The sky was nearly dark. Lanterns had been hung along the eaves of the main room and the west wing’s corridors, while the east wing, under Hua Zhi’s orders to be kept clear of all people, remained in a stretch of unlit gloom.

Gu Yanxi came out of the room, and at the sight of Hua Zhi’s slightly indistinct silhouette in the dim light, his footsteps stilled of their own accord.

Hearing him, Hua Zhi turned around. Their eyes met. Hua Zhi dipped her head and sank into a proper curtsy — unlike the half-bows she had given before, this was the most correctly executed bow she had ever offered him since the day they had met.

Gu Yanxi’s gaze darkened. For quite some time he said nothing, and Hua Zhi held her position throughout.

Gu Yanxi gave a rueful smile, stepping forward to raise her up. “Are you blaming me, eldest young miss?”

“I dare not.” Hua Zhi looked up, caught the rawness at the back of his eyes, and the words on the tip of her tongue shifted course. “It has always been this commoner who received Master Lu’s protection, and Master Lu has never once acted against the Hua Family’s interests. To have taken every advantage and then begrudge Master Lu for concealing his identity — what face would this commoner have left?”

The light gradually returned to Gu Yanxi’s eyes. He looked at her without blinking — so close, in that corridor, to letting his feelings come to the surface. At the last moment his remaining reason just barely held him back. Not yet. He knew with perfect clarity that now was not the right time. Even if he said everything plainly, what he would most likely face was a refusal.

Until the Hua Family had regained its footing, Hua Zhi would not give a single thought to her own future. Or — that was not quite it either. Gu Yanxi looked at the woman before him, whose eyes and brows hinted at a warmth visible only in unguarded moments. He recalled Shao Yao once saying that she had resolved never to remarry.

Hua Zhi suddenly lifted her head and met Gu Yanxi’s gaze directly. “Does Master Lu have something to say?”

“Gu Yanxi. My name is Gu Yanxi.”

The Gu family name. The imperial family name. Hua Zhi felt as though she had heard the second shoe drop. Without a moment’s hesitation she began to sink into a full formal obeisance — and found her arms firmly held.

“But within the Hua household I am only Master Lu. That I am the martial arts teacher to the Hua children — that will not change.”

“The Hua Family…”

“Can afford to pay.” Gu Yanxi cut her off. “I am quite willing to earn this wage from the Hua Family.”

Hua Zhi was no fool. More often than not she was sharp enough to be called genuinely perceptive, and so she saw plainly the feeling in Gu Yanxi’s eyes — and understood, too, how rare such a feeling was. And yet… she could not accept it.

She could comply with her parents’ arrangements and a matchmaker’s word and marry as a wife should — she could be the virtuous principal wife who sent tonic soups as her husband took concubines. But she could not enter into a romance with a man in this strange country. It was not merely that they spoke differently or came from different places. They came from entirely different worlds. They had received entirely different upbringings, held entirely different views of life. How could two such people possibly be in love?

It would only end with both of them nursing wounds. At worst, they would grow estranged and never speak again for the rest of their lives. What would be the point?

“Master Lu, in this lifetime I have no intention of leaving the Hua Family.”

“A lifetime is still very long. This matter can be spoken of later.”

Hua Zhi frowned faintly, then reconsidered. Such an obsession would pass on its own once enough time had gone by — it was born of not yet having what one wanted. If he truly needed to have her to lay it to rest, that, too, was no great matter as far as she was concerned.

“You need not trouble yourself over it.” Gu Yanxi suppressed the impulse to reach out and touch the hair at her temple, his eyes and brows brimming with a quiet smile. “I will never use my standing to compel you in any way, nor will I ever use the Hua Family as leverage against you. My hope is that you will treat me in the future exactly as you have treated me until now. Others could not manage it — but I know you can.”

She could, in truth. She had, at her core, no reverence for imperial power, and certainly no capacity for trembling deference before anyone of imperial blood. This was, in fact, a very dangerous quality — anyone with ill intentions could easily find a charge to pin on her for it. Which was precisely why she kept herself within the inner household, making herself as invisible as possible, limiting her contact with the outside world. Yet this one before her, she thought — perhaps he was one she could not avoid.

