Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s an odd girl at the back of the throng. 

To the casual eye, she looks completely average. She wears the same soft cream and dull yellow uniform of the other girls around her. She is small and slight, and her cheeks are dotted with freckles. Among the other palace girls surrounding her, she blends in perfectly. She could be any girl from any far-flung village of Li. 

The other girls around her, though, fidget. They glance nervously around the grand office and wonder aloud why they’ve been summoned. The braver ones gawk openly at the twisting dragons carved into the wooden pillars. Others look nervously over the desk in the center of the room, eyeing the brush and expensive paper stacked atop it. Others yet point at the vase by the desk holding a long, yet-blooming bough of rhododendron. 

The girl in the back, though—she does not gawk or gape or crane her head. Her back is straight as an arrow, and she faces forward, unmoving. Still as a statue. 

But her eyes—they are what catch his attention. They are what draw him in. 

In her eyes, there is no wide curiosity, no glazed shine of fear. They are dark as the night sky, but something behind them glints---ticking, analytical, and in constant motion.

He watches as her eyes dart first to those same dragons, following their twists up, up, into the grand, high ceiling. They run over the polished wood of his desk and the papers stacked atop it. When her eyes find the bough of rhododendron, blushing pink in the afternoon sunlight, her eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. He wouldn’t have noticed if he was not already staring in rapt attention. 

All eyes fall to him as he strolls out from behind the screen, pompous flare and masked sparkle at full blast. Most of the crowd lights up in curiosity and wonder. A few of the boldest girls frantically tap their friends’ shoulders, lean in, whisper a false name in their ear. 

“I’m sorry to gather you all here on short notice,” he says, voice airy and crisp as a summer’s breeze. Most of the girls are blushing already, clinging to every word—but that girl, in the back, looks less than impressed. 

Interesting. 

Even when he turns his gaze to the paper and brush in front of him, he can feel that pull of her gaze above all the others, tracing his movements. It follows the brush in his fingers from the inkstone to the paper before him as he dashes a few quick strokes, and her eyes move to his hand as he holds it aloft. 

She freezes, her eyes widen, and the trap springs. 

Got you, Jinshi thinks. 

A few days after he moves the girl into the Jade Pavilion, Jinshi receives a gift of several baozi, freshly steamed, from a middle-ranking officer Jinshi sometimes sees in the training grounds. The buns are delivered in a fine, lacquered box by a bemused, flustered laundry girl knocking on his office door. 

“A-and he sent this, too,” the servant stammers, producing a single crimson rose from the folds of her robes. 

Are roses even in season this late in the year? Jinshi thinks to himself, but he accepts it with his best smile. “I’ll see to it that these gifts are taken care of,” he purrs. “Thank you for the delivery.” 

“O-of course, you too sir thankyouokaybye,” the girl stutters, and runs off. 

Once he’s inside his office, Jinshi scowls and drops the box on his desk with an unceremonious thud next to a pile of paperwork. The noise catches Gaoshun’s attention, who looks up from his own work. 

“Another gift, sir?” 

“Another gift,” Jinshi confirms, slumping in his chair. He tosses the rose next to the box, too, and a few petals fall off and scatter at the impact. “Care to make a bet that this one’s been tampered with, too?”

“I wouldn’t bet against it.” 

“You’d think Officer Zhou would have better things to do than this.” Jinshi shuts his eyes against the headache building in his temples. Three gifts this month already, and the moon hasn’t even begun to wane yet. “Especially given the poisoning incident in the village happened to men under his command.”

“You’d hope,” Gaoshun sighs. 

Eyes still closed, Jinshi blindly reaches for his desk and fumbles around until his hand finds the stack of paperwork he still needs to look through today. He opens his eyes to a proposal for raising the legal drinking age to twenty. 

Better not let that one pass, he thinks to himself—a drink sounds nice right about now, and if he had to wait another two years before he was allowed to touch the stuff...well, he doesn’t want to think about it. 

He reaches for the next paper. It’s a letter of some kind. Jinshi opens the envelope and sees exactly three key words—‘imperial brother’, ‘eligible daughter’, and ‘potential consort’---before he makes a noise of disgust and rips the letter up. 

“You know you can’t keep avoiding that,” Gaoshun chides. 

“I’ve gotten this far, haven’t I?” Jinshi protests, sweeping the scraps of paper aside. 

“The court won’t wait forever.”

“And most of the court doesn’t even know I’m here. Officially, I’m holed up in some dark room of the palace, miserably wiling my days away in solitude.”

“Lord Shishou knows,” Gaoshun reminds him, nodding to the paper scraps in front of him. “And I doubt he’ll let up on the marriage inquiries anytime soon.”

Absolutely horrible, Jinshi thinks to himself with a pout. The stack of paperwork on his desk looms larger than ever, and he cannot bring himself to take another paper from it. Who knows what horrors might be on the next one? Jinshi eyes the lacquered box of baozi on his desk with suspicion. It smells heavenly, too, which is the worst part. Who knows what medicinal horrors it may contain, and yet it’s so appetizing. 

Suddenly, Jinshi gets an idea. 

“Where are you going, sir?” Gaoshun asks once Jinshi is already halfway across the room, the box tucked under one arm. 

“I think it’s time I stretched my legs,” Jinshi replies. “And the Jade Pavilion needs a visit, don’t you think?”

He has to see how that strange girl is settling in, after all. 

The ladies-in-waiting of the Jade Pavilion watch from behind the curtain with bated breath. At his request and Gyokuyou’s nod of consent, Hongniang scurries off. 

The girl enters a few minutes later, head bowed. 

“You called for me?” she asks from behind her sleeves. 

“Yes—or rather, he did,” Lady Gyokuyou replies, gesturing to Jinshi. 

Jinshi puts on his best, sparkliest smile. “I have a request for you,” he purrs. With most people, the prospect of a ‘request’—a personal request, a chance to interact directly with the beautiful eunuch of the rear palace—is an exciting prospect. Most trip over themselves at the chance, or blush, or fluster. 

The girl does none of these things. Instead, her eyes narrow behind her sleeves, and when she rises from her bow, her face is curled into an open, obvious grimace. 

Jinshi’s eyes narrow as well. What the hell? Aren’t people supposed to like him better with the sparkle? Is there something on his face?Just as a test, Jinshi flashes a smile towards the three ladies-in-waiting watching from the sidelines. Ailan squeals, Guiyuan hides her eyes, and Yinghua swoons. Yep, still got it. 

Something must be wrong with this one, then. 

“What request do you have of me, sir?” The girl asks, completely unfazed and looking a little…is that disgust, on her face? No, there’s definitely something wrong with her. 

“I received these from one of the military officers in the outer palace,” Jinshi explains, placing the box of baozi on the table. “Would you be able to taste them for me?”

Still eyeing him with suspicion (seriously, is there something wrong with his face today?), the girl steps forward rather like a cautious, feral cat. She kneels at the table, takes one of the buns, and pulls it apart. Steam rises from the filling, and she gives it a cautious sniff. 

“This contains an aphrodisiac,” she declares immediately. 

Jinshi cocks an eyebrow. “You can tell without eating it?”

Seemingly pretending that she did not hear him, the girl dusts herself off and stands. “It won’t harm you,” she assures. “Take them home and enjoy them.” 

Jinshi chuckles bitterly. “I doubt I could, knowing who gave them to me.” 

“Indeed,” the girl replies. She sounds almost bored. “I think you might have a visitor this evening.” 

Jinshi grimaces. He suspects as much as well. 

The girl turns to leave, with that same disinterested look in her eyes, and suddenly Jinshi cannot bear to see her go. 

“One more thing,” he says, before she dismisses herself. The girl grimaces but turns back towards him. 

“How could I be of assistance, sir?” She asks, though she sounds less than enthused. 

Who are you? He wants to ask. How did you know it was an aphrodisiac just by the smell? That knowledge could be useful to him, and he’s more than a little jealous it comes to her so easily. 

Instead, what comes out of his mouth is, “A military battalion sent to quash barbarians outside the capital were poisoned.” Out of the corner of his eye, Gyokuyou sits up a little straighter, eagerly awaiting the news from outside. 

“Poisoned?” The girl repeats. The glint in her eyes is suddenly brighter. “Intentionally?” 

“We suspect as much,” Jinshi replies, and begins to explain. 

Miraculously, the girl has answers for that, too---though she plucks a flower from the rhododendron bough in Gyokuyou’s rooms and does not inform them it’s poison until after she has chewed and swallowed it. 

It cannot be denied: Gyokuyou’s new poison tester is an odd one. 

“Just who are you?” Jinshi wonders aloud, hours later. In his hands are the papers detailing the girl’s records. According to them, she came to the palace last winter. Assigned to the laundry division. Her contacts list three men, presumably her brothers—though, since commoners have no last names, there is no easy way for him to confirm that.

“Don’t you think you should give it a rest, sir?” Gaoshun asks, eyeing the stack of papers still piled high on his desk. 

“She could be useful,” Jinshi protests, flipping through the records. She mentioned being an apothecary, he remembers, though it’s not as if previous occupations are listed on these records. “She’s more versed in poisons than I expected.”

“And she’s already solved the issue of Gyokuyou’s vulnerability,” Gaoshun replies. 

“I’m half-tempted to transfer her over to me instead, if she can tell what food’s been tampered with that easily.” Jinshi reaches for his teacup, still scanning over her records. There’s pitifully little information on her. 

Jinshi runs through what he already knows about her. Apothecary, she said. Pleasure district. She made an aphrodisiac upon his request like it was nothing—

And she cringed, when he snuck up behind her and ran his hands through her hair and purred his thanks in her ear for the favor. 

Weird. 

The medicine she made for him—‘chocolate’, she called it—still sits untouched in the pocket of his robes. Another test passed. Her reaction to the opportunity is also worth making a note of. His normal methods don’t work, but the bribe of medicine does. If he needs a favor done, then, that’s how he’ll go about it. 

Granting her access to medicine when he wants her to do something isn’t a price he minds paying, he thinks, and brings the teacup to his lips—

And it’s too sweet.

“Sir?” Gaoshun rises from his seat as Jinshi spits the tea out into the vase with the rhododendron. 

“Who sent that tea?” he asks, wiping his mouth. He doesn’t think he swallowed any of it, but sometimes just holding it in his mouth is enough to have an effect. 

“The new servant did, and—oh, no.” 

Jinshi nods. “See to it that she is relocated,” he says, and retreats to his room before anyone can try any funny business. 

Unfortunately, he leaves the girl’s records in his office, and he is unable to look through them in his home. He lays awake in bed past the moon’s zenith, anyway, waiting for the dull warmth and ache of the drug to pass. He’d rather not fall asleep like this—not until it’s out of his system, and especially not until the servant who gave it to him is far, far away from his service. So he lies awake in bed, staring listlessly at the ceiling. The aphrodisiacs she made for him lie on his bedside table, forgotten. It’s not as if there’s anyone he’d like to use them with, anyway. Maybe he’ll give them to his brother. 

“Just who are you?” He asks the empty air. 

The weeks pass. The mysteries around her build. 

There is a bandage wrapped around her left arm. Jinshi thought it to be from a burn or injury, soon to disappear, but it stubbornly remains as the weeks pass into months. It is always a pristine snow-white and expertly wrapped so it doesn’t unravel. 

Her voice and face betray little, but the more he watches her, the more he realizes he can, actually, read her. He just needs to pay attention. 

The twitch of the lips, a humorless laugh woven into her voice—these are all subtle glimpses of what’s going on in her head. Less subtly, she takes to looking at him like a worm whenever he flashes his sparkliest smile at her. Bribes of medicine work on her in the way that a simple smile works on most others. The bribes of medicine take a few more pulled strings, yes, but it’s nice not to sell himself with a smile to get what he wants done. 

Despite the eccentricity, though, what is undeniable is that she is brilliant. 

Even the most difficult cases crumble like sand beneath her fingers. She burns through the details of each case like a wildfire, until the oxygen runs dry. No stone left unturned, no avenue left unchecked—she finds the truth, and she often finds it embarrassingly quickly. After she has cracked the mystery open like it is nothing, she will report to him, pass the details off to Gaoshun, and just continue on her merry way. She only has interest in the truth. What comes after is of little concern to her. 

Jinshi’s jealous, he must admit. Of her intelligence and her ability to wash her hands of it both. He’s just grateful she’s on his side, and not holed up and coveted in some other corner of the palace. He says as much to the emperor himself one night, when they are both a few cups deep into a bottle of grape wine from the west. Jinshi hadn’t planned on bringing up the topic himself, but the emperor asked first, so—

“She’s remarkable,” Jinshi tells him. “Capable and reliable, and whip-smart to boot.” He takes another sip. “You may notice that she’s a bit odd, but her skills speak for themselves—she’s helped me more in the last few weeks than Doctor Guen has in his whole career.”

“That’s quite a low bar,” his brother says with a laugh. 

“It is,” Jinshi agrees. He sinks back into his seat a little with a sigh. “It doesn’t do her justice.” 

The emperor smiles around his cup. “Looks like you’ve found a new toy, little brother.”

Jinshi sits up straighter, and tells himself the flush in his cheeks is only from the wine. “Nothing of the sort,” he assures. ”I’m just glad I managed to bring her into my corner. Her talents are wasted as a laundry girl—could you imagine if some other actor got to her first? With her skill in poisons? There would be chaos.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” his brother replies. “Just remember our agreement.” 

I’d rather not, Jinshi thinks to himself—but aloud, he says, “I’ll keep it in mind. I appreciate your generosity.”

The emperor strokes his beard, thinking. Jinshi takes the lull in conversation to refill his brother’s cup. Don’t forget where you are, he scolds himself. 

“You said she was an apothecary?”

Jinshi lifts his head. “She is,” he replies. “She worked in the pleasure district with her father.”

“If she’s so clever,” the emperor wonders aloud, “maybe she would understand Lihua’s sickness.”

Jinshi’s blood runs cold. 

“I—I’m not sure if that’s wise. She’s quite young—younger than me—and she may not have had so much experience treating patients if she worked with her father. Besides, the high consort’s illness is serious, and—”

The emperor cocks an eyebrow. “You were just bragging of her brilliance to me, were you not?” He knocks back the drink. “Put her to the test.”

Jinshi, around the lump in his throat, can only bow his head. 

“As you will,” he replies, and says no more.

The apothecary, as it turns out, is more than capable of handling herself. 

“Go rinse your mouth out,” she spits at Lihua’s lady-in-waiting. “And wash your face.”

The lady, handprint of the poisonous white powder still on her face, scrambles to her feet and doesn’t pay Jinshi any mind as she shoves past him. 

“And you all,” she barks at the other ladies-in-waiting. “You want that stuff on the patient? Clean it up.” 

“Women,” Jinshi can’t help saying aloud, “are indeed terrifying.”

The apothecary seems to have forgotten he was there. She starts, eyes widening in panic. They meet his for a split-second before they flit away.

There’s a bounce in Jinshi’s step as he weaves through the throngs of ladies-in-waiting and officers milling about, all preparing for the garden party. 

The weather has turned quickly this fall, and the late afternoon is frigid—winter is already looming. Jinshi tugs a little on his collar. The clothes are heavy and insulated, but that just means he’s more likely to sweat as he makes his rounds through the garden party. At least he’s not in the thin silk of many of the ladies. 

There are braziers scattered around, and many of them are bunched around, warming their hands and gossiping through chattering teeth. Others, though, have gotten the clever idea of heating smooth stones in the coals, then tucking them into their robes to stay warm away from the fire. Jinshi smiles to himself, feeling the press of one of the stones, tucked in a specially-sewn pocket in his inner robe. What a clever idea. He wonders where they got it fro. 

Ignoring Gaoshun’s look of long suffering, Jinshi practically skips his way to the pavilion he knows he will find Gyokuyou in. It’s a little further from the main festivities and tucked under a spectacularly crimson maple tree, pure fire-red in the golden afternoon light. Its leaves are nothing, of course, compared to Gyokuyou, draped in crimson robes a few shades deeper than her scarlet hair and a shawl that matches the green of her eyes. She is stunning, and he tells her as much. 

“Thank you,” Gyokuyou replies with a demure blush—she is fluent in this language of flattery, and knows how to thread the needle between a lady’s bashfulness and a consort’s pride. 

And with that, Jinshi thinks with glee, his mandatory greetings to the four High Consorts are finished, and he can get to more important matters. 

All of her ladies-in-waiting look plenty nice, but none of them outshine their lady. (Imagine the scandal if they did.)But there’s one turned away from him, kneeled over the basket holding Princess Lingli. She’s dressed in the same pink and green robes to accent their mistress. 

“And who’s this?” Jinshi says with a smile, and steps forward.

The girl turns, and his breath catches in his throat. 

She looks…different here, in the shade of the pavilion and the glow of the afternoon light. Shadows pool in the folds of her robes, at her collarbone, in her eyes. Her cheeks are tinged with a slight blush touched yet-warmer in the light, and there’s crimson like her lady’s robes, like the maple tree, at her lips and in the corners of her eyes. 

And those eyes—they still hold that same cold, hard glint they always do. But now, though, they are pools of ink, so black they swallow the light. 

It takes Jinshi a moment before he remembers he’s supposed to say something. 

“A-Ah, apothecary,” he starts—shit, how long was he just staring like a dumbstruck little boy? “I—hardly recognized you.” 

Mentally, Jinshi kicks himself. Smooth. 

But there is—there’s something different about her, besides the makeup and the robes and the golden afternoon light. He scrambles for a minute before it hits him: “Put on a touch of makeup?” 

“I haven’t, sir,” she flatly denies. 

He points at his own face, plastered with the smile that suddenly feels flake-thin and papery as gold leaf. “Your freckles are gone.”

“Because I removed my makeup.” 

Jinshi cocks his head. “You’re not making sense.” 

She narrows her eyes at him in annoyance, like she’s frustrated he can’t keep up. “It makes perfect sense,” she protests, with a bite in her words. Feisty as ever. “I apply clay to my face most days. Once it dries, it makes convincing freckles.”

“Clever,” he praises, and her lips narrow into a thin line. Yes, this back-and-forth is more familiar. “But to what purpose?”

“To prevent me from being dragged into some dark alley, sir.”

Jinshi freezes. 

He wished to learn more about her, and now it is granted. 

She was raised in the pleasure district, Maomao begins. Jinshi knew as much already. He did not, however, know the consequences. 

The pleasure district, she explains, is not all gilded rooms and silken sheets. The brothels put that face forward, of course, in the countless beautiful women cooing from the windows of the main street, in the red lanterns that set the entire district aflame. But dip into the alleyways, and walk a few blocks until that crimson glow fades, and you find the people who can only afford to live in the furthest reaches of society. There gather the poor, the sickly, the desperate. The pretty girls cooing from the brothels had to come from somewhere, after all. If they don’t want to starve, they have little else to sell. 

Others, she explains, starve in different ways. They are surrounded by beautiful flowers, but those flowers require coin, and plenty of people here have none. What they can’t take with any of the girls on the main street, they steal in the alleys instead. 

But even they have their tastes. Even they can be picky. Maomao is naturally small and twiglike, and to further lower her risk, she gathers and mixes clay to paint freckles on her cheeks. Some are semi-permanent, but most she applies daily. Given the event today, though, she didn’t have to bother. Draped in the robes of her lady and wearing a necklace of jade and gold, he figures, no one would dare. 

Jinshi remembers baozi, roses, and sick sweetness, and swallows the lump in his throat. 

“Were you ever…?”

“A few tried. Kidnappers were the ones who got me in the end, though.” Maomao all but spits the last few words, and several things click into place for Jinshi at once. 

He remembers that list of names in her records, the ones he assumed were her brothers. 

Hands safely tucked into his robes where no one can see, he clenches them into fists. Words do not come to Jinshi for a moment; when he opens his mouth to speak, nothing comes out. Her eyes narrow a fraction of a centimeter, as if to demand he stop flapping his mouth like a fish. 

“I’m sorry,” he finally manages. “I—failed in my responsibility.”

To his surprise, she shrugs. “It doesn’t make a difference either way. Some are sold by kidnappers. Others by a family for a lump sum and one less mouth to feed. The results are the same.”

Jinshi’s heart twists horribly again. 

Before he can think better of it, he grasps the stick of silver in his hair and steps forward, sliding it into her hair. He ignores the gasps from the ladies-in-waiting, and the glare he’s sure Gaoshun is burning into the back of his neck. He’d intended to save the hair stick for a political favor, to be honest. In the garden, it’s as much a bargaining chip as it is an accessory, and now he’s burned a very useful tool before the festivities have even begun. 

Maybe he will regret this later, but he cannot bring himself to care now. The apothecary could use a little extra protection. 

“And where’s the apothecary?” Jinshi asks on his next visit to the Jade Pavilion. “I appreciate your efforts, Guiyuan,” he says with a nod to Gyokuyou’s lady-in-waiting, “but testing the tea is her duty, no?” 

It’s not as if he has a burning poison-related problem at this minute, but he wonders if she’s still wearing that hairstick he gave her. It looked nice on her at the garden party, that’s all. 

“Oh, yes,” Gyokuyou replies, clapping her hands together with a mirthful light in her eyes. “She went home with one of the military officers at the garden party.” 

Jinshi spits out his tea.

“She what.”

“You asked for me, sir?” 

As if she has any right to ask that. 

“I heard you had a little visit home.” 

“I did, sir.”

Jinshi knits his fingers together.  “And how was it.” 

“Everyone was in good health. That’s the most important thing.” 

Jinshi narrows his eyes. “Is it, now.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

Jinshi resists the urge to grind his teeth. 

“This ‘Lihaku’—” Jinshi makes air-quotes around that forsaken name— “What kind of man is he to you?” 

“He vouched for me so that I could leave the palace, sir.” 

“And do you know what that means?” he demands. “Do you understand?” 

“Of course,” she replies. “One must be a high official of flawless background in order to vouch for another.”

‘High official’, she says. ‘Flawless background’, she says. Is ‘Jinshi the eunuch, manager of the rear palace’ not enough for her, then? 

For a very brief moment, Jinshi wonders if this is worth blowing his cover for. 

“Did he give you a hairstick?” Jinshi presses. 

“Me and many others. He gave them to practically every girl in sight. He felt it was an obligation, apparently.” 

Maomao reaches into her robes and pulls out the plainest, least impressive hairstick Jinshi has ever seen. It’s carved of what looks like a stick from a tree, and the beads tied to the end don’t even have the luster of real pearls.

Oh, absolutely not. 

“You’re telling me I lost out to that,” Jinshi breathes in disbelief. “To some crappy bauble some hack felt obligated to give to you.” 

Pure silver. Masterful craftsmanship. A design like a phoenix’s wing. Hours spent twisting the metal into shape, and forged by a jeweler in direct service to the imperial family. 

And it lost to a twig. 

“Well, I gave you a hairstick, too,” Jinshi protests, “but I didn’t hear a peep from you that you needed someone to vouch for you!” 

“My sincerest apologies,” Maomao replies, while managing to not sound very sincere at all. “I couldn’t think of compensation that would be worthy of you, Master Jinshi.”

Jinshi pales. “Compensation?” he echoes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I offered him a night’s pleasure,” she replies. 

The teacup in Jinshi’s hand falls and shatters. 

One bright winter’s morning, as the frost melts on the grass outside, eighty wooden strips land on his desk, each containing a name to be cut from employment for contact with a dead woman. 

He only truly cares about one, though. 

“What do I do about this…?” Jinshi wonders aloud to himself. 

The writing is clear as day—Maomao, Jade Pavilion. The letters do not change no matter how much he stares at them, or fervently prays they would. 

Gaoshun watches him from the corner. “She’s been a very fortuitous pawn,” he argues, cold and rational. The sort of thinking expected from a leader at a time like this. 

In the scant few months she’s been here, Maomao has saved the life of a consort, solved several mysteries, and removed more than a few thorns from Jinshi’s side. She is a useful asset, and it would be easiest to think of her as such. 

Jinshi breathes out hard through his nose, pressing his forehead into his knuckles until the skin starts to sting. The pain sharpens his focus but does not solve his problem. 

“Is that all she is?” He wonders aloud to himself. 

He didn’t intent for Gaoshun to hear, but the man bows his head anyway. 

“It is all she can ever be, Master Jinshi.” 

Jinshi bites back a sneer and stands. “I’m going to think on this,” he declares. “Hold off on anything with her until I can get my thoughts straight.” 

Maybe a walk outside in the freezing air will clear his mind. He heads for the door. 

“And the other seventy-nine, sir?” Gaoshun calls after him. 

Jinshi waves a hand over his shoulder. “They can all go.” 

She wishes to leave, and Jinshi despairs. 

“There’s no point anymore,” Jinshi protests when Gaoshun tries to rouse him from his desk. “No point in any of it….”

“You’re practically growing mushrooms, sir.” 

Jinshi sniffs and buries his face in his sleeves. “I hope they’re poisonous,” he whines. “Maybe then she’d come back to me…”

Even with his eyes closed, he can hear Gaoshun sigh in noisy disapproval. 

After a few days of his moping, Gaoshun urges him to go to the manor of a particular lord on a particular night. There will be courtesans and dancers there, Gaoshun says. You should take the night off, he says. 

Jinshi catches his meaning but goes only to drink his sorrows away. 

The room the festivities take place in is dimly lit and smoky. Jinshi plops himself down in the dimmest, smokiest corner with a bottle of liquor and decides that he will grow roots here for the evening. Thank the heavens he didn’t pass that bill for raising the drinking age. 

The music and the courtesans are beautiful. So he hears in the awed voices of the other customers. Jinshi keeps his head down, face buried in his sleeves, and sulks the hours away. 

A presence settles silently next to him. 

“Leave me be,” Jinshi sulks at them. He’s in mourning. He picked out his darkest robes for a reason. Can’t they see that?’ 

The figure next to him gives a quiet sigh but makes no effort to move. 

“Please,” he repeats, squeezing his eyes shut. “I just want to be left alone—”

Fingers brush his cheek. Jinshi recoils immediately with a sneer—even like this, people feel entitled to touch, of course—

“Master Jinshi?” comes an achingly familiar voice, and Jinshi whirls around so fast his head spins. 

And by some inexplicable stroke of fate, Maomao is sitting right next to him, hand still raised from where she brushed his cheek. Her robes are ornate as the garden party, dyed a deep turquoise and embroidered in pinks and greens, like a lotus in the heat of summer. Her hair is swept over her shoulder, still woven with those familiar red and blue beads she always keeps in her hair. The usual freckles are gone from her cheeks, warmed by blush, and her lips are painted a vivid, inviting red. Here, wide-eyed and draped in finery, Jinshi would hardly recognize her. 

Her eyes, though. Wide, curious, questioning—he would know them anywhere. Here, in the dim light and smoke, they are dark as the space between stars in the sky, and draw him in just the same. 

And once again, Jinshi is left speechless. 

His mouth flaps for a moment, searching for words. What finally comes to him is, “Anyone ever tell you that you look different without makeup?” 

Smooth. 

Maomao frowns a little. (Smooth.) “Often, sir.” 

Feeling suddenly lighter than he has in weeks, Jinshi smiles to himself. 

Their misunderstanding, as painful as it was, is easy to rectify. She is here as a courtesan, it turns out, though she hasn’t taken any clients yet. 

Absolutely unacceptable. Jinshi knows a better place he can put her to work. 

Five thousand silver pieces to the madam of the Verdigris House, and another five hundred for the cordyceps fungus Maomao is oddly enamored with, is a bargain price to pay. 

Chapter Text

Maomao thinks the eunuch is a bit of a nuisance, but even she must admit there are some nice bonuses that come with knowing him. Getting out of the greedy hag’s old hands and the cordyceps make the top of that list.

In fact, those two bonuses are so nice that she forgets just how much of a nuisance he is. 

Naturally, he waits until they are already out of the Verdigris House, through the outer walls of the palace, and stopping in front of a grand estate before he finally explains with that blinding, sparkly-ass, pretty boy smile, “You’ll be working under me directly from now on!”

And all Maomao can think is:

Aw, fuck.

Her rooms are way too spacious for a simple maid, and the clothes provided for her are of a much finer cotton weave than she expected. 

“Weird,” Maomao says to herself, but thinks nothing more of it. 

She asks something to write with before dismissing herself for the evening, and the eunuch doesn’t so much as hesitate before he hands her a full, heavy stack of the nicest paper she has ever touched, as well as an inkstone and a brush. 

Is this thing rabbit’s hair? Maomao wonders to herself, running a finger along the brush’s tip. Definitely way too nice for a common apothecary. 

But if she’s going to get all of this nice stuff, she’s surely not going to waste it. 

Before bed, Maomao writes a letter to her old man, and another to her sisters. She just saw them this morning, but letting them know she’s arrived safely can’t hurt. 

Chapter Text

“Ow.”

“Pardon me, sir.” 

“You’re surely doing that on purpose.”

“It’s surely your imagination,” Maomao shoots back, and tugs the comb again through Jinshi’s still-wet hair. 

It catches another snag. Jinshi winces. “Ow.”

“It’s quite a bit more tangled than usual,” she observes, though he can hear the frustration in his apothecary’s voice. 

“Believe me,” Jinshi replies around another wince as she tugs at the knot again. “I’m aware.” 

After another few sharp (ow) yanks (ow) at his hair (ow), his apothecary sighs and sets the comb aside on the table with a clunk. She takes the towel and gathers his hair in it again, tussles it a bit more. Jinshi doubts it’ll do any good. This is what he gets for spending a night tossing and turning in dread.

Maomao is quiet for a minute as she works, which isn’t unusual. She tends not to speak unless there’s something worth saying. Which is fine, Jinshi thinks—his eyes ache from the lack of sleep. She yanks his head back again, though, as she tries to dry it a little more with the towel. 

After a few more minutes and no progress made, she sighs, neatly folding the towel and setting it aside again. “I’m not sure I can go any further like this. May I be excused for a moment, sir? There’s something in my rooms that may be able to help.” 

“I’m willing to try anything,” Jinshi grumbles, massaging his poor, poor scalp. For how scrawny she is, she sure can pull on his hair enough to make it hurt. 

“Then excuse me for a moment,” Maomao says with a bow, and trots off. 

Jinshi watches her go with a smile, remembering her expert makeup job on him a few weeks ago for their little jaunt in the pleasure district. What a lovely escape from his duties it was—and what a surprise, as well, that his apothecary had so many tricks up her sleeve. 

It’d be nice if she could smear his face in makeup and stuff him into oversized robes and sneak him out today, too. 

(Maybe without the smell of whatever she stunk him up with, though. That took an unfortunately long time to wash out of his hair.)

A few minutes later, Maomao returns with some kind of small sealed jar in her hands. “What’s that?” Jinshi asks her.

“Camellia oil,” she replies, uncorking the container. She pours a tiny drop onto her palm and spreads it between her hands. “It should help with detangling. Excuse me.” 

“You didn’t strike me as the type to have so many beauty products,” Jinshi teases. She takes his hair in her hands and rubs the oil in. It smells vaguely floral, and with each pass, her fingers run a little smoother. It feels lovely. Jinshi closes his eyes and leans back in the chair. 

“My sisters made me bring them,” she grumbles. 

“Your sisters?” 

“You saw them at the Verdigris House, sir. They sent me to the rear palace with more makeup than I could carry.” 

Ah, them—those three courtesans who saw her off, who each gave her a kiss on the cheek in turn. Who were presumably the ones who put her in that beautiful outfit. 

“Would’ve been better if I could’ve brought my equipment instead,” Maomao grumbles under her breath. 

Jinshi hums, but doesn’t reply. Her hands feel so nice, spreading the floral-smelling oil through his hair. Maybe he could finally fall asleep like this, with her hands on his scalp, sleep right through the ceremony…

One of her fingers brushes the back of his neck. 

Goosebumps rise in its wake, and he shivers at the feeling of the sweet, warm smear of oil it leaves behind. Suddenly Jinshi is wide awake again. 

Of course, she chooses that moment to take her hands away, and Jinshi nearly whines aloud. Maomao reaches for the comb again, though, and that’s still nice—a gentle, rhythmic, soothing motion. It runs through his hair much more smoothly now. Surely a nap before the ceremony couldn’t hurt, if she continues like this…

The soft clunk of the wooden comb on the table declares her attentions over all too soon, though. No such luck. 

“The same style as usual, sir?” she asks, and for a brief moment Jinshi really considers saying yes. Her hands felt nice. 

But he does have a responsibility—so he takes a deep, slow breath through his nose and forces himself upright. “No.” He slumps forward in his chair, sweeps his hair over his shoulder, and reaches for a red braided cord. “Just leave it be.” 

Maomao perks up at that, eyeing him with suspicion. “Are you sure, sir?” 

Jinshi really wishes she wouldn’t sound so enthused. “I’m sure,” he grumbles, gathering his hair up. “Suiren will take it from here. In the meantime, go into the archives and look for what I asked.”

“And then you’ll give me the bezoars?”

Jinshi sighs through his nose. “And then I’ll give you the bezoars.” 

She perks up even more. There’s a skip in her step as she gathers the towel, oil, and comb from the table. 

Jinshi smiles, despite himself. Medicine is so much easier than the fake smiles, he thinks, as he loops the cord around his hair to bind the ends. He will have to figure out where to source the cow gallstones, though. Would she know? Would she be disappointed if he asked? 

Just as he’s pondering this, Maomao, apparently extra-curious to go along with his good mood, asks, “Are you not going to the rear palace today then, sir?”

Jinshi’s hands in his hair still. 

Has she finally put the pieces together, then? She’s clever enough. He wouldn’t be surprised. Would it be easier if she already has, so he won’t have to explain himself?

“No,” he says, after a long pause. “Though I wish I was.” 

Maomao does not pick up on his mental anguish, of course. “I’ll take my leave, then,” she says with a bow, then picks up her things and promptly departs. 

Jinshi sighs and puts his head in his hands. No, there’s no way he can ask her. He’ll have Gaoshun look for the things, he supposes. 

There’s a gentle knock on the door. When Jinshi calls the affirmative, Suiren enters. There’s a jet-black robe folded over her arm that Jinshi doesn’t like the look of. “Young Master,” she greets with a bow. “Are you ready to begin preparation?” 

Absolutely not, he thinks to himself with a pout. He wants to go back to his bed and sleep the morning away. Or go pester his apothecary more. Spending a day in the archives wouldn’t be so terrible, if it was with her. 

If he said that to Suiren, though, he knows he’d just get scolded. 

“I suppose so.” 

The air of the ceremonial hall is heavy. 

Flickering candles cast dancing shadows into the corners of the hall. Smoke from the braziers and the incense hands suspended in the air, thick and choking, without a breeze to move it. On paper, so much incense burns as an offering, a prayer for success. In practice, though, it burns to hide the stale, musty scent of this place. Summers are humid, and this hall rarely feels the touch of the wind. 

Jinshi pauses in between prayers to take a breath of that stale, scented air. In the second of silence, the wooden beams creak over his head. 

They creak every year. His brother assured him as much—that it sounds ominous, but it’s nothing at all to worry about. He pays the noise no mind and continues. 

The scripture in his hands is ancient, and the edges of the scroll threaten to crumble apart at the slightest touch. The words written upon it, though, are slow, simple, and rhythmic. After months of practice, he knows them all by heart. For an ancient ritualistic prayer, they’re remarkably boring. 

Jinshi dares a glance around himself as he recites the next verse. To his left, lined up along the edges of of the circular dais he stands upon, are countless ministers. They are all dressed in ceremonial black deep enough to blend into the shadows. Only their faces stand out—but blurred by the smoke, they blend into a line of pale moons lit by the brazier’s faint, flickering light. 

They are all staring at him. 

Jinshi straightens his back, moves his gaze back to the text, and locks himself there. 

He rolls the scroll in his hands to the next passage, careful not to rip the delicate paper. He’s barely halfway though, and he’s sweating already. These ceremonial clothes aer hot and heavy, the room is stuffy, and Suiren pulled his hair so tight beneath the headdress that it tugs at his scalp, much less pleasantly than his apothecary did this morning. A bead of sweat runs down his neck. 

His eyes ache from the strain of staying up all night, dreading this, and sting even worse from the smoke. He hopes he’ll be able to escape quickly once the job is done. 

Jinshi begins to recite the next verse—but beneath the drone of his own voice, he can hear another. 

Raised, angry, shouting. Male, judging by the timbre of it. Too faint to make out any words. It carries into the chamber alone, bounces dully for a half-second, and is swallowed quickly into heavy cloth and incense-thick air. 

