The sight jolted a memory loose. Once, long ago, they had crouched just like this in the summer gardens, lifting warm stones to uncover scurrying beetles and tiny, jewel-bright frogs. Two daughters of the emperor’s consorts. Two girls so different in station, yet found time to be together. Then, they both Awakened. LinXin—flawless, composed, the very image of celestial grace—was elevated as the Meirûnsha. JingYi—marked, limping, a living flaw in the imperial tapestry—was swept into the shadows of the Jade Mortar Hall.
Yet here they were, shoulder to shoulder once more. Not in the sun-drenched earth, but on cold stone, gathering the sharp, wet pieces of JingYi’s broken world.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” JingYi murmured when they finished.
LinXin rose and dusted her palms. “Those three ought to be taught a lesson.”
JingYi’s hands stilled over the shards she’d carefully wrapped with cloth. She saw not the sneers of the women, but the rigid panic in their eyes as LinXin confronted them—the fear of those clinging to a ledge.
“They do it because their own lives have fallen short,” she said. “So they take out the bitterness where they can.”
LinXin’s dark eyes snapped to hers. “You’re much too kind. They don’t deserve your understanding.”
JingYi didn’t look away. The sting of shattered hopes was a phantom ache in her own bones, as familiar as the mark on her cheek. She knew the shape of that bitterness—how it curdled into cruelty. It was a kind of sickness, one she could diagnose, yet couldn’t cure.
The rhythmic, uniform click of boots on stone fractured the garden’s silence. They both turned. A contingent of stewards in the emperor’s dark green livery advanced, the gold threads of their salamander sigils glinting in the sunlight.
JingYi’s body stepped aside on instinct. Her heart was a frantic thing, beating against the cage of her ribs. They had come for LinXin. Of course they had. To lead her to the throne room, to the carved jade dais, to the moment her future would be sealed and signed away to a stranger in a northern keep.
She stole a glance. LinXin’s face was serene composure, but JingYi knew the mask. She saw the truth in the strained corners of her sister’s mouth, the stillness of her hands. Understanding sat cold and solid in her stomach: LinXin was bracing for the verdict.
The Imperial Steward stopped and bowed deeply. “May a thousand years of peace grace Your Highness, Princess LinXin.”
Her sister acknowledged him with a slight nod, every inch the poised daughter receiving a messenger. Only then did thesteward’s attention shift, homing in on JingYi’s stained uniform and the bundled cloth with wet shards inside. His nose wrinkled, mouth turned down in distaste.
She cast her eyes down and shrank back.
He cleared his throat.
“Physician’s Attendant JingYi, His Majesty summons you to the Hall of Serenity. You are to come with us at once.”
For a heartbeat, JingYi thought she’d misheard, the syllables twisted by some trick of the wind. Then, the air left her lungs.
Her? They’d come forher?
Her eyes snapped to LinXin. For a heartbeat, her sister’s perfect mask cracked: a minute loosening of the shoulders, a slight furrowing of her brows. Then it was gone, smoothed back into serene composure. That gaze met hers, and the intensity in them was not a look she could decipher.
“You should not keep His Majesty waiting,” LinXin said, her voice firm. It was the only encouragement she offered.
The steward gestured toward the sedan. The bearers lowered the chair before her, its lacquered frame gleaming like a beetle’s shell. JingYi shoved the damp bundle into her skirt’s pocket and stepped in carefully, settling her medicine chest at her feet. The poles lifted, and with them, her stomach—a brief, weightless lurch before the world settled into a gentle rhythm.
“JingYi.”
LinXin’s voice halted the forward motion.
Her sister stood framed in the garden’s moon gate. Silence stretched, taut and expectant.
Then, she said softly, “Take care.”
Two words, a most tender decree:‘Look after yourself.’So slight, so enigmatically offhand. JingYi opened her mouth. A dozen questions crowded her tongue, but the steward barked a command. The sedan swayed forward, swallowing her unspoken words into the rhythm of the bearers’ steps.
And, long after the garden vanished behind a wall, she felt the lingering weight of LinXin’s gaze—a relentless, burning point on her back.
They passed through The Gate of Ascending Steps into the Celestial Court, the centre of governance. The Hall of Serenity rose before them, its pale outer walls inlaid with broad veins of limyerite. The crystal caught the sun, drinking the daylight to breathe it back out after dark. The building’s roof swept upward like a pair of outstretched wings. Beneath it ran a carved procession of the twelve animals of the Xûen calendar, frozen mid-motion.
JingYi’s gaze drifted to the salamander in the centre. Sculpted larger than the rest, its gilded scales caught the late light. Emperor HaiYán, born in the Year of the Salamander, had ordered its image made prominent throughout the palace when he took the throne. Now, it watched from every carving and corner, a sinuous reminder of the man who ruled these halls.
The bearers dropped her off at the foot of the grand steps. The flanking guards didn’t move. Their eyes fixed ahead, as if she were air, while the Imperial Steward disappeared inside to announce her.