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Chapter Text

On the day the imperial envoy came to Lotus Pier, Wei Wuxian spent the entire morning boating on Lake Lianhua. 

No one in the household knew that the imperial envoy would be coming: not even Aunt Yu, who would have had the servants scrubbing Lotus Pier from the roofs to the piles it was built on for days in advance, if she did. Hence, Wei Wuxian felt perfectly justified in putting on what Yu-ayi called her worst set of clothes (a stained and often-mended gown that was twice as thick as her other dresses, because Jiang Yanli had patched it for her no less than twenty times) and going out to catch fish for lunch, since the errand boy who did the daily shopping had been confined to bed with a cold. 

It took nearly four hours for Wei Wuxian to catch all the fish she wanted—for six of them were intended for the little runner, who had been prescribed a bowl of fried carp cooked in soup for each day his cough lasted—and turn her rowboat towards the shore. She tied it up near Lotus Pier’s main dock and climbed out with the fish dangling from her shoulders on a string, looping her skirts over her elbow to keep them out of the mud; and then, amid the admiring shouts of the children playing on the pier, she recounted her spoils and went home. 

At first, the Jiang- fu seemed much the same as it ever was, but Wei Wuxian realized that something was amiss when she came through the front gate. The house was too quiet, and the field where she and Jiang Cheng used to spar with Jiang-shushu had been swept clean; and when she opened the carved double doors in front of the living compound, Wei Wuxian walked straight into a frantic Yu-ayi and fell over, fish and all. 

“Here she is,” Jiang-shushu said cheerfully, hoisting Wei Wuxian up by her elbow and presenting her to what appeared to be a gaggle of uniformed court officials. “My yang daughter, Wei Wuxian.”

“Jiang Fengmian!” Aunt Yu hissed, looking as if she would dearly love to spring at him and pull out his hair. “Fengmian, you fool, look at the state of her—”

One of the officials stepped forward and cleared his throat. “Well—well, since the young lady is here, I see no need to delay any longer. His Majesty has finally decided to hold a selection ceremony for the future Empress in accordance with the wishes of the court, and all unmarried gentry maidens between twenty and twenty-five are required to present themselves at the palace so that huangshang may choose a wife from among them. 

“According to shifu at the girls’ academy in the city, Wei-guniang is of the correct age. Is she married, or betrothed?”

Uncle Jiang frowned. 

“Selection ceremony? Is this— not about the examinations that were given to the lady scholars last season?” he said, looking bitterly disappointed. “Ah, but our A-Ying did so well…”

“Examinations? No,” the official floundered. “But if Young Mistress Wei has no marriage arrangements set already, she is invited to take part in the xiunu selection next month. Guniang, this is your invitation token.”

And with that, the official took his leave, fleeing from the estate with his retinue as quickly as he possibly could.

Yu-ayi sank to the ground and put her head in her hands. 

“Wei Ying, go to the bathhouse and make yourself presentable. You’re not fit to be seen,” she whispered, through her fingers. “And for heaven’s sake, get rid of those fish.”

Wei Wuxian nodded and took her string of carp to the kitchens, where she presented the poor creatures to the delighted cook; and then she went off to the women's bathhouse and jumped into one of the five enormous tubs. 

“This must be some kind of mistake,” she muttered to herself, smoothing her wet fingers down the surface of the jade invitation token. “I’m a yang daughter without a drop of noble blood, and no one knows anything about my ancestors on Muqin’s side. If Jiang-shushu explains, they’ll have to take me off the list.”

And with that, she laid the token aside, and forgot about the matter entirely. 

*     *     *

“I still think the palace made a mistake,” Wei Wuxian says mutinously, six weeks later. “Jiang-shushu should have gone back to court to explain that I’m not a blood relation. The court wouldn’t have insisted on including me then.”

“A-Ying,” her older sister coaxes, sliding another— another!— jeweled pin into Wei Wuxian’s dark hair. “The emperor’s family has never held a xiunu selection before. You know the late emperor used to be a court official, and the founder of his clan was a wandering priest. Lan men are as virtuous as monks, and nearly half of them end up finding wives among the common folk. Why should his Majesty be any different?”

“Because his Majesty is his Majesty,” Wei Wuxian sulks, making a sour face at her reflection in the looking glass. “Jiejie, I don’t want to go. Can’t A-Cheng send a message and say I’ve been taken ill?”

At this, Aunt Yu looks up from the fragrance pouch she was embroidering.

“That idiot son of mine—do you think he didn’t try?” she snorts. “I locked him in my dressing room to stop him from knocking the wheels off your carriage.”

“Oh, Mother…”

“What else could I do? No one in this family but A-Li understands what a great chance this is!” Yu-ayi says, forcing her embroidery needle right through the heart of the perfume sachet. “I said nothing when Wei Ying came of age without a betrothal arrangement, because I did not wed until I was twenty-nine, and our household is more than rich enough to keep her here in luxury for the rest of her life. But now, now she might marry a man who vowed to take only one wife, and who would never presume to keep her penned up in the inner court, and still—”

Wei Wuxian blinks. “But Auntie, why wouldn’t his Majesty keep his wife locked in the inner court? What else is the hougong for, then?”

“It’s not as if his Majesty’s Empress will have to mind a houseful of concubines,” her aunt shrugs. “And think of the Grand Princess Zeming. Did the late emperor ever confine her to the women’s quarters? Does she hide away in her husband’s inner court now? No!”

Wei Wuxian is forced to concede to this last, for there had never been a man in this world or the next who would dare think of confining Grand Princess Zeming. She was the emperor’s elder by four years, born to the same mother; and when the late Emperor Qingheng seized the throne from Wen Ruohan, he betrothed Princess Zeming to the son of the general who helped him break into the palace. 

A decade later, Empress Haoxian passed away during an outbreak of pox; and though the rest of the imperial family was left unscathed, her husband succumbed to his grief and died before the end of the next year.

The crown prince and the Grand Princess were ten and fourteen at the time, both too young to rule except in name, so Emperor Qingheng’s brother served as regent until the taizi took command of the court at twenty. Both uncle and nephew were competent monarchs; and the Grand Princess, who assisted them with the most difficult court matters, was perhaps even more so. But for some unknown reason, the young emperor spent the last three years quashing any mention of his future marriage, until the court astrologers banded together to kneel before him and plead that delaying his wedding too long would throw the empire into turmoil. 

The emperor refused at first, for he had already elevated the Grand Princess’s infant son to the rank of crown prince. More importantly, the precepts of the Lan family—which were set in stone over twelve generations before the emperor’s birth—insisted that its men should wed for love and love alone. But all of the palace officials were united in their hopes for an Empress, right from the Grand Chancellor to the lowliest scholar in the Ministry of Works; and at last, the emperor yielded and announced a xiunu selection. 

However, Jiang-shushu went to make inquiries at court and discovered that the emperor had two requirements of his future wife that he would not renege upon. Firstly, she must be no younger than twenty, and preferably at least a year or two older; and secondly, she should have received an education at least equal to that of the young masters who were just beginning their three years of study for the next imperial examination. 

“There should not be more than twenty such maidens within a hundred miles of the capital,” Yu-ayi mutters now, applying a sheet of lip paper to Wei Wuxian’s mouth. “From that, I judge that His Majesty must be wiser than most men his age, or else that he does not wish to marry at all; but this xiunu selection is a good chance for A-Ying either way.”

Wei Wuxian frowns. “What do you mean?”

Yu-ayi sighs. 

“If the emperor truly wants an educated bride no younger than himself, then you would make an ideal wife for him,” she says slowly. “After all, the Grand Princess takes part in most of his duties, so it stands to reason that the empress would be granted the same privilege. But if he wishes to appease the court while remaining unmarried, the easiest way to do so would be to cull the pool of bridal candidates beforehand, and then claim that none of the girls who attended the selection were to his liking.”

“I knew the requirements sounded odd,” Jiang Yanli murmurs. “After all, Wen Ruohan’s empress entered the palace when she was seventeen, and A-Xian’s academy is the only one that teaches law and martial history.”

“En, exactly. If not for Wei Ying and her friends at the girls’ school, the only unmarried ladies that fit the age requirement would have been widows whose husbands died early,” Aunt Yu says, before stepping back to let Jiang Yanli paint the first stroke of a huadian in the middle of Wei Wuxian’s brow. “Now, hush for a moment. A-Ying, have you picked out a design for your huadian?”

“Paint a smiling face,” Wei Wuxian suggests. “That way, huangshang will send me back the moment he gets a good look at me.”

“A-Ying, so help me—”

“I’m going to paint a lotus bud with red petals,” Jiang Yanli says, with a quelling glance at Wei Wuxian. “Hold still, Xianxian.”

Wei Wuxian holds still as bidden, making a valiant effort to keep her tongue away from her colored lips while Yanli finishes painting the huadian. In the meantime, Aunt Yu goes off to check on Jiang Cheng: or, more likely, to make sure he hadn’t chewed through her locked bedroom door and run out to wreck Wei Wuxian’s carriage sometime in the last fifteen minutes.

“There,” Jiang Yanli smiles, a little while later. “What do you think?”

The huadian depicts a half-blown lotus flower, not quite a bud or a fully-opened bloom; and when Wei Wuxian leans a little closer to the mirror, she discovers that the seed pod at the flower’s heart has a tiny smiling face in the middle.

Suddenly, Wei Wuxian feels as if she might cry. 

“I love it,” she says thickly. “What’s next, A-Jie?”

Jiang Yanli kisses the top of her head. “Just your sash and slippers. Hurry, A-Xian, or we’ll be late.”

Her sash and silk shoes are put on in good time, and then Yu-ayi returns with her finished fragrance pouch before fastening it to Wei Wuxian’s belt.

“There,” Aunt Yu says, looking very much like a satisfied cat. “Now a purse for snacks, and we can be off.”

Yanli presents Wei Wuxian with a purse filled with miniature baozi, and accompanying instructions to refrain from taking them out unless the xiunu were not served luncheon at the palace, and then Aunt Yu sweeps Wei Wuxian down the stairs and into the waiting carriage in front of the gates. 

“Good luck, A-Xian,” Jiang Yanli calls, maintaining an iron grip on Jiang Cheng’s shoulders—for he had been released from Aunt Yu’s dressing room to see Wei Wuxian off, now that any messages reporting her absence will have no chance of reaching the palace before she does. “I’ll cook a pot of hulatang while you’re gone, so don’t run off to play in town after the ceremony!”

Wei Wuxian’s heart swells. 

“I won’t,” she shouts back. “See you tonight, A-Jie!”

