When Ming Huazhang saw Princess Taiping in this room, the shock he felt inwardly was beyond measure. Of all the people he might have expected — how could it be Princess Taiping? Was someone trying to engineer a scandal between him and Princess Taiping?

But to his complete surprise, Princess Taiping saw clearly that it was him and let out a long breath, saying with a hint of reproach, “You frightened me half to death. I thought they had found me out.”

Ming Huazhang raised an eyebrow slightly, at a loss as to what the Princess was actually trying to do. Princess Taiping had set aside all her usual imperious authority. She took hold of Ming Huazhang’s arm on her own initiative and looked him over from head to toe.

Ming Huazhang was distinctly uncomfortable under that gaze, and stepped back, moving out of Princess Taiping’s reach. “Your Highness — what is the meaning of this?”

A subject who dared to speak this way to a princess was committing something close to great insolence. Yet Princess Taiping paid absolutely no heed to his presumptuousness. She examined Ming Huazhang carefully all the way around, and finally fixed her gaze on his face. All at once her eyes filled with tears. “The resemblance — truly the resemblance. How is it that I never noticed before? And you still call me Your Highness?”

Ming Huazhang’s pupils contracted. He lifted his head sharply — but then, as his eyes met Princess Taiping’s, he went still again. Ming Huazhang was silent for a long while, then lowered his lashes and said, “This official does not understand what Your Highness means.”

Princess Taiping gave him a look that was half-reproachful and half-overcome with feeling, and then said with a sigh full of deep emotion, “You take after the Changsun family — your great-grandmother’s line, that is. He looked just like you when he was young.”

Ming Huazhang kept his gaze downward, still saying nothing. Princess Taiping had not thought of that particular person from long ago for many years. Today, seeing Ming Huazhang, all those faded, transformed memories — locked up together with her girlhood years — came surging back and struck her like a wave.

Princess Taiping blinked, and could not hold back the tears that fell. “The first time I saw you, I felt you resembled Xue Shao. Now that I think of it, it was never Xue Shao — it was Auntie Chengyang. Your brow and eyes are almost exactly the same mold as Auntie Chengyang’s, but your manner — your manner is identical to Second Elder Brother’s.”

Ming Huazhang heard that name again, and a vast emptiness opened within him. He did not know whether to go on pretending not to recognize it, as he had before, or to ask for more details.

Princess Taiping wiped her tears. Having lived always in comfort and luxury, her nails were kept long, and no matter how she tried to dry her face, the tears would not stop. Half-gratified, half-aggrieved, she said, “Second Elder Brother really — on a matter this enormous, he left us not a single word. Were it not for the spy I placed close to Prince Wei, I would never have known that Second Elder Brother still had a bloodline in the world. Thank heaven you were not found by him.”

At this point, going on pretending ignorance seemed rather pointless. Ming Huazhang let out a breath and asked, “How did you find me?”

Princess Taiping looked at him, and her smile took on an inscrutable quality. “You were rather daring yourself — knowing full well that the Xuan Xiaowei are Her Majesty’s private soldiers, yet still choosing to enter their ranks. Though fortunately you did, or Third Elder Brother’s return to Luoyang would have run into serious trouble.”

Ming Huazhang was startled, and jerked his head up. “You knew about the Xuan Xiaowei?”

“Of course I did.” Princess Taiping held her chin high, as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. “Why else would I have been able to find you ahead of Prince Wei? Many of the contact points across Chang’an and Luoyang were established by my own hand. But Mother does not trust me fully — the Xuan Xiaowei is layered with walls within walls, one section watching another, and even I cannot control it entirely. Otherwise I would have simply contacted you using the Xuan Xiaowei’s own codes. But this way is also good — I used the pretext of a banquet to invite you openly, with complete legitimacy. Mother and Prince Wei should not suspect anything. Going forward, I will work in the open and you will work in the shadows, and together we will take hold of the Xuan Xiaowei. With that, the day the realm returns to our Li family is within reach.”

Only now did Ming Huazhang understand: the reason Princess Taiping had dared to hold a grand banquet and party at a time when Chang’an was in an uproar over the explosions was that she needed a pretext to meet with him. Prince Wei was turning the city upside down searching for Li Xian’s surviving child — inviting Ming Huazhang alone would have been far too conspicuous. So she had simply invited every notable figure in Chang’an, and people would only think Princess Taiping was being extravagant and willful, rather than thinking along any other lines.

Ming Huazhang was a little surprised, but on reflection it made sense. If Princess Taiping had not known about the Xuan Xiaowei, why would Jiang Ling have been inserted into it by his own father? And if Marquis Jiang’an had not received some kind of intelligence, how would he have known that entering the Xuan Xiaowei would guarantee a smooth path through the ranks?

