When the discussion was finished, Shao Yao had still not returned. Hua Pingyang walked Hua Zhi back to her room. As they reached the doorway and she made to stand up to step over the threshold, Hua Pingyang held her in place, waving off his injured elder brother’s attempt to help, and gestured to the second uncle. The two of them lifted the wheelchair across together.

Hua Zhi had been a little embarrassed at first, but then she reconsidered — these wounds were ones she had received for these very people. If she refused their small gestures of care, their guilt would likely only grow, and the distance between her and her family would, without her intending it, be pushed a little further. Sometimes accepting it graciously was better for everyone.

With that thought, she made her peace with it. She gave her second uncle a smile and let Fourth Uncle wheel her back to her room.

The night in Yinshan Pass was neither cold nor hot — just comfortable. The moonlight stretched their shadows out long along the ground, and even the children looked almost as tall as adults.

Hua Pingyang noticed the small child and felt a headache coming on. “Don’t be too indulgent. You can’t just keep letting him sleep in your room like this.”

“He’s so young. The rule about men and women not sharing a space doesn’t even apply until seven.” Hua Zhi kept her voice low. “The only family he had in this world handed him to me as she was dying. To him, I’m the only person he trusts. Once this stretch of time passes — when he feels a little less like the floor might drop out from under him at any moment — it will be fine.”

“You — why do you insist on shouldering everything yourself?”

“What else can I do? Without me holding the Hua family together, it would have fallen apart. That night, without me holding on, we would all have died. With Zeng Han, without me holding things steady, his whole world would have collapsed. Every one of these things — when has any of them ever given me a choice?”

It was as she said — no choice had ever been given. The more capable one was, the more responsibility was loaded onto those shoulders. Hua Pingyang reached out and patted his niece on the back. “That was ill-said of Fourth Uncle. The Hua family, stripped of their positions, are nothing but scholars who couldn’t fight their way out of a sack. Far too useless.”

“A general without a post can still fight. A civil official without a post still picks up his brush. Isn’t Father exactly the kind of person people are drawn to right now? People practically fight over the chance to wash his clothes.”

“If your mother ever found out that women were scrambling to wash his underclothes, your father would make you pay for it when he got home.”

“If Mother actually found out, it would be Father who’d be pickled in vinegar. It wasn’t me who let it happen.” Hua Zhi smiled. The memory of that scene was hard not to laugh at. It had happened after her father had started teaching. He had come out after bathing, carrying his basin, and before he had any idea what was happening, the clothes inside had been snatched away. All they had seen was one trouser leg fluttering in the breeze as the woman who took them ran off calling out cheerfully that she’d return them once they were washed. Her father had chased after her and failed to catch her and had been left stamping his feet and declaring it an affront to all propriety, while everyone watching had laughed until their sides hurt.

It had only happened the once, though. After that, her father had made a habit of washing his clothes in his bathwater before coming out, guarding against any repeat.

Seeing that Fourth Uncle’s mood had lifted, Hua Zhi steered the conversation back. “Fourth Uncle, do you all think I’m remarkably capable?”

On this point there was no argument. Hua Pingyang nodded without hesitation. “Who would dare say otherwise?”

“I’m just forcing myself to manage.”

They had reached the door of her room. Hua Pingyang stopped pushing the wheelchair and came around to face her. He heard the bitterness threaded through her words and saw the rueful smile on her lips.

“I was never truly that capable. Even the things I do know, I’m nowhere near mastery. But when there was no retreat left, when I had nothing to fall back on but myself, when there were people I had to protect — when I had no second option in front of me — what else could I do but make myself capable? The limits of what a person can do are boundless. If you’re pushed hard enough, you become capable of things you never were before. Things you couldn’t do — you learn to do them anyway.”

The free-fighting skills she had once trained in were decent enough, but the first time she had faced real opponents at the estate, her body — softened by years of ease — had been completely uncoordinated, and her physical reactions had been nowhere near sharp enough. Worse still, she had had no real belief that she could kill another person. She had grown up in an age of peace. Everything she had practiced had been for self-defense. She had forced herself to strike with intent to harm, held together by that unyielding streak of determination inside her that had never broken.

After that, she had begun to train her body. But when she thought back on it now — whether it had been the incident at Zhenyang before, or this time — she had always used the same method: trading injury for a kill. Where two paths narrowed to one, the bolder one survived. She paid with wounds to her own body in exchange for her enemy’s life, and she had never once come out of it unscathed. It was the approach she had devised for herself when she had had no other options, the one suited to what she could actually do — and she had forced herself, every time, to aim straight for the kill.

Now, thinking back on it, she didn’t even know at what point she had found it within herself to strike without flinching. Perhaps she wasn’t far off from someone who treated lives as worthless.

Hua Zhi laughed at herself, then called Zeng Han, who had been lingering by the doorframe, over to her. She rested her hand on his head and spoke of things that had nothing to do with him — though they did. “You will all become like this too, without knowing when. Things you never knew, you’ll know. And without noticing, your hearts will grow harder.”

She looked up. The corner of her mouth curved in a resigned arc. “Because only by becoming this way can the people behind us live in safety.”

Hua Pingyang’s lips trembled. Not a single word came out. Yes — if it weren’t a necessity, who would want to be this capable? Who would want to grow a body full of thorns?

“So, Fourth Uncle — you don’t need to feel like you owe me anything. You don’t need to feel useless. Very soon we’ll all be playing the same role.” Hua Zhi smiled. “We are all protectors.”

“I understand.” Hua Pingyang’s voice was a little unsteady, but the expression on his face had eased. Zhi’er understood everything — understood that they felt useless, understood that they felt shame at needing a niece to be the one protecting them, understood that they couldn’t lift their heads in front of her. These words were not only for him. They were for every man of the Hua family.

“We all understand now.”

Hua Zhi was suddenly a little flustered. She bowed her head and let out a small laugh. “Then I’ll go in. Cao Cao.”

Shao Yao, who had been listening from inside the room for quite some time, came bursting out. She flashed Hua Pingyang a grin full of teeth, then swept both Hua Zhi and the wheelchair up in one motion, stepped over the threshold, and carried her inside. Zeng Han followed immediately on her heels. The door snapped shut behind them.

In the corridor, more and more of the Hua family’s people quietly made their way out.

Inside the room, Hua Zhi directed Shao Yao to make up the bedding. These past several days, Zeng Han had been sleeping on the pallet at the foot of her bed.

Zeng Han almost never initiated conversation, but he would always answer when spoken to, and he made sure to stay somewhere he could see Hua Zhi.

Hua Zhi neither made deliberate efforts to draw close to him nor kept him at arm’s length. She treated him the way one would any ordinary child in the household — sometimes exchanging a few words, sometimes making him a small toy, calling him over for water when she drank, reminding him to eat slowly at meals, making him eat his vegetables when he only wanted meat.

This evening, Hua Zhi pulled him over to her side and asked, with easy, offhand curiosity: “Did you understand the game Shao Yao and the others were playing today?”

Zeng Han’s dark eyes came alive. “Yes.”

Shao Yao paused in her bed-making and exchanged a glance with Hua Zhi. Neither of them knew exactly how much he meant by yes, so Hua Zhi tested him gently: “Would you like to play a round with Shao Yao?”

Zeng Han nodded at once — and there was, unmistakably, something almost eager about him.