And with that, the carriage rolls off. Wei Wuxian leans back and tries to go to sleep, since Yanli and Yu-ayi dragged her out of bed before mao hour that morning; but about fifteen minutes later, she opens her eyes to find Aunt Yu staring straight at her with a pleased half-smile on her face.

“What are you smiling for, Auntie?” Wei Wuxian asks. “I—”

Aunt Yu holds up a hand to silence her. “The moment huangshang lays eyes on you, he will know what choice to make,” she says solemnly. “If you behave at the selection ceremony, I have no doubt that your uncle and I will be sending you back to the palace in red by the end of next month.”

Wei Wuxian’s jaw drops. 

Yu-ayi wouldn’t say such a thing unless she believed it, she thinks wildly, before closing her eyes and pretending to go to sleep again. His Majesty wants an educated bride to help him in the court, and Shifu said that my examination scores were the highest she’d seen in the last thirty years. And the palace officials found my name in the records at the academy, so if they sent the records to the emperor…

“Beauty fades, and even fond feelings dissipate with time,” Aunt Yu continues, sounding as if she was talking to herself and not to Wei Wuxian at all. “His Majesty has not been raised to think too much of a woman’s appearance, and he will have no time to fall in love with his bride before marrying her, so he must choose based on other merits. When one’s wife is to be the mother of a nation, the husband must judge by her wits and learning, and then by her manners; and you are second to none in the first, and lack only a little in the latter. Who can he possibly choose but you?”

Wei Wuxian feels her blood run cold. 

Yu-ayi’s right. He really is going to choose me, she thinks. Oh, no. Oh, good Heavens, no!

If she had been anyone else, she would have burst into tears on the spot. But just as her eyelids begin to sting, she remembers what her aunt said only two minutes earlier and breathes out a sigh of relief. 

The moment huangshang lays eyes on you, he will know what choice to make. 

If Aunt Yu has judged the emperor’s motives correctly, Wei Wuxian can only be certain of evading the Empress’s throne if she ensures that the emperor never lays eyes on her at all.

“I guess you’re right,” Wei Wuxian says aloud, mustering a smile for the first time in the past three days. “I’ll do my best, ayi. Don’t worry.”

Chapter Text

When Wei Wuxian’s carriage arrives at the palace, she is promptly escorted out by a high-ranking maidservant and sent into a side hall to wait for the emperor with the rest of the xiunu. 

“Mind your manners,” Aunt Yu whispers harshly, before the momo comes to sweep Wei Wuxian away. “And don’t be afraid. Huangshang is barely more than a child.”

Child or not, Wei Wuxian has no intention of hanging about long enough to meet him; so she smiles, bids Yu-ayi goodbye, and follows the momo into the waiting hall without another word. There are about ten other girls seated inside, clustered around low tables laden with colorful sweets and tea—and just as Wei Wuxian suspected, all of them save for one are her fellow scholars from the girls’ academy. 

“Ying-jie!” one of her shimeis calls. “You’re here, too!”

“A- Shuai,” Wei Wuxian greets her, before sitting down in an empty chair and glancing backward to see if the momo might be eavesdropping on them. “What are you doing here? I thought you were engaged.”

At this, Li Shuai makes a sour face and stuffs a pink osmanthus cake into her mouth. 

“I am,” she says grimly, following the cake with a long quaff of tea. “A-Hong and I are going to start the betrothal etiquettes next month. But the imperial envoy came to ask Jiufu if there were any unmarried girls my age at the estate, just four days ago—and when my uncle told them that I’d gone to school in the city, they left an invitation token for me. The nerve of it, shijie! A-Hong left to announce our betrothal to his grandmother only last week, but my uncle promised the head of the envoy that I’d come to the xiunu selection all the same.”

“Why?”

Li Shuai rolls her eyes. “Because my little cousin is taking the imperial examinations next year. If he passes, having A-Hong for a brother-in-law won’t help him advance in court,  but if I were to marry huangshang and become the Empress…”

“Oh, good heavens,” Wei Wuxian murmurs. “But you have a plan, don’t you?”

“Supposedly, his Majesty wants a wife learned in military history,” her friend shrugs. “I failed that section of the examinations, remember?”

Wei Wuxian nods in silent agreement; and then, with a grimace, recalls that she had passed that examination with flying colors. 

“What will you do, Shijie?” Li Shuai whispers. “You’re older than the rest of us—well, older than everyone except for Qin Su—and your uncle might as well be a court official himself, since he and the Grand Prince were friends when they were boys. If his Majesty judges by merit alone, he’s sure to choose you, so how…”

In answer, Wei Wuxian tilts her chin towards the open back door, which appears to lead to a low-walled courtyard garden.

“If anyone asks,” she whispers back, “say that I felt ill and went out to find the momo. I don’t think that one will come back again, but if she does—”

A-Shuai nods. “Go,” she says. “I’ll make your excuses, but you ought to hurry.”

Wei Wuxian rises and sweeps a handful of osmanthus pastries into her sash, taking only the white ones to keep her clothes from staining; and then she hurries out of the hall and into the garden beyond, walking so softly that none of the other xiunu seem to notice her departure. 

A moment later, she scales the cobbled wall and jumps lightly onto the path behind it. From where she stands, Wei Wuxian can see nothing but stone-lined pathways and round moon gates that lead further into the palace; so she slips through the nearest gate and enters a sweet-smelling maze of flowerbeds and clear ponds filled with golden koi fish, sprawling northward and westward away from the hall where her junior sisters are still waiting for the emperor. 

This must have been a residential garden once, Wei Wuxian reflects, as she wanders through a quiet grove lined with stalks of bamboo. From the path, she can just make out the leveled foundation of a palace that had crumbled years ago, or been torn down to make way for the bamboo forest to grow—and in the distance, Wei Wuxian sees the dappled coat of a fawn weaving through the foliage, followed by a doe with a patch of white fur between her eyes. 

“Oh!” she laughs, as the fawn leaps in fright at the sight of her and scrambles back to hide behind its mother. “I’m leaving now, little one. Don’t be afraid!”

With that, she gathers up her skirts and flees from the bamboo grove as swiftly as she can, ducking into an adjoining courtyard that ends in an empty wall. There is no way out, aside from the moon gate Wei Wuxian just passed through; but the walls are covered with a mat of sweet-smelling mutong vines, which stretch from the earth at the base of the wall to the roof of the lone pavilion on the other side of it. 

Wei Wuxian reaches up and tugs at one of the vines. It bends at her touch, but only slightly; and when she hoists herself up onto the wall, the coiling creepers beneath her feet support her weight as well as a knot of sturdy rope would have done. 

Another moment, and Wei Wuxian climbs over the wall, slithering through the mutong branches like a monkey and down onto the green lawn below. 

Much like the other gardens she passed through, this one appears to be deserted (albeit carefully-tended, as even the most far-flung corners of the palace are). But perhaps the silent bridges and pagodas are simply the way of this Emperor’s time—for the palace is home to an imperial family of only five, counting the general who wed into the clan so that his son with the Grand Princess could inherit the Lan family name. 

In dynasties past, the back palace would have been filled with royal wives and their children, and the princes past their coming-of-age would have lived in the outer residences with their princess consorts; but since Emperor Qingheng took the throne almost thirty years ago, the whole imperial city has stood empty but for the servant’s quarters and the palaces where the young huangdi and Zeming zhang-gongzhu live. 

Still lost in thought, Wei Wuxian clambers to her feet and heads off in search of a pavilion where she can hide in peace until shen hour, when the bridal candidates will be sent home. Curiously, the sole pavilion on this side of the wall of mutong vines is the one she passed on her way in; but at last, she wanders into yet another garden filled with gentian flowers running wild in the long grass, and discovers a tiny rest pavilion in the east corner. 

Perfect, Wei Wuxian thinks to herself, rubbing her hands together in satisfaction. She steps up into the pavilion and spreads her handkerchief across the carved drawing-table inside, and then she lays out the squashed osmanthus cakes she pilfered from the reception hall; but before Wei Wuxian puts her first bit of cake to her lips, a small pink hand reaches onto the table and whisks one of her pastries out of sight. 

“Tian ah!” Wei Wuxian exclaims, stunned. She drops to her knees, cake and all, and laughs out loud at the sight that greets her under the table—for there is a baby hiding there, cramming bites of cake into his little mouth as he gazes up at Wei Wuxian with round, imploring eyes. 

Wei Wuxian’s heart melts on the spot. 

“What are you doing here?” she whispers, coaxing the baby into her arms. “Where’s your mother, baobao? Did you walk all this way on your own?”

The baby swallows the remnants of his cake and licks his sticky fingers. 

“Bu,” he says firmly, snuggling closer to Wei Wuxian’s chest. “No bath for A-Yuan.”

Wei Wuxian holds the child up at arm’s length and stares at him in bewilderment. For a moment, she wonders if he might be the Grand Princess’s son; but the infant crown prince is not yet a year old, and this baby is already old enough to walk and talk. 

Presently, she hears the thud of a sliding door flung back against its frame, followed by a panicked shout. “A-Yuan!” the strange voice calls, followed by a set of footsteps running through the garden on the other side of the moon gate. “A-Yuan, where are you?”

In answer, the baby—A-Yuan—scrambles out of Wei Wuxian’s grasp and takes refuge in the folds of her gown. 

“No bath,” he whispers again, pressing his tiny face to her knee. “Jiejie, cake?”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Wei Wuxian scolds, lifting him onto her hip. “You ran away, didn’t you? Is that your father calling?”

A-Yuan squirms in her arms, whimpering, so Wei Wuxian wraps him up with the loose end of her sash and goes in search of the man who was calling the baby’s name. 

She finds him in the adjoining garden, dressed in nothing but a white undershirt and trousers, and puts out a hand to catch his sleeve. “Gongzi,” she calls, as he turns towards her with wild, white eyes like a frightened horse’s. “Is this your son? He wandered into the next garden over, but he’s not hurt. Right, A-Yuan?”

A-Yuan shrieks and tries to crawl down the neck of Wei Wuxian’s robes. “Jiejie, no!” he pleads, clinging to a lock of her hair for dear life. “Keep A-Yuan! A-Yuan don’t want a bath!”

“Yuan’er,” the man exhales, trembling from head to foot as he envelops A-Yuan’s tiny pink hands in his own long, pale ones. “Thank goodness— guniang, I cannot be grateful enough—”

He lifts his eyes to hers, not bothering to brush away the tears that had gathered at the corners of his eyelashes—and for almost the first time in her life, Wei Wuxian finds herself stricken dumb with wonder. 