A murmur goes through the gathered crowd, but the noise stops as quickly as it began. Jinshi continues unimpeded. 

The next interruption, a minute later, is not so easily dismissed: footsteps. 

Brisk and sure, they are a counter-rhythm to the slow drone of prayer on his lips. They grow louder with each tap-tap-tap against the stone tile of the flooring. Against them, the words on his tongue stutter and die. 

The officials to his left are agitated now, a few already rising from their seats. Others lean in towards one another and murmur in a confused buzz. The wooden beams creak again, another high-pitched squeal that echoes in the vast ceiling above him, louder this time. Floating beneath the sound is the rapidly-swelling murmur of ministers and guards and, inexplicably, ragged breathing. Behind him, approaching quickly. 

Jinshi, absolutely baffled, turns on his heel. 

A weight slams into his back, knocking him off-balance. The scroll flies from his hands as he tumbles forward. His back hits a wall with a gasp, knocking the wind out of him. 

His choked shout is swallowed by a final creak, the shriek of shredding metal, and an echoing crash that shakes the foundation. 

The silence after, though, is somehow more deafening. 

The yelling starts a few breaths later. Shouts of guards and officials alike swell at once into a single ear-splitting, chaotic buzz, monolithic noise blending with the pounding roar of his own heartbeat in his ears. 

Jinshi tears his gaze from the massive pillars in a heap where he was standing. There is a weight in his lap.  

It’s a body. 

It is slim and boney. A sharp elbow presses against his knee, the curve of a ribcage against his foot. Disheveled, wild black hair runs to the floor like rivers of spilt ink. 

It wears a familiar green jacket and maroon skirt. Of course it’s familiar—he saw them just this morning. The colors are dark in the dim light of the candles. The maroon skirt slowly soaks into ever-richer colors as he watches in horror. The sticky heat of blood winds around his ankle. The body is horribly still. 

For one terrible second, Jinshi thinks Maomao is dead. 

After too long holding his breath, she stirs. Maomao makes a horrible noise into his chest. Her arms shake as she strains to push herself upright, lifts her head to meet his eyes. The entire right side of her face is swollen beyond recognition. Blood is streaming from her nose. Her entire body sways when she turns, pulls at the hem of her too-deep skirt, exposes a cut on her calf. Blood still pours out of it, but it is deep enough to expose bits of yellowish fat, peeking out beneath the skin and muscle. 

“How—”

His ears are ringing. Dust still spins in the air. Mixed with the smoke and incense, it chokes him now. Her face in front of him swims and blurs. Jinshi cups her cheek. The swelling of her face pulses beneath his fingertips. 

“How did you....?”

“Master Jinshi,” Maomao slurs. Her words are clumsy and thick. “Can I…have those bezoars, now…?”

“Now is not the time,” Jinshi bites out, tracing the pad of his thumb beneath her eye. The skin is horribly hot, swollen and throbbing beneath his hand. The freckles dotting her face drown in maroon-purple bruising. 

She was fine this morning.

“What happened to your…?”

Maomao blinks, sluggish. She parts her lips to speak, but more blood drips across them, down her chin, into the black of his robes. She sways, bracing one hand on his chest. Her other, inexplicably, begins fumbling in her robes. 

“Excuse me,” she slurs, “just—just let me stitch—”

Maomao leans her face into his hand. Jinshi runs his thumb along the delicate, inflamed skin beneath her eye—if she wants comfort—

It takes too long for him to realize her head is lolling on her neck. 

All at once, her arms give out, and her body weight slumps against him. Against his hand, her head twists like a thrown ragdoll. She collapses against his body, and goes horribly still. 

Jinshi panics. 

He shakes her shoulder, and her body only flops like a sack of rice. He yells her name, and she does not rouse. The only movement of her body is the slow shallow rise and fall of her chest and the still-growing scarlet pool beneath her.

Jinshi takes a long, slow breath, digs his nails into the palm of his hand to sharpen his mind, and shoves the panic down as deep as it will go. 

He needs to get her out of here. The entrance is clear of debris, and the doors to the outside are thrown open. Midday sun spills in, and countless officials, draped in shadow-black, race out. That is the only feasible exit. 

Footsteps come racing towards him. “Sir,” a guard gasps when he sees them, looking relieved to see him conscious. “Are you injured?”

“No,” comes Jinshi’s reply, harsh and clipped. “She is, though.”

“Who…?”

Jinshi ignores the half-baked question. He gathers Maomao into his arms and stands on trembling limbs. She is too light. Even through both their robes, he can feel the sharp angle of her ribcage, the poke of her elbow into his side. Her blood is still dripping onto the floor. 

He adjusts her in his arms, guiding her head to rest in the crook of his arm and shoulder. That’s good, he thinks. Stabilize the head. He’s heard something about that. 

“Call for a doctor,” he barks at the guard. “I want him there at my palace when I arrive.”

The guard replies with an affirmative and darts off, but several others swarm back in his place. They chatter and flit around him with questions and honorifics and other bullshit that he does not have time for right now.

“Move,” he snaps, and they part like curtains. 

One reaches forward to take Maomao from him. Jinshi shakes his hands off and marches forward, around the collapsed pillars, through the dust and smoke, and out the hall’s doors. 

Coming from darkness, the midday sun blinds him. The world blurs into the sun-white paving stones and the blue of the sky and the black of ceremonial robes. He can’t make out any figures or faces. Everyone smears into blobs of light and dark contrast, and it makes his head throb. 

His ears work just fine, though, despite the dull roar in them. There’s a collective gasp as he emerges, then the shuffling of fabric as dozens of officials all hurry themselves into a low bow. 

He can also hear how the murmured honorifics shift into frantic, furious whispers as he passes, rising at the end in questions. He catches only fragments—who, what, her, prince, blood, taboo. 

Jinshi keeps his face a careful, practiced mask, but his jaw aches from how tightly his teeth are clenched. 

He descends the stairs slow step by slow step to avoid jostling the precious bundle in his arms. Halfway down, amidst the bleach-white blur of stones, stands a figure. Jinshi’s eyes have adjusted enough that he can make out scruffy, unkempt hair and the flash of a silver monocle amidst the uniform black. 

Lakan looks furious. 

Eyes wide, teeth clenched, a glint of terrible madness in his eyes. How dare you, they demand. 

How dare who, exactly, Jinshi doesn’t have time to care about. As he passes the general, though, he pulls Maomao a bit tighter to his body. Her temple presses against his chest, casting her face and the worst of her bruising in shadow. It is all he can do now—a pitiful attempt to shield her from that man’s horrid, prying eyes. 

Privately, though, Jinshi sympathizes with him. At the very least, he can understand the fury. 

When he ascends the steps to his palace, Gaoshun, Suiren, and an imperial doctor are already waiting for him. 

“Xiaomao!” Suiren cries as soon as she recognizes the bundle in his arms. She rushes to his side, pulls a lock of hair away from Maomao’s face. She gasps when she sees the swelling. “What happened?!”

“The—the beams,” Jinshi stammers—away from all those eyes, his voice suddenly feels weak and thready. “During the ceremony—they…”

The beams explain the cut on her leg. They do not explain the swelling of her face. 

She was fine this morning. 

His hands are shaking where they hold her. Gaoshun steps forward silently, arms out. Jinshi only tugs her closer. “Not now,” he begs. Not while her blood is still dripping on the ground beneath them. 

Gaoshun’s eyes soften. Wordlessly, he steps back and holds the door. Jinshi races past the rooms for receiving guests, through his inner chambers, to the only place he can think of—his own bed. He lays her down on the sheets as gently as he can manage. She doesn’t so much as stir when her head hits the pillow. 

Her leg is still oozing blood, and her face—that looks even worse than before. The entire right half of it is turning a horrible, blotching purple that slips towards blue-green around her eye. Blood smears across her nose and down her chin, across her parted lips, onto her teeth. 

Maomao’s head is awkwardly turned to the side. Her neck is stretched at an odd angle. That can’t be comfortable. 

Jinshi reaches towards her and cups her face. The swelling isn’t throbbing as badly, now, but her skin is still boiling-hot. As slowly and gently as he can manage, he turns her head to a better, more natural angle. 

A hand lands on his arm. “She may be concussed,” Gaoshun murmurs. When did he get here? 

“Her injuries would indicate it,” the doctor adds—when did he slip in beside him? “It seems she took a good blow to the head, either way. Now—” he turns to Jinshi, “we can move her to the medical offices after I take a look at—”

“No,” Jinshi snaps. “I’m not injured, I called you here for her.”

“With all due respect, your majesty,” the doctor says, “you’re covered in blood.”

He is?

One hand still on Maomao’s cheek, Jinshi looks down at himself. 

Little circles of crimson stain the finely-woven carpet at his feet. With each passing second, they accumulate like raindrops on stone. They drip from the hem of his robes, wetted enough to twist the light with each minuscule movement of his body. His free hand, too, is stained crimson, which twists in rivulets down his fingers and wrists. When he draws his other hand from Maomao’s cheek, it leaves behind its own scarlet, flaking print. 

Jinshi has never seen so much blood in his life. 

“You take priority,” the doctor says. It is not an opinion, but an objective statement of fact. “I cannot see to other patients until your own health is assured.” 

Is he fine? 

He feels no pain. Nothing stings or threatens to tear when he moves. But it’s hard to think past the roar of his heart, and harder yet to speak around the lump in his throat. 

“She—she pushed me out of the way,” is what comes out of Jinshi’s mouth. “I’m fine.” He swallows hard. “Because of her. See to her instead.” 

The doctor gives him a long, lingering look—perhaps a war in his head between his service to the imperial family and direct orders. After a moment, he makes his decision. “Very well, Moon Prince,” he says with a bow, and kneels next to the bed. 

Jinshi swallows hard at the title. At least now, though, she will get the medical care she needs. Maybe this title is good for something after all. 

The doctor carefully lifts the hem of Maomao’s skirt to observe the injury. He is careful enough to preserve her modesty, but something in Jinshi’s stomach twists anyway at the scene—the doctor’s hands against her leg, still oozing blood. Jinshi looks away. 

“Lady Suiren,” the doctor says, “would you be able to bring a cloth and cold water? Her leg will need stitches, but the swelling should be treated soon, too.”

“Of course,” Suiren says with a bow, and shuffles off immediately. 

Cold water? To make the swelling go down, he assumes. He knows so horribly little about medical treatment. Maomao would know what to do, but… Jinshi weakly calls after her, “If—if ice is better, have it brought from the stores. Spare no expense.” 

The doctor rises from his kneel and bows low. “Your majesty’s generosity knows no bounds.”

Jinshi grits his teeth. “I told you not to fuss over me,” he snaps. “She’s the one who’s injured here, treat her—”

“Master Jinshi.” Gaoshun puts a hand on his shoulder. 

Jinshi wilts immediately. The doctor turns back to his patient without a word. There’s not a need to use that name here. Not when everyone present already knows…

Well. All but one. Jinshi casts his gaze to the body on the bed. The doctor is rifling through his bag now, bent over her body. Against the familiar white of his sheets, she looks so small. 

Her face looks so peaceful, though, turned to the side, hiding the swelling from view. The doctor’s body hides the mess of blood on her skirt. Her eyelashes cast shadows on her cheek, and her lips are parted. Like this, she could be sleeping. As safe and as sound as she was this morning. 

Gaoshun is still speaking. “…may be best for you to wait outside.” 

Belatedly, Jinshi realizes it is inauspicious for him to be standing here witnessing a commoner’s bloodshed. He thinks he nods. He can’t tear his gaze away from the bed, though, until the curved silver slip of a needle flashes in the doctor’s hand. His stomach turns, and he twists away. 

“Stay with her,” he hears himself say. “Both you and Suiren. Attend her until the treatment’s finished.” 

Gaoshun looks at him, stricken. “Are you sure?” 

“She needs the help more than me.” 

Gaoshun gives him a long, unreadable look. Finally, though, he bows his head. 

“As you will,” he replies. “Go and rest, sir.” 

Jinshi doesn’t think he can, but he nods, and staggers out of the room. He should go to his office, get his things in order. This will need to be investigated as an assassination attempt. But—but no, he can’t bring himself to. His feet carry him to a chamber for receiving guests, and no further—the vertigo wins, then, and he collapses into a chair before his knees can give out. 

He takes a long, slow breath that rattles in his chest and stares down into empty space. 

His hands are shaking. 

They are still covered in her blood, thick and sticky as it seeps down his fingertips to the floor. A staccato drip, drip, drip against the heartbeat echoing in his ears, pulsing in his fingertips. The blood is violently crimson and cooling on his skin. 

He can still smell the smoke and the incense and the copper-iron of her blood, and his black sleeves are flecked light brown from the dust thrown into the air by the pillars’ collapse. He squeezes his eyes shut, and the darkness behind his eyes flickers like candlelight. 

Her warmth is no longer pressed against him, but her still-warm blood becomes her ghost; he can still feel the weight of her against him. 

A second longer, a moment’s hesitation more, and his words with her this morning would have been the last they ever spoke to each other. Jinshi would be a broken corpse beneath those beams. 

His blood would soak the floor, trickle through the lines in the stone tiles, and life in the palace would come to a standstill. The officials lining the halls would wear that same mournful, shadowy black for many days after they pulled him from the rubble. As would the consorts, and the eunuchs, and every single serving girl in the palace. The scribes who keep records of the imperial family would bind the scroll detailing his life with a black cord and put it on the shelf half-finished.

He could have died. 

But somehow, that thought does not upset him as much as the next, which comes as he stares listlessly at his bloodied hands: 

She could have died. 

Maomao could have died instead, if she were another second later. She could have pushed him out of the snare only to be caught in it herself. The weight of the beams would crush her instantly.

And so few would mourn her. 

The entire palace wouldn’t wear black or pray for her soul or fall into scripted rites of social grieving. A few, those who know of her brilliance, would recognize the light lost, but the rest would shrug their shoulders. They would thank her for her sacrifice, or claim she was sent by heaven to protect a figure much more important than herself. Those who care about her would be left to bear the weight of their grief alone. The world would turn on unimpeded, without so much as a note in the records, and the shifting sands of time would quickly cover the hollow she would leave behind. 

On the first day he met her, Jinshi saw that spark of curiosity and intelligence in her eyes and thought she would be a useful tool. A tool, a solution to his problems, and nothing more; a star in the night sky, yes, but one among thousands. 

But now, the thought of walking the rear palace without her, without that light to guide his way—

Maomao’s blood on his hands is starting to dry. Little rivers of it gather in the lines of his palm, and they crack when he flexes his fingers. Flakes of it flutter to the ground beneath him like petals. 

There is one particularly thick rivulet of blood on his right hand. It twines down his wrist, down one of the lines of his palm, to the tip of his little finger. Blood still flows sluggishly down it, drips to the floor. 

It twists around his pinky like crimson thread. 

Suddenly overcome, Jinshi presses a hand to his mouth to muffle his sob. 

Chapter Text

On a beautiful, bright, warm day in early summer, as the birds chirp merrily and the flowers sway in the gentle breeze, disaster strikes the Jade Pavilion. It does not come as poison, nor fire, nor the dry, sickly touch of death. No, but to the pavilion’s residents, it is just as horribly grave:

The newly-planted hydrangeas in the central garden are blooming not pink, but blue. 

“This won’t do,” Hongniang says, cupping one of the blooms in her palm. “This won’t do at all.”

Admittedly, it was a little hard to tell what colors the flowers were at first. They all started out pure white when the first buds popped. For about a week, one could probably argue that the first tinges of color seeping in around the center of each flower leaned purple-pink, not purple-blue. 

But no, leaning in now, Maomao can say for certain: the hydrangeas are turning a beautiful, striking periwinkle blue, without a hint of pink in sight. 

Ailan cocks her head. “Did the gardeners mix up our request somehow?”

Hongniang sighs. “It’s possible. I know for certain that I specified pink flowers, but…”

“But we can’t have blue flowers in the garden!” Yinghua cries. Her eyes burn with righteous fire. “Not with a baby on the way! It’s ruining the color scheme!”

She swings her arm in a wide arc, at the blush-toned azaleas next to them, the just-blooming crimson lilies, and the pale, feather-delicate peonies now starting to wither. Even Maomao has to admit—the blue sticks out like a sore thumb. 

Hongniang kneels mournfully next to the bush and runs her thumb over a green, spade-shaped leaf. “It really won’t do to have a rival’s colors in the garden, especially now. I suppose we’ll have to tear them up and start over.”

“No luck this year,” Ailan agrees. She sighs. “Even though the princess was so excited to see them bloom…”

How horribly wasteful, Maomao thinks. No doubt hundreds of silver pieces were poured into someone’s hands to plant these bushes, and even more to maintain them and raise them. Rip them up, and the yearly salary of the average commoner goes down the drain—not even counting the extra money to plant new ones, and the time it will take until they bloom. 

And also, hydrangeas are mildly poisonous, and Maomao is getting desperate.

“Excuse me,” she says, kneeling next to Hongniang. She digs her fingers into the loamy soil. There’s nothing particularly unusual about it—the soil is spongy and damp with the rainy season starting, and there are some sticks and leaf litter mixed in as well. 

A little pillbug emerges from the soil and crawls around her hand. Maomao can practically feel Yinghua behind her cringe. “Before you rip them up, can I try something else, first?”

“Hm?” Hongniang says. “Do you know what happened, Maomao?”

“No.” Not yet, at least. Maomao rises to her feet and brushes the dirt off her knees. The still-healing cut on her leg twinges. “But I may be able to conduct a test to investigate.”

An hour, a quick request to the kitchens, and a small raid of the Jade Pavilion’s tea pantry later, Maomao returns to the garden with several things in her arms. 

“What’s all this?” Guiyuan asks, drawn from her diligent dusting by all the commotion. 

“Materials for the test,” Maomao replies, spreading her supplies out on a cloth. In front of her are two identical bowls as well as several cups of liquid—-all silver, to ensure they are as sterile as possible. 

All four of Gyokuyou’s ladies-in-waiting kneel down to take a look. “That smells like green tea?” Ailan says, pointing at the first cup. Maomao nods. 

Guiyuan kneels and lifts the second cup to her nose. She cocks her head. “This one doesn’t smell like anything.”

“Plain water,” Maomao replies. 

Yinghua grabs the third cup. “And this one?” She asks. “It’s kind of yellow-tinged.” She brings it to her nose and sniffs, and her face twists like she bit a lemon. 

“Vinegar,” Maomao says. 

“Well, that’s all well and good,” Hongniang says, patting a queasy-looking Yinghua on the back, “but how will it help here?”

“It’s possible that the gardeners made a mistake, and simply planted the wrong variety of hydrangeas,” Maomao says as she divides the water evenly into both silver bowls. “But hydrangeas are also very sensitive to the qualities of the soil they’re planted in. Some species will change color completely, from blue to pink or vice-versa, if the soil conditions change as well.”

All three of the younger ladies in waiting coo in delight. Maomao scoops a handful of soil from the base of the plant. Carefully, she sprinkles an equal amount of soil into each cup, then swirls them until the soil is fully waterlogged and no air bubbles remain. A few twigs float to the top, but that shouldn’t be an issue. 

She reaches for the cups, but the girls are still gathered around them, peering into the two still-full ones with curiosity and whispering to each other. “Excuse me,” Maomao says, and grabs the cup of vinegar. 

Maomao pours most of the cup’s contents into the bowl and swirls it again, staring intently at the surface of the liquid. 

After a few seconds of silence, Yinghua says, “Nothing happened.”

Which is entirely what Maomao expects, if her theory is correct. 

This whole experiment would be a lot easier if she was back in the pleasure district with her old man, she quietly mourns. Luomen taught her this little trick with hydrangeas when she was young. They tested the soil with the juice of a vegetable called a ‘red cabbage’—they aren’t native to Li, and she’s never seen them in the markets here, but her old man brought back the seeds from his studies in the west. They raised the plant in their herb patches for a while, and the juice changed color depending on the properties of the soil. 

But in the rear palace, she has to work with what’s on hand, so vinegar and green tea, mildly acidic and alkaline respectively, will have to do. 

She bats one of the ladies’ curious hands away from the second cup. This experiment would also be easier if they would stop hovering, but alas. Carefully, she pours some of the green tea into the second, un-vinegar’d sample, and waits. 

After a few moments, she sees it. “There,” she says, pointing with her pinky finger.

“Bubbles?” Hongniang asks, leaning in as well. 

“Bubbles,” Maomao confirms, and lifts the cup to show the other girls. 

“What does that mean?” Guiyuan asks. 

“That the soil is too acidic,” Maomao answers. “This is what turned the hydrangeas blue.”

The ladies coo and murmur in delight as Maomao unceremoniously dumps both bowls out—on the opposite side of the azalea bush, so she doesn’t end up making the hydrangeas even bluer on accident.

“Incredible, Maomao!” Yinghua cries, as the girls nod vigorously in agreement. 

It’s nothing special, Maomao thinks. It’s a basic principle that she’s applied before. Instead of responding, she stares at the remaining green tea. She could dump it into the bush to get a start on neutralizing the soil’s acidity, but, well, she’s quite thirsty. 

Maomao knocks back the remaining green tea and sets off for the rest of the day’s work. 

Between Gyokuyou’s tea time, dinner for both her and Princess Lingli, several visits around the rear palace for materials, and a quick playtime with the princess before her bedtime, Maomao is only able to begin the process once dusk is already falling. 

She took some eggshells from the kitchens and asked a (kindly, non-sparkly) eunuch for the chalk. Both crunch satisfyingly in her mortar as she works. Once the mixture is pulverized into a thin, loose white powder, she kneels down next to the first of the bushes with a trowel and begins to dig shallow trenches, sprinkling the powder into the soil. 

Maomao pulls a few weeds around the base of the bush as she goes, falling into a calm, familiar rhythm. Dirt under her nails, digging around in the soil, it’s just like how she tended the fields of her home in the pleasure district with Luomen. 

At least, it would be, if the air wasn’t so floral smelling, and she swapped the flowers for more useful plants, and the entire place wasn’t so color coordinated. Nobles sure are picky about the weirdest things. 

Maomao finishes treating the first bush and moves onto the next, and the next, down the line planted along the garden path. The light is fading now, making it harder to see her work, but there remains a heavy, sticky mugginess in the air. It’s not unbearable yet, but it promises a hot, humid summer to come. 

As she kneels at the fourth bush, there are footsteps behind her. A familiar, honeyed voice calls, “Apothecary? Ah, there you are—” The footsteps pause. “Why are you kneeling in the dirt?”

Maomao sighs and wipes some of the sweat off her brow, looking up at the nymph-like figure. He’s standing on the raised path that surrounds the central garden, leaning on the vermillion railing, and looking down at her with more than a little bewilderment. 

When Maomao begins to rise to face him properly, though, he sighs. “No, no, don’t get up. Not with your leg still giving you trouble.”

Well, she’ll have to get up eventually, and it’ll twinge then. But she’ll stay squatted in the dirt for now, if he doesn’t want her to rise. Fine by her—her knees ache from gardening for so long. 

“I’m fixing the flowers, sir.”

Jinshi cocks his head. “What about them needs fixing?”

“They’re ruining the color scheme.” Apparently.

“Ah, yes, I can see that,” he says with a nod, as if he understands perfectly now. Maomao resists the urge to roll her eyes. “It’s hard to make out their colors in this light. How do you ‘fix’ them, though? If they’re blue, the gardeners will have to just rip them up and start again, right?”

“There are treatments.” Maomao holds up the bowl of white powder at her side. 

Jinshi makes a face. “I assume that’s not the face powder I banned, right?”

Maomao scowls. What did he take her for? Did he think she went to all that trouble teaching that lady-in-waiting a lesson just to hoard some of the poison away for herself? Who would do something so foolish? “Absolutely not. It’s just crushed eggshells and chalk.”

Jinshi wordlessly gives her a look that she knows by now means, I don’t quite follow, apothecary.

She sighs and continues, “Hydrangeas are very sensitive to the composition of the soil they’re planted in. Tiny differences can change whether they turn pink, blue, or purple.” She takes another handful of the powder and scatters it around the base of the bush, then mixes it into the dirt with the trowel. “So I’m changing the makeup of the soil.” 

“That makes sense, I suppose.” Jinshi replies. “Seems complicated, though.”

“It’s the same idea as the blue roses, isn’t it?” She replies without looking up. “Hydrangeas start out white, too. The roots absorb whatever they’re able, and that’s what tinges them one way or the other.”

In all actuality, the hydrangeas’ mechanism of absorbing color is much more complicated than the roses. Her father could explain it better than she can—and besides, she doesn’t feel much like getting into the weeds of a topic so complicated with a layman. 

Satisfied with the treatment of this bush, Maomao pats her hands clear of dirt and powder and rises, ignoring the twinge of the wound on her leg. She brushes away the unsightly dirt and twigs stuck to the front of her skirt from kneeling, but there’s not much she can do about the spots at her knees stained deeper maroon from all the moisture in the soil. Ah, well. 

“Did you have a reason for calling me, sir?” She asks. Maybe she should stand for the rest of this conversation, but it’s getting dark, and he told her she could kneel, and she’d like to finish this work before it gets too dark to see. She crosses the stone path and starts on the opposing row of bushes.

“Ah, right. I wanted to give you an update on Consort Yingfei’s case.”

“The middle consort’s poisoning?”

“You were right. Her head lady-in-waiting confessed to everything and has been dealt with. I wanted to thank you again for your input.”

Dealt with, Maomao thinks with a shudder. Yikes. 

And besides, she didn’t really do much with that case. A five minute search of the lady-in-waiting’s rooms was all she needed. 

“She was cultivating belladonna,” Maomao replies. “She wasn’t exactly subtle about it.”

“Yes, but it’s not native to Li, isn’t it? It’s from the west. I certainly didn’t recognize it.”

More thanks should go to her father, then, for teaching her about the plants of the west, too. Belladonna is child’s play, as far as identifying poisonous plants is concerned. One look at the suspicious potted plant in the woman’s room, with its rich purple flowers and night-black berries, told Maomao everything she needed to know. 

“Did she try to explain why she was raising it?” Maomao asks. 

Jinshi laughs, though there’s much humor in it. “For cosmetics, if you can believe it.”

“That may have been the original purpose,” Maomao replies. “Some in the west use it to dilate their pupils or pale the skin.”

It was a flimsy excuse either way. The consort died murmuring delusions, a hand pressed over her racing heart, pupils blown wide and unseeing. Maomao has never seen the active symptoms of belladonna poisoning, but she has seen the corpses of people who died from it. A beautifying plant will find its place in both the rear palace and the pleasure district, after all. The connection was obvious. 

“Did she say where she got the seeds?”

“Yingfei’s father is a western merchant, so I assume that’s how.” 

This case isn’t really something worth thanking her for, Maomao thinks as she pulls another weed. It was such an easy answer she was almost insulted. And besides: “You could have at least let me have a berry or two, if you wanted to thank me,” she grumbles under her breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, sir.”

She can feel Jinshi’s disapproving scowl trained at the back of her head. Damn, she thinks. She’ll have to try to figure out how to get a few seeds and try cultivating it herself. Surely they’ve confiscated the plant by now, but maybe there’s a chance they haven’t disposed of it yet. All she needs is a few berries.

And she’s heard those berries are sweet, too, at first bite. Deceptively so, enough to lure an unwitting victim into taking another handful. Maomao isn’t much a fan of sweet things, but she’d gladly give belladonna a try. 

Guess she’ll have to settle for the hydrangeas for now—but hydrangeas aren’t really that interesting a poison. They’re only a mild toxin, enough to aggravate the stomach and cause nausea or vomiting. The best method to really test it, she supposes, will be to apply it directly through the bloodstream, through a cut on her arm. That’ll get her a better sample—

“You’re not thinking anything dangerous, are you?” Jinshi accuses. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”

They fall into silence. Maomao keeps working. It’s getting harder to see her own hands in front of her eyes, and she’d really like to finish this work tonight. 

She can feel him still lingering behind her, though. If he’s finished all he wants to say, she thinks with a huff, it’d be best if he leaves her to her work. No use lingering. But he doesn’t speak, and she doesn’t either. It’s not as if she has a lot to say, anyways. 

He hovers for a while, and Maomao can’t help but think of the stacks and stacks of papers she has seen on his desk when she worked in his palace. Surely he has better things to do with his time than stand around in a garden. 

After a long few minutes, Jinshi breaks the silence with, “Is your leg still giving you trouble?”

Maomao wipes the sweat from her brow and sits up on her heels—another treatment finished. The bowl’s nearly empty, but she should have enough left for the last few. “Not much. I can walk just fine.” 

Kneeling down and standing up in the dirt over and over has made it start to twinge, though. The stitches pull at her skin uncomfortably. There’s nothing to be done, though—she has a job to do. 

“Are you sure?” he presses. Pushy as always. Maomao rolls her eyes and turns towards him.

For the first time since he came to the garden, their eyes meet. Jinshi’s face is cast in the pink-orange glow of dusk, and the light traces across the lines of his jaw and cheekbones, sharp enough to keep his otherwise androgynous face obviously male-leaning. Sparks of sunlight catch in the dark of his eyes. Really a waste that he’s a eunuch, Maomao thinks, not for the first time. 

She averts her eyes. “I’m certain.” 

He laughs, then, just a quiet chuckle—smooth, soft, deep. “Just wanted to make sure I won’t have to carry you back to your chambers again.” 

Maomao scowls at the hydrangea bush. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Did I ever thank you, by the way?”

“For what?”

“For saving my life.” 

His voice is doing that thing again—where it gets too genuine, too soft for a place like this. Maomao doesn’t dare look back at him again. She only shifts uncomfortably. 

It’s weird to be thanked by a superior. It’s much easier to be ordered around, in her opinion. A personal thank-you isn’t necessary here, and besides, it’s not as if she knew it was his life at stake. She just didn’t want a head to fly. Didn’t matter if it was his or not. 

And besides, if he wants to thank her properly, he can finally get her those bezoars he promised her. Bastard. 

“There’s no need for such sentiments, sir,” is the reply she settles on, and says no more. 

She knows the eunuch well enough by now to expect that such a simple reply won’t be enough to end the conversation, but to her surprise, he hums and says no more. He still stays, hovering behind her on that balcony, but he doesn’t try to keep talking.

She still kind of wishes he would leave, though. He certainly has better things to do than just hang around, annoying a simple apothecary. 

No such luck—another few minutes pass, and then she hears a quiet gasp behind her. 

When she turns to look, Jinshi’s not staring at her, but at the garden beyond. “Is it that time of year already?” He asks, voice hushed and full of wonder. 

Maomao follows his gaze. After a few moments looking out across the garden, in its riot of pinks and reds turning dusky-purple in the dim light, she sees them—weaving between the leaves of the flowers, little blinking lights cast quick flashes of yellow-green on the vermillion petals. More and more rise from the grass with each passing second. 

Jinshi leans forward against the railing. “Beautiful, aren’t they? Like tiny stars. I used to chase them around the palace when I was young.” 

Around the palace? Maomao thinks, but she purges the thought. A eunuch’s childhood backstory is not information she needs to retain. 

The fireflies are interesting, though. Maomao chased them herself, as a child, through the medicine patches of her little hut in the pleasure district, as her father worked. 

“How do they glow?” She asked him once summer’s night, cupping a little blinking star in her hands. 

“We don’t know,” he answered, not looking up from the herb garden. “One of nature’s mysteries. Only around for a few weeks out of the year. We just have to enjoy them while we can.”

At the time, Maomao looked back down at the little black bug with its red head, blinking a lazy rhythm, and quietly vowed she’d be the one to learn their secrets. Current Maomao doesn’t have the time for such pursuits, not when she has poison to study and, evidently, a eunuch to entertain. 

That’s not to say they’re not interesting, though. She’s heard of other bioluminescent creatures, but all of them can only glow constantly—fireflies are the only ones able to turn that light on and off at will. Maomao has no idea how. Maybe Shisui will know, she wonders, and makes a mental note to let her know that the fireflies’ season has started. 

One night, before her interests shifted to better, grander things, Maomao came to her sister Meimei’s room clutching a ceramic jar in her hands. When Meimei asked what was inside, Maomao removed her hand and showed her sister the contents. In the jar were a few bunches of torn-up grass, two broken twigs, and three fireflies, which immediately crawled up the rim of the jar, spread their wings, and took off into Meimei’s room. 

Her sister was less than enthused. 

All the palace women seem to feel the same way, funny enough. They appreciate the bugs from afar, but get squeamish when the things land on their robes, which Maomao doesn’t understand. 

If you’re so captivated by the beauty of something, why would you be so afraid to let it come close? 

So she expects Jinshi to react about the same way, but no—one of the fireflies drifts lazily over the bush she stands next to, towards the pavilion, up to the railing he’s leaning on. It lands demurely on his slim finger, outstretched as an offering. He brings it to his face, and its rhythmic blinking illuminates his handsome features. His eyes are wide in delight. 

Thank goodness she did save his life, Maomao thinks. The women of the rear palace would be up in arms if they lost the pretty boy eunuch. What else would these caged birds coo at to occupy their time?

“Maomao?” comes a voice, pulling her from her thoughts. Hongniang emerges from around a corner, lantern in hand. “Ah, excuse my interruption,” she hurriedly corrects, bowing to Jinshi. Turning to Maomao, she says, “Lady Gyokuyou is feeling a bit peckish, and would like to take a light meal before bed.”

Maomao rises, ignoring the twinge of stitching in her calf, and dusts herself off. “Right away,” she replies. “I was able to apply the treatment to most of the bushes.”

Not all, she thinks, with a glare at the eunuch still cooing at the firefly. It lifts off his finger into the night, and he pouts. 

“Ah, excellent! How long will it take to change the flowers pink?” Hongniang asks, craning her neck to peer at the bushes in the garden. The light of her lantern doesn’t reach, but she squints against the dark anyway. 

“If I continue to apply the treatment,” Maomao says, “they should be pink next year.”

Hongniang and Jinshi both look at her, dumbfounded. 

“Why would it take that long?” Jinshi asks, as Hongniang begins muttering oh dear, oh dear, under her breath. “The blue roses took a few hours.”

“It’s complicated,” she replies. “As you said yourself, Master Jinshi.” 

Hongniang buries her face in her hands, and Jinshi still looks more than baffled. Why would they be so frustrated by that answer?

Nobles really are weird about the strangest things, Maomao thinks, and goes to taste Gyokuyou’s dinner. 

Chapter Text

The invitation from Shishou is about as expected as it is unwelcome. 

The lord of the northern province is influential enough in the court to know that the tale of the imperial brother wiling away his days in solitude is entirely a ruse, and that the strangely powerful eunuch running the rear palace is not who he claims to be. He was privileged with that knowledge from the beginning—him and a select few others, the most powerful in the court. And given that knowledge, it makes sense that Shishou would want to keep up relations with the imperial brother, even despite his disguise. Currying favor can be done in relative secrecy.

That doesn’t mean Jinshi is particularly happy about this, though. 

The letter arrives via Shishou’s personal messenger. It smells like the rich, dense forests of the north, and the paper is the finest quality Li has to offer. The quickly-dashed brush strokes invite the imperial brother for an excursion, to the northern province of Shihoku-shu, with the promise of fine hunting and an escape from summer heat. 

And no matter how much he wants to, Jinshi knows this is a letter he cannot just tear in half and throw away. Burying his head in his hands and groaning is about the only thing he can do. It does not help. 

“Will you accept, sir?” Gaoshun asks, peeking over his shoulder at the letter. 

“I don’t think I have a choice,” Jinshi grumbles. “Not without Shishou kicking up a stink.” 

And so, for the next few weeks, there is a frustratingly drawn-out exchange of letters. The contents of them are too baked in formality to be interesting to go through, so Jinshi would summarize the frustratingly drawn-out exchange as follows: 

Lord Shishou, I would be honored to accept your invitation. However, I have a few concerns.

Your Majesty, we are humbled that you would so kindly grace us with your consideration. Please name your concerns, and we will account for them fully.

The ‘imperial brother’, as I am sure you are aware, is supposedly cloistered away in the palace, horribly disfigured. If I were to show my face, or even to simply come openly as my true self, there may be those who can piece together the ruse, and my safety and the security of the rear palace both may be placed at risk. A mask at least would be necessary in order to not raise suspicion, but I fear more countermeasures may be required, as other nobles who are not in the know may have questions. 

I hope that Your Majesty would still consider the invitation. I can assure you we have but the finest guards in all of Li in my manor, and they will be under the strictest of orders to prioritize your life above all else. You need not fear using your true name here. 

