Qiu Zui was shackled with iron chains as thick as a child’s arm, suspending both arms. His right wrist seemed dislocated, hanging limply. His disheveled hair fell across his lean and rough cheeks, and his pair of fierce, thin eyes shifted slightly with Zhao Yen’s approach.

Meanwhile, Zhao Yuanyu was still unconscious, sprawled on the ground in a pig-like, disgraceful state.

Zhao Yen clenched her fingers, taking a deep breath before hatred could drown out her reason, and asked Wenren Lin: “What is going on here?”

“He touched something he should not have touched.” Wenren Lin glanced at Qiu Zui’s dislocated right hand and said indifferently, “So, this prince simply removed it.”

Zhao Yen suddenly remembered—on that rainy night at Madam Liu’s charitable estate, Qiu Zui had used this very hand to flick away the dagger in her grasp.

She seemed to understand Wenren Lin’s meaning, and a flame gathered in her beautiful peach blossom eyes: “Prince Su’s meaning is, they are left for me to deal with?”

Wenren Lin did not answer, only signaling Cai Tian to remain behind.

“Prince Su is not staying?” Seeing him turn to leave, Zhao Yen quickly asked.

“This prince does not share Her Highness’s curiosity.”

Wenren Lin went up the stone steps and out of the secret chamber. His light voice faded gradually with his shadow: “Once you are finished, come up.”

The reason Wenren Lin had no curiosity was because, to him, this imperial city held no secrets.

Seeing that he had truly delivered her enemies beneath her eyes, Zhao Yen instead felt a sense of unreality. Yet soon, the groaning sounds of Zhao Yuanyu waking dragged her thoughts back to reality.

“Zhao… Zhao Yan?”

Zhao Yuanyu raised a hand to shield his eyes from the light. Like he had seen a ghost, he shrank back again and again, retreating until he pressed against the wall, stammering: “No, no… you are not Zhao Yan, who are you?”

Zhao Yen fixed her gaze on him, enunciating clearly: “The one who has come to take your life.”

“You are an impostor! To falsely assume the position of the Eastern Palace Crown Prince is a capital crime, you too must die!”

Zhao Yuanyu shouted hoarsely. Catching sight of Qiu Zui bound in shackles beside him, his eyes lit up and he stumbled forward on his knees: “This dead dog! Hurry and rise, kill him! Kill—”

Zhao Yen clenched her fingers and took a step forward. Zhao Yuanyu instantly shrank his neck, raising his sleeve to cover his face, babbling: “It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me who killed him…”

“And now you still dare to recant?”

Zhao Yen gripped the lotus-patterned jade pendant at her waist, pressing him: “If it was not you, then why is this jade pendant in your possession!”

“It really was not me!”

Realizing Qiu Zui was useless, Zhao Yuanyu whimpered without dignity: “Indeed, I did order men to ambush Zhao Yan on his return to the capital, but who would have thought his subordinates used the ruse of shedding the cicada’s shell¹Shedding the cicada’s shell: idiom, a stratagem to escape by leaving a decoy. to protect him with their lives, sending him back to the Eastern Palace! The one I killed was the shadow substitute who had exchanged clothes with Zhao Yan. This jade, this jade I tore from that substitute’s body… At the charitable estate, I deliberately humiliated you, so I did not explain clearly…”

Zhao Yen was startled, then her gaze sank: “When the assassination failed, you then had Qiu Zui make another move in secret!”

Zhao Yuanyu shook his head frantically: “At that time I did not even know Qiu Zui! He came to me only after the mishap at the Eastern Palace, pledging allegiance! He said he had already stabbed the Crown Prince, and used this as his pledge of fealty… Yes! That’s right, it was he who betrayed his master and murdered the Crown Prince! Ask him!”

The front of Zhao Yuanyu’s trousers was soaked; clearly he had been frightened into incontinence.

Zhao Yen, seeing his madness and trembling, could not tell whether his words were true or false. She said coolly: “No hurry. One by one. Those dozens of dead young girls and children, you cannot possibly deny them all.”

Zhao Yuanyu suddenly quieted. He fixed his eyes on Zhao Yen, pulling out a twisted smile.

“You are Zhao Yen, aren’t you?” he asked, as if he had discovered a secret he could grasp.

“Do you think Zhao Yan was such a meek and safe person? The things he plotted in secret, do you know how many people’s bad luck he touched? I am far from the only one who wanted him dead.”

Zhao Yuanyu placed his hand behind his back, warily glancing at Cai Tian. “I know who else wants him dead. Come closer, and I will whisper it only to you alone.”

Zhao Yen fixed her gaze on his sinister eyes and walked forward step by step.

One zhang, half a zhang, three chi.² Zhang (丈) and Chi (尺) are traditional Chinese units of length.

Suddenly, Zhao Yuanyu pulled out the half-broken tree branch hidden at his side, using its sharp jagged end as a blade, and lunged violently toward Zhao Yen’s neck!

The event came without warning. Cai Tian immediately pressed his hand to his sword and called: “Crown Prince!”