Her mother was a famed beauty, in her time; and judging by the one surviving portrait that hangs in Wei Wuxian’s study, the late Cangse Sanren looked a great deal like Wei Wuxian does herself. She had suitors in droves by the year she had her hair-pinning ceremony, and some of them wore their good looks better than she did—but even after meeting the thirty-odd youths who tried to court her when she was a girl, Wei Wuxian has never laid eyes on a man so peerlessly beautiful as the one standing before her now. 

His beauty is not in his face, exactly: though that is certainly handsome enough, so much so that Wei Wuxian finds herself yearning to capture it with her painting set. His eyes are deep-set and black as a starless night, upswept at the outer corners like a pair of outstretched birds’ wings—and his skin is as luminous and fair as the face of the white-jade Guanyin around Wei Wuxian’s neck, issuing a soft, cold glow of its own under the light of the sun.

But the core of his beauty lies within his flesh, buried somewhere so deep that her eyes cannot quite reach it: so she remains where she is, transfixed, and does not look away until A-Yuan reaches up to touch her cheek.

“Who are you?” she breathes. It feels as if the words had willed themselves from her lips; and then, a sudden wind blows through the garden, as if the trees and mutong flowers were awaiting his reply.

“I—” The young man frowns and glances at Wei Wuxian’s light red over-dress, stained with crushed grass and purple berry juice from the garden behind the reception hall. “Forgive me, guniang, but this compound is forbidden to guests. Did you lose your way?”

Wei Wuxian laughs at him. “No,” she says merrily. “I don’t know where we are, exactly, but I know the way back. I’ll be gone by shen shi.”

The boy’s frown deepens. 

“You can’t stay here. No one is permitted to enter this garden but for the imperial family and their attendants.”

So she had wandered into the royal family’s living quarters, then. “No one knows I’m here, apart from you,” Wei Wuxian points out. “And I won’t stay for long.”

A moment later—while the young man seems to be deciding whether to call the palace guards or not—Wei Wuxian looks down at the dusty little bundle in her arms and realizes that the shoes on the baby’s feet are far finer than anything a commoner’s child might wear. 

“Who are you, baobao? Huangshang's uncle isn't married, so you can't be his son, and you can't be taizi dianxia,” she murmurs to herself, planting a kiss on A-Yuan’s downy forehead. “He’s not a year old yet, and you’re already old enough to run about on your own."

She wonders if he could be a relation from Nie-jiangjun's side of the family, and then abandons the notion. Nie Huaisang is the only Nie relative of the right age to have a two-year-old child; and he and Wei Wuxian saw one another quite often when she was a girl, so the Jiang estate would have heard some word of his wedding if one had taken place.

“A-Yuan is A-Yuan,” the baby beams, laying his small face on Wei Wuxian’s shoulder. “Gege go ‘way. A-Yuan eats cakes with my Jiejie.”

At this, the aforementioned gege shakes himself back to full awareness. 

“A-Yuan is Huangshang’s adopted son,” he says abruptly, before squinting at Wei Wuxian. “Who are you?”

“Well, shuai-gege —” and here Wei Wuxian nearly laughs out loud, because the boy’s ears had turned crimson at the teasing lilt in her voice, “shouldn’t you tell me who you are, first?”

“Shameless!” he snaps, folding his arms over his chest. “If you must know, I—I'm Prince Yuan’s caretaker.”

“But I can hardly call you that, can I? What’s your name?”

He huffs and turns away from her. “You found A-Yuan, and for that, I am in your debt; but we are not likely to meet again, so you need not call me anything. Now follow me, and I will open the gates to let you out.”

Wei Wuxian hides a grin in A-Yuan’s fluffy hair. 

“Gege it is, then,” she muses, as his ears flush even darker than before. “And I’m not going anywhere. I have to stay out of sight until the xiunu selection is over, and then I’ll be out of this garden in a heartbeat.”

The boy freezes. 

“Xiunu selection?” he mutters. “...Are you one of the bridal candidates?”

She nods. “Which one? I thought you must be one of the ministers’ daughters.”

“Wei Wuxian. I’m the yang daughter from the Jiang estate,” she replies, shrugging. “I’m the only xiunu without a noble bloodline—Fuqin was one of Jiang-shushu’s retainers, and no one knows where my mother came from—so I decided to stay out of huangshang’s sight, for fear that he would choose me without realizing that I have no gentry background of my own. He is young yet; and Lan or not, an emperor without a large clan to rely upon ought to marry a wife from a powerful maiden family.”

“Why would the emperor do such a thing? Relying on one’s wife for influence and wealth is forbidden by the Lan family precepts; and though the country is not obliged to follow them, his Majesty certainly is.”

“He hasn’t been in power for very long,” Wei Wuxian reminds him, lifting A-Yuan up onto her shoulders. “And the imperial family’s clan precepts were written by a monk, were they not? He could never have imagined that his descendants might sit upon the throne one day—and if the choice had been left to him, he’d have made certain that they never would.”

The boy inclines his head, troubled. 

“I have often thought so myself,” he says quietly. “But, Maiden Wei—Huangshang has no such expectations for his bride. The late emperor truly loved Empress Haoxian, so much so that even his children were not enough to keep him alive when she died, and General Nie worships the very ground beneath Grand Princess Zeming’s feet. After witnessing the joy his parents shared with one another, and the happiness of his sister’s marriage—how could Huangshang bear to pledge himself to a maiden he did not love?”

“I suppose he wouldn’t be able to bear it,” Wei Wuxian agrees, following the boy through the overgrown paths of the gentian garden as he leads her towards a sparsely-decorated palace on the far side of it. “Was he planning to send the girls away without choosing a bride at all?”

Judging by the thoughtful look on his face, it appears that Wei Wuxian was right. 

“Will you come in for tea?” he says presently, stopping beneath the golden sign hung over the palace doors. “The weather is hot, and since you mean to avoid the outer palace until the selection is over…”

Wei Wuxian beams and jumps lithely up the stairs in his wake. 

“Thank you, shuai-gege,” she teases. “Will you tell me your name now, at least?”

This time, when he blushes, he turns scarlet from the top of his forehead to the bit of pale throat just above his collar. 

“A-Zhan,” he mumbles, ushering Wei Wuxian over the palace threshold. “You can call me A-Zhan.”

Chapter Text

Wei Wuxian has hardly crossed the threshold of the emperor’s palace when a thunderclap shakes the ground beneath her feet, tearing the heavens asunder and pouring what appears to be a full day’s worth of rain into the garden outside.

“Strange,” A-Zhan says quietly, looking out of the nearest window. “The Grand Princess thought the last day of the coming week would be auspicious for a bride selection, but the court astrologers insisted that it should take place today. I cannot imagine what must be going on at the Mingshi now that the weather has turned.”

“Isn’t it terribly unlucky to hold a xiunu selection on the morning of a thunderstorm?” Wei Wuxian laughs, as she lets A-Yuan climb down to the floor. “My poor shijiemei! Half of them never wanted to attend the selection in the first place, and now they’ll have to travel back to the city in this deluge.”

A-Zhan grimaces. 

“Judging by what little I know of divining, a storm would be considered an omen of ill fortune on an occasion like this,” he says. “Though I do not find the rain surprising, since His Majesty’s circumstances are much like those of the xiunu. He did not wish to marry at all, so perhaps fair skies on a day like this would only have troubled him.”

And then, hesitantly: “Do you not mind the weather, Wei-guniang? Today was meant to be warm, and you have no coat.”

Wei Wuxian grins at him. “No. I do not fear even lightning, much less rain,” she says, in a mock stage-whisper. “In fact, shuai-gege, shall I tell you how His Majesty’s court officials found me when they came to Lotus Pier to issue my invitation token?”

He blushes at the flirtatious tone of her voice: one that Wei Wuxian has never heard from her own lips before, in spite of having goaded more than one young man to the point of speechlessness in her girlhood. 

“If they intruded upon the Jiang household—or upon you —when you were not prepared to receive visitors, then I shall tell the Grand Princess. Her audience chamber is open to all, regardless of status, and petitioners who request secrecy in the handling of their matters are granted it,” he says stiffly, dropping his gaze. “If you wish it, Her Highness will see that the officials who went to Lotus Pier are disciplined. How exactly did they trespass, Wei-guniang?”

“What?” Wei Wuxian exclaims, goggling at him. “They didn’t trespass. I was fishing when they came to deliver the token—and when I crossed paths with the head official, I was dressed in an old working gown and soaked to the skin, and I had a string of carps wound about my shoulders. They must have thought I was a maid, or a fishmonger’s daughter coming to make a delivery to the kitchens: but then Jiang-shushu made introductions, and asked what they wanted with me. That was all.”

“Truly?”

“Yes, truly. Look at yourself, A-Zhan! I hardly said a thing, and you were ready to have those officials punished on my behalf. Are all of His Majesty’s servants so fearsome?”

“It is the duty of all under heaven to serve Huangshang,” A-Zhan replies. “If that service demands fierceness on occasion, then so be it. As a subject, and his servant, this one could do no less.”

For some reason, Wei Wuxian is certain that A-Zhan had weighed his worth in Emperor Lan’s eyes in that moment and recoiled at the reminder of its insignificance: or else that he had lamented the countless differences that parted the emperor from his people, and their obligation to live and die at his bidding if he only spoke the word. 

To Wei Wuxian’s knowledge, the young Emperor has been nothing but merciful during the four years of his reign, much like his father before him. Emperor Qingheng outlawed the use of torture within two months of taking the throne, and Emperor Hanguang outlawed the use of execution as soon as he was crowned; but fair or not, he could deal out all manner of injustices if he wished it, so perhaps that is what troubles A-Zhan.

And A-Zhan serves in the imperial palace, so he must know any number of things about his lord that the rest of the world does not.

Wei Wuxian’s heart stutters. 

“Never mind all that,” she says hurriedly, lifting Yuan’er so that A-Zhan can see the bottoms of his dirty feet. “Look at this dusty little radish, shuai-gege . Aren’t you going to give him a bath?”

At this, A-Yuan squeaks in dismay and darts behind a curtain. “Jiejie, no!” he wails, betrayed. “Won’t Jiejie give cakes? I don’t want a bath!”

“A-Yuan!”

A-Zhan springs to his feet and rolls up his sleeves, intent upon extracting A-Yuan from his hiding place and bathing him by any means necessary: but a gust of frigid wind sweeps through the reception chamber before he can take a step further, raising patches of gooseflesh upon his bare arms as Wei Wuxian begins to shiver in her thin silk dress.

“Forgive me,” A-Zhan mumbles, stricken. “I must have left a window open in A-Yuan’s room.”

