The moonlight slanted westward, and the shimmering ripples upon the pond quietly sank into stillness.

Zhao Yen, wrapped in dry underclothes, sat upon the couch. The corners of her eyes were moist, the tip of her nose faintly red. Her unbound figure rose and fell in delicate curves, like snow gathered in the moon.

In the pond, long, light, and translucent silken cloth floated and dispersed like drifting clouds. It was flung into the water by Wenren Lin when she had cried until she could not breathe, so that she would not faint from shortness of breath.

Wenren Lin had accompanied her in the pool for a long time, his garments soaked inside and out. At this moment he had changed into a frost-colored inner robe, his hair half gathered with a glossy wooden hairpin, the other half damp, hanging over his shoulders, swaying slightly with his steps.

He walked to the side and took a towel and comb, holding Zhao Yen’s waist-length black-satin hair with a clean and soft cotton cloth, drying it inch by inch from top to bottom, then carefully combing it smooth.

In the floor bronze mirror was reflected his tall, upright figure. His profile, lit by the warm glow of candlelight, bore a kind of unhurried composure.

Sensing Zhao Yen’s gaze peeking through the mirror, Wenren Lin lowered his eyes and asked, “Feeling a bit better?”

Zhao Yen lifted her hand to wipe at the corner of her eyes and said hoarsely, “Hungry.”

Wenren Lin chuckled lightly. At this age, what young girl would not know how to act spoiled?

He set the jade comb back upon the table. On the back of his hand was a circle of small, bright-red teeth marks, clearly visible. Zhao Yen also noticed. Remembering where that bite mark came from, she turned her gaze aside.

Wenren Lin walked into the outer chamber and gave a quiet command. Not long after, he came back carrying several dishes of porridge and light supper.

Zhao Yen did not know how many of his men were awaiting his dispatch within Yuquan Palace. Too many things had happened tonight; she had no heart to mind such matters.

When she saw Wenren Lin place the food in front of her, Zhao Yen instinctively lifted her eyes to glance at him.

Her long lashes still bore tears not yet dry. When she looked up at others, there was a fragile tenderness that stirred pity.

Wenren Lin could not help but smile. He pulled a chair over from beside the table and sat down, stirred the porridge bowl, scooped a spoonful, and held it to her lips. “This prince has no habit of eating supper. Your Highness, please help yourself.”

Only then did Zhao Yen open her mouth to sip the warm porridge. As it slid into her stomach, her thoughts churned ceaselessly.

Wenren Lin only needed a glance at her slightly dazed, red-rimmed eyes to know she had not yet emerged from it.

He set the porridge bowl aside, wiped the glistening trace at her mouth corner with a kerchief, and casually said, “This disposition of Your Highness, to take every responsibility upon yourself—how was it fostered?”

It was hard for Zhao Yen not to blame herself.

She knew that Zhao Yan’s nature was gentle, but not foolish.

That letter must have been forged in her handwriting with extreme likeness, and chosen at the opportune time after the siblings had parted unhappily. Thus Zhao Yan would open and read it without suspicion.

At the instant he realized he had fallen into a trap, the only thing Zhao Yan could do was to burn that letter.

Until the very last moment, Zhao Yan had protected her with his frail body. Yet the final memory she left him was only those piercing, wounding words.

If only she had not spoken those words about wishing to exchange lives with him. If only she had been a little more honest. But how many “if onlys” exist in this world? What the dead leave are regrets, what the living bear is remorse.

Perhaps because she longed too much for someone to confide in, Zhao Yen murmured, “He died from the letter sent out in my name, but… he burned it.”

From only a few links, Wenren Lin could guess the meaning in Zhao Yen’s words. The final truth did not differ much from what his spies had discovered last year. Had Zhao Yen not impersonated the Crown Prince, disrupting sight for a brief moment, the Great Xuan dynasty would likely already have fallen into disorder as in his plans.

“Clearly, leaving the evidence would have uncovered the true culprit faster…”

Zhao Yen’s throat caught unconsciously. She pressed her chin against her knees and, with eyes closed, whispered, “Fool.”

Wenren Lin picked up a slice of crystal pear and handed it to her. Seeing her sit blankly, unwilling to open her mouth, he then asked, “Did Your Highness not think—if the Crown Prince had not destroyed the evidence, once Your Highness was implicated in such a great case, what would you have faced?”

“The letter was not written by me; it can naturally prove my innocence,” Zhao Yen said.

Compared to seizing the true culprit and redressing injustice for her elder brother, what counted as her suffering a little grievance?

Wenren Lin’s lashes moved slightly.

“Your Highness has studied the Chengde Guangji. You must have read the story of ‘Yang Jin Suspecting His Servant.’”