I fear that is the issue at hand—showing my true self will draw much intrigue, much of it untoward or even disruptive. It may be easier if I were to guise myself as an entirely different noble to ensure my own safety, and use that name in most company—even if some of that company does know my true identity.

I suppose I can see Your Majesty’s logic. 

Let me use a different name and wear a mask, and I’ll come to your dumb hunting trip. 

Deal. 

And so a compromise is hammered out. 

Is it a lot of trouble to go through? Yes. Will having a different name really lower the risk to himself? Almost certainly not. A high-ranked noble is a high-ranked noble, no matter how you slice it. But at least this way he can have some semblance of a disguise.

As for what name he will choose? Well…

“Is this really the best way to choose a name, sir?” Gaoshun says wearily.

Jinshi draws a black go stone from the bag. “Do you have any better ideas?” 

“I think most methods may be more effective than this.” 

“I already chose this name.” Jinshi flicks his thumb, and the stone goes flying, landing on the paper on the desk with a loud clack. The stone doesn’t land on any of the characters he wrote, though. He draws another stone, this one white. He’s never liked go, but at least these stones he keeps around are useful for something other than entertaining Lakan whenever he visits unannounced. “I don’t see the point of putting thought into a name I won’t use for more than a week.” 

Clack. He flicks another stone—and it lands on one of the characters on the paper. Excellent, he has the first half of his name decided. 

“Some of the more knowledgeable bureaucracy may be suspicious if a high-ranked noble they’ve never heard of is the guest of honor.” 

“On the contrary, I think that they’ll stay quiet from the embarrassment. I certainly would, if I were the only one who’s never heard of the noble…” The stone lands with a clack on the character for kou.

Gaoshun cocks an eyebrow. “Senkou, sir? I don’t know if that sounds much like a name.” 

Jinshi puts a finger to his chin. “No, flip them. Kousen.” 

“That still doesn’t sound like the name of a noble.”

“Plenty of nobles have climbed their way into the upper ranks through merit nowadays,” Jinshi protests. “I can be of common birth. It adds to the backstory.” 

Jinshi rises from his chair and does not give any further acknowledgement to Gaoshun’s weary sigh. He rolls his neck and winces when it twinges—it’s become quite stiff from sitting all day. 

He wonders if his apothecary might have a treatment for it, and—not for the first time—wishes he hadn’t sent her off to Gyokuyou’s palace. 

Jinshi stops, mid-stretch, and cocks his head. 

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea.” 

“I didn’t even say anything.” 

You don’t need to, says the look on Gaoshun’s face. What comes out of his mouth, though, is, “You assigned Xiaomao to Consort Gyokuyou’s palace on account of her pregnancy, did you not? What would the consort, in such a delicate state, do if her poison-tester left her side?”

“It’s fine! I’ll just send Suiren over in exchange for a few days.”

Gaoshun sighs and puts his head in his hands. Jinshi summarily ignores him and trots off to the Jade Pavilion. 

He should be able to take back his favorite apothecary from the Precious Consort without any fuss, right? 

Unfortunately for Jinshi, his apothecary’s presence can only do so much for his morale. 

Shihoku-shu is several days from the capital, and that means hours and hours of bouncing around in the carriage, trying to breathe through the cloth mask over his face and not die of heat exhaustion. 

The temperature is truly horrible. The rainy season is over now, and proper summer has taken its place. The moisture remaining from the month of near-constant rain hangs stiflingly heavy in the air—it reminds him of the air in the greenhouse they used to grow the blue roses, except constant and inescapable. It’s hell. 

And Jinshi knew it would be hell. This is why he didn’t want to come in the first place, and why he invited her to come along to boost his spirits. Of course, though, there’s not much she can do for him now. She was assigned to another carriage with Basen, leaving Jinshi alone in a carriage with Gaoshun.

It’s too hot for either of them to feel like speaking, especially on day two of the grueling carriage ride. A bead of sweat runs down Jinshi’s neck, and his ass is sore from bouncing around in a carriage for a day and a half. Maybe it would be better if he did actually get heat exhaustion, just so Maomao will have to come running to rescue him. 

Until the heat takes him, though, all Jinshi can do is languish. 

With a long sigh, Jinshi rests his cheek in his palm and stares listlessly out the window. They’re passing rice field number sixty-five, by his count. Number sixty-six follows right after it. Jinshi resigns himself to a day more of a bruised ass and a longing heart. 

Hopefully his fortunes will turn once they arrive at the villa. 

His fortunes do not turn when they arrive at the villa. 

Shishou is a slimy, manipulative bastard always hungry for more power. Jinshi knows this. So maybe he should have expected this nonsense, but it’s hot and horrible and Jinshi is exhausted already, and even the food is coming to him with an ulterior motive. 

Soft-shell turtle? Wine? Jinshi is many things, and while ‘intelligent’ may not be on that list, ‘plainly stupid’ isn’t either. He knows what it looks like when people are trying to drug him, and this is one of the most insultingly blatant attempts he’s seen so far. 

It’s just a surprise that Shishou hasn’t sent serving girls knocking on his door already, Jinshi thinks as he takes another bite of rehydrated rice.   

At least Maomao seems to be enjoying herself. Her cheeks are a little flushed—from the turtle? The wine? The excitement of eating such fine, medically-potent food?—and the tips of her ears are the slightest bit more pink than usual. 

Her dark eyes shine with glee—seemingly at getting all the food for herself. They’ve the same starry glint in them as when he gave her the cordyceps, or when he mentioned the bezoars. 

Jinshi smiles to himself, remembering the little package tucked away in his luggage. It took time to source the bezoars and quite a bit of coin, but if her reaction will be anything like this, it’s well worth the trouble. 

Maomao notices his stare as she chews another bite of turtle. The spark in her eyes goes the slightest bit dimmer, and when she swallows, she asks, “Are you sure you don’t want any of this, sir?”

“Positive,” Jinshi replies. “It’s all yours.” 

The shine in her eyes returns to its full, brightest glory, and Jinshi can’t keep the grin from his face as she lifts another bite to her lips. 

The rehydrated rice and oversalted fish he had for dinner isn’t the most filling, but he only supplements it hours later, with the medicine he takes every night before bed. He pinches his nose as he swallows the horribly sweet potato flour mixture in one gulp. Shishou provided him juice and water garnished with fruit in his rooms, but Jinshi only trusts the plain water he brought personally to wash it down. 

The water washes out the stickiness of the medicine—the worst part, in his opinion—but it leaves behind the cloying, oversweet taste behind. Jinshi grimaces and wipes his mouth, which does little to get rid of the taste. 

Shishou might be the bigger fool here, wasting all his most vigor-inducing foods on someone who won’t even eat it. Jinshi’s heard that lust is a thing with fangs, but even when he was drugged when he was younger, overtrusting, and foolish, the increased blood flow and flush never bothered to direct itself at anyone in particular. 

All Shishou succeeded in, Jinshi thinks smugly as he lies down to sleep, is make his apothecary very, very happy. 

(He’d love it if the joy she felt came directly from him, though, and he hopes the little pack of bezoars in his luggage will make her even happier.)

(Maybe they’ll even get her to listen long enough for him to explain his situation.)

Even Maomao can’t be the perfect reprieve, though. 

There are other nobles milling about, so the stifling cloth mask is firmly fastened to his face. Even just a few hours after first light, it’s already hot and stuffy. The humidity makes his mask already feel damp to the touch, promising a truly miserable afternoon. 

“Could you fetch some water for me?” Jinshi asks, when one final check of his equipment reveals that the container on his hip is already half-empty. “From the stores we brought.” 

The stores they brought, of course, are not twenty feet away in one of the carriages, in plain, unmarked barrels and constantly watched by multiple guards. Jinshi’s longer legs could carry him there in five seconds, and he could probably part the crowd blocking the way to it easier, too. He knows exactly how she would react if they were in his palace, alone—she would glare daggers at him. Get it yourself! Her eyes would cry, even if she would ultimately obey. She would grumble all the while. 

With the heavy mask over his face, he could use the normalcy. Jinshi forgets, of course, that they are surrounded by strangers. Maomao, of course, does not.

“As you wish, Master Kousen,” she replies with a low bow and not a hint of her usual disdain. She takes the container from his hands and obediently trots off. 

Jinshi watches her go, hand hovering uselessly in midair like he’s still holding the gourd. Something in his chest cracks right open. 

Once she’s disappeared into the throng of people, Jinshi buries his face in his hands. 

Oh, he hates this. 

Jinshi’s mood only worsens on the long ride on horseback from the villa to the hunting grounds. The nobles all take it at a leisurely trot, basking in the heat of the sun and bragging to each other about the craftsmanship of the arrows they brought, or what quarry they’ve caught in the past. 

Can we not go faster? Jinshi thinks, swaying in his saddle. The sun is already beating down on them, and the thick weight of his dark hair absorbs it all—with how the mask fits, he couldn’t even tie it back to get it off his neck. 

A bead of sweat runs down his cheek, but at least there’s a breeze coming down from the mountains. One particularly hard gust comes rushing down, and Jinshi slaps a hand to his face to keep it from lifting his mask. Can’t have that.

He’s riding at the front of the group, in the position of the guest of honor—only Shishou rides in front of him, the portly man swaying in his saddle. Behind him are Gaoshun and Basen, and behind them countless other nobles deemed less important. 

The skin of his neck rises in goosebumps, though—he can feel their gazes on him, and the wind carries their quiet whispers. 

Masked again. 

What are we to supposed to call him? Kousen? 

Why the secrecy?

Who’s he trying to keep in the dark?

Jinshi tugs the cloth of the mask tighter around his face. 

They finally arrive at the hunting grounds, deep in the forest, around mid-morning. Countless other men meet them there with equipment and refreshments. A few retainers have falcons perched on their arm. Shihoku-shu is known for its falconry. 

Jinshi himself will not be partaking. After the few days he’s had, he’d quite like to shoot something. 

Before he dismounts, he scans the crowd of retainers for a thin figure a head shorter than the rest, one with crimson and turquoise beads in their hair. He finds none, and allows himself a pout—the mask hides everything but his eyes, after all. A few servants approach him and offer tea and juice, but Jinshi waves them off and accepts his equipment from a retainer. 

His bow is wrapped in a vermillion cloth, and when he removes the cover, the gold embellishment at each tip shines in the dappled forest sunlight. The bow is made of fine, carved wood. It was a gift from his brother when Jinshi came of age. Another retainer holds his arrows, perfectly sharp and fletched with hawk’s feathers. 

“Is it to your liking, sir?” asks one of them as Jinshi pulls the bowstring to his cheek. 

“I’m a bit out of practice,” Jinshi confesses. The muscles in his back pull with the strain. He runs drills with the sword with Basen nearly every day, but it’s been a while since he used a bow. “But nothing unmanageable.” 

The group they’re currently in is much too large to get any effective hunting done, so they quickly decide to split into groups of three or four nobles each, plus their guards and servants. Jinshi, as the guest of honor, finds himself grouped with Shishou and Gaoshun, as well as Basen in his guard and two retainers to collect their quarry. 

Perhaps as a show of good faith, Shishou doesn’t elect to bring any guards with him. 

And it’s the northern lord who gets the first kill, sending an arrow cleanly through the eye of a pheasant. 

“A good shot,” Gaoshun says, as the first retainer—a boy not yet of age—sets off racing through the underbrush. Gaoshun catches Jinshi’s eye and gives him a meaningful look. 

Right. Flattery. That’s something Jinshi has to do, too.

Before Jinshi can say his own piece, though, Shishou’s head whips around. In an instant, he nocks another arrow and sends it whistling through the air. It flies past the cheek of the young boy, who gives a startled cry and leaps back. Red is already bubbling through his fingers as they all hear a thwack and the cry of some dying creature. 

The second servant rushes off, leaving them alone. 

Jinshi swallows the lump in his throat. “Impressive,” is all he can manage. The first boy staggers through the underbrush, hand over his ear. 

Shishou huffs a quick laugh and takes a swig from the container of water at his hip. “You flatter me. Pheasants are easy enough.” 

Without waiting for the retainers, the northern lord continues down the path. As he scans the forest, Jinshi fiddles with the archers’ guard on his wrist—another tight, suffocating layer of fabric. The skin beneath is itching, and he can’t get his fingers beneath to scratch it. 

“I prefer hunting deer, myself,” Shishou continues. “They make for more interesting quarry. Harder to bring down.” He takes another drink. “What about yourself, Your Majesty?”

Jinshi’s fingers still. 

“I thought we agreed to use another name here, Lord Shishou,” Jinshi replies, voice low. 

Shishou bows at his own indiscretion, but it’s only a nod of the head, not deeper. “I apologize,” he says, “but we’re only in the company of those already in the know, aren’t we?” He gestures at Gaoshun and Basen. The servants are still gone. 

Gaoshun’s eyes are narrowed, and his fingers clench rhythmically around his own bow. Basen looks openly furious. Jinshi catches Basen’s eye and gives him a look. Don’t start.

“You never know who’s listening,” Jinshi replies. His eyes catch on movement in the far distance—a deer, young enough that its back is still dappled white. It dips its head to graze, and Jinshi crouches as well. He draws an arrow and nocks it on the bowstring. 

“Your guard is capable enough to notice an enemy, isn’t he?” Shishou retorts, nodding at Basen. “I’ve heard legends of the Ma clan, and we have not one but two among us.” 

Both retainers are coming dangerously close to earshot, now. As he draws, Jinshi’s thumb brushes against the cloth of the mask. The muscles of his back flex until they ache. 

Shishou continues, “Why keep up a farce among friends?”

Farce, Jinshi thinks sardonically. Friends.

His cloth mask flits in the breeze. He exhales, and lets the arrow fly. 

It’s too hot. 

Jinshi is out of the sun, now, in Shishou’s villa instead—but despite the shade, and the fans, it is brutally warm. The food in front of him remains untouched. Maybe another time, the smell of fresh meat would be appetizing, but now the greasy, sticky heat of the food hangs in the air, clings to every pore. It’s hard to breathe. The mask doesn’t help.

Shishou is still in his ear. The words dull into a monolithic buzz. Jinshi blinks hard, nods. Something about—about arms dealing? Some deal to be struck?

A bead of sweat rolls down Jinshi’s cheek, soaks into the mask at his chin. His entire body is drenched. His head pounds in his ears. His throat is thick.  

Apothecary—where’s his apothecary? 

There she is, standing behind Gaoshun. Her eyes narrow at him. She leans forward to whisper something into Gaoshun’s ear. 

“You look quite warm, Your Majesty,” Shishou whispers in his ear at that moment, and a chill runs down his spine. “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable if you took that mask off?” 

And in that instant, Jinshi turns from his apothecary and looks around the table. 

All eyes are on him. 

Sharp, hungry eyes surround him, all turned in his direction. Whispers carry through the thick air. Eager to see the imperial brother’s face, of the disfigurements that mar him. Ravenous for just a glimpse. 

Jinshi realizes in that moment that his hands are trembling. 

He rises from his seat, poorly hides the stagger in his step with a hand on the table. “I apologize, Lord Shishou,” Jinshi hears himself say, but his own voice seems far away now. “I’m—I’m afraid I need some air.”

He thinks Shishou replies with an affirmative. He doesn’t stay for the answer. The table is deathly quiet as he leaves, but the buzzing chatter rises again as he leaves as quickly as could be considered polite. 

Which is not quickly at all. He sways out into the corridor, shoulder bumping against the wall. It’s not as oppressively warm out here, though. There’s less clinging heat in the air without the warmth radiating off the many bodies and all the food. It feels good. 

He wants to breathe that air properly. His mask blocks the air, though. It’s soaked. 

Outside lies the forest. It looks cooler. Jinshi stumbles out of the villa and into the woods beyond. It’s not as warm in the shade. The wind of the lake whistles through the leaves of the trees. It can’t carry away the heat trapped beneath his robes, but it’s something. 

Good, he thinks. That’s good. 

He blinks, and the world swims. He’s seen this path before. There’s a waterfall somewhere down it, right?

He takes a step down the path, then another. At the third, his leg twists beneath him, and he staggers into a tree, slumps against it. 

The parallel tree trunks are starting to bend and sway. He realizes he is open-mouthed panting beneath his sweat-soaked mask. Jinshi digs his fingers into the bark of the tree, rough under his hands, but the scrape of it against his palms isn’t enough to ground him. His legs are trembling. 

Jinshi shuts his eyes against the pounding in his temples, and his balance gives completely. Leaning against the tree is the only thing keeping him upright. His stomach is churning. 

He just—he just needs a few minutes. Out here. And then he’ll be fine. 

Down the path towards the villa, a twig snaps. 

Fuck. 

Jinshi squeezes his eyes shut and bites his tongue against the rising nausea and forces himself to his full height, only allowing himself a single hand against the tree’s trunk. 

“Who’s there?” he rasps. His voice comes strangled and high and barely audible. Another swell of nausea comes as soon as he opens his mouth, but—no, he can’t show weakness among these snakes, he can’t—

“Master J—Kousen,” comes a voice Jinshi would recognize anywhere. 

“Oh,” he sighs. He slumps again against the tree. “Oh, it’s—it’s just you….”

Maomao sways in his vision like a desert mirage. Done up like a princess in beautiful green robes. Forest-dappled sunlight catches glints of silver at her throat, playing in the dark of her eyes. A glass bottle flashes in her hands. His salvation. 

His lovely apothecary marches right up to him and reaches for his face. Jinshi leans into her hand on instinct. The shine in her eyes looks like little stars. 

“You need to take this off,” comes her beautiful, scolding voice. 

Jinshi snaps out of his haze and snatches her hand away. “You can’t.” 

Maomao scowls at him. “Of course you can—there’s no one here.”

She doesn’t understand. Of course she doesn’t.

Jinshi leans his forehead on her shoulder and takes as deep a breath as he can manage, slow and shaking. She smells sharp, like medicine. Jinshi would appreciate it more if his entire body wasn’t threatening to collapse against her. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, though. 

“Someone might come,” he protests, voice high and weak. 

Maomao growls in frustration—he feels it as much as he hears it, pressed against her—and wraps one arm around his waist. His skin sears against her hand, even through his robes, but he doesn’t hate this heat. Her other hand bodily shoves his arm around her shoulders, and she begins to half-carry, half-drag him down the path. 

Down towards the waterfall, not the villa, thankfully. Jinshi groans and hangs his head, shutting his eyes against the wave of nausea that lurches forward with the movement. He sincerely owes her those bezoars after this, he thinks. And a proper explanation. 

He owes her many things. 

His apothecary is silent as she drags him down the path. When the nausea recedes enough for Jinshi to open his eyes, her lips are drawn into a thin line. A bead of sweat runs down her forehead. Her eyes have the same hard, stubborn glint in them as when they’re working on a case together. Jinshi wonders if that’s just her face when she treats any patient, or if the kernel of disdain is reserved only for him. 

She stops after a few minutes, and Jinshi lurches forward before she pulls him back, shoves him down to sit on a rock. It’s smooth and cool beneath his fingers—it feels nice. 

Her arms pull away, though which is less nice. He whines. Where is she going? 

She pulls a handkerchief from her robes and dips it into the river. River? He looks up. There’s a majestic waterfall before him. Ah, they’ve made it. So the roaring in his ears isn’t just his own heart pounding. 

Maomao returns with the soaked cloth, kneels in front of him, slips it under his mask. It’s ice-cold, but once the shock of the temperature wears off, it feels so nice. He closes his eyes and leans into her hand. 

“We’re fairly deep in the woods now, Master Jinshi,” she says—he missed the shape of his name on her lips so much. “I don’t think anyone would follow us this far—and if they did, we’d have a few minutes before they come.” She tugs on his mask. “Can you take it off now?”

She sounds frustrated. Her voice is beautiful. 

“Yeah,” Jinshi slurs. Whatever she asks. 

His fingers reach up to the clasp of the mask. They brush against hers, separated only by the cloth. It’s just the two of them, and he’s safe with her, isn’t he? “Yeah, let me just—”

There’s a crack, a faint whistling, and then the ground beneath their feet explodes. 

Two near-drownings, an attempt at that explanation he owes her, a good few bruises to his ego and several rash decisions later, Jinshi collapses into bed with a groan. 

His hair is still drying from their little swim, pleasantly cool against his neck and damp against the back of his robes. The shock of the feifa attack and their little adventure that followed has long worn off, now, and between the heat exhaustion and the crash after the fear of the attack, his limbs feel like they’re filled with lead. Jinshi rolls onto his back, stares listlessly at the ceiling, and decides he’d rather do nothing more for the rest of the evening. 

His mind is still spinning, though. 

She was angry at him. 

Which, admittedly, was understandable. After the feifa attack, and after their impromptu little swim, and after she almost drowned (and scared the life out of him, when he finally pulled her limp body from the water), her first response was anger. Justified anger, yes. In his defense, the heat had fully gotten to his brain. He wasn’t thinking straight when he jumped into that waterfall. 

But it would have been really nice if she’d been able to set that anger aside and even try to listen to what he was saying. 

Jinshi sighs and turns onto his side, facing the wall, and shuts his heavy eyelids. Of course, when he does, the other memories of their little adventure come flooding back. 

They come in flashes—the way his skin blazed beneath her hands as she led him, how cool her hand was against his cheek; the shock of the cold water, and how warm her skin was after, through their drenched robes; the way their bodies slotted together perfectly; the pull of her hand against his—

Jinshi’s entire face flushes hot, like the heat exhaustion has returned. He heaves himself upright with a grimace. There is a nervous, buzzing energy in his veins that he’s not entirely sure what to do with. But after what transpired, he knows there’s only one thing he can really do. 

The bezoars in his luggage were meant to be a thank you, but they’ll have to serve as an apology instead. After today, he owes her one. 

And maybe they’ll manage to keep her attention long enough for him to give her that explanation he owes. 

Jinshi heaves himself to his feet and drags himself to the vanity. He picks up a comb and starts to run it through his hair, messy and tangled from letting it air-dry. It catches a few snags, but for some reason, the pull on his hair is less pleasant than whenever Maomao yanks at it, trying to tease the worst knots out. 

And he remembers one more thing, too—how her hand brushed the nape of his neck, one spring evening, as she combed through it. Goosebumps rise against his neck as he remembers the ghost of her fingers. 

What…what is this? 

What is this pull he feels towards her? What is this odd, relentless gravity that compels him to seek her out, drag her into his messes? 

Jinshi puts the comb down and stares hard in the mirror. His hair is more presentable, but there are still a few flyaways. His eyes are tired, and they hold no answers. 

He still doesn’t look the most presentable, but he supposes he doesn’t have to be. He’s not even sure if she’ll open the door. She might well be asleep already, after the day they’ve had. 

It’ll have to be good enough. Jinshi heaves himself to his feet, takes the glass pitcher of water he had filled with his personal supply and drinks no less than three cups. Maomao warned him before they parted ways that afternoon to drink as much water as he could stomach, to combat dehydration, and Jinshi isn’t keep on passing out on her doorstep mid-apology, even if that would mean her hands on him again. 

(He also remembers how she didn’t so much as look at him as she gave the advice, and wishes the water were liquid courage instead. He really should have taken Shishou up on that wine.)

There’s nothing else worth delaying his visit any longer, though. Jinshi digs the bezoars out from where they’re buried in his luggage, squares his shoulders, and takes a deep breath. He’s pushing the door open, but glances back into the dark room one last time and stops. 

His mask sits on the table in the center of the room. Its thin fabric dried quickly in the heat of the afternoon sun after they managed to get themselves out of that cave, but the fabric is wrinkled. He has worn it every moment he stepped outside his rooms since he arrived. 

It’s not worth putting on, he decides after a moment. Her rooms are just across the hall. He’ll only be talking with her. 

Jinshi decides not to bother with the damned, suffocating thing. He turns and shuts the door behind him. 

He spares a glance down the hall, but there’s no one around—not even a servant. Everyone must still be at the banquet now. He crosses the hall, but pauses when he reaches her closed door. 

It’s evening now. The sun is nearly down. After all the excitement of today, she may be sleeping. 

Or she may not be. 

Jinshi takes a deep breath, summons all his courage, and knocks thrice on the door, soft enough that it shouldn’t startle her.  

There’s silence on the other side. Jinshi counts the heartbeat pounding in his ears, and after ten, shifts nervously on his feet. Maybe she’s already gone to sleep. Or she’s just ignoring him, hoping he’ll go away. He wouldn’t put it past her. 

And then he hears shuffling on the other side of the door. 

Jinshi’s heart leaps to his throat, and the pulse in his ears doubles in tempo. 

The sliding door rattles in its frame and opens just a crack. A single dark, curious eye peeks out. It sees him, widens, and he sees a flash of a red bead in her hair as she retreats. 

She doesn’t shut the door, though.

“You don’t have to let me in if you don’t want to.” 

The cracked-open door says nothing. Jinshi sighs. Talking to a door doesn’t feel right, anyway—so he turns and leans back against the wall. “I’m sorry I upset you.” 

He’s met with a long silence, then more shuffling. He turns his head, and through the crack in the door, he can just barely make out a sleeve, a lock of dark hair, as she herself turns and leans against the wall. 

(It’s definitely his imagination, telling him that their palms are placed in the exact same spot, with only the wall separating them. The heat he feels pressed against him is all a lie. Down, brain.)

Lost in thought, he startles when she replies. “I haven’t given it a second thought.” A pause, and then, “I should apologize to you, instead.” 

Jinshi gives a mirthless chuckle, but says little more. 

Maomao, behind the door, is silent. He wonders what she’s thinking about. 

No doubt her clever mind has put at least some of it together already. Even besides the incident in the cave, she’s been pulled into no less than two attempts on his life. She has seen the piles of paperwork on his desk as she tidied up, and if she looked closely, her sharp mind would instantly notice that the documents fall far above the scope of a mere eunuch’s duties. 

She accompanied him on this trip, where he took yet another false name because he doesn’t want to wear his real one, and the one he picked for himself wouldn’t cut it either. She’s seen him nearly die of suffocation and exhaustion because of that damned mask. 

His secrets have almost gotten her killed. Twice. 

And—and maybe knowing will make her life harder, yes. This will only pull her further into the storm with him. But maybe dragging a companion into his mess, selfishly, isn’t such a bad thing. 

He opens his mouth to speak, and the words are on the tip of his tongue: I am not who I say I am. “I—”

“There’s nothing to say,” she begins, in the exact same moment. 

“As far as I’m concerned, you are who you are, Master Jinshi.” 

He freezes. 

The mask on his bedroom table suddenly feels so far away. 

“I am who I am, huh…?” he asks the empty air. 

He—he had a reason for coming here. He has something he needs to tell her. 

She always did surprise him, though. 

After a too-long moment of staring dumbly, blankly ahead, and her words still echoing in his mind, Jinshi’s hands begin to dig through his robes of their own accord. He pulls out a cloth-wrapped bundle and, before courage can fail him, offers it through the door. 

“It’s a gift,” he assures, when he can practically feel her draw back. “Don’t be afraid.”

Tentatively, her hand reaches out. Their fingers brush against his for an instant, slim and cool against his skin, as she takes it. 

“I need to tell you something,” he starts in a rush, before nerves can trip him up. “It’s one of the reasons I brought you along—I wanted to tell you sooner—and I think you deserve to—”

Maomao cries out on the other side of the door. 

Jinshi spins on his heel. Is she hurt somehow? Did someone try to hurt her? He reaches for the door, but before he can do anything, it flies open of its own accord. 

And there Maomao stands, smiling up at him with naked delight in her eyes. Her cheeks are flushed and pulled into a wide, exuberant smile. 

Her unmasked joy steals whatever words were about to come off his tongue. 

“Thank you so much!” she cries, with a bow so low her unbound hair goes flying every which way. The glint in her eyes has brightened to a blazing star, and staring directly at it blinds him, but he can’t bear to look away. “It—it took a while, but I managed to source—hey—don’t close the—” 

Still grinning, Maomao slams the door in his face and bars it. 

“No, listen,” Jinshi begs, pressing up against the door. “Listen, I need to tell you—”

Silence. 

With a disbelieving sigh, Jinshi leans his forehead against the door and shuts his eyes. His mind still spins with the smile she gave him, how the light caught in her eyes and how her joy shone. 

And behind his closed eyelids, memories come flooding back. 

The hard, determined look in her eyes as she half-dragged him to safety this afternoon, a bead of sweat rolling down her temple; how the summer sunlight caught in her eyes and in the silver at her throat; the cold of their soaked robes, and the blazing heat of her skin beneath them; how their bodies slotted together so easily. 

How her eyes pull and crinkle at the corners when she smiles—in that true, rare way she only does with rare medicines. 

How her lips look so soft. 

His heart is still pounding. He presses a hand to it. It’s beating twice a second, and his stomach feels fluttery; he can’t quite swallow down the lump in his throat. 

Why? There is no adrenaline racing through his veins, no panic, no fear. He’s not out in the heat of the sun anymore. 

He’s never felt this way before. The closest thing is when someone managed to slip an aphrodisiac into his food, but that flush, that heat, that pull—it was nothing compared to this. 

So what is this?

Jinshi stares again at the closed door in front of him. It does not open, and it holds no answers. But looking at it, the answer comes to him. He’s heard of it before. 

It suffuses the most fantastical dreams, the most heart-rending tragedies. It is told in folktales and myths and legends passed down centuries. Some claim that it lights their path; others profess that it ruins nations. It is whispered about in the emperor’s garden of flowers as a fleeting, ephemeral daydream, and murmured into his own ear by countless, who claim the same flush, the same beat, the same pull. 

He never understood what they claimed, why they used it as an excuse to creep closer, to take another mile if he gave them an inch. To him, their sweetest murmurs only tasted of poison. 

He never understood a word of it. 

Not until now. 

Oh, he thinks, and something slots into place next to his heart. As natural as breathing. 

Oh, he thinks, and the implications hit him like a rockfall. 

Chapter Text

Maomao rises even earlier than usual today. 

Working in the rear palace demanded her waking at dawn, as the sun’s first golden rays began to shine down on the capital. Now, in the depths of winter, the sun comes up later in the day, and so Maomao’s internal clock demands she rise much earlier than sunrise. 

She takes one final, deep exhale, then pushes the covers off of herself and stretches. She rolls her neck, sighing in relief when it pops. This room isn’t particularly comfortable, and her shoulders ache from sleeping at an odd angle. 

Her bare feet sting on the cold floor as she rises, finding a place to sit and prepare for the day. She doesn’t have a mirror here, but that’s fine—she didn’t have a mirror back in her hut in the pleasure district, either. They were much too expensive for a common apothecary. She finds a place to sit that’s not on the cold floor and begins to dig into the folds of her robes. 

Despite the cold and the discomfort of the room, it’s not so bad, Maomao tells herself. She still has all the things she needs, and she can make do with little. 

From her robes she pulls a familiar little cloth pouch. The wooden beads inside clack against each other, the only noise in the empty room. She draws a crimson bead from the pouch and weaves it into her hair, then repeats the process thrice more. See? Even without the creature comforts of home, she’s more than fine. Her fingers know the way. 

Once they’re fixed in her hair, she lets out a slow breath. That’s a little better. She feels more human, like this. Next, Maomao reaches again into her robes and draws out a little pot of clay mixed with oil. She takes a brush from the desk, brushes off the thick layer of dust, and smears it into the mixture. Carefully, she applies the freckles to her face. The clay and oil is yet-colder on her skin in the frigid air, but once they’re painted on, she feels better. Safer. 

Now, she is ready for the day. As if everything was normal. 

The bars on the window ruin the illusion, though. 

Maomao sighs and looks out the window. The cold metal bars slat the moonlight spilling into the room. The moon is full and just starting to wane, and it’s well above the horizon. The sky isn’t even lightening yet. It’ll be hours until dawn. Her eyes ache. By her best estimate, she got about three hours of sleep. 

Maomao finishes tying her hair back and reminds herself that she never sleeps well in unfamiliar places. It was a problem in the rear palace, too, and later during her service in the outer palace. 

This isn’t so different. Besides, she’s done her routine for the morning, so it’s easy enough to pretend that everything is normal. Three hours is better than nothing. 

The storage room serving as her quarters is frigid and unheated. Beneath her feet, the floor is cold stone. So she sits on the wicker chest in the corner, the only thing in the room one could call anything near homely furniture. It’s comfortable enough to sit on, though, and it even holds the treasure trove of books she’s been sorting through the last few days, at the behest of a madwoman demanding an elixir of immortality. The books are quite interesting. Many of them are from the west, and hold theories or stories or anecdotes she’s heard from her old man. A treasure trove of knowledge, to be certain. Plus, the wicker chest holding the books is marginally more comfortable than what’s meant to be her bed—a single sheet thrown over the cold stone. Maomao has layered a jacket, a cloak, and every other scrap of moldy fabric in this room that she could find onto the floor, but it’s still not very warm. 

The room is cold. Her fingers are shaking. 

It takes her a moment to realize this, but when she tears her gaze from the room to look down, there they are, trembling slightly. Her breath rises in puffs of steam. 

She breathes into her hands, shoves the discomfort down, and looks out the window. The moonlight illuminates a field of pure white. The tower she is in is high enough that her head spins, if she looks too far for too long. The only way out is down, down, down, into the valley, which starts out broad but narrows closer to the fortress. A swarm of invaders would be funneled in to their deaths, even if sheer numbers could eventually break through. 

What does that say about her, then, already in the fortress’ maw? 

“It’ll be a bloodbath,” Maomao murmurs to herself, fiddling with one of the beads in her hair. The Forbidden Army will certainly come knocking soon. 

It’s not a question of if anymore. The rebellion of the Shi clan in the north is open and brazen enough by now. They are openly cloistering themselves in a fortress to the north and manufacturing enough arms to rush the capital. If the all-seeing eyes of the Emperor, of Heaven Himself, land on this fortress and learn of the Shi’s plans, His vengeance will be swift and brutal. No matter the collateral. 

If the Forbidden Army comes sweeping through, Maomao will be slaughtered with the rest. That’s just how these things work. And if the army somehow doesn’t come knocking, Shenmei will decide she’s through waiting for that impossible medicine sooner or later. 

The bars of the window feel close, caging, choking. There is a lump in Maomao’s throat. Her fingers are still shaking. 

She tells herself it is just the cold. Nothing more. 

Her gaze is still locked onto the window and the white beyond. Maomao fumbles blindly at the front of her robes, feeling for the little cloth pouch of beads, the ones that Pairin gave her many years ago. She’s already put the largest four in her hair, but the others from that broken bracelet clack noisily against each other. A touch of comfort, she tells herself. A bit of home, when the familiar routine she practices every day has failed to still her shaking fingers. A reminder that even here, isolated and imprisoned and a breath away from the executioner’s blade, far from home in the frigid north, she is not so alone. 

Her fingers close around something else instead. 

It is long and thin in her fingers and smooth to the touch, save for one end capped in intricate detailing. Its metal is warmed by her own body heat. Against the tips of her frigid, shaking fingers, it feels like a sauna. Maomao’s breath puffs in the air again as she draws the object out of her robes. The phoenix wing adorning one end flashes with every twist against the moonlight. Even in the dim light of the room, the polished silver gleams like a beacon. 

The hairstick Jinshi gave her is warm against her frigid fingers. 

Maomao heaves a sigh hard enough to cloud the silver with her breath. She really doesn’t understand why he gave her the thing in the first place. Surely he could trade the thing for a million other political favors. It is really beautiful, she thinks, as the silver flashes in the moonlight. The craftsmanship is impeccable. Surely he could have given this to someone else in trade for something worthwhile. She doesn’t think she’ll ever understand how his mind works. 

The silver flashes in the moonlight. She ought to sell the thing. It’s sure to fetch a decent price. It was pure coincidence that she happened to be carrying it on her person the day she was kidnapped. It doesn’t mean anything in particular. That’s right—she had been toying with selling it, actually, which was why she put it in her robes that day. It wasn’t her fault she was caught up in some crazy conspiracy and dragged off before she could. 

But she has it now, and she might as well use it. She’ll take any good luck charm she can get. 

She’d do the same with any of the hairsticks she received that day. If she’d brought Consort Lihua’s or Lihaku’s to sell instead, she would also wear those in her hair. It’s not like this silver one is special. 

With a grimace, Maomao pierces the hairstick through her bun, as she has every morning since she arrived. 

It’s nearly become part of the routine. 

There’s only so much charms can do, though. 

Another massive fireball rises behind her, close enough to feel the heat of it against her back. Maomao cries out as the ground lurches beneath her, stumbling forward as the world tilts. Her knee bangs against the wall hard enough to bruise, pain flaring through her nerves, but she scrambles to grasp the rough, freezing stone just before she can pitch down the fifty-foot plunge beyond it. 