He turns on his heels and flees down an adjoining hallway, leaving Wei Wuxian alone with A-Yuan. From where she stands, she can hear the echoing crash of five shutters slamming into place in quick succession; and then A-Zhan reappears on the threshold of the receiving room, looking rather more ruffled than he did when he left. 

“You must be freezing,” he says to Wei Wuxian. “I’ll make up the fire.”

He lights the iron stove in the center of the room and puts on a pot of water for boiling; and after the water begins to steam, he summons a young manservant and orders him to fetch luncheon for Wei Wuxian.

“What would you like to eat?” he asks, as the manservant stands at the door and stares between the two of them with the blood steadily draining from his round face. “A-Yuan and I are the only ones here aside from you, so there is no need to stand on ceremony.”

“Very well, then,” Wei Wuxian says, laughing again in spite of herself. “What about noodles with braised mushrooms and zhusun, then? I won’t ask for meat, since Jiang-shushu told me that His Majesty has never partaken of it.”

Yet another reason why I had to run away from him, Wei Wuxian thinks to herself. After all, it would be one thing to live so far from Jiang Yanli that she had to do without her sister’s pork-bone soup—which she already does, since the Jinlintai is more than an hour’s drive from Lotus Pier—but a woman raised upon the fish and duck that teem in Yunmeng could never live in a household where the consumption of meat was banned altogether.

“The rules are not as strict as you might think,” A-Zhan explains, when she tells him so. “His Majesty and the Grand Prince do not eat meat; but Nie-jiangjun does not keep to the Lan precepts at all, since he is a married-in member of the family. And the children of his line are born larger and more vigorous than most, so her Highness was obliged to break the edict forbidding meat when she conceived the Crown Prince and has not kept to it since. You can ask for whatever you like.”

Wei Wuxian meant to repeat her request for noodles with mushrooms, so as not to burden the palace cooks—who should never have been burdened with the duty of cooking for her in the first place, since she was meant to remain with the other xiunu in the outer palace—but suddenly, she finds herself unable to speak, for A-Zhan’s words reminded her of the night she first came to Lotus Pier, twenty years ago. 

Treat this as your home, for it will be yours from this day forth, Jiang-shushu had said, before kissing her forehead and settling her into Wang-bomu’s arms. I am your uncle in all but blood, and you may call me Yifu; and here is your sister, and here your brother.

“Would you like a clay-pot with fish, young mistress?” the manservant asks, staring fixedly at A-Zhan’s stocking-feet until he sighs and returns to the inner chamber to fetch a pair of slippers. “The pond in the kitchen courtyard is well-stocked with carp, and a fish clay-pot with vegetables will not take long to prepare.”

“En, that sounds wonderful,” Wei Wuxian smiles, before turning and shouting down the corridor after her new friend. “What about you, A-Zhan?”

For some reason, the young manservant nearly chokes on his own tongue.

“The—the staff are well-accustomed to Hua—that is, his preferences,” he says, in a strangled voice. “The braised mushrooms and bamboo shoots that Wei-guniang asked for are his favorite dish, along with baozi stuffed with chestnuts. Will that serve, my l—Master A-Zhan?”

“En. Have my dishes made with double portions, so that Wei-guniang may share them, and fetch a plate of fried shrimp cakes for her and Prince Yuan,” A-Zhan says, materializing at Wei Wuxian’s right with his feet properly encased in a pair of fine gray shoes. “I heard Her Highness tell Chifeng-jiangjun that the kitchens received a delivery of fresh baixia this morning.”

“As you wish, Master.”

“After you deliver the order, have someone send up a tub of hot water for A-Yuan’s bath.”

“Yes, m—Master A-Zhan.”

“And one more thing,” A-Zhan says, frowning. “It is cold, and you see that Wei-guniang is not dressed for the rain. I would lend her a cloak and a pair of gloves; but it is not meet for her to wear a man’s clothes, and the only women’s garments in the back palace belong to the Grand Princess. Go to the storage-house behind the Longdan Gong and open the rosewood chest on the third shelf—there is an old woolen cloak inside, with a matching undercloak of linen folded away beneath it. Bring them here for Wei-guniang, along with a hand stove she can take back to the xiunu’s waiting chamber.”

The boy nods, bobbing his head like a chicken pecking at grain before turning on his heel and vanishing into the garden.

“Come,” A-Zhan says to Wei Wuxian, as the manservant’s footsteps fade away under the insistent pattering of the rain. “Will you have tea while we wait?”

“Not yet, I think,” Wei Wuxian replies, eyeing the fluttering curtains at the far end of the room. “May I ask a favor of you?”

“Mm, as you like.”

“These are the little prince’s chambers, aren’t they? I suppose his little highness must not know how to write yet, but if there was any scrap paper lying about…”

“Not here, but there is plenty in Huangshang’s study. I may go in and out freely, so I can fetch some for you. Will you mind A-Yuan for a moment?”

“Of course.”

With that, A-Zhan produces an umbrella and departs through a back door on the north side of the palace, leaving Wei Wuxian to draw up a chair and toast her chilly feet by the fire. A-Yuan creeps out from behind the curtains as soon as he hears the door fall shut, hopping up into Wei Wuxian’s lap and nestling against her bosom like a contented cat; and when A-Zhan returns with a stack of scrap-paper under his arm, he nearly laughs out loud at the sight of them.

“Here,” he says to Wei Wuxian, handing her a square piece of paper upon which the emperor seemed to have written a daily schedule:

Mao shi—breakfast.

Half-past—court.

Depart at Si hour to prepare for the xiunu selection.

Meeting with the first ten candidates at Wu shi.

Luncheon with A-Jie at half-past.

“Is it really all right for you to take these?” she wonders. “If Huangshang’s daily plans were to fall into unfriendly hands, then…”

“Everyone knows when Huangshang goes to court. And who in the empire does not know that the xiunu selection was to be held today? These papers are of no importance, Wei-guniang—do as you will with them.”

He turns his back on her and begins making preparations for tea, though not without casting swift glances over his shoulder as Wei Wuxian begins folding the pieces of scrap-paper. But before long, he gives up all pretense of minding the tea and watches in open amazement as the ink-stained sheets transform into paper boats: rowboats, a fleet of chuan with fluted sails, a roofed fishing sampan like the one Wei Wuxian takes onto Lake Lianhua, and a little canoe made to resemble the head and body of a swan.

“Ah,” Wei Wuxian grins, upon the arrival of a fleet of servants carrying a tub and basins of hot water. “Just in time.”

“Just in time for what?” A-Zhan asks, as A-Yuan bursts into tears and scrambles off Wei Wuxian’s lap. “A-Yuan, come here—”

“Wait!” Wei Wuxian hushes him, before turning to the gaggle of serving boys. “Set the tub here, near the stove, and leave one of the pots over the fire.”

The boys nod, readying the bath in complete silence before bowing and taking their leave.

“Now what?”

“How can you be so impatient?” Wei Wuxian asks, despairing. “Wait and see, shuai-gongzi. You’re ruining the surprise.”

One by one, she sets the paper boats afloat in the bath; and after the very last boat—the little sampan—has been carefully set on its course across the tub, Wei Wuxian tells A-Zhan to fetch A-Yuan.

“Huangshang uses excellent paper, so the boats ought not to sink until A-Yuan’s bath is over,” she muses, as A-Zhan turns large, wonder-stricken eyes upon the fleet of boats in the tub. “But we still mustn’t delay, so hurry up!”

So A-Zhan goes off to pry a protesting A-Yuan out from under a flowerpot, looking as if he might weep himself at the sound of the child’s sobs; but Yuan’er falls silent as soon as he catches sight of the boats, cooing in sheer delight as he reaches for one of the sailing chuan.

“If you want to play with them, you must take your bath,” Wei Wuxian tells him. “Do we have a bargain, little radish?”

A-Yuan stares at the boats for a moment longer before nodding and shedding his clothes where he stands.

“Jiejie gives me a bath,” he says gravely, holding up his arms. “Not gege.”

A-Zhan sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yuan’er, you are being impolite. It is my duty to bathe you; your Jiejie is a guest.”

“I’ve bathed more babies than I have fingers and toes. This messy little luobo will be the work of half a ke, if that,” Wei Wuxian tells him. “You finish laying out the tea and prepare the table for luncheon; and in the meanwhile, I’ll bathe A-Yuan.”

Much to A-Zhan’s relief, the bath goes as smoothly as anyone could wish. A-Yuan hardly makes a sound as Wei Wuxian washes his hair and scrubs his small back with a soft brush, so enraptured with the little sampan that he does not even notice when she pours a bucket of warm water over his head; and just after A-Yuan is bundled out and dried, eight young maidservants arrive bearing trays full of covered dishes, escorted by the young attendant who was sent to fetch a cloak for Wei Wuxian.

After they depart, Wei Wuxian and A-Zhan eat their lunch in companionable silence. Wei Wuxian has heard that the imperial family forbids speech while dining save at formal banquets, so she does not press him to speak; but halfway through the meal, she feels a soft tug at her hair and glances down to find A-Yuan waving a toy grass-butterfly at her.

“I like you,” he babbles to himself, lifting the butterfly and brushing Wei Wuxian’s shoulder with it. “Come with A-Yuan, I like you, too…”

“What is he doing?” she whispers, looking up at A-Zhan. “Shall I give him this lock of my hair to play with?”

“Do not cut your hair, I pray you,” A-Zhan replies, gracing her with a soft, sweet smile that reminds her of sunlight on new-fallen snow. “There is no need for it, anyway. I think he is trying to play with your butterfly zanzi.” 

“Oh!” Wei Wuxian exclaims, warming from head to toe. “Of course.”

“You must not give it to him, if he asks for it. It is difficult to raise princes well, and a boy should know better than to demand a zanzi from a woman’s head, prince or not: even if he is only two years old.”

A-Zhan falls quiet again, but this lull is a welcoming one; so Wei Wuxian drops a piece of plump fish into A-Yuan’s bowl and calls out to A-Zhan.

“If I might ask,” she says, “did Huangshang name Zeming zhang-gongzhu’s son the crown prince because of A-Yuan?”

A-Zhan looks at her with large, puzzled eyes. “What do you mean, guniang ?”

“Well, this way, he need never feel slighted by Huangshang’s first son by blood taking the throne,” Wei Wuxian elaborates, “and A-Yuan would be the elder brother, so that might have complicated matters further if he and the taizi dianxia shared a father.”

“Ah? Oh—no,” sighs A-Zhan. “That was because—you saw the scars on A-Yuan’s left leg when you bathed him, did you not?”