Ah, and then there was the one in the room. Hua Zhi cast a glance at the closed door. “Is he to remain here?”

“For the time being, he must. Don’t worry — I have people watching. Nothing will go wrong.” Gu Yanxi made a gesture of invitation, and the two of them walked forward one after the other — he deliberately slowing his pace, she reminding herself inwardly not to overstep the proper distance, keeping herself half a step behind, which satisfied them both.

Gu Yanxi looked back — and without drawing any notice to it, paused for just a beat, closing that half-step gap by half again. Satisfied, he picked up the thread of conversation: “Let’s keep calling him A’Jian from now on. It’s a good name.”

“To have given him such a name already bordered on disrespect. Knowing his identity and continuing to address him that way…”

“People of the imperial family are, in truth, quite pitiable. They appear to have everything, and yet they have nothing. The name A’Jian means nothing to anyone else — but it is genuinely his own. That matters a great deal to him.”

Thinking back to how the child had reacted when she stopped calling him A’Jian and began calling him ‘Sixth Prince’ instead, Hua Zhi felt a softness move through her heart. He was only a child, no older than Bailin — and without a mother to shelter him. One could only imagine what he had endured in that palace that devoured people whole.

“Then the Hua household will simply have to be presumptuous.”

“He will be very pleased.”

Somewhere along the way, they had fallen into step side by side, just as they always had. Gu Yanxi, afraid Hua Zhi would notice, pressed on: “Did you know that the Sun Family and the Hua Family have old ties?”

In the time she had spent understanding the Hua Family’s reach, she had thought she had a fair grasp of it — yet she had never imagined the Hua Family was connected to General Sun at the mountain pass garrison. One family of scholars, one of military commanders, both important subjects of the crown. If the Emperor ever came to know of it — could that be good?

“Is it through Grandfather and General Sun, or…”

“Nothing so direct. You would have to go back several generations. It should trace back to the grandfather of the old patriarch of the Hua Family. The Sun Family has always been a military clan, but they were not so prominent before. From what I know, the two old patriarchs became the closest of friends through their shared love of drink, and your grandfather and General Sun grew up together — a friendship of many generations that, by their time, was as solid as blood brotherhood, no different from actual brothers. Later, when the Sun Family rose steadily in prominence and Sun Bei became the garrison commander of that critical mountain pass, the two families had to grow more distant, so as not to invite gossip.”

Gu Yanxi looked over at Hua Zhi with a smile. “Were it not for that, the chances of your father having made a marriage alliance with the Sun Family would have been even greater.”

A marriage alliance with the Sun Family? The only heir of the Sun Family was Consort Zhen. Could it be that her father once had feelings for Consort Zhen?

Hua Zhi looked at Gu Yanxi, her eyes full of curiosity.

The smile in Gu Yanxi’s eyes deepened. “When the two families had frequent dealings, the younger generations naturally had occasion to meet.”

He left it at that. Consort Zhen was gone, and she had been the Emperor’s own consort — whatever lingering regrets the two families might carry, such things could not be said aloud.

Hua Zhi felt a genuine warmth toward this Consort Zhen. “Was it illness that took her, or…?”

“Illness. In a place like that, only the deeply ambitious can thrive. Consort Zhen had entered the palace not by choice — as the Sun Family’s only daughter, she was the hostage the Sun Family placed in the Emperor’s hands.”

Now that she was gone, the Sixth Prince was the only bond left to General Sun Bei. Hua Zhi curved her lips slightly. The First Prince and the Fourth Prince had certainly taken on more than they could digest.

Since the Sun Family and the Hua Family shared old ties, and she had happened to bring the child back with her, she was bound to give him some protection — if nothing else, for the sake of the friendship the two families had carried through so many years.

“I ask only that Master Lu keep his word, and ensure that no trail leads back to the Hua Family.”

Gu Yanxi was not in the least surprised by Hua Zhi’s decision. Everything he had said had been said precisely to bring her to this point. Hua Zhi was this kind of person — toward those she had claimed as her own, she protected fiercely. The Sixth Prince could consider himself fortunate to have stumbled into such misfortune.