The cold stone scrapes her palms. The tips of her fingers ache from the cold. Her eyes sting from the smoke. 

Think, she tells herself. Think. 

Maomao doesn’t know where she’s going. The snow falls thick and fast enough that it blinds her, gathering in her hair and on her eyelashes, stinging her eyes. She blinks, and freezing moisture gathers on her cheeks. The snow muffles all of the sound, though. In the wake of the blast, it’s oddly quiet. Or maybe her ears are just ringing from the explosion Shisui set. 

Maomao reaches up to her hair with shaking fingers. The hairstick is gone, passed on to Shisui. She needs the good luck charm more than Maomao does. It was all she could do. 

Give it back to me someday.

Maomao clenches her fists hard. She tells herself the sting in her eyes is just from the snowy cold. She faces forward, and she marches on. To where, she doesn’t know. There’s nowhere she can go. This fortress is the only thing for miles. Trying to find civilization would be suicide in this cold. Bare instinct keeps her legs moving. She has no choice. 

It’s not likely that the Shi’s top priority would be some girl they kidnapped to try and make medicine, right? Not when their warehouse just blew up, and not when their princess is in active revolt. Maybe she’ll be able to hole up and slip through the cracks of their notice. 

Her legs feel heavy. Her shoulders are shaking. She pulls the thin cloak tighter around herself, but it does little good. Maybe the cold will take her instead. Her father always told her it is a quiet death. That doesn’t sound so bad. 

Her shaking legs have only carried her a few feet further down the winding, narrow pathway when she hears something from down below. It’s faint and muffled, but the snow can’t absorb the sound completely. 

Shouting. 

Maomao looks down over the barrier, and her frigid blood runs yet-colder. Something is moving, down in the base of the fortress. 

A smear of something yet-whiter against the pearly snow, it creeps at first between the torches throwing golden light out into the storm, towards the Shi soldiers standing guard. Beneath the white comes glimpses of black—armor, boots, hair. The soldiers finally catch on—they shout, reel back in surprise, and reach for their swords. 

It’s too late. From the white blur comes a flash of steel, sparking golden in the torchlight. Crimson spatters on the snow and Maomao knows her fate is sealed. 

The Forbidden Army has come, and she is in the perfect place to become collateral damage. 

She heaves another gasp through raw lungs, clutches the banister; exhausted, she can only watch the figure—how it flicks its sword and scatters more crimson droplets into the snow, how its night-dark hair spills from the hood of its cloak. Pulled tight against the skull, it whips in the wind like a conqueror’s flag. Torchlight catches on purple-black armor. The snow runs red. 

Others in the same pure white cloaks rush in after. None of them have the ornate armor of the first, and none catch her eye in the same way. The first barks orders, but she can only catch the shape of the voice, not the words themselves. 

Something about it keeps her rooted to her spot. 

The voice sounds…familiar, somehow. 

She stands there, breathing hard against the banister, for a second too long. As she watches the men below, one of them looks up. His face is obscured by the falling snow, but she can still hear his booming shout, and see him point directly at her. 

The figure with the long hair starts to turn on its heel. Maomao does not wait to meet its eyes before she bolts. 

Her legs scream at her, breath coming in ragged gasps. Smoke and sulfur hangs choking in the air, and she presses a sleeve to her nose. There might be more explosions. She doesn’t know Shisui’s—Loulan’s—plans. She doesn’t know if there are more stores of gunpowder, whether the crevice she might hole herself up in will blow her to smithereens like a rodent. But maybe it’s her only chance.

She just has to find a place to hide. 

Maomao runs blindly through the snow. Thick, heavy flakes stick to her eyelashes and blind her vision and sting her eyes, but she presses forward through the storm. The ground shakes beneath her with the footfalls of hundreds of men pouring into the fortress. She comes to a door and blindly throws it open to what might have been a storehouse. Bits of metal and scrap lie scattered about the room. There’s no furniture. 

There’s no place to hide. 

The thundering footsteps grow louder and louder. She shuts the door and crouches among the metal, pulling her thin cloak tighter around her, as if it’ll do anything to protect her. 

Maybe they’ll hear me out, she tells herself. Unlikely, she knows. But at least here, crouched down, she can conserve some body heat. Her hands are still shaking. It’d be nice to be warmer, in her final moments. 

The ground is shaking beneath her feet with the footfalls of what must be thousands of soldiers by now, a dull, deafening roar. It’s broken by the door slamming on its hinges. Someone on the other side just kicked it. 

The door slams again, harder this time. The wood cracks and squeals. Maomao curls further into herself and shuts her eyes. 

On the third slam, the wood splinters on its hinges with a horrible crack, and the door pitches into the room. A figure stands beyond it, dim in the moonless night. What light there is catches on the sharp angle of its armor, flashes in the long strip of the steel sword it holds. 

The figure steps into the room, dust rising with every heavy footfall. Its head swivels, scanning for enemies. Its eyes are cold and unfeeling, lips pressed into a thin line in the face of its solemn duty. The sword in its hand is still dripping crimson. 

And then their eyes meet. 

His expression shifts in an instant. His lips part and his eyebrows unknit. His fingers loosen around the hilt of his sword. His shoulders slump, and the cold, hard glint in his dark eyes shifts to starlight. 

They’re both silent for a moment, staring each other down. 

Finally, Maomao rises on shaky legs from her crouch on the floor. Willing her voice not to shake, she says, “Please excuse me. But I may need to ask you to protect me, Master Jinshi.” 

“Are you hurt?” is the first thing out of Jinshi’s mouth, stepping forward into the gap between them. He looks so strange here in this sharp armor, with a sword still dripping crimson clutched in his hand. The pure relief on his face is yet stranger. 

What is he doing here?

“I’m fine,” she tells him in the steadiest voice she can manage. 

“You’re covered in blood.” 

Is she? She looks down at herself. Ah, right. “It’s spatter.” 

His beautiful face twists in exasperation. “That’s not better.”

“It’s snake blood,” she manages. “Not mine.” 

In this strange armor with a sword in his hand, he looks so different from the eunuch she knew, but the frustration that twists his face is the same. His shoulders slump, and he looks completely exasperated, and there is something so comfortingly familiar about the sight. 

Maomao’s racing heart begins to slow, and the corners of her lips start to pull. 

The frustration is off his face in an instant, replaced by something like wonder. Jinshi steps forward, reaching a hand out—coming close enough to touch. After everything that’s happened today, she might even let him. “Are you—”

Pounding footsteps race outside, and Jinshi cuts himself off. His eyes snap back to that cold, hard glint in an instant. His fingers tighten around the hilt of sword and steps between her and the door—but as soon as he sees another soldier cloaked in white, he relaxes. 

“Milord heir,” the soldier says, and bows as deeply as his armor will allow. 

So that’s who you are.

“That title is not mine anymore,” Jinshi snaps. His voice is not that cloying, honey-sweet voice she knew in the rear palace—no, it is sharp and cold as the sword in his hand. “A royal son has been born.”

That answers a few questions Maomao had at once, and she breathes a sigh of relief. So Gyokuyou had a safe delivery, and the baby was a boy. 

And that means…

Maomao looks at the man standing before her now, with snowflakes melting in his hair and the cold eyes and the blade in his hand. There’s nothing remaining of the man she thought she knew in the rear palace—none of the smarmy eunuch or the childish young man both. The nymph-like beauty of his face is hardened into pure steel. 

“You seem to have changed a great deal,” she murmurs to herself. 

Not quietly enough—Jinshi glances back in her direction with plain annoyance. That’s more familiar. Some things never change. 

His eyes flick down to her bloodstained clothes, then down the hall. He clenches his jaw and loosens it again, thinking. There’s a war in his eyes. But finally, he turns to the rough-looking soldier and asks, “Is Lihaku here?”

The soldier sticks his head out the door and shouts. There’s a yell of affirmation, and another familiar face comes bounding in like a dog. “She’s in your hands,” Jinshi barks, and turns to leave. 

Maybe it’s the exhaustion. She’s not sure. But before she can think better of it, Maomao steps forward, some half-baked thought on her tongue. 

But…

The face and voice of the man standing before her are familiar, yes, but the way his face twists, the way his voice hardens, is foreign. His armor is much grander than the other soldiers around him, and while those others wield crude clubs, the weapon in his hand is a fine-forged sword, surely made by one of the best craftsmen in the country. The Imperial Brother would be armed with nothing less. 

Does she have any right to speak with him? Almost certainly not. This lowborn apothecary has no right to raise her voice to the son of heaven, no more than wood sorrel has the right to compare its beauty to peonies, or bellflowers, or the moon itself. 

She sent Shisui off with a prayer for safety. But for some reason, looking at him, those words—stay safe—fall dead on her tongue. 

Before she can act, Jinshi turns and leaves without another word. 

Hours later, in a carriage beneath a moonless sky, Maomao wakes up to Jinshi looming over her. 

That is much more familiar, as he springs back with hands held up in innocence, trying to explain away why he was leaning over her sleeping body. Maomao’s glare feels even more like home, like a common, nearly comforting routine, but she drops it as soon as she notices: 

“Sir, what’s that on your face?” 

Jinshi sits up a little straighter, smacking a hand over his cheek to cover the bandage. Despite the armor he still wears, he looks much more like the young, immature man she knew in the rear palace. Especially when he winces from slapping himself. “It’s nothing,” he says a little too quickly. “Just a graze.”

Maomao narrows her eyes. Just a graze? She’s seen enough injuries to know he’s not acting like it’s ‘just a graze’. Such a small injury wouldn’t make him wince so badly when he touches it. He’s speaking more carefully than usual, too, like he’s trying to not pull at the skin of his face. 

She sits up, fixing her collar, and stares right at him, eyes narrowed. Jinshi grimaces and looks away. 

And in this comforting space, in this familiar routine, Maomao forgets herself. 

She leans forward, pressing into his space. Jinshi leans back. He’s not looking at her. Maomao narrows her eyes further. “Let me see it.” 

Jinshi glares very intently at a spot on the floor next to her. “It’s not worth showing.”

Not worth showing? Maomao must disagree. The very presence of a bandage covering his heavenly face implies something well worth showing. 

She presses forward, reaching up for the bandage. Jinshi’s face only twists more. When she crawls forward, he crawls back—but when his back hits the carriage wall with a quiet oof, and she crawls yet-closer, until they are nearly chest to chest, he goes very still. Weird face he’s making, she thinks, but Jinshi still lets her reach for the bandage. At least he’s letting her do her job now, and she finally peels the offending cover away. 

Beneath it is a long gash, several inches long and curved like the crescent moon, running just below his cheekbone. The skin around it is still raised, red, and angry, straining against the ten haphazard stitches keeping it closed. 

Whoever sewed this thing up did a terrible job, is her first thought. The stitches are uneven, and the thread is pulled too tight. She could do a much better job. 

Maomao runs her finger along the wound with the lightest touch she can manage. Jinshi’s cheek is ice-cold from the air outside, and he winces again. Definitely too tightly stitched. Whatever doctor sewed it up didn’t do their job well. She could redo them herself. She still has a few medicines tucked away in her robes—simple, useful things like an antiseptic balm, and a needle and thread. She keeps many things tucked away. You never know when you might need them. 

Maomao’s hands itch to fix them—but looking at her own fingers against his cheek, she realizes they are still shaking, from exhaustion or the cold. She couldn’t hold a needle right now if she tried. 

Not very helpful. The one thing she’s supposed to be good at, and she can’t even do it properly. 

“You were in the fighting,” she croaks. 

Jinshi scowls. He’s still not looking at her. “I couldn’t just sit back and watch while the others put themselves in danger.”

Maomao scowls back. Surely he could. The Imperial Brother has better things to do with his time, and better ways to go about them than this. “Why not? You’re important enough to sit this one out. I wish you wouldn’t go running headlong into danger, sir. You’ll only cause trouble for others.”

Jinshi gives a grim smile. “People like you, you mean?” 

Yes, Maomao wants to protest. He should have hung back at camp, commanding the army from afar—not storming the fortress on the front lines. Not coming face to face with someone who would give him this scar. Not chasing after some apothecary. 

Though it’s not like he came here just to save her, anyway. Even this not-eunuch doesn’t have that much time to kill. 

There must be something she can do. Even if she can’t stitch up the wound, she has that antiseptic balm in her robes. She reaches for it, but before she can, Jinshi wraps his arms around her back and pulls her close. 

“Sir,” she scolds. “I can’t move like this.” 

“Mmmph,” Jinshi says into her neck, and pitches sideways. 

Maomao lets out an undignified squeak as they tumble to the floor together, lying side by side. “‘M tired,” Jinshi whines, and Maomao resists the urge to roll her eyes. Of course now the worst of his childishness decides to rear its head. 

“Your wound will get infected,” Maomao protests, pushing against his chest. He doesn’t budge. It’s like being tackled by a large, clingy dog. “Sir.” 

Nothing. 

She shoves at his chest again. And when that doesn’t work, she shoves at his face. Forgetting the bandage. 

“OW,” Jinshi yelps, finally releasing her from the death grip. 

“Your wound will get infected if I don’t treat it now,” Maomao protests, pushing him away just enough to reach into her robes and snatch the cream. When she looks up at him, still lying sideways, his pout is truly pathetic. 

“Don’t make that face, sir. It’s undignified.” 

“That hurt.” 

She spreads some of the cream on her fingers. “And an infection will hurt worse,” she replies. “Hold still.”

Jinshi pouts at her like a kicked puppy but does as she says, letting her reach a hand to his cheek to spread the cream across it. If she cannot restitch the wound now, this treatment is the least she can do. 

Her fingers are still shaking, as she smears the treatment against his cheek. Must be the exhaustion. 

He winces a little at her touch, but holds still for her. Maomao clicks her tongue. “This isn’t stitched properly at all,” she grumbles to herself—the edge of the wound doesn’t have a stitch where it really needs one, and the injury is still raw and open. She runs her pinky along the edge of the cut. 

From it, a single drop of blood gathers. It catches on her crooked pinky, and winds down her finger like crimson thread. 

Chapter Text

The pleasure district is always the quietest in the mornings. 

Not at dawn—when the first rays of golden light creep across the sky, most people in the Imperial City are asleep, but the pleasure district still pulses with some activity. Most of it comes from drunk patrons, who meander their way out of the brothels after spending a sleepless night pouring coin into a courtesan’s hands. Those stragglers are usually too deep in their cups or too worn out to notice things they shouldn’t, but one can never be too sure. 

Come too late in the morning, and the district starts to wake up again. Manservants bustle around the streets, lugging sacks of grain to feed the girls or carrying fine silks and new jewelry to clothe them. In the afternoon, the courtesans start to wake up as well. White powder layered carefully under their eyes to hide the evidence of their sleepless nights, they coo and beckon from the windows. 

A few hours after dawn, though, in the bright light of morning, the streets are abandoned, and the courtesans are—for the most part—asleep. The customers have all left, save for the occasional drunk passed out on the side of the road. The evidence of the previous night’s debauchery is laid bare—foul-smelling waste of who-knows-what pools in the gutters, scraps of food and trash from stalls lay piled in alley corners. The streets reek of smoke and booze and sex, not yet swept out by the midday breeze. 

So if Jinshi wants to come knocking, Maomao taught him, this is the best time to avoid attention. 

Jinshi adjusts the cloth mask over his face one final time, grabs the cloth-wrapped bundle on the seat next to him, and steps out of the carriage into the cold winter’s air. Basen exits half a step behind him. 

It’s still winter, and the sun is low in the sky, despite being a few hours after sunrise. The carriage horses’ breath hangs in clouds around them, and Basen gives one of them a gentle (well, for him) pat on the nose as he exchanges a few words with the carriage driver. 

Jinshi has no interest in waiting a moment longer. He doesn’t bother waiting for his guard as he rushes inside the Verdigris House. 

Its entryway is grand as ever, vermillion-painted beams climbing up into the high, dizzying ceiling. A few courtesans mingle at the higher levels, but they all turn at the sound of the door. They giggle and point at him when he enters. 

Jinshi pays them no mind—he knows exactly why he is here. 

“Hm?” grumbles the old madam of the Verdigris House, looking up from her blatant coin-counting. When she sees who just walked through her door, though, she hurriedly stuffs the coin back into her pocket and plasters on the fakest grin Jinshi has ever seen. He would know—he’s practiced his own every day in the mirror for years. “Oh, sir!” she cries, already rubbing her hands together. “We are always so honored to welcome you into our humble establishment! What can I interest you in—”

“The same as always,” Jinshi replies distractedly, adjusting his mask. The wire holding the veil over his mouth is digging into his nose, and his scar is itching again. He glances up at the stairs above. The courtesans who are still awake are already gathering like vultures at the railing, pointing down at him and cooing. 

The madam deflates, a tiny bit, but bows. “As you wish, sir,” she replies. “Right this way—please follow me.” 

Jinshi doesn’t really need the escort, not after so many visits here—and he doesn’t really appreciate being paraded around in front of the courtesans, either. But the madam ushers him (and Basen, who caught up) down a narrow hall instead of up the grand staircases in the center, to a plain, unmarked door. Beyond it, he can hear the sound of stone grinding against stone, and his heart leaps in his chest. 

The madam probably says something, alludes to some other services another girl could provide, but Jinshi pays her no mind. He only raises his fist and knocks thrice on the door. 

The noise of grinding stone stops, and then he hears some shuffling. Jinshi shifts from foot to foot, unable to contain his grin. The door finally opens, and his favorite apothecary blinks up at him. She looks drowsy, and her hair is tied back into a simple ponytail—the beads she keeps in her hair are nowhere to be seen. 

“Master Jinshi,” Maomao says in a familiar, scolding tone. “How much sleep did you get last night?” 

“Two and a half dual-hours,” he replies perkily. More than usual!She narrows those lovely, night-dark eyes at him in a glare, and his heart skips a beat. Why are you here so early when you could be asleep? she seems to be asking. He doesn’t bother answering that question—instead, he holds up the cloth-wrapped bundle. “Suiren sent lunch.” 

Those lovely eyes widen in delight, and she steps aside. “Come in, then,” she says. 

Jinshi cannot suppress his grin. “You stay out here,” he orders Basen. The old madam of the house opens her mouth to speak, but Jinshi does not give her the opportunity to—he only steps inside and shuts the door after himself. 

Immediately, he takes his mask off, and the smell of herbs hits Jinshi’s nose, pungent enough to make him dizzy. The shop is small and a little cramped, and the walls are lined with equipment or numerous shelves, which only further reduces the usable space. Bundles and bundles of herbs hang from the ceiling, and he has to duck as he enters to avoid knocking into a fresh-smelling bunch of mint. 

A little table sits in the center of the floor, and her mortar and pestle sits next to it. Maomao grabs one of the ragged cushions stacked in the corner and gives it a good smack to fluff it up. “Please sit, sir.” 

Jinshi all but throws his mask onto the floor next to the table. The damned thing is wet from the condensation of his breath—miserable in this cold weather. It’s much warmer in here. “Where’s Chou-u?” Jinshi asks, setting the cloth-wrapped bundle on the table. “This early, I assumed he’d be around.”

“No clue,” Maomao grumbles, setting water boiling for tea. “The brat’s probably upstairs with some of the girls. They love him for some reason.”

As Jinshi takes off his fur-lined cloak and sets it next to himself, Maomao stands on her tiptoes to grab the teapot and cups from a very high shelf. The lower, easier-to-reach shelves are stacked with medicine-making equipment and herbs. Of course, Jinshi thinks, and smiles to himself. She has her priorities. 

“Is he still selling those drawings?” Jinshi asks. “He seems to have quite the talent.”

Maomao yawns, plopping back down beside her mortar and pestle as she waits for the water to boil. She gathers the powdered herbs up with a little brush and pours them into a bowl, then unseals a small, unglazed clay pot and pours some liquid into it. “He is,” she says, as she mixes it all together. “It brings in a little money, at least. I keep trying to convince him to draw diagrams of herbs for me, but does he listen? No.” She scowls. “Says plants are boring. Ungrateful brat.”

“Ah, I see,” Jinshi drawls, resting his cheek on his palm. “So he only cares about the things he’s truly interested in and refuses to pay attention to everything else. How terrible.” 

Maomao nods vigorously, as if to say, Isn’t it?, and keeps working on her medicine. Right over her head. He should expect no less. 

Her hands fly as she works—adding a touch of this, a bit more of that—and in no time at all, the mixture is a smooth balm. “Excuse me, sir,” she says, and kneels next to him. This routine, done once every ten days on the dot, is familiar to him, now. He leans his head into her hand as she peels back the bandage on his face, revealing the healing scar. 

“How does it look?”

“Fine,” Maomao replies shortly, grabbing the little pot of medicine she just prepared. “Now that the stitching is out, it shouldn’t become infected, though the skin may yet dry out.” She runs a thumb over the raised line, and Jinshi’s eyes flutter closed—his cheek is still cold from the winter’s air, and her hand is so, so warm. 

“You still think it’ll scar?” 

“Almost certainly, though it likely won’t be too pronounced.” She takes a scoop of the medicine with two fingers and rubs it into the skin with practiced hands. Jinshi would almost call them gentle if he didn’t know any better. “I worried the stitching would have scarred it worse. It was quite haphazard.” 

“The doctor who did it seemed nervous.” 

“I could tell. The stitches were too tight.” She brushes another bit of the balm onto his skin, but her fingers retract too soon, reaching for a bandage. 

Jinshi smiles. “I’m sure you could have done a better job.” 

Maomao says nothing, though the twitch of her lip, he’s learned, probably means that she agrees. 

“Besides, maybe I should thank that doctor. You said you like me better with a scar, anyways,” Jinshi says, not bothering to hide the delight in his voice. 

“When did I ever say that?”

“When you first took a look at it.”

Maomao purses her lips. “I don’t recall,” she says. When he opens his mouth to retort, she says, “And please don’t talk, sir, or I won’t be able to place this bandage properly.” 

Jinshi pouts. 

She glares at him. “That doesn’t make it easier either.” 

“What would you have me do with my face, then?”

“Neutral.” 

As if he could stop smiling around her. Still, Jinshi does his best. 

Maomao affixes the bandage to his cheek, smooths down the wrinkles with her thumbs. “Finished,” she declares, wiping her hands on a cloth and rising. 

“Already?” 

“There’s little I can do for it besides preventing the skin from drying out,” Maomao replies, taking the kettle from the stove and pouring the hot water into the teapot. “Besides, sir, don’t you have better things to do with your time?”

“Not today,” Jinshi counters. He raced through work yesterday to make his desk clear today, and he arranged today to not have any engagements until late in the afternoon. Later this evening is a feast to celebrate a new minister’s promotion, but even factoring in the ride to and from the pleasure district, the time he has to spend with her today is blessedly long. 

And he hasn’t been able to see her, not really. He was busy in the rear palace, yes. He didn’t have much time to spare to visit her. But they could work together on the various incidents that cropped up in the palace, and even when their paths didn’t cross, she was a scant distance away in the Jade Pavilion. 

They make a good team. Even now, he often sends her letters to ask opinions on one case or another. When he has a free moment—rarer and rarer, these days—he writes her a letter. 

But it is so different from being here, able to bask in her presence, watch her in her element, so he carves out time whenever he is able. His visits usually only last a few hours, and he can only make time about once every ten days, but he begins to count down the minutes until he sees her again as soon as he boards the carriage home. 

So today, when he can spend all of the morning with her, is a rarity. He intends to savor every minute. 

Maomao has placed his tea in front of him and is, of course, now ignoring him. She’s plopped herself back down at her workstation, and is hunched over a small box of ingredients, counting each tiny seed with her pinky finger. Her lips trace around each number as she does inventory, murmuring the count quietly to herself. 

Her hair isn’t in its usual style today. Instead, it’s tied back in a haphazard ponytail. A few locks of hair have already broken free from their ties. The strands that fall in the front slip forward and fall over her shoulder, hanging in her face. The beads that are usually tied to them are absent today. 

Jinshi reaches forward and brushes the ink-dark lock behind her ear. “Different hairstyle today?” he asks, holding the tip of her hair in his hand and pointing to where the beads are normally tied. 

He does not expect her reaction. 

Maomao freezes for a split-second, eyes going wide, and then she nearly drops the container of seeds onto the table. Ignoring the few seeds that tumble out of the box, she begins to pat at the front of her robes, desperately feeling for something. Her fingers apparently find something after a second of frantic searching. She sighs in relief and draws a little drawstring pouch from her robes. Something inside clacks.

“Thought I forgot them at home,” Maomao mutters to herself. She reaches into the pouch and draws out four beads—two crimson, and two turquoise.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Jinshi says, hands up in apology. “I’ve just never seen you without them.” 

“I always wear them,” Maomao grumbles, passing her hair through each bead with practiced fingers. “Just forgot them today.” 

“Why? That doesn’t seem like you.”

Maomao glares at him as she affixes the second bead into her hair. “Early morning,” she retorts. “Had to get ready in a hurry.” 

“Weren’t you the one who told me that this early in the morning was the best time to come?” 

“It is. I just imagined you’d take the time to visit another courtesan instead.”

“As if another courtesan could be half as entertaining,” Jinshi retorts with a smile. Her glare is as invigorating as ever. It wakes him up better than the crisp morning air ever could. But he is curious, so he asks, “Those beads—I’ve never seen you without them. Do they have some sort of meaning?”

Maomao’s fingers still. 

It’s a split second before she keeps going, weaving the final bead into her hair, but it’s just long enough for him to notice. She stays silent for a moment, and he lets her gather her words. 

“They were a gift,” she says finally. “From Pairin.” 

“Your sister?” 

“Mm,” she hums. The little cloth pouch is still heavy in her hand, and he can hear more wooden beads clacking against each other inside as she tucks them away. 

But she doesn’t just tuck them in her pocket, though, no—instead, she takes the drawstring and ties it into a specially-sewn loop in the inside of her robe. It reminds him of the pockets she sewed for him for the garden party, over a year ago now. She draws the knot tight and smooths her robes down, then turns back to counting the seeds. 

Jinshi watches her for a moment, chin in his hand, taking sips of tea, and feels more at ease than he has all week. Maomao’s practiced, clever hands sprinkle a pinch of the seeds into the mortar, then bundles of dried leaves and other concoctions from the drawers lining the wall. She settles at her workstation and gets to work. 

“What are you making today?” he asks her. 

“Nothing very interesting,” she replies. She takes another handful of dried herbs and throws it into the mortar, starts grinding it down. “This is a particular blend of tea favored by the courtesans around here. I supply it to the House every week.” 

A sharp, bitter smell rises into the air as she grinds the mixture down. He can smell them from his seat, a pace or two away. “A tea? Does it taste good?”

“No. And it wouldn’t have any benefits for you, sir.” 

Jinshi cocks his head. “Then why would they drink it?”

She glares at him like he’s stupid, and his heart skips a beat. “I said it wouldn’t have any benefits for you, Master Jinshi. Courtesans are different.”

Jinshi blinks, then goes red. Pleasure district, brothel. Right. 

“But after this,” she continues, and he sits up a little straighter—how often does she continue speaking on her own?— “I’ll need to restock the antipyretics.” 

“Oh?” Jinshi smiles, watching her work. “What are those?”

Though she doesn’t look up from her medicine, he can see how her eyes go a little brighter. Not as excited as she gets over the rarer medicines, and this reaction pales to her passion for poisons, but there’s that same light in her eyes. “Anti-fever medicine, in layman’s terms. I have to keep them restocked, especially this time of year.” 

He could listen to her talk for hours. “Tell me how you make them,” he asks, and she does. 

She gets much more animated when she talks about medicines. The hard glint in her eyes melts, just a little, becoming a spark of heat, of passion. She launches into a long, winding explanation. She tells him each ingredient, how to process them, how to boil them down, how to bind them with honey into solid pills that keep ten times longer than the individual ingredients. 

They lose track of time. 

Once she finishes grinding down the herbs for the tea, and after she pours the blend into separate pouches and ties each one off, she rises from her seat and starts explaining to him the different plants hanging from the ceiling to dry. Like an encyclopedia, she lists the medical name, then the more common terms used by laymen, and then the main uses of each. 

She is in her element, and she is radiant. 

“And this one has many uses,” she continues, “so I dry the whole plant—but I use the fruit the most. It’s an ingredient in the tea, so I keep it stocked at all times.” She has to stand on her tiptoes to point at a bundle of herbs hanging right above Jinshi’s head. She takes one of the leaves between her fingers and purses her lips. “It seems about dry, actually.” 

Maomao turns and reaches for a tool leaned against the wall, a long stick with a metal hook at the end. Before she can grab it, though, Jinshi rises, careful not to get a faceful of leafy bush in the process. “Let me,” he says. 

The ceiling of the shop isn’t too high. Jinshi stands on his toes, grasps the rope at the top of the bundle, and unhooks it from the ceiling. It’s lighter than it looks—probably because there’s no moisture left in the plant. The leaves rustle as he lowers them. “What’s this?” he asks, handing the bundle to her.

“This is balsam.” 

“Balsam—the plant the consorts all painted their nails with a year or so back?”

“Correct,” she replies, plopping back down at her work station. “But that was using the flowers. If you dry the stems and grind them into power, however, you can make an antiseptic balm.” She gestures to the little tin of medicine she used for his own treatment earlier. The medicine made by her hands, just for him. 

Maomao plucks a little  pod off the plant and shows it to him. “The fruit is toxic, however. As are the leaves, if consumed. That’s what I use.” 

Jinshi frowns. “And these plants grow around the rear palace for anyone to just take and turn into poison?”

“If you know how to use them.” She starts stripping the leaves off the stem. “Most don’t.” 

Jinshi sighs. He needs the emperor to produce as many heirs as possible to get himself out of the line of succession, and having a potential abortifacient growing willy-nilly about the rear palace doesn’t help his cause. Thank goodness the nail-painting trend has mostly died off, but the lower consorts who cling to last season’s fads will be less than pleased. 

“Are there any other plants you saw around the rear palace that I should be concerned about?” Jinshi grumbles. 

To his horror, Maomao puts one hand to her chin and starts counting on her fingers with the other. “Peonies, lilies, bellflowers, chrysanthemums… Just to name a few from the gardens.” 

Jinshi rubs a thumb to his temple. It doesn’t ache yet, but after that answer, he knows it will. “Let me rephrase. Are there any flowers the emperor favors that could not be used in a potential assassination attempt?”

Maomao thinks for a moment, eyes flicking to the ceiling. “Roses, I guess.” A pause. “Unless you make a perfume with them.” 

Jinshi groans. 

They sit together for hours. 

The sun shining through the window of the little shop shifts as the minutes tick by, growing a brighter yellow-white in midmorning, tinging gold by midday. The sunbeams are warm, catching in the steam curling from the next cup of tea she prepares for the two of them. His mask lays in the shadow of the table, forgotten on the floor. 

She even only insinuates he should leave a few times, too. 

Once she finishes processing the balsam, Maomao pauses in her work for lunch. Suiren sent four savory baozi stuffed with minced pork, bamboo shoots, and mushrooms. She makes yet more tea and lays out the dishes for lunch. 

“If you’ll excuse me,” she says, taking the first bite. A check for poisons, though it’s only formal now—they both know it’s not necessary this time. She chews and swallows instead of spitting out the piece like she’s technically supposed to. Jinshi can’t blame her—he wouldn’t want to waste Suiren’s cooking, either. 

Instead of giving the signal for him to eat, though, her brows furrow in focus, and her dark eyes narrow at the filling of the bun. Before he can ask her what’s wrong, she mutters to herself, “Simple shiitake. Would be nice if they were more interesting.”

Jinshi rolls his eyes. “You’re saying things aloud again,” he scolds, taking a bite himself. Even though they’re not warm anymore, the bun itself is fluffy and light, and the filling bursts with juice and flavor. “We’d both be in trouble if they were.”

She glares at him and takes another bite without a word. Jinshi grins at her. Her next bite is yet more indignant. Is she pouting? He’s never quite seen her pout like this. 

Though he doesn’t really want to supply her with poisonous mushrooms (he’s seen the scars on her arm, no pleading look from her could make him forget), maybe he should bring some other rare medicinal ingredient on his next visit, or whenever he’s able to source it. More bezoars, maybe? 

Maomao mentioned something called a “velvet antler” a few months back, though. He has no idea how to source this particular medicine, or how much it might cost. Naturally, he makes a mental note to start looking for it immediately. 

His dear apothecary must have been hungry. She scarfs down the first bun as quickly as could be considered polite and reaches for another, sparing only a quick glance at him for silent permission. He nods, and she takes it. 

“It’s not going away, you know,” he reminds her as she takes a big bite of the second. 

She sits up a little straighter in response, correcting her posture that’s started to flag. “Excuse me,” she says behind her hand after she’s chewed and swallowed, but that doesn’t seem very sincere at all either. 

There’s a tiny, minuscule crumb of pork clinging to the side of her lips, small enough to barely see. “Hold on,” he says, reaching for her, “you have something right....there.” 

She jolts in surprise as his thumb brushes across her lips. They are just as soft as he remembers them being at that party, all those months ago. He swipes the crumb away, but his hand lingers on her cheek. 

Maomao’s face, of course, scrunches up and she shakes him off. Jinshi lets her go, but watches her with a smile on his face. 

The tip of his thumb still seems to tingle with the memory of her skin on his. Her lips are soft and warm, and he wonders if they would feel yet-softer against his. 

And even though she’s glaring into the corner, she is still as stunning as the day they first met. The golden sunlight of midday catches in her ink-dark hair, touching the red and turquoise beads tied in it to stunning, richer hues. The dark of her eyes, like endless shadow, like the dark of the night sky, pull him in, and he is helpless to resist. 

Here, in the peace of her little shop, with his mask forgotten on the floor, Jinshi can’t help but think that this was worth everything. 

The scar on his cheek, that mask on the floor, the role he now must play—it was all worth it. He would do it again in a heartbeat, if it means he can spend another few hours here, with her. 

He wants to kiss her so badly. 

And it would be so simple. He would just have to lean over, across the table, press his lips to hers. Would she resist, at first, in the way she always seems to? Or would she at last give in, give him the gift of tasting her? 

He’d bet money on her resisting, but that’s no issue. How could it be, when something about this time spent together with her feels so right? 

Jinshi could kiss her now, here in her apothecary shop, learn the shape of her lips, tangle his fingers in her hair, press kisses to the exposed skin of her neck, her collarbone, her chest. Take her for himself, finally. Make sure she could never leave. He would spoil her, adorn her in silver moons and silk robes finer than that cotton he’s given her before. 

I want to marry you, he thinks, watching her. 

He wants to do many things—crawl over to her, crawl over her, kiss her into the floor. Cradle the back of her head, tangle his fingers in her soft hair. Bite her. Mark her. Claim her. 

His skin feels hot, suddenly. Overheated in a way that contradicts the chilly winter’s day outside. His robes feel too tight, and the skin beneath them rises with goosebumps as he remembers how she feels, pressed against him.

He’s memorized the shape of her body through their robes already, but what he wouldn’t give to learn her again, and again. 

And surely she must want this too, if she’s tolerating him spending so much time uselessly wiling away his time in the apothecary shop. Surely she must be okay with it. 

Right?

She’s staring at him, now, those ink-dark eyes glancing up and down, looking at him like one might a predator. The baozi is half-eaten in her hands, seemingly forgotten. 

It would be so easy. 

Jinshi can’t help himself—this want burning in his veins is demanding action. 

He moves forward, just an inch, then another, pulled to her like gravity. Their eyes meet for a split second before hers flick away. She’s hard to parse as always, but the way her eyes dart to his face, to the ground, to the dwindling space between them…

“Master Jinshi?” she breathes. Maomao’s voice is quiet, softer than he has ever heard. He wants to kiss his own name off her lips. 

Jinshi creeps forward. Maomao does not move. She is still not looking at him, but he is close, now, closer than he’s been in a long time. He could reach out his hand and touch, from this distance—relearn the feeling of her skin on his, and take what he has wanted for so, so long. 

Is this it? 

Is this finally—

“HEY, FRECKLES!” comes a loud voice from the door. “DIDYA MAKE LUNCH?” 

“No,” Maomao calls back, wolfing down the last of her bun and throwing the lid on the box containing the remaining one. She covers it with the wrapping cloth and shoves it all under the table. 

“ARE YOU SURE?” comes Chou-u’s voice. “I CAN SMELL SOMETHIN’ GOOD IN THERE!” 

