After a full day’s work, Hua Zhi finished her meal and stepped outside, tilting her head back to look at the gold and crimson sunset spreading across the horizon. She said quietly to herself: beautiful.

Bao Xia hurried out after her and helped the young miss into her cloak, all the while murmuring her usual reminders. “It’s still cold this time of year, young miss — please don’t take chances.”

Hua Zhi stood quietly and let her fasten it, then turned to Nanny Su, who had followed behind. “The sky is lovely, and we don’t make it out here very often. Tell everyone to go outside for a walk and get some fresh air.”

Nanny Su gave a respectful curtsy and went back in to pass the word. She did not take the young miss’s courtesy toward her as license to interfere with her decisions.

That was simply who their young miss was. She needed none of that.

It had been two days since they arrived at the manor, and this was the first time the entire Hua household, mistress and servants alike, had ventured outdoors. The maidservants, though composed by habit, were young after all — even they could not entirely conceal their curiosity as they looked around. Dong Zi, alert to the possibility of trouble, hung back at a careful distance with a few others, keeping watch over the group.

It was barely early spring, and the earth had only just thawed. The eye could find no green anywhere, and there was little in the way of scenery. Yet everyone’s spirits were high.

This kind of ease had been absent for a long time. For so many weeks, a coiled tension had stayed with all of them, not a moment’s loosening. Here in this open, almost desolate expanse, they found themselves laying it down at last.

With the maidservants chattering among themselves behind her, Hua Zhi walked forward into the declining sun. She thought — once this place is blanketed in green, once the work here has found its footing — perhaps she could invite the girls at home, who had been shut indoors for months, to come and stay for a few days.

Hoofbeats drifted into her hearing, growing closer by degrees. Dong Zi and the others moved swiftly to close around her, their eyes fixed warily on the direction of the sound. Hua Zhi felt a quiet satisfaction — the martial training of these past few months had clearly not been for nothing.

She looked toward the sound herself. She was calmer than any of those around her. If Lu Xiansheng had placed people here, then no one who was not meant to pass through would have been able to. Whoever had not been stopped was, therefore, someone known.

Against the last of the sunlight, a man on horseback moved toward her at a slow, unhurried pace. She could not quite make out his expression against the brightness behind him. Out of courtesy, she offered a small, easy smile.

She did not know, then, how beautiful that smile looked in the light of the setting sun — that quality of calm, of a woman who seemed to belong exactly there in that moment — and how, to Gu Yanxi, it carried the feeling that she had been standing there waiting for him to come home. The heart that had moved through blood and bodies all day thawed, slowly, at last.

Lin Ying had not seen Hua Zhi in some time. The horse pushed eagerly toward her and pressed its head into her arms. She patted its broad forehead and, following its movement, looked up at the man who had not stirred. Their eyes met. Neither looked away.

Hua Zhi’s characteristic stillness settled something in Gu Yanxi that had been on the verge of breaking loose. He swung down from the saddle, gave Lin Ying a light pat on the flank, and sent it off to roam on its own.

“Did things go smoothly on the manor?”

“Quite well.” Compared to what had been unfolding in the capital, it was as smooth as one hand brushing against the other. Hua Zhi was decent enough to keep this thought to herself.

Gu Yanxi’s lips curved almost imperceptibly. He stepped forward first. Knowing he had something to say, Hua Zhi gestured to the others to stay where they were and followed.

Bao Xia grew anxious and wanted to follow closely — they were not at home now; if someone were to see the young miss, her reputation would suffer for it. Ying Chun caught her arm and looked to Nanny Su.

Nanny Su thought for a moment, her brow slightly furrowed. “We won’t follow close. But we do follow.”

That suited all of them perfectly. They set off at once at exactly the distance the guards had kept behind the maidservants earlier.

The silence between the two walking figures was quiet but not taut. Gu Yanxi tilted his head slightly, catching her presence from the corner of his eye, and gradually slowed his pace to let her close the gap. He liked walking side by side with A’Zhi. She would maintain a proper distance at first — she always observed the rules — but after enough steps she would always forget, and gradually the two of them would simply drift level, as though that were simply how things naturally were for her.

Sure enough — before long, the full step between them had narrowed to half.

“Shao Yao will be staying in the palace for a time.”

“Mm.”

“She craned her neck today hoping to spot a meal delivery from you, and it never came. She was rather put out.”

“…I imagine the imperial palace is hardly short on food and drink for her.”

“It’s not the same.” Palace dishes, however fine their ingredients, were half-warm at best by the time they were eaten, and carried little in the way of taste. The Hua family’s cooking, even cold, had its own quality.

Gu Yanxi stopped walking and turned. His gaze drifted to the figures still following at a distance. The palace cooks, he supposed, had spent so long with their heads full of power and luxury that something had seeped into the food itself.

Hua Zhi followed his glance, and something in her eyes grew warmer.

“The eldest prince colluded with the Celestial Master to offer the Emperor golden elixir pills. The Emperor has been taking them for two months.”

Something came clear to Hua Zhi at once. So that was it — no wonder Lu Xiansheng had been so furious. Yet golden elixir pills were hardly a good thing in themselves, but two months of them should not be cause for anything extreme. From what she knew of history, countless emperors had spent their entire reigns focused solely on the cultivation and consumption of these elixirs, waiting for immortality that never came — but even they had lived for decades before the end. Two months, surely, was nothing to worry about.

“Shao Yao says the proportions in those pills were several times what a standard golden elixir would contain. They were aimed at Imperial Uncle’s life.”

Hua Zhi faltered slightly. Then she understood what he was leaving unsaid. The Emperor was approaching fifty. Measured against the life spans of previous emperors of the great Qing dynasty, there were not many years left. And if someone had taken care to doctor the elixir further —

Ruthless. Truly, the imperial household was what people said it was.

“Shao Yao says those pills were too potent — the damage to his foundation runs deep, and even her master would have little hope of restoring what has been lost.” Gu Yanxi turned to face the last of the evening color at the horizon. “The world assumes it was the Emperor’s long delay in naming a Crown Prince that led to what has happened. But how many people know that Imperial Uncle has always, more than anything else, wanted to name the eldest as his heir? That boy was the son he raised with his own hands. And yet — no matter how many years he spent on him, no matter that he used the other sons as whetstones to sharpen him — the eldest never made an inch of progress. If anything, each year made him less than the year before. No matter how desperate Imperial Uncle was, he could not name a man like that as Crown Prince. And only when he had finally given up on his eldest entirely — only when he shifted his eyes away at last — did he find that the other sons who had grown up around him had all become wolves in the meantime.”

Hua Zhi listened to these things she had absolutely no business hearing, and stood in silence in this wide, open space — exactly the kind of place where such things could be spoken aloud. She knew. Lu Xiansheng simply needed someone to listen.

“In my hand was a pile of evidence. In the end, I presented only the least significant of it — only what implicated the eldest directly. I did not tell Imperial Uncle that the second prince’s reach had extended to the northern border. I did not tell him that what happened with the Yan Kingdom may have carried the third prince’s hand behind it. He has only so many sons. I could not let him lose three of them at once.”

The sunset faded. The evening colors receded and were gone. In an instant the sky lost the brightness it had held before. Gu Yanxi looked at the woman who had stayed quiet throughout, and said, “The world believes the Emperor is the most exalted person alive. But I have always thought the Emperor is the most pitiable.”