Wei Wuxian nods: for she had indeed taken note of the five pitted marks on A-Yuan’s chubby thigh, and breathed a sigh of relief at what they signified.

“You know that the late Empress was lost to small-pox,” A-Zhan says somberly. “Huangshang and the Grand Princess were inoculated as soon as Empress Haoxian took sick, though her Highness’s inoculation was not fully successful—but either way, it brought them safely through the outbreak, and the Grand Princess had Yuan’er and her own son inoculated as soon as Wen-taiyi deemed her child old enough to survive a mild case of smallpox. 

“Of course, they both survived in the end, so Huangshang named his nephew the new taizi as soon as the children were well again. It will have to be done again for every child born in the palace; but since Huangshang already has an heir who will never fall prey to the pox, he saw no need to wait for a son of his own.”

Wei Wuxian’s throat aches at the thought.

“It is fortunate that they came through it,” she whispers, thinking of her own parents. “That was a dreadful time, I remember.”

A-Zhan’s eyes go wide with pity. “Then, your parents…?”

“Not to the pox. Or at least I don’t think so; it was too sudden.”

“You mean you do not know?”

“En. One day, I was traveling through the country outside Yiling with my mother; and the next thing I remember was being taken by a group of slavers,” she says, frowning. “But they didn’t get far. The city watch captured them the next night, and I was sent to my uncle at the Jiang estate.”

“Were you stolen from your parents, then?” A-Zhan asks, his fist clenching about his chopsticks. “Do you think—could they still be alive?”

“No. Jiang-shushu said I was covered in dried blood when the watchmen found me, but none of it was mine. I expect it was my mother’s,” Wei Wuxian sighs. “Uncle interrogated the slavers and went back to the place where they said they had taken me; but by then, there was nothing left to find, and I couldn’t remember how Muqin and I had been separated.”

They sit together for a little while longer, and then:

“What about your parents, A-Zhan?”

 “They were taken by the same outbreak that killed her Majesty.”

The two of them look away from one another, each mired in their own thoughts of the past; but then Wei Wuxian looks down and smiles at the child swaying back and forth on her knee, nodding towards sleep with his little grass butterfly clutched to his chest.

“Give him to me,” A-Zhan says quietly, holding out his arms. “It is high time that he had his nap, anyway.”

Wei Wuxian hands the baby over and watches A-Zhan carry him away, feeling more than a little bereft as they disappear into A-Yuan’s bedroom. A-Zhan does not return for another ke or so, since A-Yuan had to be dressed for bed and sung to sleep with a folk lullaby that Wei Wuxian’s own mother used to sing to her in her childhood; and by the time A-Zhan rejoins Wei Wuxian in the receiving room, shen shi is less than an hour away.

“I ought to go back to the other xiunu before long,” Wei Wuxian says at last. “Will you open the gates to let me out, Zhan-gege?”

“Of course. I should have remembered sooner,” A-Zhan replies, before unwrapping the soft parcel the attendant left behind. “Put this on before you go, or you’ll catch cold.”

He shakes out the mass of blue wool in his arms, letting it ripple down to the floor like a stream of dark water. Wei Wuxian catches her breath at the sight, for not once in her twenty-four years has she seen a cloak as fine as this. 

The outer layer is covered in stars made from pearls and silver beads, so that the cloak might have passed for a tapestry depicting the night sky if it were hung upon the wall; and at its hem is a heavy border nearly as broad as her arm, thickly embroidered with shining seed-pearls and mirrors no bigger than the nail on Wei Wuxian’s little finger. The cloak was clearly made for a woman as tall as Wei Wuxian herself, if not taller; for upon her, the lower hem would strike her ankles, but the embroidery is in such perfect condition that she doubts the cloak has ever come within a zhang of the ground.

“That is because of the under-cloak,” A-Zhan explains, holding up another cloak made of fine white linen. “It is meant to lie between your clothes and the silk lining of the woolen cloak. Put it on.”

Wei Wuxian nods and holds out her arms, so dazed that she does not think to ask whom the cloak belonged to. She has never even touched a garment as fine as this before, let alone worn one; and though A-Zhan removed it from an unused storage chamber, it hardly seems likely that a palace servant—even a high-ranking one, as A-Zhan seems to be—would be permitted to give the cloak away.

“You need not worry. It was made for a woman of the Wen dynasty, many years ago, and it has never been worn since her death,” A-Zhan says, smiling. “There are many things left over from the rule of Wen Ruohan’s forefathers, and most of them are gathering dust in the palace treasury; but this one was gifted to me as a reward when I became A-Yuan’s caretaker.”

“Can you really give it away?” Wei Wuxian mumbles, as A-Zhan covers her stained silk gown with the white under-cloak. “If his Majesty gave it to you as a reward, you ought to treasure it.”

“I could hardly wear it myself, Wei-guniang,” he says; and the light in his eyes is like the sun. “I have been called handsome now and then; but I fear I would look ridiculous in the garb of a royal princess.”

Wei Wuxian snorts. “I doubt you could ever look ridiculous.”

“Truly?”

“Yes, truly. I think you would look like a divine princeling even if you wore nothing at all.”

At this, A-Zhan blushes so furiously that Wei Wuxian can feel his fingers burning at the back of her neck. “Forgive me!” she cries, as he does up the clasp of the outer cloak with shaking hands. “I did not mean—oh, what a tongue I have! I only meant that you are peerlessly beautiful, A-Zhan—and that I cannot imagine any trappings of the flesh that could make you look any less than you are.”

Both of them drop their gazes, their cheeks flaming.

“I understand,” A-Zhan says hoarsely. “You need not be embarrassed, guniang. I took it just as you meant it.”

“Then why did you blush so, ah?”

“I blushed because you blushed! I could not help it.”

“Oh, I see. Then do you become so abashed whenever a fair maiden blushes at you?”

“I see no need to converse upon this subject any further,” A-Zhan says, turning his face away to reveal a pair of ears as red as cherries. “Wait here for a moment, and I will go out and call for a sedan chair. You cannot walk back to the outer palace in those silk shoes.”

He bows and runs out into the garden, leaving his oil-cloth umbrella behind; and a minute later, he comes back again, with his dark hair sodden and plastered to his face with the rain.

“The sedan will be here in a moment,” he tells her, as she lifts the hand-stove he sent for and tucks it into a fold of her skirt. “In the meantime, gather your things. Should I wake A-Yuan, so that he can bid you goodbye?”

“No, you mustn’t. Let him sleep.”

But she leaves her paper boats behind for Yuan’er, along with the bag of osmanthus cakes she took from the xiunu’s waiting hall, and then she goes out onto the porch to wait for the sedan with A-Zhan. It arrives in short order, carried by six manservants dressed in thick blue robes; and after Wei Wuxian bids A-Zhan goodbye, she climbs into the curtained sedan chair and holds her breath as the porters start towards the gate that leads to the outer palace.

“Wait!” she cries out, as the porter at the front of the line reaches out to unlock it. “Turn back! There is something more I must say to A-Zhan before I go.”

The chair shakes beneath her, as if one of the porters had stumbled on the wet ground before regaining his footing; and then it turns around and returns to A-Yuan’s palace, where she finds A-Zhan standing at the door with a queer lost look on his face.

“A-Zhan!” Wei Wuxian shouts, springing out of the sedan and up the steps towards him. “Take this!”

She reaches up and pulls one of the zanzi from her hair—the one topped with the pink jade butterfly, which had so enchanted Yuan’er when the three of them had luncheon together—and drops it into A-Zhan’s outstretched hands.

“Here,” she says breathlessly. “If you—there will be a palace holiday a fortnight from now, for the Duanwu festival, and I know that the palace staff are given three days’ leave for the celebration. If you are willing, present yourself at Lotus Pier with this hairpin, and tell my uncle that you have come to see his yang daughter, Wei Ying.”

A-Zhan stares at her, overcome.

“I—but the selection, and you—”

“I have no wish to marry his Majesty!” she exclaims. “I am sure he is a good man—but I have no desire to be an Empress, and if you would not face trouble for courting one of his bridal candidates—”

“No,” A-Zhan says softly, closing his fist about the butterfly’s wings. “No, I would not. Not at all.”

“—but if you would rather not,” Wei Wuxian says, lowering her voice so that the servants cannot hear, “then take my hairpin as a gift for A-Yuan. I doubt I will ever see him again; so let him have this yudie as a match for his little paper one, to remember me by.”

With that, she turns and jumps back into the sedan, too petrified by her own daring to look back at him as she goes. But when the porters carry her to the gate, she lifts the silken curtain in the window and squints through the falling rain, eager for a last look at A-Zhan; and to her delight, she finds him staring reverently down at her zanzi as if he had never beheld something so lovely before.

When he sees her looking out of the sedan, he lifts the jade butterfly to his lips and presses a gentle kiss to the curve of its right wing.

Wei Wuxian drops the curtain, blushing, and sets off for the outer palace with her heart full of sunshine.

Chapter Text

Much to Wei Wuxian’s relief, her journey back to the waiting chamber goes as smoothly as one could wish.

No one crosses their path on the way, for most of the staff have retreated indoors to avoid the rain. Wei Wuxian is obliged to keep the sedan curtains closed, lest she ruin the cloak A-Zhan gifted to her: and though she would have liked to ask the porters about him on the way to the outer palace, they seem reluctant to speak to her—save to ask if she is cold, and whether Wei Wuxian’s little hand stove is still burning. 

Upon hearing her answer (namely, that the stove is alight, and that Wei Wuxian herself is wonderfully warm in the safety of the carriage) the porters say nothing further until they ascend the stairs below the waiting chamber and escort her to the door.

“Good luck,” the youngest porter chirps, as Wei Wuxian slips through it. 

She had not expected to re-enter the waiting room without being noticed. Wei Wuxian has been gone for hours, and the momos must have noticed her absence shortly after she disappeared: but to her surprise, she finds the waiting-chamber just as peaceful as it was when she left it. A-Shuai is lounging on a divan by the window, half-way through a game of weiqi with the young mistress of the Qin estate; and Nie Zonghui—a high-ranking lady of the Nie clan, and tangjie to Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang—is eating her way through a steaming dish of eight-jeweled rice in the corner. 

The other xiunu are similarly engrossed in tea and conversation: and when Wei Wuxian closes the door behind her, Li Shuai drops one of her checkers and calls out in welcome.

“Shijie!” she exclaims, bouncing to her feet. “Come sit down. You’ll never guess what’s happened.”

Wei Wuxian gulps and allows Li Shuai to usher her to a chair. “Aiyah, don’t draw things out,” she says wryly. “I already know. The momo’s going to report me to Aunt Yu, isn’t she?”