“It’s your imagination,” Maomao retorts. Ignoring how Jinshi is half-crawling over to her, she gets up to rifle through her medicine cabinet once again. 

Chou-u bursts into the room a second later, yapping away about something or another. Jinshi doesn’t bother listening to what. He just sighs, dejected, and lays his cheek on the table. The scar’s aching again. 

He could bring it up and ask her to do something about it, but he’s too busy mourning the moment lost. 

Chou-u spends only a few minutes pestering them before racing off somewhere else. Jinshi spends the rest of the afternoon watching her work, but he doesn’t try to get close to her again. 

He was so close this time. But…

“I’ll be back in ten days,” Jinshi tells her as he gathers the last of his things. Maomao hums, but says nothing. She’s finished binding the antipyretic pills with honey and is lining them up to dry on a bamboo basket. Jinshi retrieves the box from beneath the table as well the cloth Suiren tied it with, but he can’t quite get the knot right when he tries to tie it. 

“Let me, sir,” Maomao says, and all but knocks his hands away. Jinshi sits awkwardly at the table as she expertly ties the cloth around the box and hands it to him. 

Finally, Jinshi scoops that damned mask off of the floor and fixes it to his face. Like this, he’ll be protected from prying eyes, but he much prefers wearing his real face in this little shop. He already hates the weight of it. 

Basen snaps to attention at the sound of the door rattling in its groove. Jinshi pretends not to notice that his guard was clearly dozing up against the wall. Maomao walks him to the threshold of the little shop, but no further. 

“I’ll write soon,” Jinshi tells her, scratching at the bandage on his cheek. “There’s another suspicious case in the rear palace that I want your eyes on…”

Maomao’s eyes narrow at him.

“Yes, I know,” Jinshi grumbles. “Old habits.” 

Her eyes only narrow further, like a cat’s. “I may not be able to help much without seeing the details for myself,” she says, “but I can do my best to provide input.” 

Jinshi smiles. “I always appreciate it. You’re better at cracking the cases than me.” 

Maomao glances down at the floor. They stand there for a moment. He waits for a reply, but of course, none come. She’s never been talkative unless she has something worth saying. 

He’d love to hear just a few more words from her, though. 

“Well…I’ll see you soon?” 

Maomao nods. “In ten days, correct?’ 

“That much I’m sure of.” He’s carved time out of his schedule to ensure it. “Though I don’t know what time I’ll be coming.” Jinshi scratches absently at his cheek beneath the mask. “I’ll include that in the letter too.” 

When he scratches at his cheek, though, Maomao abruptly turns from the entryway—and to his great surprise, she doesn’t even slam the door in his face. 

He’d like to call it progress. 

Jinshi pokes his head back into the shop to find her rummaging around in her medicine cabinet. She returns a moment later holding a shell filled with some kind of balm. 

“What’s this?” he asks, poking a finger into it. It’s smooth and some sort of off-white, though it looks different from the makeup she used on him back in the rear palace. 

“A balm for your wound. Apply it twice a day, and it will cleanse the wound and ensure it heals correctly.” A pause. “If you can apply this yourself, you may not need to visit anymore.” 

Jinshi takes the shell, tucks it in his robes, and says, “I’ll keep visiting.” 

Maomao bows her head in understanding, but by now he knows it’s just to hide the annoyed look on her face. 

He still really wants to kiss her.

Before he can say anything, though, Maomao looks up at him. Before he can get lost in those dark eyes again, she says, “I believe it’s time you get going, sir,” and slides the door shut.

“Wait, I—”

Click, goes the bar of the door. 

Jinshi sighs and turns to the entrance. Basen, who was silent but looked mildly bewildered throughout the whole thing, follows a half step behind him. 

The Verdigris House is waking up at this hour, and about a dozen courtesans lounge about on the second floor, peering down the staircase at him. Among them, Jinshi can recognize the faces of the three women Maomao calls her sisters. They are the few who do not coo or wave at him as he goes, only watching him like a hawk. 

Once they’re seated and the carriage jolts into motion, Basen breaks the silence. 

“How was your treatment, sir?” 

Jinshi gazes out the window. The pleasure district is starting to come alive again. A young apprentice carries a tiny flame down rows and rows of lanterns, lighting each in turn. The orange fire of dusk turns yet-crimson with each flame lit. He reaches beneath his mask, grazes a thumb along his scar, and touches a finger to his lips. 

“Refreshing,” he replies. “As it always is.” 

In his mind, a countdown has already restarted, ticking down the minutes until he can see her again. 

Chapter Text

“So….” come the singsong voices every time Jinshi leaves, “…who’s that?” 

“An acquaintance,” Maomao tells Meimei, who arches an eyebrow. 

“An annoyance,” she tells Joka, who nods in silent understanding.

“I’m leaving,” she tells Pairin, because she is tired of answering this question. 

“No you aren’t!” Pairin grabs the collar of Maomao’s robe and pulls her to her chest. “I want to know all about the man who’s stolen my dear girl’s heart away!” 

There are many things wrong with that sentence. Maomao tries to breathe enough to attempt protest, but in squishy hell, she can’t get much air. “Let me go.” Her voice is muffled in her sister’s chest. “You’re too warm.” 

“Not until you tell us everything.” Pairin cups her cheek with the hand not pinning Maomao and keeping her from escaping. “Why, we never get to see his face, but he must be quite handsome under that mask.” 

“High-ranking, if he’s going to such lengths,” Meimei adds from across the room, gathering her hair in an updo.

“Rich, too,” Joka says, not looking up from the mirror so she doesn’t smear the rouge she’s applying to her lips.

Maomao protests, “Pairin, you’re supposed to be getting ready for work. Let me go.” 

Pairin huffs, which makes it even harder to breathe. “The madam hasn’t come knocking yet,” she protests. “I’ll get ready once you tell us.”

Maomao would really rather not. At her silence, Joka sets down the brush and pulls out a white face powder—already checked by Maomao, to ensure it has no poison in it. “Does he have a wife? Is that why?” 

Maomao takes a half-second to think about the man who comes knocking every ten days to, as far as she can gather, annoy her. She scoffs. “No.” 

Although—it wouldn’t be too unusual for the Imperial Brother to be married off sooner or later. The imperial line needs to make babies, after all, and the Emperor doesn’t seem to be trying very hard at all, judging by what she saw in the rear place. Two sons and a daughter, all in infancy, do not a steady imperial line make. It’d stand to reason that someone would get on the Imperial Brother to do his part sooner or later. 

And besides, if he did have a wife, Maomao’s sure the fine lady would not be pleased with her husband fucking off to the pleasure district to spend time with some random girl born to the dirt. She’d certainly be carted off by the wife’s family by now, and she doubts her head would still be snugly attached to her shoulders. 

Why is she thinking about the affairs of royalty? There’s no need to. 

Even if that royalty is crashing into her shop every ten days. 

“I mean, it’s not like it’d be a problem if he did.” Meimei pins her updo in place with a delicate, flower-like ornament. “Goodness knows we’ve dealt with worse.” 

Pairin finally lets Maomao go. She gasps for air just as Meimei turns in her seat and fixes Maomao with a curious, mischievous glare. 

That look does not bode well. Maomao turns to leave, only to find the door blocked by Pairin.

Great. It’s two on one now. 

“So,” Meimei croons. “What do the two of you get up to, during the hours and hours he spends in your little shop?” 

“Nothing interesting,” Maomao replies, which is entirely true. She treats the scar on his cheek, though that barely takes five minutes now. He asks constant questions about her work, pointing to this or that, which slows her down. At least he has the decency to feign interest and nod along as she explains. 

He sometimes takes impromptu naps on her floor. He has a bad habit of resting his head on the cushions but letting his long, flowing hair spill out onto the floor like rivers of ink. It gets horribly tangled like that, too, and Maomao knows how much time his damn hair takes to untangle—she did it for him once upon a time. 

Across the room, Joka scoffs and turns as well. “Nothing interesting? In all those hours you spend holed up with an unmarried man, nothing interesting?” 

Fantastic. It’s three on one. 

All three of her sisters lean in, curious. The door is blocked. So Maomao protests, “Wasn’t it the three of you who taught me about customer confidentiality?” 

All three of her sisters’ eyes go wide at once. 

Mentally, Maomao kicks herself. 

“Oh,” Joka drawls, and oh, dammit, she really walked into this one. “Strange. I didn’t hear any of those noises coming from your shop.” 

“I meant—”

“We taught you to moan loudly when we trained you, didn’t we?” Pairin agrees. “You know the men like that! We practiced and everything!” 

Maomao’s eyes dart around the room. Pairin is firmly blocking the door. Joka is at the vanity, and Meimei sits in a luxurious armchair, both of them to her left. All are within arm’s reach and could grab at her if she tries to escape. 

She could dart to the right. The only thing that could help her there is a window, though, open to let in the crisp spring breeze. It leads to a three-story drop, though. 

“You’ve seen his face, right?” Pairin plies. There’s a familiar, hungry glint in her eyes that Maomao doesn’t much like the look of. “Can you at least describe him to us?” 

A face like a god, a gnarly scar running down his cheek, eyes of obsidian that glint and flash in the light. She really has to make sure none of these three ever see Jinshi’s face. Especially Pairin. Forget bringing the country to its knees, that pairing would cause an international incident, and no one wants that.

Besides, Jinshi’s tired enough from work as is. She doesn’t want to think about how withered he’d be after a night with Pairin. 

Scratch that. She doesn’t want to think about anything in that direction at all. 

Maomao takes a deep breath and steels herself. The window it is. If she dies from the fall, so be it.

“Don’t jump,” Joka barks. 

“I wasn’t planning to,” Maomao lies. 

Meimei sighs, leaning back in her chair. “Really, Maomao, we don’t want to push you—”

“I do,” Pairin interjects. 

“—but you can tell us anything. If you want advice, or just to share.” Her sister’s smile is gentle. “We just want you to be happy. We’re always here.” 

Maomao glances away. “Nothing untoward is happening.” 

“But there’d be no shame if something was,” Joka replies. “We’re whores by trade. You won’t find judgement here.” 

“And we’re curious,” Pairin adds. “A strange man, coming to visit you again and again? I’ve been in this trade long enough to know that’s usually not ‘nothing’, Maomao.” Pairin taps a finger to her chin, then says, “Wait, is he the man who bought you out?” 

“That’s what I assumed.” Joka leans back in her chair and reaches for her pipe. “Who else would it be?” 

Maomao stays silent, shifting from one foot to the other. She’d still like to run, but she does have to (begrudgingly) thank Jinshi for buying her out before the old madam could try and sell her off. 

Meimei taps her chin. “And what’d that man pay again? Five thousand silver, I think is what the madam said?”

Maomao freezes. 

He paid all that money? 

For her?

Joka whistles. Pairin claps her hands together. “So he must be a prince!” she exclaims. “Or a high-ranking noble at the very least.” Maomao squeezes her eyes shut and tries to think about the herbs back home that need grinding, but her sister continues, “He just keeps coming back for you again and again, doesn’t he? So romantic—why, it even makes me think of a particular legend about a little red string—” 

The pinky finger of Maomao’s left hand, crooked at the first joint, twinges in phantom pain. “I don’t want to hear it,” Maomao snaps. 

Her sisters all fall silent at once. Meimei grimaces. Joka looks away and takes a puff of her pipe. Pairin wilts, jutting out her lower lip in a pout. 

Before any of them can say anything, there’s a bang at the door. “Girls!” comes the madam’s voice. “The sun’s down, where are you?” 

“Coming!” Meimei calls. To Maomao, she says, “Just remember what we said. If you ever do want to talk about it, we’re here to listen. You know that.” 

Eyes downcast, Maomao nods. She rubs her fingers over the protrusion of bone at the first knuckle of her left pinky finger. The pain is already gone. Must have been an ache from the weather, she thinks, like how her old man’s knee always protests the changing of the seasons. 

On her way to the door, Pairin grabs for her again. Her older sister sweeps her bangs aside and presses a kiss to her forehead. “I’m sorry if I pushed,” she murmurs. “We just want you to be happy.”

Maomao would be very happy if she wasn’t in this room right now. 

“I know,” she murmurs. If Pairin knows it’s a lie, she doesn’t call her on it. 

She turns to leave, but before she can, Joka calls, “Maomao.” 

After the grilling she’s just gotten, Maomao would really prefer to go back home, tend to all the weeding she has to do, and not think anything more about this conversation. Unfortunately for her, Joka grabs her pipe and beckons with a single finger. “Walk with me.” 

“Do I have to?” Maomao grumbles. 

“Do what you want,” Joka says with a crooked smile. “You never do anything less.” 

Maomao sighs and follows after her. 

They walk in silence down the halls of the Verdigris House, passing many courtesans in a rush to get ready, their robes blurring into colorful smears in their haste. A few wave at Maomao. The older ones do not. 

Maomao nods at a few, but Joka pays none of them any mind. Maomao loves all three of her sisters, but temperament-wise, she has long known herself to be most similar to Joka. While Pairin or Meimei try to fill silence with chatter, the youngest of the Three Princesses prefers the quiet. People pay all three of them handsomely for their time, but Joka makes the most coin off of conversation. It makes sense she’d be quite reserved with it. 

Her sister leads Maomao to a door at the end of the hall. Wordlessly, Joka pushes the door open, and they step together onto a balcony overlooking the pleasure district. The streets are coming alive now—crimson lanterns cast a blood-red glow upon the paved stones, and patrons are already starting to buzz about. The silver-stuffed wallets they carry will be much lighter come daybreak. 

The air is crisp and chill, and the moon hangs in the sky, half-full and shining down its silver light. Joka leans against the railing, takes a long draw on her pipe, and looks down upon the throng of people.

“I can’t say I don’t empathize,” she says, after a long moment. Smoke still curls from her crimson lips. “It’s not fun to be interrogated. Not about something like that.” 

Maomao pulls her robe a little tighter around herself. “It’s hard to keep secrets here.” 

Joka huffs a bitter laugh and takes another draw. Purplish smoke rises into the air. “Five thousand silver, huh?” 

Maomao shivers. “We don’t know where she heard that from.” It might not be true. 

Joka hums. She taps a finger on her pipe, scattering the hot ashes into the breeze. “We don’t. Just remember the rules, Maomao.” 

Maomao’s three sisters taught her many things. A lifetime’s worth of lessons. But she knows what rule Joka is referring to instantly—even if her sisters never said it aloud, Maomao has lived her childhood in the pleasure district, and she has seen enough to never, ever forget. 

Her pinky finger twinges again. 

“I wouldn’t worry so much,” Joka continues, “If you were more like Pairin. She knows exactly what she wants, and heaven will strike down anyone who gets in her way.” Another blow of smoke out into the moonlit air, like an offering to the silver moon. “But you have to be careful in a world where you sell love, Maomao.” 

There’s that damned word. 

“I hope we raised you well enough that you know there is no life where you find some prince whose heart will never change. Not in a place like this. What does trust get you?

“At the end of the day, I’m just a whore. And you’re just a whore’s daughter.” 

Her words aren’t vitriolic. They don’t sting. Joka says them with something neighboring sympathy, an understanding of the pain they bring. But it’s just the reality. 

Maomao pulls her robe tighter around herself. “Isn’t that enough smoking for one night?” she asks, eyes downcast. She does not dare raise them to the moon. 

Joka laughs again, though it’s warmer this time. “Maybe so. Just remember what I said, alright?” 

Maomao is planning on forgetting this conversation ever happened. “I will,” she lies. 

If Joka notices her insincerity, she doesn’t say as much. Her sister only gives her a rare smile, squeezes her shoulder, and says, “Good girl. Take care of yourself.” 

Joka goes inside, leaving Maomao standing alone on the balcony. She keeps her eyes solidly on the crowd of people below her, all clamoring for a night’s revelry, and counts to one hundred, to be sure Joka will be gone. 

How many of them will leave once their purses run dry? How many more will get what they want from a courtesan and vanish into the night? 

Is there a difference?

Maomao only thinks about this until her silent count hits one hundred. Once it does, she slips back inside, hurries down the stairs, goes to her little hut in the pleasure district, and weeds until midnight. 

Chou-u is asleep by the time she finally comes home, and the moon is high in the sky. Her hands are stained with dirt from weeding, but her mind is clearer, free of the thoughts her sisters planted in her head. Maomao knows they don’t mean any harm, but she plucks those thoughts like weeds regardless. She has better things to do. 

Maomao curls up in the worn, familiar blankets atop the rough, uneven floor of her run-down shack. It is not the most comfortable, but it’s familiar. She’d take the latter over the former any day. 

The moonlight still spills into the walls of her hut. It's horribly insistent. Maomao turns her head away from the light and shuts her eyes to it. 

Despite Maomao’s protests, Jinshi still comes again after ten days on the dot. 

He shows up at her door mid-morning, just as Maomao taught him. The mask he wears covers everything but his eyes, but they glint in mirth when he holds up his peace offerings for the day—a full bottle of liquor and, more oddly, a bundle of dried wood sorrel. 

“You mentioned running low,” Jinshi says in explanation as he plops down at the table, casting his mask aside. “And you taught me how to identify them, so when I saw them at the market, I thought I’d pick up some.” 

Maomao does not comment on how a man as high ranking as the Moon Prince does not absently wander through markets looking at dried grass. She also does not comment on how wood sorrel is one of the most lowly, common plants an apothecary can find. Give it a month, and the world will be bursting with their heart-shaped leaves and little yellow flowers. 

“I appreciate it, sir,” she says with a polite, humble bow, and descends upon the liquor like a madwoman. 

The visit goes as the visits always do. After she drinks her fill of the liquor, she sits in front of Jinshi, peels back the bandage, smears salve on the wound so it doesn’t dry out, and sticks another bandage back on. It takes less than three minutes. 

“That eager to get rid of me?” Jinshi pouts. 

“The treatment is finished.” She glances up at his face. He is as beautiful as ever, yes, but his eyelids look heavy, and the bags under his eyes are worse than last time. What work the Emperor puts him up to, she has no idea. She figured nobility would shunt most of their work onto others, but here he is anyway, looking exhausted. “Besides, you look tired, sir. You should go home and rest.” 

Instead of bothering me, is the unspoken half of that sentence. He doesn’t seem to catch it. 

Jinshi opens his mouth to retort, but yawns instead. “Maybe so.” 

“Then go home and rest, sir.” 

“Mmph,” Jinshi protests, and falls forward. 

Maomao doesn’t have time to try and catch him before he’s collapsed onto her, head pillowed on her knees. He snuggles in, wrapping his arms around her back and sighing in childish contentment. 

Jinshi cracks an eye open, notices her disapproving look, and grins up at her. “Why go home when I’m comfortable right here?” 

This man is ridiculous. Maomao turns back to her work. 

Jinshi seems to be just fine being ignored. Thankfully, his head in her lap doesn’t get in the way of the work she needs to do. She only keeps grinding down the herbs in her mortar until they’re a fine powder, and it takes just a few minutes for Jinshi’s breathing to fall into the slow, steady rhythm of sleep. 

He must be really exhausted. Half the time, this is what his visits consist of. She wasn’t lying to her sisters when she said nothing of interest happens at all. 

After about half an hour, Maomao finishes the mixture of herbs. Now she needs something from her medicine cabinet, but it’s not like she can get up like this, she thinks as she looks down at him.

Jinshi’s hair spills out onto the floor like a river of black silk. It’s tangled from his unceremonious flop onto the floor. He’s just making more work for Suiren later. She knows how long his hair takes to detangle. 

She might as well make Suiren’s job easier. Maomao doesn’t have a comb, so she runs her fingers through his hair instead. It’s soft and fragrant-smelling. Jinshi sighs in his sleep and leans into her hand like a needy kitten as she works, so she puts her free hand on his cheek, running her thumb over the bandage. He leans into that instead and lets her detangle his hair in peace. His skin is warm. 

It only takes a few minutes to fix the mess of his hair into something that won’t make her sisters giggle and pester more about what they get up to. Once he looks presentable enough, Maomao sighs through her nose. 

Jinshi is still fast asleep. His lips are curved into a small smile, so different from the fake, sparkly one she knows from the rear palace. He leans into her hand on his cheek, and a stray lock of hair falls in his face. She brushes it away with her thumb, tucking it behind his ear. 

Five thousand silver.

“I don’t understand you,” she says to the empty air. 

Even though his hair is much more orderly than before, her hand in it does not still. 

The summoning letter is as innocuous as any of the others. 

It arrives the same as all the others have—by an imperial messenger who comes knocking at Maomao’s little apothecary shop and delivers it by hand. When she opens it, the scent of familiar sandalwood incense hits her nose. The paper is smooth and heavy in her hands. Of course—the Imperial Brother would use nothing less. 

Maomao reads over it emotionlessly. None of the words—‘official business’, ‘accompany’, and ‘Western Capital’—spark any particular feelings. When she has finished, she draws a lacquered box from beneath the counter and places the letter inside, atop a neat stack of dozens of others. Each is made of the same high-quality paper and scented sandalwood. Each was delivered by the same messenger. Opening the box, the scent would be thick enough to make her dizzy if it wasn’t so pleasant. Suiren has good taste, after all. 

Maomao shuts the box, shoves it back under the counter, and begins making her preparations. It’s not a matter of ‘if’ she’ll go, of course. She will. It’s an order from the Moon Prince, even if it’s phrased in gentle language and so nicely perfumed. 

Who is she, a simple commoner girl, to say no? 

Her sisters raise a few eyebrows when Maomao begins packing her things, but they help nonetheless. Pairin insists she bring more makeup than she will ever wear. Meimei sends her with the best jewelry from her own jewelry box. Joka raises an incredulous eyebrow at Maomao’s short explanation. 

None of this is necessary for the ‘official business’ Jinshi mentioned, of that she’s sure. It’s not like anything will happen that will require her to dress up. 

Whatever ‘official business’ means, anyway. Who is Maomao to question? 

Maomao slides into the carriage and only looks at the man sitting next to her after the door is closed behind her. 

Not bad, is her first thought. The burn scar is a good idea to cover up that distinct scar on his face, and it has the added bonus of dulling his beauty a little. Not enough—Maomao knows firsthand from doing his makeup on their trip to the pleasure district that no amount of powder or creams or stench can really hide it. His beauty is still there, just beneath the surface, peeking out like moonlight behind the clouds. 

The disguise works well enough that an untrained eye won’t notice, though. The plastered-on burn scar will work well enough at a distance. His hair is duller, and his bangs are tousled to cover his eyes. The man before her looks awfully brooding. 

The bags under his eyes give the entire thing away, though. 

“Master Jinshi, you really ought to sleep more.” 

The man next to her grimaces, running a hand through his bangs to tousle them up more. “Am I that obvious, even with this?” 

“Not from a distance.” She’d just recognize those eye bags anywhere—and while he took her advice about the makeup, he forgot to cover up the scent of fine sandalwood and jasmine. This close to him, it’s very obvious. 

Besides, even behind the makeup, he’s still pretty. Maomao looks out the window. “It’s passable.” 

“Only passable?” Jinshi pouts. 

“Only passable,” she agrees, glancing sidelong at him. “You forgot to dust the underside of it with the red powder.” Jinshi grimaces and touches the bottom of the scar, paler than it should be. “Most won’t likely notice, though,” she continues. “Who did it for you? Suiren?” 

Jinshi scratches at his cheek. The true scar beneath must itch. “I asked Suiren to prepare the materials, but I tried my own hand at it.” 

“Was this your first try?” If so, it’s not a bad first try. Maomao’s first attempts at makeup during her courtesan training were much worse than this. 

“I practiced a few times in the mirror to get it right,” Jinshi confesses. He gives a sheepish smile. “It’s harder than you make it look.” 

Maomao glances back out the window. “I’ve watched my sisters do their makeup for years,” she deflects. “They taught me everything I know.” 

“Well,” Jinshi says, a smile tinging his words, “I’m glad I learned from the best.”

Maomao is not the best, she thinks—but before she can open her mouth to protest, the carriage door opens again. 

“Are we ready to go?” Basen asks, settling into his seat with his arms crossed. He still looks very uncomfortable at the reversal of roles with his master, and he adjusts the hair ornament atop his head. He must be unused to it. 

Jinshi grins boyishly, leaning forward. “Isn’t that your decision to make, Master Basen?” 

Basen makes a face. “Don’t make this weirder than it needs to be,” Jinshi’s guard protests. “These clothes are itchy enough without you making my skin crawl.” 

Jinshi leans back into his seat with a snort of laughter. This smile is different from the one she saw in the rear palace, Maomao realizes. This one isn’t so horribly smarmy, like he’s trying to get something out of it. He seems lighter and much younger without the smarm, which is much more preferable. 

The quack doctor of all people climbs in after Basen, with Maomao the cat of all creatures tucked neatly in his arms. “I gave the carriage driver instructions on what road to take,” he reports proudly. “We should arrive in my hometown in two days!” 

The quack’s hometown? That’s an odd destination, Maomao thinks. What on earth are they going West to do, anyway? 

The quack doesn’t seem to notice Maomao staring, but the calico cat in his arms does. Maomao the cat gives her a few slow blinks. 

Ah, well. Maomao doesn’t need to think about it. 

The carriage ride is horribly boring. 

Despite there being four people (plus a cat) bouncing around in the carriage on the journey, there’s little substantial conversation, and Maomao participates in none of it. Most of the words spoken are the quack explaining barley field number sixty-seven passing by. He, at least, seems to be enjoying himself. 

Maomao tunes it out.  She stays curled up against the wall of the carriage, watching the unending scenery go by. 

Maomao (the cat) has apparently taken a liking to Jinshi. Maybe she recognizes him by smell through the disguise—the sandalwood and jasmine scent really does give him away. The little calico spends much of the carriage ride curled up at his feet or in his lap, or standing with two tiny paws on his knee and two on the window’s frame to watch the scenery. 

She is in his lap now, on the second day of the carriage ride, curled up and asleep. She is purring so loudly that Maomao (the human) can hear her contentment over the roll of the carriage wheels and the quack’s ramblings.

Jinshi absently pets her, his long fingers scratching behind her ear or running across her back. Despite what he said in the rear palace, he seems to have taken more of a liking to the creature. It’s a shame he’s getting cat hair all over his expensive robes. 

Jinshi grins, nudges Basen with an elbow, and leans over to whisper something in his ear. Basen makes a face in protest and smacks Jinshi lightly on the arm. Jinshi smiles even wider and whispers something more, the sound of his words swallowed by the carriage, and Basen doesn’t quite hide the snort this time. Jinshi falls back into his seat, giggling like a young boy rather than a prince. 

He really does look lighter like this. It’s odd to see him without the charismatic mask he seems to wear around everyone but a select few. 

It’s certainly preferable to the smarm, is all Maomao can think. 

Maomao (the cat) mrrrps when Jinshi’s laughter shakes her makeshift bed and stretches out her front paws, rolls over, and yawns widely. Her mouth is full of needle-sharp teeth, which looks all the more dangerous when Jinshi’s fingers drift across the cat’s back to her belly. 

She’s going to bite you, Maomao thinks. Cats, in her experience, will occasionally show trust by showing their most vulnerable areas, but it does not mean they take kindly to being pet there. Pairin learned that the hard way when a stray kitten got into the Verdigris House, and Maomao had to clean up the bite wound. 

Jinshi’s fingers scratch at the soft white fur of her belly, and to Maomao’s surprise, the creature simply flops over willingly, allowing him to stroke her. 

At her staring, Maomao (the cat) blinks up at her, as if to say, What? Am I supposed to do something different?

Yes, Maomao thinks bluntly. If Jinshi were a predator, his claws would be firmly lodged in her belly by now. Being so trusting that some big creature won’t hurt you is more than Maomao can ever be. 

“Do you want to hold her for a while?” comes Jinshi’s soft voice. 

Maomao starts and realizes she’s been staring. The man across from her is looking at her, leaning his chin on his hand. A gentle smile plays at his lips. 

You’ll mess up your scar, touching it like that! Maomao thinks. 

…not that it’s doing much right now. The makeup cannot hide how the afternoon sunlight plays in his dark eyes, or how the gentle smile playing on his lips could melt the heart of any fair maiden. 

Good thing Maomao is not so delicate. Maomao turns back to the window. “No,” she replies bluntly. 

Jinshi’s replying laughter rings like a bell in the enclosed carriage. 

They stop in the quack doctor’s village after a few days of the carriage ride. Maomao did not imagine anything in particular of interest to be happening in the quack’s hometown, especially when it’s famed for making paper. The paper itself is very nice, but it doesn’t seem like the type of place to have much excitement. 

She turns out to be quite wrong. 

“It’s not like you can read or write, after all,” Maomao taunts. Farmer Number One only grips at her shirt tighter. She grins, high on something like flying, foolish courage. “You couldn’t even use that paper if you tried. Want someone to teach you?” 

“You bitch,” the farmer snarls, swinging his fist back. 

Well, this should have been expected. She shuts her eyes and braces for impact, and—

The punch doesn’t come. But a clinking of metal does, and Maomao opens her eyes just in time to see the man with the scarred face and familiar eyes step in between them. He throws a sack onto the table and upends it, spilling a waterfall of silver coins onto the table and floor with a clatter loud enough to get the attention of even the drunkest patrons.  

Jinshi’s eyes flash cold like an obsidian knife. Voice low and dangerous, he says, “Three hundred silver would be cheap for her.” 

Not true. And don’t go flashing your silver like that!

Jinshi brushes the hand of the farmer away from her and steps behind her, arms crossed. Free from Farmer Number One’s grasp, Maomao sees she has no choice but to roll with the situation. She plants a foot on the chair and a hand on her chest and crows, 

“See? He knows the value of what he’s looking at.” 

Farmer Number One growls in frustration as the both of them give him the cockiest smirks they can muster. Bluster is everything in games like this. Maomao tosses a glance behind her shoulder, and Jinshi catches her eye. 

Even if he’s smiling like the best courtesan in the pleasure district, his eyes say something very, very different. She knows that look well enough by now:

Apothecary, what the fuck are you doing?

Maomao grins even wider, heart pounding with adrenaline. But there’s something more, too—drunk on that breathless, flying courage that makes her shoot back a look that says something like:

You’ve got my back, don’t you?

Trust me. 

She drinks all the farmers under the table, of course. Every single one. 

“Just three hundred silver?” Jinshi whispers in her ear when it’s all over, leaning in close enough that only she can hear him. His smooth, deep voice is laced with a grin so wicked that she doesn’t even need to look at his face—she can hear how it tinges his words. “Not a bad bargain.” 

He truly doesn’t know the value of anything, Maomao thinks, and drains her last glass. 

Their journey continues on, through the paper-making village and far beyond. The landscape slowly changes to the scenery her father described to her, arid and mountainous. The boredom stays the same. 

Occasionally they make camp in the wilderness, but more often than not they stay at various inns along the road.the route was meticulously planned to prevent the Imperial Brother from ‘roughing it’ as much as possible. 

Sometimes, though, they don’t get so lucky. 

Basen comes over to their carriage, scowling. “Only two rooms left, one large and one small. We’ll have to split it up one way or another.” He scowls. “Sir, you should take one, and the three of us can split—”

“No,” Jinshi blurts out in protest. He glances quickly at Maomao, licks his lips, and says, “No, it’ll look too suspicious if a ‘servant’ takes a room by himself.” 

“Do you have a better suggestion?” 

Jinshi glances at her again, opens his mouth, closes it again, then says, “Maomao should take the smaller room. The three of us can split the suite.” 

Maomao doesn’t really understand why she should get a whole room all to herself, but who is she to protest? 

Their rooms at this particular inn aren’t too shabby, Maomao thinks—though it may not live up to the standards of the Imperial Brother, especially given that the three men of their expedition share a suite with two rooms and a common area. Maomao’s own quarters are a little more humble, with only a bedroom. It’s furnished decently enough, but it’s clearly intended for a passing commoner, not a noble’s lodgings. 

Maomao rises early, when golden light is just barely starting to spill into her rooms. Mist still hangs in the mountains out her window, not yet burned off. With nothing better to do, Maomao ties her hair back, gets dressed, and crosses the hall. She is here as a servant(?), after all—she may as well do the work of one. 

She doubts any of the three of them are awake yet, given the early hour, but she knocks on the door thrice anyway. To her surprise, a voice answers, “Come in.”

“Excuse me,” she murmurs, bowing her head, and steps into the room. 

Jinshi sits near the window, backlit by the golden morning sun. He’s had the decency to dress himself in day clothes (so he can dress himself!), but his long hair isn’t tied back yet, flowing down his back like black silk. Papers are spread out on the table in front of him. It seems not even a trip like this can keep him away from work. 

He turns to her and smiles a heartbreakingly beautiful smile. “Good morning,” he says. His voice is deeper than usual and just a bit rougher with sleep. 

Maomao was hoping no one would be awake so she could prepare tea in peace. Alas. She bows. “Good morning, sir.” 

“Did you sleep well?” he asks as she sets about preparing tea. 

“Well enough. Though I never sleep much away from home.” 

“You’re telling me,” Jinshi groans, running a hand through his hair. “I would have slept better if Basen didn’t snore.”

That’s quite rich, given that Jinshi himself snores as well—quietly, like a little kitten. It’s good that he’s not louder, or she wouldn’t be able to focus on her apothecary work whenever he decides to take a nap in her shop. 

They fall into silence as Maomao spoons leaves into the teapot and waits for the water to boil. She doesn’t have much to talk about, and the other two are sleeping just beyond the door. Better to keep quiet. 

Jinshi doesn’t push conversation, either—even in the morning sunlight, his eyelids seem heavy, like he’s not quite managing to blink sleep from his eyes. She can feel those eyes on her, how they haven’t drifted back to his paperwork once after she entered the room. Whatever’s in those papers must really be boring him. 

She sets the tea down in front of him and Jinshi waves a hand at her. “Just sit across the table,” he orders. “Suiren’s not here, there’s no need to be formal.” 

Maomao does as she’s told and takes a sip of her tea. The jasmine tea is fragrant and smooth. The lack of bitterness speaks both to the quality of the tea leaves and the lack of tampering. “It’s safe,” she assures him after she swallows. 

“I’d hope so,” Jinshi replies with a chuckle. “You’re not planning on poisoning me, are you?” 

“I wouldn’t dream of it, sir.” 

Jinshi frowns. “I can never tell if you’re joking,” he says, though he takes a sip anyways. 

Maomao busies herself with polishing a nonexistent smudge off her own cup. The inn provided cups in the room, but even on the road, they only ever use pure silver dishes that they brought themselves. “Rest assured. I haven’t seen any of the poisonous plants native to this region that my father taught me about.” 

Yet. 

“I’m not sure if that’s reassuring as you want it to be, apothecary.” His voice is tinged with a laugh, smooth and deep.

Staring at her own reflection in her cup, Maomao realizes that this is quite similar to the few months she spent serving him. The mornings would always pass just like this, with simple banter. At least he’s learned not to try to force conversation with her like he used to. 

One thing that has not changed, even here, far from the capital, is how lethal he is this time of day. 

Maomao glances up at him through her eyelashes. Even if he’s not in sleeping robes like she used to see him in, his voice is deeper than usual with the remnants of sleep, and his hair flows down around his shoulders. He leans an elbow heavily on the table, holding his teacup with long, elegant fingers. His eyes are downcast, and the golden sunlight streaming through the window catches on his downturned eyelashes. 

Still lethal. It’s pure luck that no one else is around to see this. 

Jinshi slides one of the papers on the table towards her. “We should be meeting with Ah-Duo today. It’s yet a few days’ journey to the Western Capital, though.” 

Maomao nods, scanning over the letter. It’s from Ah-Duo, listing her location, route, and the plans for meeting. There’s a teasing tone laced throughout it, especially towards the end when she mentions Lishu is with her. Weird. “And what will we do when we arrive, sir? You haven’t said yet.” 

Jinshi opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again. He looks quite like a fish. Finally, he sighs, eyes downcast. “I’ll—tell you when we get there,” he says, waving a hand. He glances at her. “But—given that it’s still a few days’ journey, I was wondering if I need to touch up the disguise again.” 

Great. This is his way of saying he wants her to do it for him. There goes her hope of relaxing for an hour before they go off again. Maomao rises from her seat and rounds the table. 

“Please excuse me,” she says, and takes Jinshi’s chin in her hand. 

He blinks up at her in surprise as she tilts his face one way, then the other. It’s still convincing from a distance, but this close, it clearly needs a touch-up. “The red is rubbing off again,” she says, poking at the underside of the raised scar. 

Jinshi pouts. “Did I miss the same spot again?” 

“Yes.” 