But a slender hand drew Cai Tian’s blade a step earlier, and in the next instant a flash of cold light appeared. A faint tearing sound of flesh was heard—Zhao Yuanyu froze in the posture of stabbing, staring in shock at the “youth” who blocked him with the horizontal blade.

The sharp tree branch in his hand now had a neat cut across it. As blood splattered, Zhao Yen closed her eyes, gripping the sword.

Cai Tian, too, looked in astonishment at the “Crown Prince” before him, speckled with dots of blood. This delicate and frail body, at critical moments, could always burst forth with a power that left others shaken. The shock of this instant was no different from that life-and-death struggle on the rainy night at the Liu family charitable estate—fierce and unrestrained.

Now he somewhat understood why the Prince, who always walked alone beneath the abyss, was willing to yield an inch of his bottom line only for her.

Zhao Yuanyu collapsed to the ground, no longer making a sound.

Having resolved the first enemy who killed her elder brother, Zhao Yen abruptly lowered her hand. The sword tip touched the ground with a crisp ding, the sound echoing as a thick, nauseating stench of blood diffused in the air.

Cai Tian thought the “Crown Prince” would be unable to keep from vomiting, but she did not. She only lifted a hand to wipe the vile blood from her chin, her gaze steady as she turned toward Qiu Zui.

Qiu Zui looked at Zhao Yuanyu, now lifeless, and his eyes churned. The iron chains binding his body clanged as he strained against them.

Zhao Yen stood before him with sword in hand, like a fawn before a beast. The sword tip trembled uncontrollably, yet she still summoned all her strength to stand straight, facing him.

“When Zhao Yan was in danger, did you protect him the way you protected Zhao Yuanyu?”

Zhao Yen raised her voice, eyes reddened at the corners as she demanded, “Did you?”

Qiu Zui looked at her. The veins bulging on his arms suddenly slackened, and he fell silent.

Zhao Yen could hardly describe the look in his eyes—hollow, blank, as though nothing in this world could ever fill that emptiness.

“Was it you who killed Zhao Yan?”

Zhao Yen did not press him with the senseless question of “why kill the benefactor who recognized your worth.” She only trembled as she said: “If it was you who killed him, then why did you not tell Zhao Yuanyu the Crown Prince was indeed dead? Why, at Madam Liu’s charitable estate, did you not expose me in front of all, but instead let Yong Prince’s residence stir up mischief and test me?”

Qiu Zui’s eyes shifted slightly, as though a faint ripple had passed through them.

“I did not kill the Lord.”

He muttered with a hoarse and grating voice, only saying this one sentence.

Zhao Yen’s eyes widened faintly, then she realized that the “Lord” in his mouth referred to Zhao Yan.

For an assassin who recognized only money and not masters, to call someone “Lord” was no different from a wild dog willingly slipping a collar around its own neck—that was absolute loyalty.

Her suspicions deepened sharply. Zhao Yen urged urgently: “Then why did Liuying personally see you kill the Crown Prince, wound several people, and flee? Why did you surrender yourself to Yong Prince’s residence, telling them you were the one who assassinated the Crown Prince?”

Qiu Zui was silent for a long time, as though struggling with the limits of his mind.

“You are helping the Lord. You are a good person.”

For a long, long time, he finally muttered hoarsely and indistinctly:

“On the way back to the palace, assassins attacked. The shadow lured the enemy away, I brought the Lord back to the Eastern Palace. I was wounded, and while I was bandaging, someone delivered a letter to the Lord. The Lord opened it… By the time I realized, it was already too late.”

“The letter had been tampered with? When Liuying discovered the Crown Prince dead, only you were at his side, so she thought you had killed him?”

Zhao Yen gripped the hilt of her sword, pressed her lips together, and asked: “Then why did you flee?”

Qiu Zui tacitly admitted, speaking with difficulty: “I did not… protect the Lord well. I wanted to kill the enemy, but then I discovered…”

“You discovered there was someone behind Yong Prince’s heir, so you chose to lie dormant at his side. Was it that Immortal Master?”

When Qiu Zui again fell into silence, Zhao Yen’s thoughts spun rapidly, threading each suspicion together: “He Yuqing’s younger son, and Minister of War Cen’s younger sister Cen Yu—were they also abducted by you, taking advantage of the situation? Only you could have had such ability, all to make Zhao Yuanyu’s conspiracy grow large enough to attract the court’s attention?”

Qiu Zui said nothing more.

He did not trust anyone except the Lord, even if this person bore a face identical to the Lord’s.

“I will change the question.”

Zhao Yen, word by word, her voice trembling, said: “Tell me—who delivered that letter to Zhao Yan?”

Perhaps because her words carried a suppressed sob, Qiu Zui finally lifted those fierce hawk-like eyes to look at her.

With a hoarse, grating voice, he spat out a cruel truth: “Princess Changfeng, Zhao Yen.”

—

In the seventeenth year of Tianyou, at the end of the eighth month, the thunderstorm had just ceased.