He should have worked this out long ago. The Xuan Xiaowei had so many enterprises across the two capitals propping it up, and had woven such an enormous underground network in secret — apart from Princess Taiping, who else would have the power and means?

So from the very beginning, Jiang Ling had been giving them the answer all along. Ming Huazhang took note quietly of the lesson learned: in the future, no secret could be shared with Jiang Ling. That spendthrift couldn’t keep anything hidden.

Princess Taiping’s excitement at first seeing Ming Huazhang had led her to shed a few tears — but once they had passed, her emotions settled quickly, and she was again the great Tang princess who stood highest in the Empress’s favor. She asked, “Before this, not knowing your identity, we left you unattended all these years — I and the others are indebted to you for that. But since you already knew your own origins, why did you not come to find us all this time?”

When had he first come to know that he was not Duke Zhenguo’s biological son? Ming Huazhang’s gaze traveled far, and he fell into memory.

That had been many years ago.

He had just turned four years old that year. That year, a monk of the Eastern Wei National Monastery compiled four volumes of the Great Cloud Sutra, declaring the Empress Wu to be the earthly manifestation of the Maitreya Buddha, destined to be sovereign of all under heaven. The court officials memorialized that a phoenix had gathered at the Shangyuan Palace and a red sparrow had been seen in the great hall. Li Dan abdicated, the Empress Wu proclaimed herself Emperor and took the title Sacred Divine Sovereign.

That year, someone in Yangzhou rose up in the name of Crown Prince Zhanghuai Li Xian, demanding the overthrow of the Zhou and the restoration of the Tang. The Empress’s relationship with the son who had died four years earlier deteriorated once more, and the seven-year-old Prince of Anning — the legitimate eldest son of the late Crown Prince Li Xian — died suddenly while in exile.

That year, the autumn sunlight was unusually brilliant, the sky an expanse of deep blue, the maple leaves a burning red — the colors so beautiful they made one feel a vague dread. Duke Zhenguo’s estate had engaged a tutor to begin the children’s foundational education. Ming Huashang had taken the inkstone for a bowl of syrup, and was forever spilling it all over Ming Huazhang. Ming Huazhang, unable to retaliate in kind and certainly incapable of hitting her back, had in a spirit of resignation taken to drawing on Ming Huashang in return, and the two of them were in a perpetual uproar, never listening to a word the tutor said.

Ming Huazhang still remembered that day. The weather had been particularly fine. The tutor was up front reading from the Thousand Character Classic. Below, he and Ming Huashang were locked in their usual wrestling match when Duke Zhenguo suddenly came back from outside and stood in the covered walkway, watching him for a long time.

Then the Duke called him out alone. Ming Huazhang had thought his father was going to reprimand him, but to his surprise, the Duke simply asked him to sit down, and the first words out of his mouth were — “Your Highness the Prince.”

Ming Huazhang stared blankly. He thought his father was angry, and crept forward intending to admit his fault. “Father, I was wrong —”

Ming Huashang used this approach all the time and it had never failed, so Ming Huazhang had learned it by observation. But the father who had always been easy to move to mercy showed none of his usual softness this time. He spoke in a firm, uncompromising voice that Ming Huazhang didn’t recognize. “Your Highness — your subject received the Crown Prince’s dying commission to protect the young lord. The Crown Prince, from his youth, had the gift of remembering all he read. As he grew older, his bearing was exemplary, his conduct dignified. At twenty he had read widely across every discipline of knowledge and organized the realm’s great scholars to compile and annotate histories. His talent and virtue were praised throughout the court and beyond. A man of such rare brilliance born into the imperial family should have been the great fortune of the Tang. But heaven begrudges perfection, and the Crown Prince, at only twenty-nine, took his own life within the Eastern Palace. Today, even his eldest son is dead. Across all the realm, only Your Highness — a child of four — can prove that the Crown Prince ever existed. The Crown Prince entrusted Your Highness to the Ming family because he trusted this subject. If Your Highness were to grow up as someone who squanders time in idle pleasures and cockfights, this subject cannot atone even with a thousand deaths.”

Ming Huazhang was completely dumbstruck. A child of four did not understand much, but small children are exceptionally sensitive to the emotions of adults. He must have sensed the gravity of what was happening, and asked carefully, “Father — are you saying that I am not actually of the Ming family?”