He sighs. “The supplies are over there,” he grumbles, gesturing to the other side of the room. Maomao retrieves them and gets to work. 

It’s a quick fix, all things considered. She smears a little more glue onto the scar to make the powder stick, then taps the red onto it. His skin is warm beneath her fingers as she lifts his chin and dusts powder over his scar with her other hand. Their faces are close, but for some reason, Jinshi stares straight at her shoulder and doesn’t meet her eye once. His eyelashes are very long. Courtesans pay a lot of money and use a lot of product to look the way he does without even trying. 

She thinks briefly of her sisters, back in the pleasure district, and the conversation they had. Whoever ends up marrying this man will be lucky, at least in looks. Even setting status aside, he could have anyone he wanted. 

Maomao taps the last bit of red off her fingers. “Finished.” 

“Already?” 

“Even redoing the whole thing doesn’t take that long, sir.” 

“Maybe I should have you redo it anyway.”

Is he not satisfied with her work? Maomao frowns. “That’s not necessary,” she says, tilting his chin in her hands. “The disguise will still hold until we get to the capital.” And do whatever it is they need to do there, but she’ll learn about it when she needs to. 

Jinshi glances up at her through his eyelashes. “Only a few days’ journey left,” he murmurs, more to himself than her.  

Suddenly, his arms come around her waist. Maomao’s knees knock painfully against the edge of his chair as he pulls her to his chest, burying his face in her shoulder. 

“Sir, please unhand me.” 

“I don’t want to,” Jinshi whines. “Why should I?” 

Because the others are about to wake up and see us! She shoves at his shoulder, but his arms only circle tighter around her waist, and he breathes in deep. Is he sniffing her? 

“Besides, we haven’t had much time alone recently,” he murmurs. The tips of his ears are pink, and she’s not sure if he meant to say it loud enough for her to hear. 

Maomao lets her arms drop with a huff. There’s no use trying to push him away. “Why is that a problem?” she asks bluntly. “We’ll get to the Western Capital, do whatever needs to be done, and go home, won’t we?” They’ll just go back to their old lives after. 

It’s not like anything will change. 

Jinshi stills. He sighs into her shoulder, squeezes her one last time, and pulls away just enough to look at her face. He still rests his cheek on her shoulder, and their faces are inches apart. 

“I—” His eyes dart down and he licks his lips. “Maomao, I need to—”

The door behind them starts to slide open.

Maomao shoves violently against Jinshi’s shoulder and leaps out of the ring of his arms just as Basen lumbers his way through the door, yawning and scratching at his bare stomach: “Mornin’, sir, d’you know when—” Basen stops in his tracks. He blinks once, twice, and then his sleep-addled mind catches up with reality. 

He shrieks. 

“What are you doing in here?” Basen demands, covering his chest with one hand and his loincloth-wrapped groin with the other. 

“What’s all this commotion?” mumbles the quack, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He bumps into Basen’s bare back, and Jinshi sighs into his hands. 

Maomao takes this as her cue to leave as quickly as can be considered polite. 

Basen can’t quite meet Maomao’s eyes for the rest of the day, which is fine by her. Jinshi glances at her frequently, but his eyes always dart away as soon as she notices. He doesn’t try to bring up whatever he was going to say. 

It must not have been that important. 

They rendezvous with Ah-Duo and Lishu as planned without much issue—besides the bandit attack, at least. It’s only after Maomao has washed her hands of the blood from treating the injured guards that Ah-Duo beckons her into her tent with a crooked finger and an amicable smile. Consort Lishu sits with her in the shaded tent, still looking rather queasy from the entire affair. 

“Well,” Ah-Duo says, plopping into a chair and crossing her legs. She’s dressed in men’s fashion today, and the sturdy clothes look much more practical than the finer garments Lishu wears. “I’m sure you’re wondering why the consort is with us on such a journey.” 

Lishu shrinks into her chair, still looking rather green. Maomao bows. “Yes, ma’am.” 

The consort still looks terribly frightened from the bandit attack, but at least the former consort appears to be in good humor. Still smiling, Ah-Duo continues, “And I’m sure you’ve heard why Master Basen is going westward as well.” 

“I understand there are important discussions taking place in the Western Capital,” Maomao replies, which is all she knows. Jinshi hasn’t told her yet why they’re going west, but it’s not important for a simple apothecary. She doesn’t need to know the affairs of nobility. If it’s diplomatic talks, then it makes sense that Basen would be in attendance both as Jinshi’s guard and to represent the various interests of Li.

This talk is awfully boring. Maomao’s mind is still stuck on the tufts of grass she saw outside the consort’s tent. They could be patches of herbs that her father has taught her about, ones he learned about during his time in the West. Hopefully this talk wraps up soon so she can go examine them.

“That’s certainly a part of it,” Ah-Duo says. “And we’ll be taking part as well.”

Makes sense, Maomao thinks, nodding along. Ah-Duo is still talking—something about another task to attend to. The tufts of dry brush outside drift in her mind. No one would notice if some plants around their camp went missing, right? 

So raptured in her own fantasies, Maomao almost misses the consort’s next words: 

“We’re also tasked with finding the Moon Prince a wife.” 

Maomao goes still. Her head is still bowed, and to the lady before her, she does not dare raise her head. Suddenly, many coincidences click into place at once—but she still wonders:

Then, why is she here?

Chapter Text

Ka Zuigetsu is born the son of god. 

He knows this from the instant he learns the shape of those words and the meaning they carry. Born to Heaven Itself, high above all others, he is close enough to touch the stars. His mother names him for the moon. From his birth, the court speculates about the kind of man he will become, and whether fate will carry him to the peak of the country. 

However, it takes time for him to learn all of this. The words they whisper, their meanings, and the implications of his position do not dawn on him until he is much older. High above others as he is, most of the people in his life do not—cannot—call him by the name he is given, so he never learns it properly. He is not a particularly gifted or intelligent child. 

Some of the people in his life, unable or unwilling to speak his Imperial name, call him Yue. Yue decides to call himself that, too. 

For the first years of his life, his world is limited to the palace of his mother. It is a fine, beautiful palace, colored crimson and maroon and navy and gold. The rooms are constantly lit by dim candles. Besides the internal garden of the complex, he is not allowed to go outside, and the rooms he is kept in lack windows. The ceilings are high, but the world is cushioned. He is rarely left alone, even for a moment. 

He is attended by a few trusted, loyal confidants of the royal family. A woman named Suiren is a frequent attendant of his, but there are others who visit as well. They keep their heads bowed to the young prince. His mother lives in the complex, but she only visits once a day, and spends little time with her son. The attendants tell him that she is important, and busy as a result. Her smile is kind, but her eyes are always distant. 

“Play?” Yue plies her, once he learns the word. 

The Empress Dowager shakes her head with a vacant smile. “Not today, dear,” she tells him with a pat on the head. 

“Play?” Yue asks the man who comes visiting sometimes, about as frequently as his mother. His voice is low and doting. He always bounces Yue on his knee when he comes visiting, and will sometimes bring gifts of toys and treats. 

“Sorry, Yue,” the Crown Prince replies. “I have to get back to work.”

Yue is used to this answer. He can play alone. 

He has so many toys, all kept in a little woven box in the corner of his cushioned room. Most of them lay forgotten, though, no matter how much Suiren or the others try to ply him into playing with the others. There’s one he adores above all, a little carved wooden figure. It has two triangle ears and a little swirly line for a tail. There are more lines carved into its face, stretching out from its cheeks. Its eyes are painted a dull yellow, and its pupils are slitted. 

“It’s a cat,” one of his attendants tells him, pointing at the creature. “Can you say ‘cat’?” 

Yue ignores her, crashing the little figure into a stack of wooden blocks. The attendant gives a long, weary sigh. 

He plays with that little toy for hours every day, always under the watchful eyes of an attendant. Today, it’s that younger woman again. It’s nearly evening now—the light coming in from the internal garden is the only indicator of time for him, and that light has grown crimson in dusk. Yue’s starting to get sleepy. He yawns. 

There’s a knock on the door. The young woman starts and answers it. There are some words Yue can’t make out, then she nods a few times and steps out of the room. 

This has happened before. Yue’s used to playing alone, anyway. It’s not so different. He keeps fiddling with the little toy in his hands. 

Then, a man that he has never seen before shuffles into his cushioned, dark, secluded room. 

This man looks different from others Yue has met before. His hair is long, but it is a pure, stark white, hanging in limp strands. His hands are wrinkled and he is hunched, like a thousand weights hang from his shoulders. His skin droops off his face. His eyes are deeply empty. 

He totters forward into the empty room. 

Yue holds up the little wooden toy. “Play?” he asks. 

The man cocks his head. A faint glint sparks in his vacant eyes. 

“Of course,” the Emperor says, and kneels beside his son. Yue smiles and offers him the little wooden figure. 

In that moment, the door opens, and his attendant shrieks an alarm. 

Many people storm in after her, all shouting panicked, angry words that Yue hasn’t learned the meanings of yet. The man keens like some wild animal, backing into the far corner of the room. 

Yue turns to see his mother at the door, a fan clenched in her fists. Fire blazes in her eyes. 

She steps forward with righteous fury, raises her hand, and strikes the man across the face once, twice. The man whimpers with every strike, but she keeps going, shouting something harsh and horrible that Yue cannot understand. 

If she is trying to drive him out, the man is too frightened to move towards the door. Her shouts rise in volume. Another crack of her fan against the man’s face. 

He doesn’t want to watch anymore. 

Yue clenches his favorite toy in one hand and cowers into the corner, face pressed against the wall. He squeezes his eyes shut, but it does not stop the noise. The shouting and the sound of wood on flesh does not stop for some time. 

He only raises his head when it finally does. Tears track down his face as he surveys the room. The man is gone. His mother stands at the door. Her fan is still clenched in her fist, so tightly her hand shakes. 

“Mama…?” Yue whispers. 

His mother turns slowly, as if her body is here, but her mind is somewhere else, somewhere far away. She blinks, eyes far away and unseeing, before her gaze focuses on her son. The fire in her eyes is gone. Her face is streaked with tears. 

And for a moment, she looks at Yue with unbridled, icy disgust. 

The flash of emotion is gone as soon as it comes. Her eyes soften, and her fan clatters to the ground. She brings a hand to her mouth to muffle a sob. Another tear trails down her face. 

Yue reaches for her blindly—his mother is hurting, he wants to help—but she flees from the room, hand pressed over her mouth, eyes wide and unseeing. Yue is alone again. 

Suiren comes five minutes later with a warm handkerchief and many whispered apologies. It’s her who cleans the tears off his face that night. 

“Young Master,” she says, voice graver than he has ever heard. “You are never to play with that man. If he comes near you, come find one of us. Do you understand?”

He doesn’t understand, not really. Isn’t that man supposed to be his father? 

He sniffles and nods anyways. 

Yue is five years old when Suiren hides that little wooden cat for refusing to focus on his lessons. 

“I’m sorry, Young Master,” she tries to soothe as he sobs and sobs and sobs, “but you must focus on your studies now.” She holds up the book in her hands. “Now, can we—”

“No!!” Yue yells. “Those books’re confusing! I don’t wanna read them!” 

“I know they are,” she tries to soothe, “but they’re things you must learn if you want to—”

“I don’t want to!” Yue protests—he wants the comfort of that little toy, not the weird numbers and letters and stories that make his head spin. Suiren sighs, soft and long-suffering. 

After months of this, they reach a compromise—if Yue pays attention during those horribly boring, long-winded lessons, she will allow him to play with the little toy once he’s finished. 

The lessons are so, so boring, though. 

He has several teachers. One comes in with a brush and inkstone and teaches him how to write. The teacher is strict, and if there is a single brushstroke out of place, he makes Yue redo the entire set. 

Another shuffles in every few days with a map and books and tries to get Yue to repeat after him each province of Li. There are too many, and the names are all too long. Too many of them end in ‘-shu’. How is he supposed to keep track of all of them?

A third tries to teach him about the great literature of the courtly men before him. They’re all just stories about the court—Character X did A, Character Y did B. Some of the ones he’s told are really influential talk about this weird red string that binds them together. It’s boring!

He has no interest in any of this, and he’s not good at it, anyway. So one day, when he is six years old, Yue makes his grand escape. He’s ‘going to the bathroom’—so he tells his teacher—but slips out to his rooms instead and searches for that little wooden cat. 

His teacher comes searching thirty minutes later. The scolding he gets does not stop him from repeating it again, and again, and again. 

Taomei, Suiren, and Gaoshun become very adept at chasing him down. Yue refuses to let them win every time, though. 

A few years further into his studies and bored to tears more and more every day, Yue manages to talk Basen into escaping out of their shared swordplay lessons together. 

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” his milk brother protests, as Yue conspiratorially peers around a corner to check that no one’s looking. Basen is finally allowed to play with Yue more, now that they’re grown, but too much of the time they spend together is dedicated to sword training. More playtime would be much better, Yue thinks. 

“Sure it is,” Yue replies, as they sneak across the hall and out into the garden. “Do you want to do another round of that boring training? Master Zhou just makes us swing the sword around! We don’t even get to hit anything.”

“Mom’s gonna kill us both if she finds out we sneaked out, though.”

Yue grins back at him. “Nah, I’ll just get yelled at.” Then he pauses for a moment, thinking very hard. “Taomei might kill you, though.” 

“Hey!” Basen shouts as Yue runs away, giggling all the while. Basen has always been the stronger of the two, but Yue is faster. 

Yue darts down the pathway, his fine shoes already stained with dirt and mud, and Basen comes crashing after him, not bothering to be quiet now. Yue dashes towards the maple tree in the center of the yard and puts one of those silken shoes on the bark, reaches for a branch, but Basen tackles him before he can get out of reach. They fall onto the ground in a giggling heap, and Basen pins him easily. 

“Ow,” Yue grumbles once Basen lets him up, shaking his shoulders out and leaning against the bark of the tree. “How’d you get so strong? I can never beat you!”

Basen leans against the tree, too, and shrugs. “Dunno. Dad says I’ve always been strong—nearly broke his fingers when I was a baby. Was just born with it, I guess.” 

Yue goes quiet for a moment. He thinks about the writing drills, and the confusing maps, and the family he was born into, and says, “I don’t know if I was born good at anything.” 

The next day, he throws himself into his studies. He cuts into his playtime to copy down scriptures, review maps, and refresh himself on clan names and their recent histories. 

Suiren, Gaoshun, and Taomei are grateful for his sudden change in attitude. Little do they know that Yue still thinks all this stuff is boring. 

He just realized that he is somehow behind. 

Yue is ten years old when he tires of the seclusion of the Empress Dowager’s palace. 

For his entire life, he has been kept cloistered. If he was allowed outside, it was to the interior garden the palace is built around, or to train with Basen in a nearby courtyard—and when that happens, the entire area is abandoned. The trusted eunuch guards clear the entire place out. He has not been to the rear palace, or the palace where the Emperor himself resides. 

But that won’t do anymore—Yue is grown, now, and he needs to see how the court runs. His brother navigates it so smoothly, from what he’s seen, and yet to Yue, it’s still a confusing mess. He spent so long paying little attention to his lessons, and even now that he’s listening, he can’t seem to get it through his skull. 

He’s wasted so much time. 

That is what drives him to confront his brother, on one of the Crown Prince’s visits to the palace. Yue marches up to his brother and cranes his neck up—not as far as he needed to, once upon a time—and all but demands, “I want to sit in on an audience with the Emperor.” 

His brother pauses with his cup of tea half-raised to his lips, and cocks an eyebrow. He puts down his cup. “It’s very boring,” replies the Crown Prince, sounding quite nonchalant. 

“I don’t care.” 

“The ministers will drone on for hours.”

Yue grits his teeth. He is not an easily bored child anymore. “I don’t care.” 

“They’ll talk about things you won’t understand.” 

“That’s why I need to go,” Yue protests. 

His brother gives him a long, unreadable look. Yue shifts from foot to foot, casting his eyes down. Finally, the Crown Prince sighs, and says, “Let me bring it up with our grandmother.” 

Yue waits with bated breath. When the official summons arrives, bearing the seal of the Empress Regent, he rejoices. 

It’s a massive affair—despite his position in the royal family, Yue has not attended a public ceremony in any official capacity. If his attendance was somehow necessary, he was always cloistered behind screens or masks. He never really understood why. 

He also doesn’t understand why Suiren’s lips are drawn into a thin line as she dresses him in his most formal robes, yet-unused. They are stiff and itchy and boiling hot for the summer weather, but Yue doesn’t pay them any mind. 

His brother comes to pick him up for the audience, and Suiren is the one who sees him off. “Be safe, Young Master,” she implores him, looking oddly worried. 

Yue doesn’t understand what she’s so worried about—this is a thing for celebration, isn’t it? His first official attendance of court. A mark of his coming of age. He’s ten years old and more than ready for it. “I will,” Yue replies absently with a wave, and he does not look back. 

He follows a step behind his brother towards the audience chamber. His brother walks with pride and confidence, and Yue mimics the same elegant glide. He’s successful, too—at least for a few moments, until his brother’s longer legs take him too far away, and Yue has to dash ahead to catch up. 

His brother finally turns to him when they arrive at the doors. “Ready?” 

Yue gives a confident, proud nod, and the doors before them crack open. 

Behind his brother, he can’t easily see into the room, but the first thing Yue hears is the shuffling of bodies, as every single person in that room rises at once, bowing low. 

Except for one. 

As he follows his brother into the room, Yue sees the man he now knows as his father, the Emperor. He has only seen him a few times in his life. Busy, is what they always told him. Too busy to play. His eyes are just as vacant as Yue remembers. 

Behind him sits the Empress Regent—whatever that title is supposed to mean. While his father does not rise with the rest of the ministers, she does. His grandmother’s bow, though, is shallow. She only gives the slightest nod of the head. 

That’s a little strange. 

He follows his brother to stand before the Emperor and copies his bow. Yue’s eyes lock with his grandmother when he rises. Her brow and hands are wrinkled, and her hair falls in white and grey streaks, but something mad flickers in her eyes. He’s only met her a few times, but Yue does not like the woman. He shudders and takes his seat next to his brother. Anshi, from across the room, gives him a vague, vacant smile. Yue glances at his brother next to him and tries to sit up as straight as him. 

After much preamble, the meeting begins. 

And to Yue’s horror, it is even less interesting than his books. 

The other ministers do much of the talking. They report on the stock of the granaries for winter (why? There’s a whole four months before the cold season comes), give an overview of the taxes collected from each province (if there’s enough money—which there seems to be, as far as Yue can tell—why does it matter?). 

None of it makes sense, and by the time the meeting is dragging to afternoon, Yue finds himself fighting sleep. The Minister of War is about to speak, and they are only halfway through. Yue’s posture is starting to slip, and he lets himself slouch for a moment, wishing he could just curl up on the cushion he sits upon and go to sleep. 

His brother, beside him, nudges his leg with a clear, unspoken message: Get up. 

Yue grumbles to himself but sits up straighter and forces his heavy eyelids open. His mother gives him a disapproving frown. Yue’s eyes flit away, hoping to find something else to look at. 

He turns his eyes to one of the officials sitting across from him, only to find that the man is already looking back. Their eyes lock. 

The man’s gaze is uncomfortable. Yue shifts in his seat and casts his eyes away again, towards those seated near the Emperor.

When he raises his head, his eyes lock with someone there, too. 

He glances away again, towards someone else. Their eyes are on him, too. 

He’s never been in a room with this many people before. And despite the (allegedly) important goings-on, despite how the minister of war’s words rise into a monotonous buzz, few of them seem to be listening. 

They are all staring at him. 

A bead of sweat runs down Yue’s neck. He sits up straighter, copying the posture of his brother beside him. The eyes don’t leave. 

Yue’s not listening to what’s being said, now. Desperate, he glances at his brother next to him for some solace. The crown prince stares straight ahead, back as straight as an arrow, looking every bit as noble as his position demands. 

But his hands are clenched so tight the knuckles are white. 

Those eyes are still on him, as if trying to burn holes in his clothing with just their gaze. The Emperor is speaking now, and his weak, thready voice rises into nothing but a mosquito’s buzz. Yue tries desperately to pay attention to focus on something except those prying eyes—something about the Yi clan—‘vacuum’—whispers all around them—‘chaos in the West’ whispers one—‘plague’—

Slam.

Their grandmother slams her hand onto the table. Yue flinches. The room goes deadly silent, and all eyes at last turn away from him. 

Lip curled in disgust, his grandmother leans into the Emperor’s ear and whispers something, her wrinkled, cracked lips mouthing around inaudible words. The Emperor, with his vacant eyes and drooping skin, nods along uselessly. His vacant eyes are full of fear. When the Empress Regent finally pulls away from his ear, he declares in a frail, thready voice, “What’s done is done. We did what we must.” 

The Empress Regent nods in apparent approval. The Emperor looks like nothing more than a puppet on a string, knuckles clenched desperately tight. Yue can see the veins in his hands bulging a sickly blue, and his skin is old and wrinkled. 

Yue blinks and cocks his head. 

He looks to his brother—and his fists are clenched, too, but his skin is not wrinkled like their father. He looks to their mother, seated across from them. Her lips are drawn into a thin line, and her hands are folded neatly in her lap. There isn’t a grey hair on her head. 

Yue isn’t particularly good at math, but he decides to give some simple arithmetic a try. 

The Emperor has just entered his sixties. His brother is in his late twenties. Yue himself has just turned ten. 

…How old is their mother, again? 

Yue gets older. He begins to attend court regularly, just to try to understand how it works. He is careful to not nod off during them, not again, even if the ministers’ long, droning speeches are excessively boring. 

The staring only gets worse. It takes him a while to understand why.

It was such a vague thing before, when he was younger. Those in his circle would casually comment on his looks sometimes—on the sheen of his hair, on the dark of his eyes, on the roundness of his face—but they would never dwell. 

Now, though, it is inescapable. 

People tell him he is beautiful constantly.

The face of a nymph, the court whispers. Eyes like obsidian. Hair of black silk. Perfect, stunning, gorgeous. They tell him that he is lovely, and he is powerful, and they speculate on where his gifts will take him someday. Already, the court jostles restlessly over whose hand he will take. Already, the court wonders who Yue will choose. 

They praise his beauty, and his beauty only, uncaring or unnoticing of what lies beneath. Yue can’t blame them. What lies beneath isn’t much. 

All he has to his name are the flaws few get to see. Papercuts from tomes of politics and splotches of ink from writing practice stain his fingers crimson and black. Calluses litter his sword hand, and bruises scatter across his body from getting knocked on his ass during training over, and over, and over. 

And people tell him he is beautiful. As if that has anything to do with it. 

“You have a gift,” is the advice his brother gives him one day as they take tea together. Yue is much too old to beg his brother to play, now, and the gap between their chairs yawns like a chasm. 

Yue pouts. He takes a sip of tea and makes a face. The stuff is so bitter it makes him sick. Juice is much better, sweeter and easier to stomach, but it is ‘childish’—or so he’s heard. So he makes the adult choice and asks for the gross tea. 

“I don’t want it,” Yue says in a small voice. “It’s not a good gift.”

The Crown Prince sighs to himself, looks into his teacup, and falls silent for a moment. “But you have it, whether you like it or not. And when you have something at your disposal, you must use it. That’s the world we live in.” 

Yue stares into his own face, reflected in his cup of tea, and remembers something from his lessons. In the far West, his teachers said, there is a theory that the moon does not glow on its own. It merely reflects whatever is shone at it, and holds no light in itself. 

The Moon Prince raises his eyes to his brother, named for the sun, and wonders if that theory rings true. 

Not even sleep becomes a respite from the eyes, after a while. It becomes a frequent nightmare—not the only one, but a turn in the frequent rotation. 

Hands reach for him, whether he wants them to or not. They stroke his face, no matter how he tries to pull out of their grasp. Disembodied voices whisper in his ear no matter how much he tries to drown the voices out. They tell him how beautifully he has grown, and speculate what flower he will pluck for himself in the future. 

They try to ply him with their daughters. Yue is uninterested. People see him and claim attraction. He has never felt that pull himself. 

When he tries to run away, though, the hands stretch into ragged claws. 

So Yue learns, over the years, to grin and bear it. His brother’s voice echoes in his ear, but he is not ready to wield his ‘gift’ as a sword, rather than a shield—not yet. So he grits his teeth, he endures, and for the most part, that particular nightmare stops. 

Sometimes, though, it blends with others and rears its ugly head. 

One night, the hands claw him back into that dark space, and whisper:

You look so much like your father.

Yue jolts awake with a bitten-off shout. 

Eleven years old and already above the age of his father’s conquests, Yue presses a hand to his racing heart to try and calm his breathing. It comes ragged and choked around the lump high in his throat. His bedsheets are soaked in sweat. As soon as his hyperventilating calms, Yue chokes out a sob and buries his face in his knees. 

Yue knows he doesn’t resemble his mother, or his brother—the court whispers about it sometimes. Others, though, claim he looks just like the Emperor, and that thought is too much to bear. 

If they look at him and see his father, what is it that catches their eye? Is it truly the beauty that the Emperor once had, before he aged?

Or do they see the incompetence?

Or do they see the monster?

It—it can’t be that last one. Yue has not loved anyone in his life. Part of him hopes he never will.

He stares blankly out the window, face growing tacky with drying tears, until he realizes the moon is beginning to set. He is awake, and the lingering panic thrumming through his veins tells him that sleeping will be impossible. 

He shouldn’t waste these hours. 

Yue rises into the moonlight spilling into his room and dresses himself in something simple and easy to move in. He draws his practice sword from its place by his bed and ignores the tears still lazily streaking down his face as he gathers his hair back with one hand, reaching for a cord to tie it with the other. 

His hair reaches his waist now. Suiren spends so much time every day with a comb, trying to tame it into something presentable. It pays off. It is one of the aspects of him that people always comment on. 

Yue wishes he could cut it. He could use that time she spends combing his hair out for better things—things to sharpen other aspects of himself. Maybe if he cut it, too, people would stop telling him he so resembles the Emperor. Yue is still not allowed near that man. He understands why now. 

But then there would be scandal. Even for a commoner, cutting one’s hair is taboo—it spits in the face of one’s family, disgracing the body one was given. For Yue, born into the damned family he is, it would be impossible. 

Besides, he’d then lose the only surefire tool he has to his name, the only value certain enough to let him bargain his way through court. 

And he can’t have that, now can he?

Yue takes his sword, marches to the training grounds, and runs drills alone until sunrise. His calluses have begun to bleed by the time Gaoshun finds him. 

Once Suiren has fussed over him for his disappearance and cleaned the blood off his hands, Yue sits and waits as she combs through the tangles in his hair, working out the knots put there during his thrashes in the night and the hours of training after. He waits silently, just as he does every morning. Suiren, ever the loyal servant, spends a full hour taming his hair, turning it back into something sleek and shiny—something people would call beautiful. 

She dutifully sharpens the one weapon he has to his name. Yue tries not to hate it. 

Yue is thirteen when his grandmother passes. She is given the honors due to her official station as the mother of the emperor and no more. Yue’s father retreats to his chambers, holes himself in, and follows her not a month later. 

Yue stands stone-faced next to his brother throughout the funeral. The entire palace wears black for months, any color at all leached away in a socialized display of grieving. And it is a display, and no more. For nearly all of those who live and work in the imperial palace, the two deaths, one after the other, are a relief. They certainly are to Yue. 

There are bigger things to worry about, anyway—namely, the cleanup of the rear palace. 

It was the Empress Regent’s idea to expand the rear palace greatly during her puppet reign. The former Emperor left behind consorts, of course. Many of them. Some of them are entering their twenties, locked there by a visit over a decade ago. Most are younger than Yue himself. None have done the job of a consort in bearing a son. By the time they would be able to, the Emperor had lost interest. 

It falls now to the current, ruling generation to continue the imperial line, and speculation begins immediately. His brother has Ah-Duo installed immediately into the palace, but other seats of honor remain empty, and she is no longer able to bear children.

As the Crown Prince, now, the eyes of the court fall to Yue once again. This poses a problem—he has no interest in whatever this ‘romance’ thing is, and the thought of letting anyone near enough to do more than stare makes him ill. 

He decides to act swiftly. 

Click. 

“Hm,” his brother hums, stroking his beard. “An interesting strategy.” 

“One I’ve practiced with my teacher,” Yue replies, wiping his sweaty palm on his robes beneath the table. (This was a trick his go teacher taught him, right?) 

His brother leans back in his chair, loose and casual, but Yue sits ramrod straight on his side of the board. There is too much riding on this game for him to relax—it’s his one chance at freedom. 

If his brother wins, they agreed, Yue will do what the entire court has been clamoring for and take a consort. Several, in all likelihood. Apparently the northern lord Shishou has proposed one of his daughters as an option. Other lords from other clans have their own proposals. 

Yue wants none of it. So if he wins, the imperial brother will retreat from public life, and Yue will enter the rear palace in the guise of a eunuch. 

The plan has several benefits. First, it gets his own ass off the crown prince’s seat and buys him time to make his solution more permanent. Second, it lets Yue try to pressure his brother into doing his job of making more heirs and, with any luck, push Yue several rungs down the line of succession. 

Becoming the emperor would mean a delicate, lifelong balancing act of power within the court, one that Yue is not nearly clever enough for. It would also mean the expectation of filling the rear palace back up with women, and that is even more difficult to stomach. 

Click, goes the go stone. 

The Emperor crosses his arms and leans back, staring at the board between them. His eyes scan over the grid, looking for any more gaps in his defense to bridge, and says, “Pass.” 

Yue sighs in relief and puts down his own stone. “Pass.” He pauses. “So the game’s over, right?” 

“It is,” his brother says, leaning forward. Reading his mind, an attendant rushes forward with a brush and parchment. “Let me count.” 

Yue sweats even more as his brother counts each bit of territory captured, straining his ears to catch the numbers his brother whispers beneath his breath. He loses track once the numbers go over the forties, and he can’t see what he’s writing at this angle. Finally, the Emperor purses his lips, sets down his brush, and leans back. 

“What’s the score?” Yue demands. 

“Fifty-nine for you,” the Emperor replies. “Fifty-eight for me.” 

Yue leaps out of his chair so forcefully he knocks it over. 

“Don’t celebrate quite yet,” the Emperor warns as Yue pumps his fists in the air. “This is just the beginning, you know.” 

“I know!!” Yue yells. 

“We’ll need a cover story for what happened to you.” 

“I thought of one!”

The Emperor cocks a skeptical eyebrow. 

“I was thinking that, like,” Yue starts, bouncing on his heels, “there was some freak accident, right? There was a ceremony in that one creepy hall, and I was doing your job for the first time, reading that long thing you always do—except those big pillars with the words on them crashed down. And I was quick and smart and jumped out of the way, but they knocked over a brazier and threw hot ash on my face, so now I’m burned and too shy to show up to any events—”

“A ceremony would be too public to fake an accident,” his brother interrupts, raising a hand. He strokes his beard. “…the burn story might work, though. What if it was congee?”

“Huh?”

His brother grins. “Simple. A freak accident. Some nameless servant tripped while she was bringing you breakfast and threw hot congee on your face. She was executed, of course, but that didn’t save your beautiful face from the burn scars.” 

Yue wilts. “That’s not as cool.” 

The Emperor laughs. “And here I thought you just wanted to dip out of the ceremonial obligations. Now you want to look ‘cool’ in the rear palace?” His smile turns wicked. “That eager to find a consort already, Yue?” 

“No!” Yue squeaks in protest. His brother only laughs harder. 

“But really,” the Emperor says once his laughing has calmed, “consider this a test run.”

Yue cocks his head. “Test run?”

“You’re going to be locked in a palace with dozens, if not hundreds of women. If one catches your eye—well, you have my permission to act.” 

Yue narrows his eyes. “I don’t think that’ll happen,” he mumbles. 

His brother grins teasingly. “You never know.” 

Yue does know, actually, but he bites his tongue. 

“And one more thing,” the Emperor says before he leaves. “Think of a new name. ‘Ka Zuigetsu’ or ‘Yue’ won’t cut it.”

That night, he pours over the stacks of parchment he has used for his studies throughout the years, searching for a name that would fit. After much agonizing, he decides that ‘Jinshi’ might have a nice ring to it. It’s simple to write—which is good, since his penmanship could still use some work. 

He takes the second character, ‘shi’, from the name of his mother, Anshi. He rarely sees her nowadays, and she has always been distant. 

Given what he now knows about his father, he cannot blame her. 

Jinshi takes this new name and leaves ‘Ka Zuigetsu’ far behind. 

Life in the rear palace takes some getting used to. 

Much of Jinshi’s routine does not change. He moves to his own villa in the outer palace, yes, but Suiren follows him to his new homes. His clothes change to simpler patterns, less flashy, but they’re the same nice silks as before. 

The constant stares, the head turns, the suggestive gazes—those don’t stop either. In this garden of women, all starved of affection and pining for the Emperor, they actually get quite a bit worse. 

But the rear palace isn’t so bad, he thinks at first. It’s about the same as what he’s dealt with his entire life. He has several hard lessons to learn. 

The first comes a few scant weeks in. A mid-level consort offers him a welcome gift of honey candy, and a yet-sweeter smile. Jinshi takes it with a bow and a smile and reasons that it’s a wonderfully kind thing to do. It isn’t such a bad thing to feel welcomed into his new position. 

The candy becomes his first experience with aphrodisiacs, and sadly not the last. It falls to Jinshi to decide her punishment, once he has recovered—though he doesn’t get much of a choice. Such a transgression by a concubine of the Emperor, even one who had never been visited for the night, demands banishment from the palace and punishment of her family, to be stripped of their wealth and many members of the family whipped. 

Jinshi shudders and sets the piece of paper detailing the resolution of the case down on the far side of his too-broad desk, where he can’t see it from his seat, and tries to put the whole thing out of his mind. 

As it turns out, it is not only the consorts in the rear palace who disappoint him in their behavior. 

“There’s a new middle-ranking consort in the palace,” Jinshi casually tells his brother one day. 

The Emperor pointedly does not look up from his cup of tea. “Is there, now?”

“She’s the daughter of an influential merchant in the west. Her name is Liying.” 

“I see.” 

“So if you’re looking to further ally yourself with the west, she may be worth visiting.”

The Emperor grunts. “I’ll make a note of it.” 

His brother visits her exactly once, only after she has been in the palace for a good few months. “Was it to your liking?” Jinshi asks his brother as he walks the emperor back to his palace. 

His brother gives a noncommittal shrug. “I gave her father what he wanted,” is all he replies. 

The next day, Consort Liying’s ladies-in-waiting are in a tizzy, purchasing perfume and jewelry and all manner of fine robes for their lady. A consort visited by the emperor could become a mother to the country, after all, and the entire family is determined that Liying lives up to the role. 

Months pass. The Emperor does not return. Dust piles on the robes. The silver jewelry tarnishes. The perfume goes unused, turning greasy and foul-smelling. 

“Has His Majesty expressed any interest in another visit?” the head lady-in-waiting asks him hopefully. “We’d be honored to welcome him.” 

Jinshi plasters on that fake, sparkly smile he practices every day and replies, “I’ll be sure to ask him. I have no doubts he took great pleasure in the consort’s company.” 

The lie sits heavy on his tongue, because he knows the Emperor will never visit again. He turns out to be correct. 

Consort Liying drinks a poisoned tea two years to the day after the Emperor’s sole visit to her. Jinshi’s investigations rule it a self-inflicted poisoning. The Emperor sends his formal condolences. Her family, in reply, sends her sister to take her place before Liying’s body is even burned. 

Maybe there are others who see appeal in this garden of women, Jinshi thinks, as the doctor lowers a white sheet over her body, covering her sallow skin and hollowed cheeks, and carts her away for the final time. 

But he cannot understand. 

“Your medicine, sir,” Gaoshun says to him that night, and hands him a cup of that sickly-sweet liquid they both drink before bed. As high-ranking as they both are, undergoing the surgery to truly become a eunuch would be untenable. This medicine is a primitive imitation of what the surgery insures. It suppresses libido enough to be ignored. 

Wordlessly, Jinshi takes the cup, pinches his nose, and drinks the sweet, thick liquid down. 

Hours later, he stares at the ceiling above his bed, mind whirring. 

He helped clean up the rear palace in the early days after the previous Emperor’s reign. He doesn’t much like thinking about it. He hoped it would be better now, with his brother at the helm. 

It is better, objectively. Anything would be, after the former Emperor’s reign of terror. That’s a low bar to clear, though. When he closes his eyes, he sees the consort’s gaunt face, hollow cheeks, and abject despair. She was tossed aside like she was worth nothing. 

