: Li Shu’s gaze followed him all the way out, until the blue-green of his robes disappeared around the bend in the stairwell and she could see him no more.

And still she kept her eyes wide open, unblinking, fixed on the stairwell entrance. She did not know what she was looking at anymore.

Each meeting was one meeting fewer. After this they would be separated by a thousand mountains and ten thousand rivers, by ten thousand hardships and ten thousand dangers, by ten thousand thoughts and ten thousand longings.

Each meeting was one meeting fewer.

Take care of yourself in all things.

Li Shu said it, in her heart.

*

The following day.

Outside Zhuque Gate, at the first light of dawn, Shen Xiao led his horse out through the city gate — then stood at the gate’s entrance with the horse in hand, and did not move. He waited there like that, all the way until the hour of Chen.

Because he needed to travel, he had dressed in plain clothes — a gray cloth robe. In a certain light, it was the image of his younger self, arriving in the capital to sit the imperial examination.

He had entered the capital then full of spirit and high ambition, feeling as though the entire world lay in his hands. Now he had thrown the whole world away for the sake of a single obstinate dream.

And yet no one thought his dream worth anything. Not one person had even come to see him off.

Well. A sixth-rank county magistrate — how could he expect Princess Pingyang to come and see him off in person?

Shen Xiao felt for the broken jade hairpin in his sleeve. What was he still waiting for?

His attendant had urged him many times: “Master, if we don’t set out soon, we won’t reach the post-station before dark.”

Shen Xiao let out a breath that was barely perceptible. He pulled his gaze in. “Let’s go.”

He was just about to swing up into the saddle when, suddenly, the sound of hoofbeats came from the city gate. Shen Xiao’s heart seized. He turned to look at once.

Was it her?

He felt his breath, embarrassingly, catch in his chest.

He should not have spoken to her the way he had yesterday.

But the rider was a single figure on a single horse, dressed in black. It was Cui Jinzhi — fitted out in a close-cut riding jacket, evidently leaving the city on some errand.

Catching sight of Shen Xiao by the roadside, Cui Jinzhi wheeled his horse over — but did not dismount.

His horse was a thoroughbred Ferghana stallion, the finest quality, extraordinarily tall. Sitting astride it and looking down at a person below created a keenly imposing sense of dominance. Between the two men, with that height difference, the contest of presence was already decided.

But Shen Xiao did not give Cui Jinzhi a direct look. He only turned his head slightly, glancing at him sideways in a way that conveyed something close to dismissal.

“Sir Cui need not ask what he already knows.”

Cui Jinzhi’s gaze settled on Shen Xiao for a moment, then he gave a sudden short laugh. “Sir Shen truly leaves as bare as he arrived — after all this time as an official, now that you’re posted to the provinces, there isn’t a single person here to see you off.”

The words landed, and Cui Jinzhi watched the visible tightening of Shen Xiao’s thin lips. Clearly this subject had struck an unwelcome nerve.

Cui Jinzhi turned his head toward the city gate.

Empty. Not a trace of Li Shu.

So your political partnership is supposed to be built on mutual trust — and yet one letter of impeachment from me has broken it this easily? The foundation of that relationship must be quite fragile indeed.

Cui Jinzhi tightened his grip on the riding crop. His eyes were sharp and clear.

What was Shen Xiao, in the end? How long had he even known Que Nuo? And he already wanted to marry her, to spend his life at her side.

He had not the first understanding of Que Nuo.

From Li Shu’s tenth year to her twentieth, Cui Jinzhi had known her for a full ten years: the first five as the closest of friends, the last five as husband and wife. He understood her better than she understood herself.

Among all the unfavored princesses in the inner court, Li Shu alone had been born with eyes that were sharp as blades — cutting clean through the fog before her. She had always known what she wanted.

The year they first met, not long after, Li Shu had sought him out. She had come straight to the point: “Can you teach me to read?”

She was small and thin, but she had looked up at him without flinching. Because he was the only foothold she could reach, the only path upward she could grasp.

Why could she not simply be a quiet, ordinary princess? Not the sort who got bullied, but not the sort who attracted notice either — married off at the right age, to a husband, to children, to spend her life that way.

Li Shu had said: “There are many ways to live in this world. But I want the best one.”

She had always been like that.

Because she had gone so long without love, she drove herself without mercy to make up for it with power and gold.

What did Shen Xiao have to offer her? Their gulf was too vast. However close they might once have been, there would always come a day when they parted ways. The gap between them was too great.

Only he was the same kind of creature as she was. The two of them would sink together into the swamp of power, descend together into the dark abyss. He had fallen in too deep, and could never get out. How could he allow her to go off alone toward the light?

Even if she wanted the light. Even if someone in her life was willing to pull her out of the mud.

Cui Jinzhi could not allow it.

Cui Jinzhi pulled his gaze back from the empty city gate and let it fall on Shen Xiao.

The alliance was thoroughly broken. The collaboration was no more. Then it was time to divide and conquer.

Shen Xiao had done the Eastern Palace so much damage — it was time for his revenge.

Cui Jinzhi said: “Sir Shen, the road ahead is long. Do take care of yourself.”

He said it with a smile, his expressive eyes settling on Shen Xiao with the warmth of a friend’s parting wish.