“You are of the heavenly imperial bloodline, the only surviving child of the Crown Prince. What virtue or merit does the Ming family possess to receive your offerings?” said the Duke. “I observed you — my child — and saw that you had pattern and order. The Crown Prince hoped that you would live a life of ease and brilliance, and yet not without propriety and the laws of ritual. So he gave you the name Huazhang, and then had this subject take you away. This subject’s wife happened to be in confinement in a mountain villa in the Zhongnan Mountains and gave birth to twin daughters. This subject named one of them Huashang, to go with your name, and declared to the outside world that a dragon-and-phoenix pair of twins had been born. This subject had not intended to tell you any of this so soon. But the Crown Prince’s grievance is still unwashed, and the Prince of Anning has died suddenly in exile. The princes of the Li family are, one by one, being implicated in charges of treason. This subject feared that if this were not said, the realm would be washed in blood again, and there would be no one left to restore the Li Tang — and then it would be too late.”

Young Ming Huazhang sat quietly for a very long time. So his father was not his father, and Huashang was not his younger sister. After a long while, Ming Huazhang said quietly, “Then where did Huashang’s real birth sibling go?”

The Duke, who had only just been speaking with such ardor and righteous concern for state affairs, suddenly choked and could not continue. His eyes filled with tears. “She was sent away by this subject. Rest assured — from this day forward, you are the heir of Duke Zhenguo’s estate. All that belongs to the Ming family is yours to use as you see fit. In this subject’s lifetime, this subject will never allow anyone to threaten your position.”

After that, no matter what the Duke said, Ming Huazhang could no longer take it in. He only remembered the autumn of the first year of the Heavenly Mandate Era — how dazzling the light had been, so bright it made him feel that the season would never, ever end.

That had not been a pleasant memory at all. Ming Huazhang had no wish to revisit it, and gave only a simple account of how the child-swapping had occurred.

Duke Zhenguo’s wife, Wang Yulan, had been carrying a pair of twins. But the Duke, trapped in Chang’an, had not known this. At the time, the Eastern Palace’s conflict with Empress Wu was growing more and more volatile. Li Xian sensed that he would not come to a good end. Using medicine, he caused the Early labor of a concubine who was pregnant at the time, made it appear to be a miscarriage, and secretly had the Duke spirit the child away. When the Duke brought the child to the mountain villa, he discovered for the first time that his wife had been carrying twins.

Twin births were common enough. A dragon-and-phoenix pair was not unheard of. But triplets were all but unheard of in all the world. In order to protect the young lord, the Duke had no choice: from the twin daughters his wife had risked her life to bear, he chose the healthier and sturdier of the two and had the wet nurse, the matriarch of the Su family, take her away. The one who remained was given the name Huashang to match Ming Huazhang’s name — or rather, Li Huazhang’s name — and the outside world was told that a dragon-and-phoenix pair of twins had been born.

Time had drifted along for seventeen years. The displaced fates of those three children had persisted for seventeen years as well.

Princess Taiping looked satisfied and gave a nod of appreciation. “Ming Huaiyuān is indeed a loyal subject — Second Elder Brother truly did not misjudge him. But at the time, the Xie family was also assisting Second Elder Brother, and the Xie family’s tradition of learning is even more distinguished — better suited to raising and educating a young lord. Why did Second Elder Brother not choose the Xie family?”

This was something Ming Huazhang did not know either. What he did know was that on the day Li Xian had entrusted the child to others, Xie Jichuan’s father, Xie Shen, had also been present — one of the very few subjects who knew the truth.

To entrust one’s bloodline to be raised in another household required a third-party witness, otherwise, when one was gone, how would the child’s identity ever be proven? So Li Xian had had the Duke take the child away, using a jade pendant as a token of proof. At the same time, he had given Xie Shen a letter written in his own hand, laying out the entire truth of the matter, so that the two families could check each other and together protect his son as he grew.

Thus Xie Jichuan had known Ming Huazhang’s identity from a very young age, and with his clan’s tacit consent — or encouragement — had become Ming Huazhang’s friend.

Ming Huazhang had no desire to speak of these matters, and did not answer Princess Taiping’s question. Princess Taiping had been curious for only a moment and did not press for an answer. She soon put the question aside, and said to Ming Huazhang, “This is a good opportunity. Prince Wei has found the old servants from the mountain villa back then, and most likely he already knows that a child was swapped seventeen years ago. But outsiders only know that one child was brought in — they do not know which of the twins it was. We can work with that. We can redirect suspicion entirely onto Ming Huashang.”

“No!” Ming Huazhang’s voice rose sharply, clear and cold as ice. “Because of me, those sisters have been kept apart their whole lives. She grew up alone in the inner chambers. I have already owed them a great debt. If I now place her in danger as well, what would set me apart from an animal?”

Princess Taiping was taken aback and could not understand why he reacted so strongly. “You are the sovereign, and she is the subject. To die for you is her honor.”

“No.” Ming Huazhang’s voice was not loud, but the conviction within it was absolute. “She is not. She is my younger sister.”