It must be a generational curse, he decides around two in the morning. All the emperors of the past had the rear palace. He’s sure they couldn’t keep every woman in there happy; there had to be some who fell through the cracks, who lay forgotten. If he went searching in the archives, there would surely be records of several of them. 

The men of the imperial line must be destined to hurt. Destined to abuse. Destined to use, and suck dry, and toss aside when they’re done with them. Maybe some are better than others, but whether by some monstrous persuasion or by the sheer number of women they are expected to keep, it is inevitable. 

Maybe Ka Zuigetsu was destined for that same fate, but that name—at least to him—is dead and gone, rotting in an empty room in the palace where the imperial brother has allegedly holed himself away.

Jinshi will be different. 

Jinshi will be better. 

People in the rear palace speak about love as if it is this mythical thing. 

There’s a story of a red string, which makes its rounds through the palace every few years, as waves of new serving girls learn about it for the first time and pass it on to the ladies they serve. Two people, tied by some invisible connection. It pulls them together regardless of time or distance. 

They whisper about it in hushed voices like it’s something born from myth, like it might yet swoop down from the sky one day and pluck the consorts from their boredom, apathy, or loneliness. If they manage to spend enough time in the rear palace without being touched by the Emperor, they might just even get their wish. 

Them going untouched makes his job much, much harder, though.

“It’s unbelievable,” Jinshi huffs one night, a few too many cups deep. “All these women, and he can’t even be bothered to try to keep them occupied? Some of them are turning to me—which I expected—but Gaoshun? Gaoshun?”

His drinking partner laughs merrily and refills his cup. “His Majesty was never that good at multitasking, if you can believe it.” She takes a sip of her own drink. “Well, he can juggle political matters just fine—we all had to learn how, when the Empress Regent was in power. Consorts were never his strong suit.” 

“The rear palace is a political matter.”

“It is,” she agrees. “But knowing His Majesty—he’s a deeply stubborn man. He’ll do what needs to be done, sure. Eventually.” She chuckles again. “And if he’s not happy about it, he’ll complain the entire way.” 

Jinshi sinks into the sofa with a dramatic groan. “How did you stand him?”

Consort Ah-Duo laughs again, throwing her head back in a most unladylike manner. “After all these years? I don’t think I have much of a choice.” 

Jinshi can hear the bitterness caged behind those words. He sinks a little further into his chair with a sigh. “I suppose that’s true.”

Ah-Duo gives a wry grin and drains her cup. 

She has been a comfort since his early days in the rear palace. As his brother’s first consort, Jinshi has known her long before he was called Jinshi at all—she even slips, sometimes, and calls him Yue. He can’t bring himself to mind it. Back then, when he was young, he assumed their relationship was perfect. That maybe if there was a red string that tied anyone together, it would bind the two of them. 

Nearly half a decade in the rear palace has changed his mind on it. 

There’s a knock on the door, halfway through the evening. “Come in,” Ah-Duo calls, as Jinshi perks his head up—who would come knocking at this hour, so unannounced? 

He scrambles to his feet as the door opens and reveals his brother. 

The Emperor grins. “Having fun, Zui?” 

Jinshi grimaces behind his sleeves. The Emperor refuses to call him Yue anymore. Not since he earned his place in the rear palace. Before he can reply, Ah-Duo rises to her feet as well, and says, “Excuse us—we were simply discussing the affairs of the rear palace. If you wish to speak with him, let me—”

“It’s you I wanted to speak with, actually,” the Emperor says with a smile. 

Jinshi does not miss Ah-Duo’s grimace. 

The Emperor comes towards her with a nearly goofy smile and a bounce in his step. Ah-Duo, in a show of incredible disrespect, turns her back on him to pour him a glass of alcohol. “What did you want to discuss?” 

The Emperor, somehow, doesn’t seem to mind the flagrant show of disrespect, lowering himself to the couch. “It’s been quite a day. Am I not allowed to blow off steam with one of my consorts?”

Ah-Duo’s lip twitches. 

The Emperor waves a hand. “And Zui, you can go,” he says. 

Jinshi bows and leaves without another word. After the door shuts, though, he stares at the wood, and thinks of his brother’s smile, of the bounce in his step. 

Love is a mystical thing in the rear palace. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. 

Jinshi just wonders if that little red string they whisper about can bind just one person of a pair. 

“If only I had something to write with….”

Looking back, it’s like a physical thing, when those words drift into his ears—like something invisible tugs on his hand, urging him quietly: this is important. Pay attention.

He spins on his heel before he’s even aware of the action, scanning the crowd for…something. He doesn’t know what. 

“What’s wrong, sir?” Gaoshun asks, as Jinshi’s mind sputters, like some thread has gotten caught in the cogs of his mind and thrown the entire thing out of wack. 

“…Nothing,” Jinshi replies. “Just the wind.” 

“There must be a better way to find this person,” Gaoshun protests one morning in late summer. 

“Do you have any other ideas?” Jinshi gripes back, massaging the palm of his hand. 

“Tell the eunuchs to keep an eye out for a laundry girl with a tear in her skirt, perhaps. The warning was clearly written on fabric torn from that uniform.” 

“Tears can happen in other ways as well. And it may not be as easy to spot.” 

“But it would mean you could do your work, instead of combing through every girl with freckles in the palace, sir.” 

Jinshi sighs through his nose. Through the screen, he hears one of the eunuchs knock on his office door and proclaim the next group is ready. 

“Send them in,” Jinshi calls. To Gaoshun, he says, “If I don’t find her this round, we’ll try another method.” Gaoshun’s mouth twists into a grimace, but he bows his head and reassumes his position at the door. 

This was at least a nice break from his duties, he thinks, peeking out from behind the screen. Maybe the dramatic entrance for every group was unnecessary, though. 

He peeks out from behind the screen and scans over the newest bunch just now entering his office—they all look as plain as ever. They all gawk and gape at the rhododendron, at the grandness of his office. Just the same as the others, he thinks with a sigh. Surely when he writes the message, this group, too, will all simply cock their heads in confusion, and he will dismiss them, just as he had every time before—

His eyes catch on an odd girl at the back of the throng. 

And suddenly, he cannot look away. 

Jinshi has never understood what this thing called love is. 

The legends speak of it. The consorts whisper of it. In the imperial palace, very few find it. Not the kind told in the stories. 

Jinshi has known his entire life that love is not something he will ever find. His status as the Imperial Brother demands that he will take consorts, and many of them. High-ranking families would marry their daughters to him to strengthen their own hands, or he would take whatever calculated, political match his brother decides for him. 

In response, Jinshi took a different name and ran as far as he could, for as long as he could, buying himself time until he can find a way to get out of this accursed family for good. 

He is not good enough to be emperor, not shrewd enough to defend his position. He is too tired to grin and bear his way through sharing a bed with anyone for the rest of his life. People try to touch him plenty already. He knows what will be demanded of him and his consorts, and he refuses. 

His best hope, he knows, is leaving the family somehow—or, at the very least, holing himself into a position where he will not be expected to produce heirs. If he must take consorts, he does not want to touch them more than he has to. 

So Jinshi has never felt the pull that people whisper of, when they see him. He does not know the fireworks or the beast with fangs or the red string. He has never known the pull, strong enough to pull the moon from its orbit. He doubts he ever will. Jinshi has long made peace with this. 

But Maomao changes everything. 

She does not come into his life like a hurricane, or a blazing fire, or anything so forceful. She is a fickle thing, brisk as a winter’s gale and biting if one stands too close for too long. In the rear palace, she is one star among the thousands scattered across the night sky. 

She just so happens to become the one that guides him. 

Maomao is brilliant, sharp, and clever in a way Jinshi could never be. In his hands, the mysteries that land upon his desk in the rear palace seem impossible, like a rock he simply cannot crack open. In hers, the cases crack open like sand crumbling between her fingertips. He hands her some thorn in his side, and she finds the answer as easily as breathing. Her eyes always hold that constant, glinting light that ticks and analyzes and categorizes so quickly that Jinshi struggles to keep up. 

But more than that, she gives him an even greater gift. 

After so long of the constant fawning, of the sickly-sweet coyness, of the tempting whispers, Jinshi is not his face anymore. He is not the prince, nor the beautiful eunuch, or whatever role others care to project onto him. 

Instead, he gets to be a nuisance. 

In the rear palace, Maomao looks at him like he is some miserable thing squirming beneath her shoes. As if those incredible, intelligent eyes see right through his mask, and react with deserved nonchalance at what she sees beneath. 

Jinshi stands no chance. 

The armor of the Imperial Brother was made for Jinshi when he turned sixteen. 

“It’s a birthday gift,” the Emperor said with a wry grin as Jinshi pouted. 

“I’m not going to need it,” Jinshi protested. He had spent the last three years holed up in the rear palace as a eunuch just fine, thank you very much. He did not plan on shedding that disguise until his hand was forced. 

But his brother insisted, and the Will of Heaven is not easily refused. Jinshi hated every step of the process, from the imperial craftsmen taking their measurements to the final fitting. The armor was stiff and heavy and constricting. Compared to his disguise as a eunuch, the armor felt impossible to move in. As soon as it was finished, the armor was stashed away in some dusty, dark corner of his villa, far away from his sight. 

As Jinshi pulls it on now, in a cold carriage in the frozen north, he finds that his feelings towards it have not changed. The armor is finely crafted, but it is heavy enough that it becomes hard to move in. The thick cotton padding keeps the sharper edges from digging into his skin, but even in the frigid winter he is sweating by the time he’s put it on. The collar sticks to the back of his neck with sweat already. 

Jinshi spares one last look out the window as he fastens the arm guard on. Snow gently falls outside, and there is no moonlight to illuminate their approach. The night is silent and still. The Shi will not know what is coming. 

The Moon Prince binds his hair back with a red cord, all hints of his eunuch disguise shed. His sword flashes gold in the dim torchlight. His heart pounds in his chest, but when he presses a hand to it, he cannot feel his own pulse through his armor. 

He hates the gleam of the sword in his hand. He hates the armor. He hates the name. 

But if he must become Ka Zuigetsu for the woman he loves, Jinshi thinks, he will do it in a heartbeat. 

One day in late winter, Jinshi sits in the little apothecary shop tucked into the corner of the Verdigris House. His dear cat is ignoring him as always, her dark eyes focused on the work before her. With practiced, careful hands, she rolls out pills one by one from the thick paste he watched her make. The sunlight streaming into the room catches in the dark of her eyes, sparking in her eyelashes. 

Maomao blinks and looks up at him. Her eyes narrow. “What are you looking at, sir?” she asks. 

Jinshi smiles, resting his chin in his palm. 

“Nothing,” he says aloud. 

Everything, he thinks to himself. 

Because finally—finally—Jinshi understands. 

This is what the great poets of old write about. This is the feeling that sees nations rise and fall, the gravity that could pull the moon from the sky. 

Jinshi loves her. As naturally as breathing, and just as involuntary. He doubts he could stop if he tried—this love has already ingrained itself into the fabric of his being. To remove it would be to destroy a part of himself. 

Jinshi is not a man with many skills, and he is not fit to be emperor. He has known this since he learned the meaning of those words and the position he was born into. He is not particularly clever or witty or warlike. He does not shine like his brother, named for the sun. He is not strong like Basen, who could fell a tree in a single strike. He is not brilliant like Maomao, whose intelligence ticks eternal in her night-dark eyes. 

He does not have much of anything to be proud of. 

After Jinshi draws his last breath, the world of the palace will stop. As the Imperial Brother, he could claim a burial nearly as grand as that of an emperor’s—but Jinshi doesn’t wish for that. He is not good enough to claim the burial rites of heaven. 

Instead, according to his wishes, his body will be burned. His ashes will rise to join the stars above. The scribes of the imperial family will take down his final words onto the scroll detailing his life and place it on the shelf next to those of his forefathers. Among dozens of men who came before him, spoken of in legend for their talents, Jinshi could never hope to rank as anything more than a footnote of history. 

But this—maybe this could be his legacy. 

If the hands of heaven did not deign to shape him with charisma or strength or intelligence, maybe they created him to love her, instead. Maybe loving Maomao is what he is fated to do. Maybe this is what he was made for. 

In a hundred years, if the name Ka Zuigetsu is not invoked for his brilliance, or his mirth, or his skill in battle, Jinshi hopes he will be remembered for how he loved. 

Maybe loving her is the one thing Jinshi can be good at. 

Maomao is still scowling at him. Jinshi can’t help but smile to himself—she’s looking at him a bit like he’s a worm. It’s his favorite expression of hers. Truly lovely. 

I love you, he thinks, for the thousandth time. 

In the back of his mind, a scared, doubtful, desperate voice whispers, 

Please say it back. 

“Basen,” he calls one night. 

The moon is high overhead, casting a gentle silver glow upon their final camp. At this hour, Jinshi should be sleeping and readying himself for the last leg of their journey. They will arrive in the Western Capital tomorrow, after all. 

But with all that excitement, he can’t sleep. The finery he must wear and the mask he must don sit heavy in his mind, and he wants to put it off for a little longer. So Jinshi sits by the campfire with the man he thinks of as a brother, and pretends nothing has changed at all. 

“Do you believe in fate?” 

Basen starts awake—he was dozing off. “Uh,” he begins eloquently, “I mean—maybe? I dunno, haven’t really thought about it. Why?” 

Jinshi shrugs. “I never liked the idea,” he admits, staring into the flame. The name fate forced him to bear sits heavy on his shoulders. “But I’ve seen the appeal more, lately.”

Basen, perhaps understanding that his master has something on his mind, leans in. “How so?”

“Isn’t—isn’t there some comfort,” Jinshi argues, “in knowing that some things are predetermined? That no matter what strife you go through, the cards will always fall a certain way?” 

Basen scratches the back of his head. “I mean, I guess? But things could always go the way you don’t want, right?”

Jinshi grimaces. “Don’t talk about that right now. I’m trying to be romantic.” 

“You?” Basen bursts into incredulous laughter. “I’d sooner expect pigs to fly.” 

Jinshi falls silent, pouting. 

“…you’re not trying to put the moves on me, are you?”

God, this man is dense sometimes. He squeezes his eyes shut. “No.” 

“Okay, good.” A long, pregnant pause. “That’d be weird.” 

“But—” Jinshi huffs. “Isn’t it…I don’t know. Comforting? To know that something—someone—out there is destined for you?” 

“I mean, maybe. Hoping to meet them at the banquet?” 

Jinshi touches the scar on his cheek with one hand and presses the other to his robes. There’s a long shape tucked into his sleeve—a silver hairstick. Expertly crafted by the imperial family’s jeweler, as a favor for the Imperial Brother to give to any fair maiden who catches his eye. The court has been clamoring for him to take a consort for long enough. 

The design bears a crescent moon and an opium poppy. The moon shape was a given, because of his title and status. The poppy, though—Jinshi requested the poppy himself. He requested it with a certain someone in mind, because he knew long before this journey began who he would give it to. There could be no one else. 

“You could say that,” Jinshi says with a wry smile. 

“Here’s the thing, though,” Basen says after another moment. “This whole ‘fate’ thing. What if they’re a shitty person? Or they’re just not interested?”

A twist of ugly doubt squirms in Jinshi’s belly. His gaze drifts down to his pinky finger, bathed orange in the glow of the firelight. 

Hoping against hope, he says, 

“Then the red string will bring them together anyway.”

Chapter Text

Maomao is born the daughter of a whore. 

She knows this earlier than any child should. Her world shines bright in smears of burgundy and gold leaf, smoke-thick and flickering with candlelight in every corner. Flowers blooming lush and vibrant and alluring fill the halls, and they speak in sweet voices, hushed words, and bell-like laughter. 

In coy whispers, they beckon others in. The air hangs thick with floral perfume heady enough to flood every sense, to intoxicate, to addict. Silver flashes at the flowers’ wrists and ankles, their petals whirling in colors soaked vivid by candleflame. The rustle of fine clothing and the hiss of silken bedsheets carries through every wall. 

The world is as beautiful and vibrant as it is fake. Maomao is never fooled. 

A different world lies beyond, concealed behind screens and folded into shadows, like a flash of yellowing teeth between crimson lips. The flowers coo and beckon most into the light, but those who do not follow their sirens’ song can find the dark easily enough. 

This second world grinds forward on silver and smoke. Coin glints in a customer’s palm, and as soon as the flower tucks it into her sleeve, a countdown begins. The flower will twirl and dance and writhe for its master, but only until the money runs dry. Only until sunrise. When her dance stops, more silver is required. Metal gleams in palms like knives, twines around necks like shackles. Coin clinks in pockets and sleeves and atop scales piled heavy with it. If the flowers bleed red, the garden itself runs silver. 

This truth creaks in shadowed, musty corners overlooked by the love-drunk, and it smells dank and stale no matter how much incense is burned to hide the stench. Once day breaks, reality yawns open like a maw: the colors dull, the haze clears, and the cleanup begins. 

In the white light of morning, the flowers wilt all at once, slumping over from exhaustion after their nightlong dance. They shed their colorful petals to reveal ugly, blotching bruises scattered across their stems. Coy whispers change to groaning strain as they lower themselves into steaming water in a vain attempt to restore some of the vitality bled dry from a sleepless night. They carry those silken sheets in armful after armful to the water and try to beat out the stains, to restore some illusion of being unblemished. All the sheets run the water snow-white. Only the most expensive bleed virgin-red. 

This is the world Maomao knows. This is the world she is born into six months into her life, on a quiet evening in midwinter. 

Maomao lies on the bed, swaddled in blankets. A chill breeze flutters the curtains, but the blankets are warm. The bed is not as comfortable as the arms of another, but it is familiar enough for her to drift, caught somewhere between wake and sleep. The moonlight spilling in through the window splashes across her face and into her eyes, chasing away deeper sleep. 

Near the vanity, something rustles. Maomao squeezes her eyes further shut, trying to sleep through the hiss of a brush carrying through the air. Another rustle, then a low, near-animalistic growl. The crumple of paper; the creak of a door. 

It takes Maomao a few minutes to realize she has been left alone again—but when she does, she starts to sniffle and fuss. The night air feels colder on her exposed face. She’s getting hungry. 

Minutes pass. The room grows colder and colder. By the time half an hour has elapsed, she is wailing. The door does not open. The blankets pin her arms to her sides with no hope of escape, so all she can do is cry ever-harder, as if that will change anything. 

Maomao’s throat aches by the time the door creaks open again. Light spills into the shadowed room, and beyond the door is a riot of color, a nocturnal world roaring with life. 

Her mother is silhouetted against it like a moving shadow. The door closes, and the room goes dark again. 

Maomao stopped crying once her throat hurt too much to scream, but now she begins to fuss again. Her stomach aches from being empty for so long. Her mother does not react to her cries, but at last she comes to Maomao’s side. The bed dips, and a finger brushes Maomao’s freezing cheek. 

Maomao’s mother does not hush her daughter, but she reaches into Maomao’s swaddle and pulls out her daughter’s tiny hand. Maomao’s fingers lock around hers on instinct. The bandage wrapped around it is rough against her delicate skin, but her mother’s body is warm, and she is so, so cold. 

It eases her discomfort, just a little. But she is hungry still, and her stomach hurts, and it is too bright for her to sleep. Maomao sniffles and fusses again. 

“Hush,” comes the voice. A thumb presses to the back of Maomao’s fingers, encouraging them to uncurl. “Hold still.”

Maomao does not. The pressure of her finger is enough to hurt, and she yanks her hand out of her mother’s grip. She’s hungry, why isn’t she listening? 

The moonlight behind Maomao’s eyelids dims, and when she opens them, her mother is staring down at her. Her hair, long and unkempt, falls around her like a curtain, blotting out the light like clouds. Her eyes are deeply empty. 

When her mother shifts above her, the loose white robe slips off her shoulders, and the bandages winding beneath burn stark white and bloody crimson beneath the moon’s touch. That’s good. When her mother’s robe slips down like this, it usually means Maomao is about to be fed. Maybe her cries will be answered. 

Her mother’s hand slams down onto Maomao’s arm, pinning it to the bed. 

“I said hold still.” 

The other arm rises above her, slow as the moon. In her remaining four fingers, silver glints in the pale moonlight.

Maomao at last falls silent, a single tear leaking from the corner of her wide, confused eyes. 

Is her mother not going to help her? 

The knife swings down, and Maomao is the daughter of no one at all.

Maomao is separated from that woman, after that. She is moved to a different room instead, tucked into one of the shadowed corners where no one bothers to look. The room is as large as it is empty, and she cannot hope to fill it by herself. There are no windows for moonlight to stream through, so it is often dark unless someone else comes in to light a candle. It smells of sweet, stale perfume and something more bitter beneath. 

But it is not dark. Not always. There is some light. 

“Hello,” whispers a hushed, starstruck voice from above her. “My name’s Meimei. We’re so happy to finally meet you, Maomao.” 

Maomao would rather go to sleep in peace than be cooed at, but the arms holding her are warm. The kind, starry-eyed woman offers her pinky, placing it in the palm of Maomao’s tiny hand. Still wrapped in the stiff bandages, Maomao cannot move her fingers properly, and they ache, anyway. Maomao yawns and doesn’t bother curling her fingers. 

A low chuckle comes from beside her. “Don’t want to, huh?” comes a different, deeper voice. Fingers card through her soft hair. “That’s okay. You don’t have to.” 

“She’s awfully cute, isn’t she?” says a third voice. “Cute as a button. We’re all going to take care of you from now on, dear. Don’t you worry.” 

Maomao is quite worried about her next meal. Her stomach growls, and when she begins to fuss, all three of them laugh. 

“You must be hungry, aren’t you?” says that third voice. “After the night you had…give her to me, Meimei. I’ll feed her.” 

The three of them are kind. Maomao has a bed in this new room, but she spends the entire first day in the arms of one of the women who coo over her. She sleeps for much of it, adrift in the comfort of warmth and safety. The bandage is still stiff, but her finger hurts less after Pairin kisses it, and Meimei sings a sweet-sounding song. 

Maomao is drifting somewhere between wake and sleep, still exhausted after the previous night’s commotion, when there’s a knock at the door.

“Girls,” calls a fourth voice. “The sun’s almost set.”

“Can’t one of us take tea tonight?” Meimei retorts, exasperated. 

“Not if you want to eat,” says the voice at the door. 

Pairin purses her lips. “Are you sure? I don’t want to leave her alone…”

“Look, she’s sleeping anyway,” the voice says, coming closer. “You all have done more than enough. She’ll be fine for the night.” 

After a chorus of huffing sighs, the warm arms lower Maomao to the overlarge bed and finally withdraw. She stays adrift, but just barely registers three kisses to her forehead, and three murmured goodbyes. 

Joka brushes Maomao’s hair back and presses her lips to the crown of her head. “Sleep well, dear,” she whispers, and the door slides closed. 

It’s fine at first. Her swaddle still holds some of the warmth of the arms that held her, and her stomach is full. The room is silent and dark. It’s peaceful and easy to sleep.

When she wakes up, it is still dark. Without windows, there’s no telling how many hours have passed. The warmth has long since faded, and the meager room is unheated. Her stomach is growling again. 

The soundproofed walls muffle her wails, but Maomao sobs anyway, until her throat is raw, and until exhaustion, not comfort, carries her to sleep again. 

The three women only come an eternity later. Meimei scoops her up into her arms, whispering apologies and kind words. Joka presses another kiss to her forehead before passing her off to Pairin to feed her. The day is warm and sweet and loving. 

And then they disappear again. 

Maomao is a clever child, and she quickly figures out that crying gets her nowhere at all. She has stopped entirely by the time she is a full year old. 

Maomao is five years old when a man comes knocking on the Verdigris House doors.

He is old enough that his hair is beginning to streak with white and the skin of his hands has begun to wrinkle. Crow’s feet pull at the corners of his eyes, and his face is always set in a kind, placid smile. He leans heavily on his cane. 

Maomao watches the man from the balcony above the lobby, pressing herself low to the ground to make herself harder to see. The Verdigris House sees customers of all walks of life and ages, from young men out to blow their first paychecks to men three times the age of an average courtesan. The madam doesn’t care as long as she gets her coin, and Maomao doesn’t care as long as she can stay out of sight. In the few times a customer stumbled upon her, the madam was furious. 

He’s likely just another customer here to buy someone’s attention for the evening, not realizing that the brothel won’t open for business for a few hours yet. Maomao steps away from the balcony and goes along with her business of carrying the laundry. 

But then Maomao just barely catches the shape of the madam’s voice, sharp and angry, crowing like a disgruntled bird. 

Maomao is back to peering down from the balcony in an instant, laundry forgotten. What on earth made the madam frustrated enough to speak like that to a customer? She has no idea, but she gets down on all fours and presses closer to the edge of the balcony, straining her ears to catch anything. The man sounds low and calm, but the madam is angry. Why? 

The madam glances up from the man and spots her, peering down curiously from the balcony. Her face twists further for a split-second before she turns back to her customer, such a fast reaction Maomao herself only just manages to catch it. 

But then the man turns his head as well, following the madam’s gaze. Maomao doesn’t have time to react before his eyes land squarely on her. 

She freezes like a captured animal. The madam always tells her that she is never to be seen by anyone who comes through those doors. But the old man only gives her a placid smile, bows to the madam, and leaves. 

“What’re you looking at?” the madam barks at her. “Get back to work.” 

Maomao gives a quick nod and goes back to her laundry duties. The madam spares her a further scolding, instead sequestering herself into her office and lighting her pipe until smoke leaks through the cracks in the walls and doors. It’s what she does whenever something stresses her. Most things do, these days. 

When the man comes back the next week, Maomao makes sure to stay out of sight. 

She’s holed up in her room during the man’s third visit that month when an apprentice opens the door without so much as knocking and says, “The madam called for you.” 

Maomao looks up from the line of flowers in front of her. She gathered them that morning from the House’s inner garden for her sisters—red poppies for Joka, pink tulips for Pairin, and lily of the valley for Meimei. This is serious work, and she’d rather not be interrupted. “Now?” 

“Now,” the apprentice replies. “And she sounded angry. Don’t make her angrier.” 

The door slams shut. Maomao decides that she will do as she is told, but she takes the time to fill a basin with water to put the flowers in so they won’t wilt before she can give them to her sisters. Then, she dusts the dirt off her skirts and marches to the madam’s office. The same man as before stands in the office but does not turn to look at her. 

“You’re late,” is the first thing the madam says. 

“I was doing something important,” Maomao says from the doorway, with all the indifference of a very determined five-year-old. “You called?” 

The madam waves a hand to the man in front of her desk, not looking up from the pipe she is stuffing. “This man is here to take you off our hands,” she grumbles. “Says he wants to take you under his wing and get you out of our hair.” 

Maomao opens her mouth to protest—the flowers for her sisters still need to be given, after all—but promptly shuts her mouth. Crying or complaining will get her nowhere, and the madam has grumbled before about how Maomao is too young to work. It makes sense that she’d want Maomao gone. 

She cocks her head. “What about my sisters?” She spent a lot of time picking out flowers for each of them, after all. 

The madam scoffs. “They’ll be able to do better work without you biting their ankles all the time.” 

That’s also true. Her sisters can’t work if they have to watch her, and if they don’t work, they can’t eat. But Maomao is grown enough now, and she spends each night in her room without complaint, not causing any trouble. 

Is that not enough?

The old man finally turns as if he just took note of her. “This is her?” he asks. His voice creaks with age. His smile does not falter, but his eyes are hard to read. 

The madam eyes him. “You’re sure you want to take her?” 

The old man nods. “It’s the least I can do.” 

He walks over to Maomao, leaning heavily on that cane. He doesn’t crouch down to her eye level—from her perspective, he looks impossibly tall, stretching to the ceiling.

“What’s your name, little one?” he asks. 

“Maomao,” she replies obediently. 

The old man’s smile does not fade. “And your last name?” 

“Don’t have one.” 

The old man turns to the madam. “Have you not told her?” 

“You try explaining the whole mess to a five year old,” the madam grumbles. “She knows her name. She’ll come when called.”

The old man chuckles to himself, then shakes his head. “Well,” he says finally, “come along.” He walks out, and does not look behind to see if she follows. Maomao glances at the madam, who is angrily smoking her pipe. 

“But—“ 

“You heard the man,” the madam grumbles. “Pack your things and go.” 

Maomao hesitates at the door for a moment, glancing back and forth, before deciding it’s just best to go along with it. If she doesn’t follow him, she will have nowhere to go. 

Maomao has no choice. So she goes. 

Luomen, as she later learns his name is, walks slowly enough that Maomao’s little legs can keep pace, but he doesn’t stop or look back at her. 

Maomao glances this way and that, taking in the sights of the streets beyond the Verdigris House for the first time. The sights and sounds and smells are so different, but she knows better than to gawk openly. That only ever made customers angry. 

There are many people here that her sisters would call the worst kinds of customers: rough, dirty, and foul-smelling. The courtesans would often gossip about them in the bath, exchanging stories of the worst kind. Come nightfall, the girls would coo and beckon in those same men anyway. They have no choice. 

Maomao knows well enough why the name of the brothel is in the dirt. She’s heard whispers about that, too. 

After a while of walking, Luomen glances back at her. “You’re not one for many words, are you?” Maomao wordlessly shakes her head. A lot of the girls at the brothel preferred her being seen and not heard, and she doesn’t have much to say, anyways. Luomen chuckles. “I’m in good company, then.” 

Finally, they come to a ramshackle hut at the dead-end of a dirt road. Maomao squints at it suspiciously. There are holes in the roof, and vines creep up the side. It looks like it might fall over with a stiff breeze. The Verdigris House name may be in the mud, but at least it doesn’t look ready to fall over at any moment. 

Luomen pays the house no mind. Instead, he walks around it, stepping carefully over the uneven ground, and kneels in a patch of what looks to be…

“Grass?” Maomao asks, kneeling beside him. 

“Of a sort, yes,” Luomen says. He points to a plant with tiny yellow flowers and heart-shaped leaves bundled in threes. “This particular variety is called wood sorrel.” 

Luomen is brilliant.

The fields around his hut are lush with dozens of kinds of plants. Some bloom with tiny flowers, others grow low to the ground. Some have leaves that reach for the sun, and others have creeping vines. 

He knows the name of each, and every use he can put it to. He explains briefly that he is an apothecary by trade as he expertly grinds the plants into medicine and doles it out to the needy. He seems to know the answer to everything. 

And he does not teach any of it to Maomao. 

A week after moving to the little hut, Maomao watches diligently as he plucks certain plants out by the roots, tossing them aside. Weeding? She wants to help. 

Maomao kneels down beside him, scanning the dirt for anything that looks unnecessary. After a moment, her eyes land on a plant with tiny, meager leaves that couldn’t possibly be of use, right? She looks once more at Luomen, clasps her hands around it, and pulls it out by the roots. 

Luomen shortly after explains that it is—was—mountain knotgrass, used to treat everything from coughs to urinary stones. It’s only after her folly that he sits her down in the field and properly teaches her what a weed looks like. Even then, he only gives her the least bit of knowledge he can. 

She wants to know more. She wants to know everything.

“Maomao,” Luomen scolds one day. His patient today is a girl a year older than Maomao who cut her hand on an old, rusty tool. “I told you not to get involved.” 

“Your knee is bad. ‘Specially this time of year.” She balances atop the table on her tiptoes to reach the bandages on her shelf. Behind her, the patient sniffles. The kid should’ve been more careful.

Luomen says nothing more as Maomao hops down from her makeshift stepstool, only puts his hand out in expectation. He only glances at her when Maomao doesn’t put the bandages in his waiting palm.

“Can I do it?” Maomao pleads. 

“Not today,” Luomen tells her, and takes the bandages. 

Maomao wilts as he sets about treating the sniffling child. Instead, she learns to make herself useful in other ways. 

Her old man isn’t good at cooking or cleaning, so at the bright age of six, she learns how to do it herself, begging lessons from the cooks of the Verdigris House after she managed to burn, not boil, a whole pot of precious rice. While he doesn’t allow her to help with treating patients, Luomen eventually allows her to run medicines to and from the Verdigris House, ferrying medicinal teas and other treatments once a week. Her sisters fret about her going off on her own, but her father doesn’t care as long as she’s back before bed. 

It’s on one of those trips that she hears from around a wall, “You’re sure you want to keep taking customers?”

A familiar voice replies, “What choice do I have?” 

Maomao freezes.

After a split-second of being rooted to the spot, she dives through the nearest door and slams it shut behind her as the footsteps grow nearer. “It’s work or starve, nowadays.” 

A scoff. “And you don’t plan on dragging this place’s name through the mud again?”

“Excuse me?” 

Maomao crouches down against the door, plugs her ears, and waits out the fight that ensues in the hallway. Her fingers block most of the words, but they can’t quite block the screaming. 

The light streaming through the window is growing long by the time the yelling stops. Slowly, Maomao rises from her crouch and creeps towards the door. She cracks it open. Glancing left and right confirms the coast is clear. 

She was planning on visiting her sisters, but if that woman’s out and about again, and it’s getting dark soon…

The hallway shows only a few signs of a struggle. The courtesans are all too poor to pay for new robes, so they tear at scalps and skin instead. A few clumps of black hair litter the floor. Whoever lost it is unlucky. If they can’t cover the bald spot, they won’t be able to draw in as many customers. 

But there’s something else on the floor that catches Maomao’s eye. She crouches, and her fingers close around a bracelet. 

It’s made of wide wooden beads, painted turquoise and crimson, that clack in her palm. Nowadays, the courtesans cannot afford jewelry made of silver. They could, once upon a time. But now, wood painted in a thin veneer of color will have to suffice. 

This particular piece of jewelry stirs something in her memory. When Maomao blinks, she sees a bandaged hand with one finger too few, and the bracelet looping around a too-thin wrist. 

She blinks those thoughts away and sets off to Pairin’s rooms. It’s pretty, and it will make a good gift for her sister. 

Maomao is in front of her sister’s door in a few moments. When she raises her hand to knock, she hears quiet words and clinking metal, so she lowers her hand. Pairin usually doesn’t have customers this time of day, but Maomao shouldn’t disturb her if she does. Her sister has a job to do. 

The clinking of coins stops, and she hears a sigh. “Still not as good a going as it was before, huh?” 

“It’s gotten a lot better,” comes a lilting voice. Pairin. 

“Not fast enough,” says the other voice. It sounds like one of the most senior courtesans, who’s been there the better part of a decade. Maomao doesn’t remember her name. Joka doesn’t like her, so she never bothered. “Not with how the owner’s hounding us. It’s still not back to what it was.” 

“Improving every year. Some of the old regulars are returning. Joka saw a minister last week.” 

A noise of frustration. “Can you blame me, though? Six years—six!—and we’re all still paying the price for that stupid—” 

“Do you really want to finish that thought?” Pairin’s voice, normally warm, has turned ice-cold. Maomao clutches the bracelet harder in her fingers and squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn’t want to listen to this fight, either. 

What was it her father taught her this morning? 

Right—he was showing her how to weed. 

Luomen walked her through the garden for the first time today, properly teaching her which plants he grows for medicine and which suck the nutrients away. Some are useful, and some are not. Keep the useful, discard the rest. 

Maomao would like to be useful, so she held onto his every word. 

“Maomao?” Pairin interjects.

Maomao starts, whipping around from where her back is pressed against the wall. She didn’t even notice their conversation stopped, as lost as she was in recollection. Strange—but helpful, if she didn’t have to listen to another fight.

Behind her sister, the other courtesan’s face scrunches like she ate something sour. Pairin kneels down to Maomao’s eye level. “How long have you been out here, dear?” 

“Not long,” Maomao replies. It wasn’t too long, right? She was just thinking of her father and got distracted. “I got something to show you.” 

“Come in, then, come in!” 

Pairin ushers her inside. What’s-Her-Face takes this as her cue to leave, slipping out without another word. Pairin shuts the door behind her with more force than strictly necessary, dusts herself off, and gives Maomao a sweet smile. “Now, what is it you want to show me?” she asks, sitting at her vanity. “Another flower?” 

Maomao shakes her head and opens her hand. The wooden beads stick to her fingers. Her palms are sweaty. “This,” she says. “The colors match your robes.” 

“Oh, how lovely!” Pairin coos, clapping her hands around Maomao’s and leaning close. Her smile grows wider, like the one she uses with customers. “It’s beautiful, dear, thank you. Where did you find it?” 

“That woman dropped it,” Maomao says. 

Pairin’s eyes fall to the bracelet, then to the floor. Her smile fades. Maomao gets the feeling she’s about to get scolded and steps back. With Pairin holding the bracelet, she can’t pull too far away. 