Qin-guniang shakes her head. “That momo hasn’t been back here since you left,” she says. “We waited for an hour for someone to come, and then Luo Qingyang called for a maid and asked her when Huangshang would be ready for us, but—”

“But apparently, His Majesty’s made up his mind not to attend the selection at all!” Li Shuai interrupts, determined not to let Qin Su steal her thunder. “Her Highness and the Grand Prince sent people to reason with him, but the guards at the Palace of Earthly Tranquility wouldn’t let them in.”

“His Majesty doesn’t want to marry,” Nie Zonghui says patiently: not for the first time, judging by the weary note in her voice. “It would be easier to drag a mule into battle than persuade Huangshang to act against his wishes. In truth, I’m surprised that he let the court look for bridal candidates at all.”

Wei Wuxian quirks an eyebrow at her. “What are you doing here, then?”

“I’m just here to make up the numbers. The Grand Prince said that the court would be made to look like a band of fools if they couldn’t even find a dozen girls who fit Huangshang’s requirements. But there were only eleven of you in the end, so Mingjue-di suggested that I come as the twelfth.”

 “But isn’t Huangshang a bit too young to be considered as a prospective suitor for you?” Li Shuai asks, blinking.

“Li-guniang is being excessively polite. Huangshang is a great deal too young for me—he’s only twenty-two, and I was thirty-one on my last birthday. By all rights, I ought not to be here,” Nie Zonghui explains, before spotting the eager glint in A-Shuai’s eyes and scooping out a portion of rice for her to taste. “But it’s not every day that one can visit the palace. Her Highness’s cooks make the best eight-jeweled rice I’ve ever tasted, so I thought I might as well attend the selection and have dinner with Mingjue-di and the Grand Princess afterward.”

With that, Nie Zonghui returns her attention to her dessert: but then she goes utterly still, her gaze fixed on the trailing hem of Wei Wuxian’s gown.

“Where did you get that cloak, Wei-guniang?”

“One of the palace servants gave it to me,” Wei Wuxian answers, blushing. “I went exploring, and I was nearly caught in the rain—so he asked the kitchen staff to send me a meal and gave me this to keep me warm.”

“A palace servant,” Nie Zonghui repeats slowly. “From the rear palace?”

And then, when Wei Wuxian nods: “What did he look like?”

At this, Wei Wuxian feels the flush on her cheeks creeping down to her neck. “He was very handsome,” she mumbles. “He was dressed all in white, and he had the kindest eyes I’ve ever seen.”

Nie Zonghui stares at her for a moment longer, looking as if she could not fathom why Wei Wuxian—who was brought up as a noblewoman, for all her common lineage—might be so smitten by the beauty of a palace servant; but then she only hums and withdraws to the retiring room next door, taking her babaofan along with her.

A split-second later, Wei Wuxian and the other girls hear Nie Zonghui howling with laughter.

“What’s gotten into her?” Li Shuai mutters. “Is it really so funny that you’d like a commoner?”

“Do you like him?” Qin Su says incredulously. “You— really, shimei?”

“I’m a commoner myself,” Wei Wuxian protests, taking refuge behind a table. “Why wouldn’t I like a commoner?”

“It depends on what her uncle would say about it,” says one of the other girls. “He’s always spoiled you, hasn’t he? And his heart nearly broke when he let Jin-shao-furen marry Jin Zixuan, so perhaps he wouldn’t mind if you took a ruzhui husband.”

Qin Su lifts her eyebrows. “Her Aunt Yu would, though. And if she heard that you wanted to marry a commoner, when you could have been Huangshang’s bride if you only tried to please him…”

“What do you think, Luo-shijie?” Li Shuai appeals, turning to a hunched figure sitting by the window. 

It seemed that the aforementioned Luo-shijie—another of Wei Wuxian’s junior sisters from the girls’ academy—had not spoken for some time, for she spent the afternoon losing against herself at xiangqi and devastating a dish of sweet maqiu between moves.

“Think about what?” she asks blankly, before hissing as Li Shuai moves one of her cannon pieces and replaces it with a chariot. “Let that alone. My strategy—”

“You’re going to lose, shijie. But never mind that—our Xian-shijie is in love!”

“In love?” Luo Qingyang repeats, squinting at Wei Wuxian. “With whom?”

“With a palace servant,” Li Shuai despairs. “She ran away and met him in one of the inner courtyards right after we all arrived. Haven’t you been listening?”

“Not at all,” Luo Qingyang says cheerfully. “But shijie has my blessing, either way—she’s wealthy enough for the both of them, and no husband would dare mistreat her with that foster brother of hers about. Is the man very handsome, shijie?”

Wei Wuxian thinks for a moment. “Do you know this year’s Ranking of Young Masters?”

“Of course,” Qin Su says, confused. “His Majesty used to be the first, and your jiefu was the second before he married your sister—but Jiang Wanyin took first place this year, now that those two are off the list.”

“I’ve never seen Huangshang before, so we won’t speak of him,” Wei Wuxian says slowly, “but I do know Jin Zixuan and Jiang Cheng, and they don’t come close to matching A-Zhan’s looks.”

But those don’t matter very much, she thinks, nearly melting on the spot at the memory of him. It is his very soul that is lovely—and since he has that, I would adore him just as much if he were no more handsome than a fish.

Li Shuai buries her face in her sleeves to stifle her giggles. Beside her, Luo Qingyang opens her mouth—perhaps to ask Wei Wuxian why a man she so admired had never tried to earn an official position, despite being of age to do so—but before she can speak, a bellow echoes down one of the corridors on the west side of the buiding.

“Wangji!” someone shouts, followed by a soft reproach—a woman’s—and a loud thud as something crashes to the floor. “Do you want to kill your old uncle? Unfilial child—you cannot be serious! Twenty years devoted to your upbringing, and this is the thanks I receive?”

“Rui-wang dianxia, quell your anger!” The trembling voice of a manservant, this time. “Forgive this servant, but the xiunu’s waiting hall is not far away. You and Huangshang are sure to be overheard if you remain here.”

“Let us take this discussion elsewhere,” says the woman. “Come, Imperial Brother. We will have someone fetch the young ladies two ke from now; but until then, I think we must confer with Shufu.”

In the waiting chamber, Wei Wuxian and the rest of the xiunu exchange bewildered glances.

“I didn’t think His Majesty was going to come out at all,” Qin Su mutters. “That was him just now, wasn’t it? He spent all afternoon locked up in the Kunning Gong, so why—?”

“Nie-guniang did say that Huangshang was made to hold this selection against his will,” Li Shuai reminds them. “Maybe he asked Rui-wang to have us all sent home.”

The girls return to their seats after that, for Rui-wang dianxia and the Grand Princess have both moved out of earshot and taken the emperor with them. According to Zeming zhang-gongzhu, the xiunu will be summoned before the emperor in less than an hour; and until then, there will be nothing for Wei Wuxian and her shijiemei to do but wait.

The two ke pass excruciatingly slowly. The girls have lost their stomach for gossip, so puzzled by what they overheard in the hall that they hardly knew what to say afterward; and when the momo finally comes to fetch them, she gasps in dismay at the sight of their rumpled gowns and hair.

“You can’t go before Huangshang like this,” she frets, “though I suppose it was only to be expected, since you’ve been waiting for so long. I’ll call some of her Highness’s maids to make you presentable, and then we’ll go through to the throne room.”

Accordingly, a bevy of maids descends upon the waiting chamber. Some busy themselves with the crumbs on the ladies’ coats, and others with the wrinkles in their silken skirts; and one seizes Wei Wuxian and brushes out the mutong leaves stuck in her hair, scolding at the top of her voice all the while. At last, all of the girls are made ready and ushered out into the hallway—with the lone exception of Nie Zonghui, who remained so still when the maids arrived that none of them noticed her tucked away in the back room—and almost before she knows it, Wei Wuxian finds herself standing before the great double doors to the throne room.

Despite the solemnity of the occasion, the xiunu are admitted with little fanfare. They make their way to the front of the chamber with their eyes fixed upon the ground, so as not to commit the insult of looking the emperor in the face; and when they come to a halt before the throne, Wei Wuxian can see nothing of the man save for two black shoes and the hem of a yellow silk robe.

“Welcome to the palace,” a clear voice says, from somewhere above Wei Wuxian’s head. “Forgive us for the delay, guniangs. The household has been all at odds today; and since the twelve of you have been kind enough to come to the selection, we—as your hosts—ought to have attended you better. You may stand at ease.”

Wei Wuxian’s breath catches in her throat; for though she cannot see the face of the person sitting on the throne, she could tell at once that the voice belonged to a woman.

She raises her head and blinks, stunned: and for good reason, because the golden-clad figure before her is the Grand Princess Zeming, not the emperor.

It was no wonder that the xiunu noticed nothing amiss when they first entered the chamber, for Princess Zeming is both stout and tall: as tall as a man, judging by the span of her shoulders and the size of the white hands folded in her lap—with a bold, handsome face that could have been the envy of anyone from Chang’an to Xibei, man or woman. Wei Wuxian has never seen her equal for beauty, even among the students at Pan-laoshi’s academy: and somehow, even the seven deep small-pox scars on the Grand Princess’s face—one of which had come perilously close to the corner of her left eye—only serve to draw her further still from the trappings of common loveliness. 

Wei Wuxian glances up again before lowering her eyes in embarrassment. Since they arrived, Zeming zhang-gongzhu has been surveying all of the girls in turn; and when she came to Wei Wuxian, her gaze lingered on the dusty hem of her skirt—just visible through the glittering fringe of the cloak A-Zhan gifted to her—for nearly a full minute before she looked away again.

“It is late, so I will not draw out the selection ceremony any longer,” the Grand Princess says at length. "I regret to inform you all that Huangshang will not be joining us. He was called away to attend to an urgent matter, so I will be announcing my imperial brother's choice in his place."

Wei Wuxian winces. What urgent matter? He’s been locked up in the Kunning Gong all day! she thinks indignantly, bitterly offended on behalf of the emperor’s intended bride.  It wouldn't have taken longer than five minutes for His Majesty to hand out the edict, if that!

A covert look at the rest of the xiunu is sufficient to discern that they must feel the same. How did he decide, if he hasn’t even met us? Li Shuai’s cross face seems to say. Did he write our names on slips of paper and then pick one out of a bowl?

But before any of them can speak, the Grand Princess draws a scroll out of her sleeve and passes it to the official standing at her right. 

"The maiden his Majesty has chosen for his empress is Wei Wuxian, yang daughter of the retired Official Jiang,” the official says, his voice quaking. “Wei-guniang, please come forward and receive the ruyi Huangshang has bestowed on you."