It was as if he sank into a long remembrance, narrating slowly: “In the Chengde years of the Yin dynasty, the Great General Yang Jin was defeated and fled in exile, accompanied only by one loyal servant. One day, when Yang Jin was crossing a river road, he encountered pursuing soldiers. Suspecting that the servant had betrayed him and reported them, he ordered the servant forward and subjected him to every manner of torture. Unable to defend himself, the servant then split open his own belly with a knife and carved out his heart to prove it.”

The tenth year of Tianyou—gray clouds veiled the sky. The lonely city was without aid, corpses lay across the fields.

General Wenren was drenched in blood, rainwater mingling with it as it coursed down his body. His half-kneeling figure stood like a monument, pressing the final medicine pellet into his youngest son’s mouth.

“With my life, I fulfill the name of perfect loyalty.” He clamped the boy’s mouth shut, not allowing him to spit it out. “Your father goes. Live well.”

Arrows poured like hemp, and blood splattered into the despairing, trembling pupils of the youth. Wenren Lin raised his gaze, and in his dark eyes, too, spread the same dim shadow.

His lips moved slightly. In a low, heavy voice he said, “Your Highness, to prove innocence is to cut open the belly and show the heart.”

Thus, the Crown Prince was not shielding the little princess from anything. He simply did not wish for his younger sister to endure such a trial of the heart.

Zhao Yen also understood Wenren Lin’s meaning. She could not help but be stunned, her eyes once more growing moist. Her lashes trembled, and tears flowed uncontrollably.

Wenren Lin brushed away the crystalline tear beneath her lashes with his fingertip, then bent his head to kiss and lick it away.

He spoke no further, only slowly lifted an arm to draw Zhao Yen into his embrace. With his palm he gently stroked her back, and with his chin he lightly and slowly nuzzled her damp, trembling hair at the temples.

A precious little kitten—born to be cherished.

The lamplight gradually dimmed, until the heavy night outside slowly gave way to pale white.

When Zhao Yen awoke, the sun was already high. She lay in the bedchamber of Guanyun Hall; Wenren Lin was not by her side.

She had cried too much the previous night. Upon waking she was dizzy and weak. Propping her head, she recalled for a long while before remembering how she had returned here at dawn.

Shamefully, she had clung to Wenren Lin in the bathing hall and cried through most of the night, soaking his frost-white, neat robe into disarray.

At last, exhausted, she had closed her eyes, only to be frightened awake by a nightmare of Zhao Yuanyu’s beheading. Helpless, Wenren Lin had only been able to patiently escort her back through the rear gate to the bedchamber of Guanyun Hall, ordering calming incense to be sent, and sitting at her bedside for a long time before leaving.

After a night of release, the suffocating weight upon Zhao Yen’s chest was finally eased, and her thoughts, disordered from the surge of emotion, slowly gathered together.

Now was not the time for self-reproach. She had to understand who the person was that had impersonated her to send the letter, and what exactly Zhao Yan had done to provoke such calamity…

After sitting quietly to clear her mind, Zhao Yen shook a bell to summon Liuying, the guard outside the hall. Covering her swollen eyes, she rasped, “Bring me some ice for a cold compress, and also… prepare a new chest binder.”

With the ice pressed for a long while, by nightfall Zhao Yen’s tear-reddened eyes were finally presentable, though her complexion still bore some pallor.

She lifted her hands and patted her cheeks until a faint flush returned. Only then did she exhale deeply, dress and bind her hair, and proceed to Tingyu Pavilion.

She wished to know what crucial detail Liu Ji had concealed.

The doors of Tingyu Pavilion were wide open, as if already knowing someone would come.

Dismissing her attendants, Zhao Yen stepped alone into the room. There she saw Liu Ji wearing only simple inner garments, loosely draped in an outer robe of moon-white. Her hair was not coiled with pins and ornaments, but tied at the ends with a plain ribbon.

Two small insects had flown into the lampshade and could not escape no matter how they tried.

Liu Ji was gazing in a daze at the insects fluttering within the gauze lantern, the warm light falling across her deep and heroic features, such that for a moment it was hard to distinguish male from female.

Zhao Yen steadied herself and went forward to sit opposite her.

Upon the table lay a palm-sized silk scroll and a neatly folded winter robe—Zhao Yen recognized it as the one Liu Ji had worn when she returned last year. Now it had been cut open with a slit, exposing the inner lining.

“You know why I have come?” Zhao Yen’s gaze swept across the objects on the table as she asked softly.

Liu Ji nodded, her voice low and hoarse: “I know. From the moment Your Highness traced Zhao Yuanyu back, I knew it could not be concealed.”

As she spoke, she drew from the lining of the winter robe a piece of paper folded with utmost care. Gently spreading it open, she pushed it before Zhao Yen.