Having narrowly escaped death, Zhao Yan’s complexion was pale as he sat in the Eastern Palace bedchamber, coughing and gasping for breath beneath his robe:

“We should not have let the shadow die in my stead. To trade another’s blood for my own meager survival, to tread upon corpses to return alive—how am I to be counted a bright and upright sovereign?”

Seeing the tall assassin, body taut with wounds, kneel in silence, the young man could not bear it in his heart. He helped him up, saying:

“Enough, I am blaming myself for being useless, not reproaching you. Go, tend to your injuries.”

“Your Highness, a letter from Princess Changfeng of Huayang Palace.”

“Yen’er? Quickly, bring it.”

Qiu Zui fetched the medicine back, brushing past the eunuch who had hurriedly delivered the letter and departed. In the air lingered a faint fragrance, ill-timed, vanishing in an instant.

He sat cross-legged before the hall, tearing open the blood-stuck flesh of his upper garment, pouring all the medicine powder onto the wound.

By his side came a faint dripping sound, as though some viscous liquid had struck xuan-paper. Qiu Zui started, turned back warily—within his indifferent pupils appeared fear for the first time…

The frail Crown Prince held that richly perfumed letter in his hand, dazedly touching the crimson flowing from his nose. He tried to speak, but the blood rushed first from his lips. His body fell as lightly as a butterfly with broken wings.

Qiu Zui rushed madly forward, catching that frail figure in his palms.

With his last breath, the Crown Prince burned that blood-soaked letter in the candle flame before others arrived. Amid the drifting black ash at dawn, he quietly closed his eyes.

That was the last time he used his own way to protect his younger sister.

—

The door of the dark cell opened, and Zhao Yen stepped out from the heavy shadows.

Hearing the sound, Wenren Lin turned his face—yet when he saw her slightly pale complexion, and the drops of blood staining her cheek, he froze.

“How did you end up like this.” As he spoke, his eyes slanted toward Cai Tian.

Cai Tian immediately lowered his head. “This subordinate has failed in his duty.”

But to endure such an answer without fainting or breaking down was already a feat of immense willpower for the Princess.

Wenren Lin no longer cared about filth or not. Lifting his sleeve, he wiped at the blood on Zhao Yen’s face. Seeing it could not be cleaned away, he knit his brows in displeasure.

“I feel a little tired…”

Zhao Yen blinked once, murmuring in repetition, “…Grand Preceptor, I am truly tired.”

Wenren Lin paused.

He carried that cold, trembling body in his arms and walked toward the end of the secret passage.

Exiting the passage, bright lamps and misty steam greeted them—it led directly into the changing room beside the Dragon Pool Hall.

Wenren Lin shed his outer robe and, holding Zhao Yen, stepped with her into the warm pool. He did not tease her into a cocoon of her own making as he sometimes would, but instead scooped water with care, washing the specks of blood from her cheek and jaw. His expression was focused and calm.

Yet against such calmness, Zhao Yen’s inner turmoil surged all the more fiercely. The emotions suppressed too long clamored for release.

First a single drop fell, striking the back of Wenren Lin’s hand.

He seemed to pause for a moment. After a while, he lifted his eyes—those stubborn, beautiful eyes of hers were already brimming with mist. Tear after tear rolled down, falling onto his raised fingers.

This was her first time weeping—for the dead Zhao Yan.

Wenren Lin had long perceived it: the young Princess seemed prone to fall into a cycle of self-blame, taking others’ accidents upon herself.

She wept without sound, only clutching at her garments and biting her lip, quiet to the point of heartbreak. This truly was not the disposition a pampered and charming princess ought to have. Someone as radiant as her should have been arrogant and willful, indulged by all around.

“For others to borrow Your Highness’s hand to kill is the fault of the killer, not yours.”

Wenren Lin raised a hand to wipe the wetness from the corner of her eye, signaling her to release the lip she had bitten white. His voice was low and steady: “Do not blame yourself.”

Zhao Yen instead bit down on Wenren Lin’s hand, crying even harder, clutching his shoulders with trembling hands like a flower wet with dew, shivering in the wind.

Wenren Lin had once thought to tease her—eyes misted with tears, face flushed, ears red—that was his little secret amusement. Yet now, truly seeing these rolling, crystalline tears, he felt none of the imagined delight, only a faint displeasure.

The young Princess said no one had ever taught her to act spoiled. In truth, it was that no one had ever allowed her to act spoiled without restraint.

She was truly pitiable.

The water rippled gently. Wenren Lin leaned against the edge of the pool, his long, jointed hand running through her damp hair, lightly and intermittently stroking her trembling, frail back.

He let her vent, lowering his gaze and closing his eyes. With his lips, he brushed away the wetness from the corners of her eyes in delicate kisses.

Footnotes

• 1
  Shedding the cicada’s shell: idiom, a stratagem to escape by leaving a decoy.
• 2
  Zhang (丈) and Chi (尺) are traditional Chinese units of length.