For an instant, Wei Wuxian is certain that she misheard him.

It seems to be the only reasonable explanation for hers of all names being the one written on the edict—for what other explanation can there be, when Wei Wuxian is known throughout the capital as a common-born daughter brought up above her station? To date, no man that Jiang-shushu considers respectable has ever tried to pay court to her, while those who did try were second and third sons whose flightiness shocked Aunt Yu into silence when the matchmaker introduced them—so why would the emperor of all people choose to marry Wei Wuxian?

She can bring him no army to strengthen the royal family’s footing, as Nie-jiangjun did for the Grand Princess. Nor can she bring great wealth, or the support of a great family: for the Jiang have been merchants for the last ten generations, and none save for Jiang-shushu and one or two of his uncles have ever served in court. 

But then Wei Wuxian remembers the officials who came to see her at Lotus Pier, and the words her aunt said to her before they parted at the palace gates.

Beauty fades, and even fond feelings dissipate with time. His Majesty has not been raised to think too much of a woman’s appearance, and he will have no time to fall in love with his bride before marrying her, so he must choose based on other merits. When one’s wife is to be the mother of a nation, the husband must judge by her wits and learning, and then by her manners; and you are second to none in the first, and lack only a little in the latter. Whom could he possibly choose but you?

If not for the fact that she was standing before the Grand Princess, Wei Wuxian would have fainted away on the spot.

“Wei-guniang?” she hears the official say, as if from a great distance. “Come forth.”

Wei Wuxian takes a step forward, trembling, and reaches out to take the jade scepter from the official’s hands. She scarcely notices as the servants and the rest of the xiunu kneel down to congratulate her; and then she stands rooted to the floor as A-Shuai and the rest are given congratulatory gifts of their own—ostensibly to honor them for their loyalty to the imperial family, but in truth as a kind of apology for making them wait in the side hall all afternoon.

And with that, the selection ceremony ends. The xiunu are bowed out of the throne room and escorted to a reception hall in the outer palace to reunite with their families; and when Yu-ayi spots the jade ruyi in Wei Wuxian’s hands, she claps her hands to her mouth in delight.

“So Young Mistress Wei is to be our next empress,” Qin Su’s father murmurs, receiving his daughter with a wry smile. “Congratulations, Yu-furen.”

None of the others say a word. Luo Qingyang’s great-aunt looks bitterly disappointed, as does Li Shuai’s uncle; but Aunt Yu is beaming from ear to ear, so giddy at the thought of the future awaiting Wei Wuxian that she nearly falls over when a maid comes to intercept them at the door with a lacquered meal-box in her arms.

“The kitchens sent this for Wei-guniang and Lady Yu to eat on the way home,” she says, her head bowed.

“Thank you,” Wei Wuxian says numbly, taking the box from her.

She does not look inside it until she and Yu-ayi are safely ensconced in their carriage and well on their way to Lotus Pier; but when she opens the the box, she finds a tiny clay-pot of rice and braised mushrooms and a stack of warm shrimp cakes wrapped in a silk kerchief; and below them, a box of the same soft osmanthus cakes she shared with A-Zhan and Prince Yuan.

Wei Wuxian puts her face in her hands and bursts into tears.

Chapter Text

On the morning after she returns to Lotus Pier, Wei Wuxian awakens at half-past chenshi to find the preparations for her wedding already underway. When she descends to the ground floor for breakfast, she stumbles across a seamstress waiting in the receiving hall with a fleet of sewing girls, armed to the teeth with measuring tapes and boxes of fabric samples; and when they catch sight of Wei Wuxian on the stairs, they exclaim in delight before circling her like a bevy of bees clustering about a flower.

“The wedding colors will not wash her out, thank Heaven! And she and his Majesty will not wash each other out when they stand side-by-side, for they do not look alike,” the head seamstress says gleefully, after Yu-ayi comes in to introduce her. “Wei-guniang is dark, and Huangshang is pale; so the wedding-dresses will bring out the sheen of her skin and his Majesty’s mouth and eyes.”

“How soon is the wedding to be?” Yu Ziyuan frets. “Wei Ying does not mind her complexion as well as she should; but her mother’s was better than mine, so if she is given a month or two to prepare behind closed doors, then—”

“No!” the seamstress cries. “The wedding is to take place within the month. Her Highness told me that the date would be announced sometime this afternoon.”

With that, she goes to work at once, holding squares of brocade up to Wei Wuxian’s cheeks and throat to see how well the patterns compliment the lines of her face; and after she has been measured and made to select five fabric samples that the seamstresses declare will suit her future husband as well as herself, Wei Wuxian is finally turned loose and allowed to eat her breakfast.

That day’s morning meal is more elaborate than any breakfast she has had since New Year. There are more side-dishes for her congee than she can count at a glance, and three different types of tea that someone at the palace sent along with the seamstresses—but for some reason, all the life seems to have gone out of the food. 

Even Wang-bomu’s pan-fried soup dumplings (Wei Wuxian’s favorite, which Auntie Wang prepared in celebration of her engagement) taste like ash in her mouth. She hardly notices the fragrance of the pork, or the tang of Wang-bomu’s marinated ginger; and when visitors begin arriving at the estate, halfway through the morning, she forgets to be mindful of her guests as soon as she finishes greeting them.

Wei Wuxian could perhaps be forgiven for this, since none of them have anything remotely memorable to say. Some are her married friends from Pan-laoshi’s academy, and some are well-wishers from among Uncle Jiang’s trading connections; and others still are complete strangers, determined to make their families known to the future Empress before her altered status complicates their prospects of forging an acquaintance.

“Smile, Xianxian,” A-Jie’s encouraging voice whispers, late in the afternoon. “Are you thirsty? I’ll go fetch you a drink of water.”

Wei Wuxian thanks her, and makes an effort to smile at the next couple who comes to pay their respects to her: but the hours grind upon her nerves as they go by, so that she finds herself in tears when she retreats to her bedroom that evening.

No one comes to the estate on the following day, much to her relief. Jiang Yanli tells her that the emperor has forbidden all uninvited visits to Lotus Pier, save those concerning wedding business; and he also sent Jiang-shushu a box of lotus-shaped invitation tokens made of gilded sandalwood, to be delivered to any guests whom the household wished to invite.

He had also dispatched a small fleet of guards to keep watch over Lotus Pier’s gates, with the admonition to keep all would-be visitors out save for those with one of the lotus tokens. 

“We won’t be disturbed again until after you’re married,” Jiang Yanli says tenderly, stroking Wei Wuxian’s rumpled hair. “And you’ll be safe at the palace by then, so there’s nothing for you to worry about.”

Jiang Yanli seems to take it for granted that Wei Wuxian is only worried about uninvited visitors; and if her bridegroom were anyone else, perhaps she would have been right. 

If it were someone else, I could have told her, Wei Wuxian thinks dismally, as her sister opens the curtains. But my bridegroom is the Emperor; so what good would it do?

The Emperor decreed the marriage, so the marriage must be. And since that is the case, what would be the point of telling Jiang Yanli that she does not want to marry him?

It was not only that the marriage decree had ensured that she could never marry A-Zhan. She had loved A-Zhan at first sight, in a way—loved him and liked him and above all known him, so well that she was astounded at the swiftness with which his character had revealed itself to her. She had gifted him her butterfly zan, and all but implored him to come to Lotus Pier to propose; she had wanted to marry him, and felt certain that he would begin the betrothal rites if Uncle agreed to it. 

But Wei Wuxian has lived twenty-four years without him; and if he had chosen not to come for her, she would have found some way to live the rest of her life just as happily.

But this—

She had been prepared to congratulate the winner of the xiunu selection: even to think that she was lucky, in a way. If the Emperor’s character hold true to its reputation, he will make a better husband than any other bachelor in the capital; so why was he so determined to choose her, when one of the other girls might have been a better wife to him? If he was concerned with the lineage of his sons, the woman best-suited for the role was Nie Zonghui; and if he wanted an Empress wise in the ways of the court, he ought to have chosen Qin Su.

But then again, the Emperor had considerations of his own, as Aunt Yu explained to her on their journey back from the palace. Nie Zonghui would have made a reluctant bride, and the prospect of obtaining a brood of half-Nie princes—which the Emperor is nearly assured either way, due to his sister’s marriage to the younger Nie-jiangjun—would not have been worth the loss of her talents as a general. Qin Su would not have been invited at all if more xiunu were eligible for the selection, due to her father’s closeness with Jin Guangshan; and despite the ambitions of Li Shuai’s jiufu, the Emperor’s people must have ferreted out the truth about her and Yu Zhenhong more than a month ago.

In Wei Wuxian, the Emperor will obtain a scholar-bride who can be a good help-meet to him, and be entrusted with the care of his children; but it is only the scholar that he wants, and not the muddy-skirted river girl running wild along the piers of Lufeng.

Inexplicably, she was certain that A-Zhan would have wanted that girl—the unruly ward of the Jiang estate, who vexed all those she loved at least as well as she delighted them—-to walk beside him for the rest of his life; and at the reminder of A-Zhan’s wondering gaze, lingering on the stained skirt of her selection dress without a hint of censure, she nearly bursts into tears again for the third time in the last three days.

*     *     *

Amid the rush and bustle that fills the next week at the Jiang estate, Wei Wuxian’s melancholy goes entirely unnoticed. 

Her aunt and uncle are far too preoccupied with the wedding-work to pay much mind to her: and A-Jie returned to the Jinlintai after the betrothal decree was delivered, since small A-Ling has already been without her for too long. As for Jiang Cheng, he was opposed to Wei Wuxian’s becoming a xiunu from the first; but he has been so busy at the imperial academy that the two of them have hardly had time to speak since before her engagement was decided.

“You will have to work thrice as hard now that Wei Ying is to be the Empress,” Aunt Yu had declared, when she drove Jiang Cheng out to catch the ferry on the first day after the selection. “Whatever progress you make, your fellows should never have cause to believe that your rewards might be due to your connection to her. Sleep there if you must, A-Cheng; and if you don’t lead the class on next week’s examinations, don’t bother coming home!”

Jiang Cheng departed in haste, afraid that his mother would make him sleep at the academy if a single scholar surpassed him on the practice examinations: and since the examinations are not due to take place for another fortnight, he has not been home since.

And so, Wei Wuxian spends most of her days alone, her solitude broken only by visits from Li Shuai and Luo Qingyang.

“Did you tell your uncle to invite us to the wedding?” Li Shuai asks her at the third visit, greatly puzzled. “By rights, neither Qingyang nor I should have been asked, even if you are our shijie.”