“The answer Your Highness seeks lies here.”

At the sight of the familiar, elegant small script upon the paper, Zhao Yen could not help the sour sting in her nose. “This is…”

Liu Ji said, “The Crown Prince had long prepared for the worst. This he left for Your Highness… no—for the next heir to the Eastern Palace, as his final words.”

The two words “final words” struck Zhao Yen’s heart like a thousand-weight hammer.

She drew a deep breath, picked up that thin sheet, and examined it word by word.

If you see this letter, then I am no longer in this world.

Fifteen years of life, great ambition yet unfulfilled.

Now that you inherit the position of Crown Prince, I ask only that you carry forth my uncompleted aspirations, pursue the laws I could not enact, and save the great edifice before it collapses.

From beneath the Nine Springs I bow my head, and bow again.

Zhao Yan, Final Letter.

At the last line, Zhao Yen’s eyes could not help but tremble.

She read it again from beginning to end before placing the final letter Zhao Yan had left back upon the table. Her resolute gaze turned to the scroll beside it. “This is what Zhao Yan was planning?”

Liu Ji gave tacit assent.

All the answers, the very origin of the disaster, lay within this reformist treatise, drafted with all their effort and toil.

Zhao Yen reached for the scroll, but Liu Ji pressed it down.

Her throat moved slightly, and for once she spoke with rare solemnity: “Your Highness must think clearly. Once many truths are known, there is no return to what once was…”

Zhao Yen’s expression did not change. Calmly she said, “From the moment Zhao Yan died, and I ascended to the Eastern Palace, there was no returning to the ignorance of the past.”

Liu Ji bit her lip, and at last slowly let go.

Zhao Yen lifted her fingers to untie the cord. With a sweep of her sleeve, the three-foot-long scroll, densely filled with small characters, spread open before her like a vast sea of ink.

The renewal of the state begins first with taxation. The levy by household must be changed to levy by acreage, so that the gentry may no longer massively annex land and usurp local authority, and the poor may also have fields to till, reproducing and thriving. Next, the civil examinations must be reformed, elevating the poor and diminishing the noble, weakening the hereditary aristocracy’s control of the court’s high offices…

The scroll stretched on with more than a thousand words, analyzing reforms from taxation, civil examinations, and clan regulations, down to the esteem of Confucianism over education—more than a dozen provisions, large and small, all proposing the essentials of reform.

How many interests this document would touch, how many calamities it would incite—Zhao Yen dared not even imagine.

At the end of the scroll was another line of small characters, inscribed with bones of steel:

No matter what station I hold, I am willing to fulfill this pledge with death.

In this life I vow to serve as the moth brushing against the lamp, even dying, yet ever toward the light.

“Fu Deng (Brushing the lamp)…”

At last Zhao Yen understood the meaning of those two words “Fu Deng” that her elder brother had treasured in the Gu Jin Zhu gifted by Shen Jingming.

In this life, I vow to serve as the moth brushing against the lamp—though I die, I will ever face the light.

How magnificent, how pure a wish.

Those erudite and gifted youths were willing to fulfill their pledge with their lives, to enter court in the future and support the Crown Prince’s reforms—just like moths throwing themselves into the flame, dying a thousand deaths without regret.

Yet one by one, they all fell before the coming of dawn.

Zhao Yen held in her hands this weighty draft of reformist policy. Her fingertips trembled slightly. After several breaths with closed eyes, she finally asked, “Why did you not tell me this sooner?”

Liu Ji’s eyes were also rimmed with red. In a low voice she said, “I did not trust Your Highness at the beginning either. Besides, Zhao Yan did not wish you to be drawn into it…”

She paused. “That day, I had thought to confess everything to Your Highness while soaking in the hot spring. But…”

But in the end, the moment was missed.

Zhao Yen fixed her gaze on her, and after a long time, asked softly, “Liu Ji, who are you really?”

Liu Ji did not reply.

Within the lampshade, the moth at last struck headlong into the flame, dissolving into a heroic wisp of smoke.

After a long while, Liu Ji seemed to steel her resolve. She lifted her head, reached across the table, and drew Zhao Yen’s hand gently to her chest.

The outer robe slipped from her shoulders, then the soft inner garment beneath. She revealed her truest self before Zhao Yen—

In the warm candlelight, the porcelain-white chest was utterly flat, without the slightest rise that should have been there.

Looking into Zhao Yen’s eyes, he said, “My true name is Liu Baiwei.”

The wind passed soundlessly. Wenren Lin stood beneath the corridor, happening to see upon the window paper two silhouettes facing one another, hands clasped, hand pressed to chest.

His Highness Prince Su rubbed the tooth mark on the back of his cold, pale hand with his fingertip. After a moment, his eyes narrowed slightly.