His childhood had ended the day he learned that his father had been driven to suicide, that his mother and brothers had all been killed at his grandmother’s hands. The day after Duke Zhenguo revealed the truth of his origins, Ming Huazhang went as usual to the schoolroom to listen to the tutor’s lesson. Ming Huashang came running in to play with him, as she always did. He watched Ming Huashang — who had covered herself in ink and was grinning without a care in the world — and felt both a sharp envy and a quiet ache in his chest.

Were it not for him, she would not have been separated from her own older sister. He owed Ming Huashang a debt. He also owed a debt to the girl who had been sent away. After that he never dared to stop, not for a single moment. Crown Prince Zhanghuai’s reputation was known throughout the world, and he feared he could never be worthy of his birth father’s name — and feared still more that he could not repay the grace of the father who had raised him.

So he was especially indulgent toward Ming Huashang. In part it was to repay what he owed, and in part it was because he wanted her to have a happy childhood — to live it for his missing portion as well.

It had not occurred to him that Duke Zhenguo held exactly the same feeling. All these years, the Duke had lived with the guilt of what he had done to his wife and to his eldest daughter, and the only thing he could do was give twice as much to the younger one. Beneath both their excessive indulgences, Ming Huashang had grown up without ever encountering a single real pressure or urgency in her life — and had successfully grown into a thoroughly idle young woman.

But no matter what Ming Huashang became — no matter if she were arrogant or willful, complacent or unambitious, fanciful in her ideas, or set on never marrying; even if she wanted to go out like a man and investigate cases — Ming Huazhang would shelter her for the rest of her life. Whatever wrongs she committed, he would take the blame. Whatever debts she incurred, he would pay them back.

These feelings were not for outside ears — even if the person before him was his blood aunt in all but name. Princess Taiping frowned, entirely unable to comprehend it. “You are the heir of Second Elder Brother’s bloodline. Your younger sisters should be Anning and Yonghe — Ming family women are merely the daughters of a subject. How could a subject’s daughter be worthy of calling herself your sister?”

Ming Huazhang said nothing more, having no wish to argue the point with Princess Taiping. Instead he raised his eyes and looked directly and gravely at this princess who wielded her power across the court with such ease — “Your Highness Princess Taiping, if you still regard me as one of the Li family, then do not harm her. And do not attempt to use someone else’s hand to harm her. Should she come to any harm, I will not rest until I have settled accounts with you, with the Crown Prince, with Prince Xiang, and with all the remaining members of the Li family. I will not stop short of death.”

Princess Taiping looked into his eyes, and for a moment was utterly transfixed.

In that instant, she thought she was looking at the Empress.

All those years ago, when she had held her newborn child and knelt at the foot of the palace steps, weeping and begging her mother to spare Xue Shao’s life — her mother’s eyes had been exactly like this.

Princess Taiping came back to herself and examined Ming Huazhang’s features inch by inch, her heart a confusion of feeling.

This child’s face resembled Xue Shao. His spirit resembled Li Xian. These two men — one had been her first love and first husband, the other the elder brother she had admired most in her youth.

And yet they were both dead. One had been starved to death in prison, one had taken his own life in the Eastern Palace.

They were the girlhood she could never return to, the turning point at which the Li imperial family had begun its long decline. And so when Princess Taiping learned that Second Elder Brother still had a child alive in the world, she had been nearly beside herself with joy. It was as though this were a sign — a sign that after seventeen years of loss, the Li family had at last seen the clouds part and the moon emerge.

Princess Taiping had immediately arranged to meet Ming Huazhang. She could not allow Prince Wei to discover that the two of them had met, and still more urgently had to keep it from the Empress. To that end, she had sent invitations to half the noble families of Chang’an — all so that the heir of Duke Zhenguo’s estate could arrive without drawing a single suspicious eye.

Princess Taiping looked at Ming Huazhang, words coming and then stopping, until at last she let out a sigh and rose. “Very well. You were raised by the Ming family — it is natural that you have feelings for them. But you must remember: to be born into an imperial family, sentiment is the greatest burden you can carry. You wish to be a man of integrity — to repay grace and protect the sister who was raised beside you. But how do you know whether others will treat you as you treat them? Your father died because of his kindness. I hope you will not repeat Second Elder Brother’s mistake. While no one has yet discovered who you are, we still have a chance to remedy things. Once your existence is known to Prince Wei, to Prince Liang, and reaches your imperial grandmother — no one can save you. At that point: you, I, the Crown Prince, Prince Xiang — every last prince and princess the Li family still has — will all die.”

“I have stirred the banquet hall into confusion. No one will notice that the two of us are absent. But I cannot be away too long. I must go back first. Change your clothes, then wait one incense stick’s time before returning yourself. There will be no one in the hallways — I have already had them cleared for you. You need not do anything further. If anyone asks, simply say that you came out to change and get some air.”

“I can wait for you to think it through. But remember — in the end, we are the ones who are truly family.”