“It wasn’t Uncle,” Wei Wuxian explains. “The palace sent a letter asking whom I wanted to invite; and I thought you and Mianmian would like to come, so I put your names on the list.”

Mianmian squints at her. “That was kind of you,” she says slowly, “but you know that imperial weddings are different, don’t you?”

“Different? How do you mean?”

“I mean that the Jiang family’s standing isn’t high enough for your uncle to make demands concerning the wedding,” Mianmian says bluntly. “No one has crowned a first Empress from a merchant clan in at least three hundred years. In a situation like this, the Jiang and Yu should have been issued an invitation for clan members and told not to invite anyone else, let alone unmarried girls like me and A-Shuai.”

“Things have been different since the late Emperor was crowned,” Wei Wuxian protests. “His Majesty’s line descends from a family of ascetics. Why should he forbid my friends from coming to our wedding?”

“I suppose there’s no reason why,” Li Shuai admits, after a beat of silence. “But don’t you think he’s being oddly attentive, Shijie?”

Wei Wuxian sighs. “I think he’s being considerate. And he began all this by issuing me a marriage decree by proxy, so it’s more than high time.”

A-Shuai shrieks in mingled glee and reproof; and with that, she seizes Mianmian by the arm and runs downstairs laughing, calling out to Wang-bomu for snacks as she goes.

*     *     *

After Mianmian and Li Shuai take their leave, Wei Wuxian does not go to bed until past chou hour.

The thought of the Emperor’s attentiveness has unsettled her, somewhat. In fact, she would have been comforted to find that the Emperor was indifferent to her—for heretofore, she has never had to reckon with a man whom she could not put aside. The Emperor is no callow young master who could be dissuaded by a tactful letter from Jiang-shushu, or silenced by the fear that Aunt Yu would spread the truth of some past indiscretion if he did not let her be; so what delight could Wei Wuxian possibly find in his pursuit, now that her choice in the matter has been taken from her?

She has been assured of the Emperor’s good character a thousand times since the day of the selection; but he had ordered, and not asked, so Wei Wuxian doubts that she will ever learn to appreciate it.

“This won’t do,” she mutters to herself at zishi, after tossing and turning under her quilt for nearly half a shichen. “If I don’t go out for a breath of air, I’ll go mad.”

Wei Wuxian slips out of bed and steals across her room, tiptoeing in stocking-feet to keep from waking the servants on the floor below. She takes A-Zhan’s blue cloak along with her, for the weather is cool for midsummer; but before she reaches the door, she hears a faint tap-tapping at the shuttered window.

Wei Wuxian freezes and pricks up her ears.

As she stands listening, the sound comes again—a soft pit-pat, pit-pat—and the worry goes out of her heart, for Wei Wuxian has only ever had one nightly visitor since she came to live at the Jiang-fu: a little brown night-hawk with squinting eyes, which labors under the delusion that its choice prey of moths and water-beetles can be found in Wei Wuxian’s bedroom.

Ordinarily, she would have kept her window shuttered and let the little creature knock away; but despite herself, Wei Wuxian cannot bear to ignore it tonight. It rarely comes to her window for food—and even that is her fault, she thinks, for she and Jiang Yanli used to feed it grubs when it was a chick in the quassia tree Wei Wuxian climbed as a child—and if she does not greet it now, perhaps she will never have the chance to see the little night-hawk again.

She unfastens the shutters and falls back, gasping, for the thing at her window had not been the night-hawk after all. 

“You!” she wheezes, as A-Zhan’s moon-bright face pops up over the windowsill. “A-Zhan, you—what are you doing here?”

But she is glad to see him. She was suffused with joy at the sight of him, though this meeting between them would doom them both if it were ever discovered; and at the reminder, she looks back over her shoulder and tries to coax A-Zhan over the sill.

“Hurry!” she implores, before starting in terror as A-Zhan clutches at the shutters. “No—don’t fall!”

And then, bemusedly:

“What in heaven’s name are you standing on?”

She looks down past A-Zhan’s waist, and blinks at the battered gardener’s ladder holding him aloft; and then she suppresses a second gasp of shock, for the person holding the ladder from below is none other than Nie Zonghui.

“You!” she cries again. “What are you doing here, General?”

“Escorting the biggest fool in the Empire,” Nie Zonghui hisses back: but her words bely her, for her face is etched with a splitting grin that shows every one of her teeth. “Here is your betrothed to see you, niangniang.”

Wei Wuxian stares at her.

Nie Zonghui has brought A-Zhan; but her tie to him cannot be called a betrothal in any sense of the word, because all Wei Wuxian had done was gift him a zanzi and invite him to propose on his next day off. And Wei Wuxian is betrothed, to the Emperor—Nie Zonghui even called her niangniang in anticipation of her coronation as Empress, so why—?

The realization washes over her by degrees, like an ocean inching forward with the tide: and at last, she understands that the A-Zhan she knew was not A-Zhan at all.

Or perhaps—not only A-Zhan.

“You’re the Emperor?” she whispers, gazing into A-Zhan’s eyes. “It was really you, all along?”

A-Zhan ducks his head and nods, blushing.

“I did not mean to deceive you,” he says hurriedly. “I pretended to be Yuan’er’s caretaker at first, since you caught me by surprise; and then you stayed with us for luncheon, and I knew…”

He looks up at Wei Wuxian in supplication, his great dark eyes shining in the moonlight reflected on his hair. 

“I wanted it to be you from the moment you crossed the threshold of the Jinggong; but you told me that you had no wish to become the Empress, so I decided to send you back with the rest of the xiunu. But then you gave me your zanzi as you left, and I hoped—”

The next sound Wei Wuxian makes is half a sob and half laughter. “I meant it, A-Zhan. Truly. But why didn’t you tell me after I gave you my butterfly?”

A-Zhan’s answer takes her by surprise. “Because there was no time.”

“Before the selection ceremony, you mean?”

He hesitates.

“No. There were certain arrangements that had to be set in motion as soon as I set my heart upon you, and they could not be delayed,” he says softly. “But is it not still true that you have no desire to be my Empress, even though it would suit you to be my wife?”

Wei Wuxian nods. “But you needn’t worry about that,” she says beseechingly, blinking back tears. “Of course I wish you had told me earlier—for the thing that hurt me most was the fact that I couldn’t choose you, don’t you see? But now you’re here, and I did choose you—before you chose me, even! 

“So I will be happy, Empress or not; because you were the one I wanted all along.”

In later years, she would never recall which of them had moved first. But she remembered that Nie Zonghui had yelped in shock and seized the ladder to keep it from slipping as A-Zhan sprang towards her: and that for a long while, neither she nor her beloved could think of anything at all but the welcome coolness of the night about them and the warmth of A-Zhan’s lips upon hers.

“If I changed my mind,” Wei Wuxian whispers, as he releases her, “would you have let me go?”

A-Zhan nods. “I would.”

“And you—you always meant to tell me before the wedding, didn’t you?”

His ears flush.

“En. I thought you must have realized by the time you returned home after the selection, but then one of A-Jie’s maids spoke with a biaomei at the Old Madam Yu’s estate and realized that you were unhappy about the marriage, so I guessed—”

“I don’t understand,” Wei Wuxian says, frowning. “How could I have realized?”

“The cloak I gave you,” murmurs A-Zhan. “I told you it was made for a Wen princess, but it was more than that. My mother was one of the last princesses born before my father overthrew Wen Ruohan, though few know of it outside the palace. She fled the imperial city after Wen Ruohan promised her in marriage to a warlord from the east; and it was later reported that she had died, to cover up the shame of her running away. But she lived, and met my father; and Fuhuang had that cloak made for her as a gift when I was born.”

“So then—?”

“She wore it every winter until the year she died. Your uncle must have seen it countless times—for I met him often as part of my mother’s retinue, until he retired to tend your elder sister through her illness—so I was sure he would tell you that very evening.”

Blinking, Wei Wuxian recalls the way Jiang-shushu looked at her when he asked where her fine new cloak had come from. He had stared as if he could hardly believe his eyes; and when she said that the servants had wanted her to keep warm after her walk in the rain, he nearly burst out laughing.

“This is his fault as well as yours, then,” she says hotly, as A-Zhan begins to laugh. “He must have thought you were too shy to explain how much the cloak meant to you!”

His eyes sparkle. “He was correct on that count, I fear. After all, I gave it to you before I knew you felt the same.”

“I do feel the same,” says Wei Wuxian, laughing in mingled joy and indignation. “And I ought to punish you for making me suffer, so—”

A-Zhan’s face falls so quickly that Wei Wuxian nearly melts on the spot. “Punish?”

“Yes, punish. You’ve done wrong, sweetheart, and you made me cry more in this last week than I’ve cried in all my life: so I’ll punish you so well that you’ll never forget it.” 

She makes good on her threat a split-second later: and when she surfaces, after what must have been at least a full ke, she is devoutly thankful that Nie Zonghui heard nothing that passed in the meantime—or, perhaps, that she pretended not to hear.

“Mercy, mercy!” A-Zhan pleads, as she releases him—with his white mo’e all askew, and a face so red that she could have fried an egg on it. “What if we wake someone?”

“We all sleep like logs here, my Lan Zhan. No one’s going to hear.”

At this, he blushes harder than ever.  “What?”

“You called me by name,” he says, ducking his head. “Will you say it again—Wei Ying?”

She obeys, thrilling to the tips of her fingers, and devotes herself to tormenting her beloved with renewed vigor: but their tryst is cut short in less than a minute, when Nie Zonghui finally gives up her pretense of deafness and swarms up the ladder after Lan Zhan.

“Come down this instant, or I’ll send my hawk to his highness Rui-wang and have him fetch you,” she hisses, as her head appears in Wei Wuxian’s window. “For heaven’s sake, Huangshang! You’ll ruin her reputation if anyone finds you here, betrothed or not!”

At the reminder of Wei Wuxian’s reputation, Lan Zhan extracts himself from her arms and bounds over to the ladder in a heartbeat; but he kisses her hands before he descends, vowing to return to her side that very afternoon.

“Will you wait for me?” he says tenderly, before he climbs down. “I shall stay for as long as you want me, and leave only when you tell me to go.”

Wei Wuxian grins. “Then perhaps the good general should send word to Rui-wang dianxia,” she tells him, “for he should know that you mean to take up residence at the Jiang-fu.”

Lan Zhan gazes up at her with his whole heart in his eyes, reaching out as if to embrace her once again: but then he turns, slithering down the ladder with red-tipped ears, and melts into the night after Nie Zonghui like a ghost.

Wei Wuxian leaves the window open, and goes to bed smiling.