“Maomao,” her sister begins, in an over-patient tone. “Thank you. It’s beautiful, and I’m happy you thought of me. But—I don’t want you stealing from anyone, especially your mother.” 

Maomao shrinks back further, staring at the floor. The boards need to be polished. 

That woman isn’t her mother. 

Pairin gently tugs on Maomao’s hand and pulls her close, kisses her forehead, her cheek. Maomao lets her, but she doesn’t look up. “I’m grateful, dear. But we don’t want her angry with you. Let’s go give it back together, okay?” 

“She’ll be angry either way.” 

“I’ll be with you. Or I can take it myself,” Pairin says. “I’ll keep you safe.” 

“No,” Maomao protests. “You need to look nice, and she’s not pulling customers anyway. You should wear it instead.” That woman doesn’t need something so pretty. 

Pairin’s face twists. Anger flashes in Maomao’s chest again. Is her sister pitying that woman? 

Before she can think, Maomao yanks hard on the bracelet locked in both their fingers. The string snaps and the beads fly, clattering across the floor. Pairin makes a strangled noise in her throat and is on her knees immediately, trying to grab all the beads she can. Some have already rolled under her dresser or beneath the bed. Maomao does not stoop to pick them up. 

“Goodness,” Pairin scolds. “Maomao, was that really necessary? We can’t give it back now. Not like this.” 

Maomao lowers her head and says nothing. Good, she thinks. 

Pairin sighs after a moment. Her sister’s anger never lasts long. “Well, we can restring them.” She pokes at the pile of beads in her palm. “Though I think we lost a few…” 

“If you restring it, will you wear it?” Maomao asks. 

Pairin looks at Maomao again with that strange expression she can’t quite understand. When Maomao cocks her head, looking for an answer, Pairin’s gaze falls to the beads. She runs a delicate thumb over the largest ones, turquoise and crimson. 

“Come sit, won’t you?” she says, in lieu of a reply. “In front of the vanity.”

Maomao furrows her brow but does as her sister asks. She has to jump a bit to get on the stool. Pairin kneels in front of her and takes a little cloth pouch from her vanity—her travel kit, with all her cosmetics for when they have a show outside the House. Pairin turns it upside-down and dumps its contents onto the vanity with a clatter, then pours the beads inside. She keeps four in her hand—two red, and two blue.

“Hold still,” Pairin says, and takes a lock of Maomao’s hair between her fingers. 

When Maomao returns home that night, Luomen is rolling out pills. Maomao isn’t sure what they’re for, and he hasn’t taught her how to make them yet. But she’s seen this part of the process, so without a word, she kneels beside him and starts lining the finished ones in a woven basket to dry. 

They work in silence for a while. Maomao’s stomach grumbles. There should be enough food for tonight in the pantry, as long as she doesn’t burn the rice this time. 

Eventually, her father’s hands come to a stop. She takes the last pill and places it in the basket, then takes the basket to the window where the afternoon sun will help it dry. 

“These are new,” Luomen says, when she returns to sit beside him. He reaches out with a steady hand and cups the beads in her hair. Two turquoise, two crimson. “A gift from one of your sisters?” 

Maomao nods. She touches the little cloth pouch tucked into her pocket. The remaining wooden beads clack inside. “From Pairin.” 

Luomen finally gives Maomao a proper lesson after a full year of begging. 

“Maomao,” he calls one morning in early spring. She sets her sewing down and trots over him, peering curiously at his open palm. 

“What are these?” she asks, pointing at the tiny specks in his palm. 

“Wood sorrel seeds,” he tells her, and points to an empty pot near the window. They used it to store medicine once but it has since run empty. “Go outside and fill that pot with soil.”

Maomao beams, grabs the pot, and scurries outside. When she comes back with a pot full of soil, Luomen watches diligently as she makes little holes in the dirt with her fingers, just like he does whenever she observes his work. He doesn’t tell her if she’s burying them deep enough, but she’s fairly certain she did it right. 

Maomao picks up the pot and looks around for a place to set it—it needs light after all, doesn’t it? There’s no space on the windowsill, too narrow for the pot, and the table directly by the window is already piled high with equipment. 

“Set it here,” Luomen calls, gesturing to a spot on the floor a few feet from the window. The early afternoon sunlight doesn’t reach the spot. Maomao frowns, but does as she is told. 

The weeks pass and the days get longer. The seeds sprout in mid-spring, and as the azaleas bloom outside and the days turn warmer, the little bundles of heart-shaped leaves furl outwards, tiny yellow flowers stretching towards the sky. 

Maomao is staring at it one day in early summer, crouched on the floor, when she calls, “Dad?” 

“Hm?” Luomen says, not looking up from his work. “What is it, Maomao?” 

“The wood sorrel’s growing funny.” 

“Funny in what way?” 

“It’s…sideways?”

And sure enough, Maomao can see it right before her eyes: the wood sorrel is crooked. All the stems lean heavily to one side, far enough that it looks like the entire plant might tilt and tip over, spilling itself out of the pot. 

“The ones outside don’t do that,” she tells her father as he comes to see for himself. 

Luomen gives her a smile as he always does. “And why would that be?” 

Maomao sits up a little straighter, pressing a finger to her chin, and summons all the power her young mind can muster to look at the scene before her. 

It’s a simple enough scene—the pot sits on the floor, in the same place it has been since she placed it there. Little stems sprout from it with leaves bundled into threes. The pot is small, so could that be the issue? Maybe there isn’t enough soil in there for the plant to get all its proper nutrients. Even with Maomao’s diligent watering. 

But—no, she’s seen plants wilt before. She reaches out to pluck a leaf and examines it. If a plant wilts, its leaves wrinkle. This leaf is plump. Luomen grows plenty of other, more fragile plants in pots this size, and those don’t wilt, either. The only difference between this plant is that it leans, and those ones do not. 

What else is there to see? 

Maomao looks around the tiny hut. A beam of sunlight streams through a hole or two in the roof near the kitchen, but here, where they sleep, is cast in shadow. The inside of the hut here is dark save for the one window the pot sits near, spilling afternoon sunlight onto the floor. 

The plant is not in that puddle of sunlight. Instead, it’s placed in the shade. 

“…is it because of the sun?” 

Luomen’s ever-present smile does not change. “What makes you think so?” 

Maomao points at the wood sorrel’s leaves, leaning out of the bounds of the pot. “The leaves are all growing in one direction. Towards where the sun hits the floor in the afternoon.” 

“Because what do all plants need?” 

“Water, soil, and sunlight,” Maomao recites diligently. 

Luomen pats her on the head. “That’s right,” he tells her, and Maomao beams. Luomen crouches down, minding his bad knee, and takes one of the leaning leaves in his hand—plump, lively, and green, but crooked. “Plants are hardy things. Especially wood sorrel. They’ll grow towards whatever light they can find. It’s how they survive.” 

Maomao looks up at her father and asks, naïvely, “Can we fix it?” 

Luomen gives her another placid smile. “Plant it outside, out in the full sun. We can wait and see if it corrects itself.” 

Maomao leaps to her feet before he’s even done speaking, scoops up the little pot, and plunks the little wood sorrel down right in the center of their field. 

The azaleas wilt, and firefly-dotted hydrangeas take their place weeks later. Once the summer rains clear, sunflowers stand tall in the garden, and through it all, Luomen and Maomao harvest the plants of their field but leave the wood sorrel, their little experiment, untouched. 

As the crisp autumn wind rattles the now-crimson leaves of the trees bordering their field, Maomao looks down at the wood sorrel and says, “It’s like it doesn’t even notice the sunlight.” 

The wood sorrel is bigger now. It has bloomed countless yellow flowers throughout the season, and fed by the rich soil of the fields, its leaves are more numerous than before. It is still small in stature, though, compared to the more luxuriant plants around it. Wood sorrel always stays small. 

And the crook in its stem has stubbornly remained. 

“It remembers the shade,” Luomen says, “and grew to adapt to its environment.” He tosses a weed over his shoulder. “It’s hard to change those sorts of things, once they’re set.” 

The frost comes with the full moon, and at last the wood sorrel dies. Until it freezes and withers away, its little stems always keep that lean—like it’s still reaching for a scrap of sunlight. As if it cannot, or will not, see the sunlight beaming down, right above it. 

Maybe Maomao should think it’s sad. But to be honest, she just thinks it’s the way these things all go. 

Slowly, so slowly, Luomen starts to give her more lessons. There is no paper in front of her—they are too poor for that—and there is no classroom. Each lesson comes sporadically, and she has no way to predict when or where the next will come. 

So when Luomen kneels down next to the silken sheets of a brothel’s bed, gestures to the corpses, and says, “What do you think happened, Maomao?”—she knows that this is a test. 

Maomao straightens immediately and steps closer, taking in the scene. Two bodies lay atop the bed, half-clothed and so intertwined that it’s hard to tell what body part belongs to who. Maomao pays none of it any mind. This is not the first time she has seen sex, nor a corpse, and she has a job to do. 

Summer sun streams in through the windows, and the day is already uncomfortably warm, so the bodies are starting to smell. Maomao kneels next to her father. Since he has long forbade her from touching corpses, she asks, “Could you open his eyelid?” 

Without a word, Luomen puts a finger on either side of the eye and peels the lid open. Maomao taps her chin, and when she says, “Hers, too,” her father obliges.

Maomao squints at the woman. Her eyes are smeared in the red of the pleasure district, and her light hair spills over the side of the bed like tongues of fire. “Their pupils are really big.” 

Luomen hums. “And why would that be important?” 

“Could be a symptom.” 

“Of?” 

“Poisoning.” 

“What makes you think so?” 

Many things. This is not the first corpse Maomao has seen. “He looks rich. Someone might’ve wanted his money.” 

“That’s not evidence,” Luomen admonishes. “That’s conjecture. Look for the evidence and try again.” 

Maomao taps her chin and looks around. The room is orderly, save for the tangled, smelly pile of body on the bed. On the table sits a pitcher of water and a bowl stained with something purple. Remnants of a cosmetic, maybe?

…there’s not much to gather otherwise. After a few minutes of spinning her gears, Maomao pouts and says nothing more. Luomen’s placid smile does not disappear from his face—it never does. “Come, then.” 

He doesn’t look at her as he walks out. Maomao follows behind him, wondering if she imagines his disappointment. She stands in shame as Luomen explains the entire story to the brothel’s madam, taking mental notes of what she missed so she will not overlook them again. 

The man was a regular client, Luomen confirms, with enough financial backing to patronize an ‘exotic’ courtesan—a girl from the West, with fiery hair and pale blue eyes. “But if you looked at his robes more closely,” he says, “you may notice that his family has fallen on hard times.” 

Maomao bows her head and listens as Luomen details how the embroidery was pulling loose on his collar, and the stains on the trousers he wears, and the lightness of his purse. She missed it all. She will do better next time. 

Next, he explains the purple-stained bowl. In the West, where the courtesan is from, grows a plant called belladonna—“It means ‘beautiful woman’,” Luomen says when the madam cocks her head at the foreign name on his tongue, “named for its use in cosmetics. It can be used for beautification, but any part of it, especially the berries, are deadly poisonous.” 

Immediately, Maomao kicks herself for not licking that bowl when she had the chance. She noticed it, but didn’t think it was important. 

The madam clicks her tongue. “That fool of a girl,” she snaps. “Had her heart set on that man. Said he promised to buy her out, even when he started looking worse and worse off. Even when it became clear that he was too deep in debt to redeem her.” 

Luomen gives a sad smile. “Young people will do very foolish things for love.” 

Maomao, eight years old and more than used to seeing the corpses of young lovers, quietly agrees. 

As Maomao gets older, she begins to take on more responsibility. Her father is a brilliant man, but he is getting older every year, and he is terrible with money. By the time she is ten, Maomao is helping him in any way she can, from managing money to running errands. Her favorite thing to do is always helping him treat patients, but she is glad to make herself useful in any way she can. 

These new tasks, however, require to run about the pleasure district unaccompanied, to drop off medicines or buy groceries. She becomes more aware of the unpleasant eyes on her as she trots through those dark alleys with every passing day. 

Maomao, as always, finds a solution. 

“What happened to your face?!” Meimei all but shrieks.

“Nothin’,” Maomao replies through cheeks squished by her sister’s fretting hands.

“These aren’t nothing!” Meimei cries, tracing her thumb across Maomao’s cheeks, beneath the smattering of clay dots on her face. 

“They’re just clay. They make it safer to run around alone.” 

Meimei tuts. “Maybe so, but they’re ugly. There’s no need to dot your face with freckles, there must be another solution.” 

There really isn’t, Maomao knows. This is the easiest way to avoid being snatched up—it’s just some oil from their pantry and clay from their garden, mixed together and allowed to dry.

Her sisters all fret, but Maomao really doesn’t see the problem. They need to be pretty, yes. It’s their job. But Maomao isn’t very pretty in the first place—compared to the courtesans of the Verdigris House, her frame is like chicken bones, and her face isn’t much better. No one’s going to pay for her anyway, so there’s nothing lost if she paints her face. Her price wouldn’t be high even without them.

Painting the freckles on becomes a part of her morning routine. Maomao is dotting them on her face when Luomen ties up a bundle of medicine into a cloth and calls, “Would you like to come with me?” 

“Sure,” Maomao answers immediately, dotting one final freckle on her face and setting down her brush. “Where’re you going? The House?” 

“The madam requested I take a look at one of the courtesans,” Luomen replies as he rises to his feet. Maomao grabs the bag of medical equipment, rushes to the door, and opens it for him, then falls in line a half-pace behind. Of course she’s going. She’d follow him anywhere. 

Maomao keeps a close eye on her father as they walk towards the House, minding patches of ice or spots where the snow is deeper than usual. His knee gives him trouble in the cold weather. They wind through the streets of the pleasure district, passing ramshackle houses and shivering bodies curled up in alleyways. A few of them are still as statues. Maomao just hopes no one’s going to come ply her old man for medicine if they can’t pay. He’s too kindhearted for his own good, and there are too many nights where they both go to bed hungry, despite her best efforts to keep them both fed. 

They greet the madam at the House, who gives them a nod but does not escort them any further. Maomao follows her father through the halls of the House, out into the inner garden, barren in winter. 

She stops in her tracks when they reach the door of the annex. The garden is bright, but the door and the house beyond it are cast in deep shadow. 

Luomen turns. “Are you coming?”

Maomao draws her thin cloak tighter around her shoulders. “You’re going to see that woman.” Not a question, but a statement. 

“I’ve been hoping to see her for a while, and the madam finally allowed me to see to her,” Luomen says. His tone is gentle, but each word only grows the lump in her throat. 

Her father really is too kind for his own good. 

“You can stay outside if you’d like,” her father tells her, but Maomao is already shaking her head. 

“No,” she protests, clenching her hands into fists. She is here to assist him, and she will see it through to the end. 

She’s sure her hands are only shaking from the cold. 

Luomen nods, and Maomao follows him into the depths of the annex—towards the one room of this place that Maomao would not want to visit.

Maybe she’s gotten it wrong entirely, Maomao thinks as Luomen knocks on the door. ‘That woman’ is vague enough that her father may have misunderstood. Maybe the person she doesn’t want to see has moved to another room, and this is a completely unrelated case—

“…come in,” says a familiar voice. 

Maomao squeezes her eyes shut. “Wait here,” her father murmurs to her, then steps into the room, behind the screen, and out of sight. Maomao waits and listens, heart in her throat. 

“…who are you?” 

“I am but a simple apothecary. I’ve heard that your condition has worsened, and the madam requested my treatment.” 

“Treatment? I don’t need treatment.” 

“Maybe so,” her father says, in the placid tone he always gives to patients who don’t want to behave. “But I’ve heard you’ve had difficulty sleeping. If I may examine you, I might be able to help.” 

A long pause. Then: “Fine. If you make it quick.” 

For once, Maomao does not follow after her father. She sits down against the wall, as quietly as she can, and hugs the bag of medical equipment to her chest like a shield, thinking of anything else. She starts when Luomen taps her shoulder. “I need the bandages,” he murmurs, voice low, and Maomao scrambles to open the bag and hand them to him. Her father pats her on the head, then murmurs, “Leave the bag here, and go outside—”

“Who’s with you?” barks the voice. 

Maomao freezes for a fatal half-second. 

Footsteps are coming closer and closer as she scrambles upright, brain catching up with her body that she has to run, has to hide—

Too late. 

A bandaged hand shoves her father out of the way and curls around her wrist. It whirls her around, and Maomao comes face to face with a ghost. 

The bag she still clutches smells like the medicine her father made this morning. What was it again? Ah, right, an antipyretic. Honey pills. He taught her how to make honey pills. 

The figure looms over her, white robes and stringy black hair, and snarls, “You little cunt.” 

Grind the herbs down into as fine a powder as you can. For some herbs, baking them can help draw out moisture. Others need to be hung for months before they are usable. 

“—how dare you show your—”

Simmer honey on low heat to reduce the water content so it keeps better. Mix in the powdered herbs while still hot, a little at a time. Smooth the mixture in a mortar. 

“—wish you were never—”

Flatten the mixture into strips and cut into pills. Roll each piece in your hands to create a uniform shape.

“—my sisters nearly starved and this place’s name was in the dirt, all because of—”

Store in a cool, dry place—

SMACK.

Maomao reels back, clutching a hand to her cheek. It stings enough that it will be swollen in a few minutes. It’s a good season for this type of injury, though. Whenever someone comes knocking at their doors with an injury like this, Luomen always gathers a handful of snow outside and presses it to the swelling. She knows how to treat it. 

The woman who has long discarded the claim of being her mother is still screaming. Spittle flies from her lips, and her white robes are slipping off her shoulders, revealing a red rash that winds around her torso, across her thin collarbone, up her neck. 

“And you,” she screams, rounding on Luomen, “did the madam send you here to humiliate me? Shut me up? All I have left is my pride, and you fuckers can’t even let me have that?” 

The rash stands stark against the white of her robes. White and red, the colors of a brothel. The syphilis rash winds around her neck like crimson thread. Her face is gaunt enough that she could already be just a corpse, hanging from it. 

“Out!” Fengxian screams. “OUT!”

They make it to the entrance of the annex before Maomao’s shaking legs give out. She sinks to the floor, curling up against the wall and burying her face in the medicine bag. She does not cry, because that won’t do much of anything. Her cheek still stings. 

Luomen disappears for a moment. When he returns, he coaxes her to raise her head and presses a handful of snow to her swollen cheek. 

His eyes look so sad. Maomao can’t bring herself to look for more than a second, so she glares at the floor instead. After a long few moments, Luomen murmurs, “I’m sorry. I hoped she would react differently, after long enough apart. I shouldn’t have brought you here.” 

Maomao shakes her head, not looking up from the floor. “She shouldn’t have pushed you,” she whispers. “Or yelled at you. You didn’t do anything wrong.” 

Luomen says nothing in reply. She doesn’t either. Neither of them have ever been one for many words. In the silence, that woman’s words threaten to ring in her ears, but Maomao does not let them. Maomao reminds herself instead of the accounting work she’ll need to do when they get back, as well as the dried herbs that need processing. That’s much more interesting, and better to dwell on. 

The snow against her cheek is nearly melted by the time Luomen rises from his crouch. Maomao bolts to her feet instantly, placing a steadying hand on his hip. 

“Let’s go home,” her father tells her, and opens the door to the annex. 

Sunlight streams into the dark annex, chasing away the shadows creeping into the corners, bright enough to blind her. It frames Luomen’s silhouette like a halo as he steps forward, out into that light. He does not look back. 

Maomao’s legs are shaking, and her cheek still stings from the blow and the cold both. The last thing she wants to do is go face the world like this. 

But she knows the truth—if she doesn’t chase after him, the door will close, and the world will go dark. 

Maomao rises on shaking legs like a newborn fawn and rushes through the door, chasing that distant light. 

Maomao gets older. 

Some things stay the same. She still runs errands for her father, and she still wears the beads in her hair from Pairin. Work at the Verdigris House gets better with each visit, from what she hears from her sisters. They are all safe, well, and happy. It is all she can ever ask for. She still brings contraception medicine for the courtesans to the House every week. 

One bright winter’s morning, after Maomao hands the madam the medicine, begrudgingly accepts a kiss on the cheek from Meimei, she sets out into her field of herbs.

When the kidnappers snatch her up, all she can do is sigh to herself. They won’t get much money for a chicken-bone girl like her. 

It’s not like she’s worth very much. 

Some things stay the same in the rear palace, too. 

The world here is as opulent as the Verdigris House is, and has just as many shadowed corners. The girls all coo and giggle and wonder about the world outside, just like the courtesans did. They whisper the same hopeful stories to each other. 

There’s one story in particular, spoken in whispers and giggles in the pleasure district and the rear palace alike. The exact details differ in each retelling, but the basics stay the same—whether told by the excitable laundry girls beneath blanket forts in their dorms, or murmured honey-sweet into the ear of a customer between silken bedsheets, or recited in the books held by consorts highborn enough to read them. 

It goes something like this: 

Sometimes, between two people, there lies an invisible thread. Sometimes it binds the ankles; other times, it winds around the thumbs. In most tellings, it is tied to the pinky finger. The one thing every iteration agrees on is that the thread is red as blood. 

This invisible string can stretch across great distances, or tangle, or fall slack for a time, but it will never break. It will tug the two people together inevitably, over any amount of time or space. 

Usually, there are names and stories attached, supposed evidence of this unobservable bond. Maomao stops listening around this part, though, so she doesn’t know the details. 

“How romantic!” Xiaolan cries, clapping her hands together in delight. Despite the late hour, the girl is wide awake, sitting in a circle with a few of the other younger laundry girls. “Don’tcha think, Maomao?” 

“Huh?” Maomao grunts, staring listlessly up at the ceiling. The pallet she sleeps on is hard and cold, but it’s the other girls in her dorms that keep her awake, chattering on and on like noisy starlings. Unable to rest, she’s resigned herself to daydreaming about those mugwort seeds she sowed in a little green space while the eunuchs weren’t looking. If she were back with her old man in the pleasure district, she wouldn’t have to daydream about such common herbs. “Uh, sure,” she says, to supplicate Xiaolan. 

“So it’s around the pinky finger, huh?” Xiaolan wonders aloud. She raises her hand to scrutinize her little finger. “Wonder if I’ve got one…” 

“You can’t see it with the naked eye,” reminds another girl in the dorm. Maomao didn’t bother learning her name. “You’ll never know unless you find whoever’s at the other end.” 

Xiaolan pouts. “Guess I’ll have to wait til my term’s up, then…”

Maomao’s really hoping this is the end of the conversation. 

“D’you think you’ve got one, Maomao?” 

No luck. 

Maomao lifts her hand listlessly above her head. Her tired brain conjures the image of a blowfish swimming in front of her—what she wouldn’t give to taste that poison, especially right now. She reaches out to grab the illusory fish, and her fingers clench around nothing. God, she needs a drink. 

Her hand opens again. The dormitory is lit only by dim candles at this hour, and the silhouette of her hand is near-black against the barely-lit ceiling above. 

Even so, she can see the crook in her pinky finger, bent at an odd angle at the last knuckle. 

“Not likely.” 

Ignoring Xiaolan’s whine of protest (“You’re no fun, Maomao!”), she rolls over and pulls the covers over her head. They only do a little to block out the dull chattering of the other girls in her dorm, but she slept through much worse noise in the pleasure district. Her eyes fall shut and sleep claims her quickly. 

She dreams of a dark, dusty room, a bed that smells stale and sick. Grief-mad eyes. A flash of moonlit silver. Pain. 

Maomao wakes silently, heart pounding and the covers damp in a cold sweat. It is not yet dawn, and every other girl in her dorm is asleep. Cursing her disgusting sheets, Maomao ties her hair back and rises anyway. She never sleeps well in unfamiliar places, especially not surrounded by strangers. 

In the pleasure district, where the only strings that matter are purse-strings, courtesans whisper the tale into customers’ ears to ply them into a few minutes more, another ten silver coins spent. In the rear palace, consorts and serving girls alike coo about the red string like caged pigeons, sheltered from the world as they are. 

They wish, and they pray, and they indulge, and the stupid ones waste away from it. The consorts and the courtesans both—despair eating them alive from the inside like gangrene, or dead from the flash of a lover’s knife. 

Maomao has seen bodies enough. Too many of them hang on that red string. 

So why would she ever want to be bound by it? The smart ones know to avoid it. The dumb ones who don’t wind up dead, more often than not. Just look at her fool of a mother. 

Maomao will be different. 

Maomao will be better. 

“If only I had something to write with…”

There’s an odd feeling as she mumbles those words to herself. A presence, quietly asking her to follow. A physical tug, telling her to turn around and search for where it leads. 

Maomao keeps walking. 

She has better things to do. 

The twittering serving girls threaten to give Maomao a headache. 

“Do you know why we were called?”

Maomao has no idea why they were called, and she doubts any of the other girls would either, so there’s no point in asking. She blinks sleep from her eyes and straightens her back, just like her sisters always taught her in courtesan training. The doors of the office stand imposingly before them, and the dragons carved into the wooden pillars watch the group from on high. If she’s in trouble, she may as well make a decent impression to whoever’s in that office. 

“No clue,” replies one of the girls, yawning. “No need to question, right? Just get it over with.” Maomao can’t help but agree.

Another girl leans over, whispering conspiratorially. Maomao wishes the girl wouldn’t lean over her as she did. “I heard it’s a test.”

A third girl blinks. “A test? For what?”

“No clue. Only a few of us are being called, though. My friend wasn’t.”

Maomao glances at her. That…is a bit more unusual. 

She scans over the group around her. Why them, then?

There are few similarities between them. Every girl is wearing the same soft cream and dull yellow uniform marking them as belonging to the laundry division. Other than that broad category, though, there isn’t much to note about them—all are quite plain looking, many slim and short like Maomao herself. Plenty of these girls were sold into the palace like Xiaolan, after all, since their families were too poor to feed them. Like Maomao, this group isn’t very pretty, at least not by the standards of the pleasure district or rear palace. Most of them have plain faces and cheeks dotted with freckles. 

…Maomao glances around again. 

A lot of them have freckles, actually. In the immediate group around her, not a single one has completely unblemished skin. But that’s surely just a coincidence. Most of these girls were out in the sun, working fields or tending livestock. It would make sense if a lot of them have freckles. 

The creaking of wood chases Maomao out of her thoughts—a eunuch, taller than others she’s seen, opens the door of the office. 

“We’re ready for you now,” he says with a bow. His voice is deep—Deeper than she’d expect from a eunuch, but that’s not her concern. Maomao excuses it all from her mind and enters the office with the rest. 

It’s a grand room for the Matron of the Serving Women. Twisting dragons curl up vermillion pillars; a grand desk made of wood polished to a mirror shine sits in the center of the room. An imposing, heavy-looking seal sits atop it, as well as some stacks of papers. Unusually, a vase sits next to the desk, holding a long bough of rhododendron, blushing pink in the light. 

Maomao narrows her eyes. She would like to chalk that up to coincidence, too. 

“I’m sorry to call you all here on such short notice,” comes a smooth, soft voice, pulling Maomao out of her thoughts. 

Quiet gasps and coos run through the crowd, paired with heavy footfalls against the polished wood floor. From the screen in the corner emerges a figure so beautiful it would belong in a painting—smooth, silky hair, a gentle smile, and a loveliness so encompassing the breath of the other girls catches in their throats. 

It takes her a moment to realize that, judging by the breadth of their shoulders and the curve of their jaw, the person standing before her is a man.

A man who is already staring at her. His eyes are dark and curious. 

Try as she might, Maomao can’t quite pull her eyes away. 

Maomao has always understood what this thing called love is. 

Her home makes a business of selling it, after all. All you have to do is pour a few silver coins into a courtesan’s hands, and she will give it to you. As long as the money keeps flowing, the love will not stop. 

The problem, of course, is that the money can’t flow forever. 

By the time she is taken into the rear palace, Maomao’s sisters have climbed the ranks to become three of the greatest courtesans the pleasure district has ever known. Just taking tea with them costs six months of a commoner’s salary. To buy their love for the night, a thousand silver must fly. 

Securing their affections permanently, as one particular soldier tries to with Pairin, requires enough coin to last a decade. To any but the absolute wealthiest of the Verdigris House clients, it is an impossible sum. 

Not that it stops anyone from trying. 

The brothel wrings some men until they run dry. Once the coin runs out, they take loans and come anyway. Maomao watches from her little shop as regular customers turn up looking more haggard and gaunt with each visit. Bags under their eyes from sleep deprivation and purses ever-lighter, they march into the fire regardless. They pour what coin they have into the courtesans’ hands, and they indulge for the night. 

Other men have other motives. They whisper fantasies into a courtesan’s ear of buying her out, and a few foolish ones even believe them. They inevitably disappear, broke or bored or sent too far by work. Whatever the cause, the courtesans are left to pick up the pieces of their broken hearts. Some women cut themselves on the shards. Others don’t even bother trying to pick themselves back up. Maomao is not the only person in the pleasure district versed in poisons. 

Some say that love itself is like poison, but Maomao must disagree. 

Poison may be dangerous, but it is thrilling. There are ways to detect its presence, and antidotes to take before one falls too far into its tendrils. No, love is something much less delightful, and much more dangerous:

Love is addictive. 

It’s sticky like honey, like the sap of opium poppies. Hard to wash off once it’s on your hands. The high of it will fade eventually, whether it takes years or just the time until dawn when the silver runs dry. Some fools depend on it anyway, and the withdrawal breaks them apart and grinds them to dust. They delight when the next wave crashes ashore, but it inevitably withdraws to the ocean, leaving them waiting. 

Love wrings you of all you have, and when you have nothing, it will disappear. 

Some of the books on Joka’s bookshelf claim differently—that this thing called love is a flush, a pull, a lasting warmth. Maomao never bothers reading those books. She has little interest.

It doesn’t mean those books are wrong, though—Maomao has never experienced something like that, but that doesn’t mean the ideas are wrong or foolish. 

It just means that she left whatever part of herself capable of it in the moonlit bed where her life began. It means she is fundamentally stunted. That some part of her is missing. 

But she knew that already. 

Everything that transpires in the rear palace does not change that. 

Maomao sits in her little apothecary shop one day, rolling out pills like she always does. The room is cast in golden afternoon sunlight, and beyond her door come the sounds of the Verdigris House coming alive for the evening. Maomao pays it no mind, focusing on the work before her. 

But the eyes on her are starting to feel heavy. 

“What are you looking at, sir?” she grumbles, not looking up from her work. 

Jinshi, across the table, gives a contented sigh, resting his chin on his palm. “Nothing,” he says with a wide, loose smile. 

Certainly, she thinks. He’s not looking at much. Chicken bones, the madam always called her. In comparison to those girls preparing for the night just outside her door, she has little to offer. 

And yet here Jinshi sits, cast in the glow of twilight spilling in through the tiny window. Shadows fall along the line of his jaw, his cheekbone, and alight against the healed scar on his cheek. Like a scratch on a perfectly-cut gemstone, it is the only thing that mars his beauty. 

It was a brave thing he did. Not that she’d say that aloud—he did it for the sake of the country, after all. Nothing more. 

He still comes to her shop every ten days like clockwork, to have that scar checked. A full three months out of his injury, though, and there’s little left to be done. It’s already healed, and now only time will fade it further. She has done all she can. 

He still comes anyway and sits with her for hours. Sometimes they talk, sometimes not. He stays anyway. 

Maomao keeps her eyes focused on her work, smashing down the herbs with more force than necessary. 

What does he want from her? 

She knows that if she glances up, she’ll see something she’d rather not. Jinshi’s obsidian-dark eyes hold something in them she can never parse. His smile is not that blinding, sparkly thing it was in the rear palace. Now, more than ever, it is a delicate thing capable enough of bringing the nation to its knees. 

He is beautiful. She has known this from the moment she laid eyes on him. The girls of the rear palace all whispered about the beautiful eunuch, and now, shed of that skin in her little apothecary shop, he is somehow even more so. Like a piece of art. 

To look at and admire, but not to touch. Not ever. She knows this rule better than anyone. 

Because something about his expression reminds her of the most dependent of the customers who come to the Verdigris House, time and again. More haggard with every visit, they flood through those doors anyway, until their wallets are too light to do so anymore. 

All those customers stop coming. Each and every one. Torn away by work or obligation or a simple lack of funds, they leave once the grinding wheels of the pleasure district have sucked them dry. 

She wonders how long this simple apothecary has left. 

Maomao stares into her pot of herbs because it is easier than meeting his eyes and seeing the demand in them. She knows already what his expression will look like if she dares to raise her head. Pressing the herbs down into her mortar, she reminds herself of the only answer she could ever give: 

I can’t.

Maomao returns to her rooms in the Western Capital only once the moon is high in the sky, spilling in silvered moonlight from the windows. After the long journey to the Western Capital, and the banquet tomorrow, all she really wants to do is curl up in bed and take some well-earned rest. 

Of course, her way is blocked—atop the bed sits an innocuous, paulownia-wood box. 

The wood is finely carved and the box is of excellent quality, and when she lifts the lid, she finds a silver hairstick similar to the one she lost during the Shi rebellion. It is just as beautifully made as the last. On the end is the crest of a moon, as well as a half-dozen poppies blooming in monochrome silver. 

They’re clearly opium poppies. She can’t help but chuckle to herself. When Maomao twists the silver stick in her hand, it flashes white in the moonlight like the glint of a knife. 

Maomao glances out the window. The moon is high in the sky, full and round and a beautiful pale gold. It spills its light down upon her, and yet it is untouchable as any of the other stars in the sky. Despite the bright, silvered white of the moonlight, clouds drift lazily around it, threatening to block the light and turn the world dark again. 

One of those clouds will slip in front of it any minute. The silver will tarnish. The light will go. She knows this as well as anything. 

The banquet is tomorrow. The Moon Prince must find a suitable wife. 

So when Maomao climbs into this unfamiliar bed in this unfamiliar place, she presses her body as close to the wall as she can, where the moonlight does not reach. Curled up in shadow, she closes her eyes to the bright, blinding light. 

If the moonlight cannot touch her, it cannot hurt her when it disappears behind the clouds. 

It looks likely to at any moment. 

Somewhere in the pleasure district, in a little garden behind a rundown hut, grows a tiny patch of wood sorrel. 

The plant is a tiny thing, delicate enough to be crushed beneath an uncaring boot. Its yellow flowers, smaller than a pinky’s fingernail, sway gently in the cool night breeze. Stubbornly, it remains despite its own fragility, spreading its heart-shaped leaves across the little patch of dirt and sky it claims as its own. It is a survivalist, after all. Common and humble, but it can grow under any conditions. 

The crook in its stem attests to that. 

At the base of the plant, near the roots that keep it anchored to its soil, the stem leans at an odd angle. A memory of a place with little light, when the little wood sorrel learned to lean and stretch for what sunny warmth it could. 

The moonlight shines bright overhead, casting a gentle silvered glow. The sky is clear, and stars spill across it like a river. Not a single cloud in the sky threatens to conceal the light, nor do any flowers crowd around the little wood sorrel to steal it. 

The little wood sorrel, however, remembers the days of dark. Stubbornly, it leans, and does not—cannot—reach up, into the unwavering moonlight shining just overhead. 

Chapter Text

The son of the heavens and the daughter of the dirt find each other beneath the star-strewn skies of the Western Capital anyway, despite it all. Pulled together by fate, or by string, or by mere coincidence. It does not matter. The result is the same. 

“You’re actually wearing it,” Jinshi whispers in reverence, pulling back from her warmth just enough to admire the stick of silver pierced into her bun. She looks stunning in it—he knew she would. Jinshi brushes a lock of hair away from her eyes to better admire them, dark like the space between each star stretching above their heads. Alone in the moonlight with him, wearing a mark of his favor, she is more radiant than ever. 

Maomao ducks her head, avoiding his gaze. Jinshi’s eyes glint like polished obsidian in the moonlight, and his touch is warm against the chill night air. She brushes his hand away regardless. “I didn’t realize it was from you,” she murmurs. 

She would never dare assume something so improbable. 

He scoffs. “Of course. I had it made before we left.” Jinshi brings his arms around her, presses his face into her hair, and breathes in the scent of her. Sharp like medicine—that is the same, despite the finery that further sharpens her beauty. She will look even more stunning as his wife. “To replace the one you lost.”

Maomao does not close her eyes when he draws her in. Her mind spins, and her hands stay pressed to her sides. He is like a painting—to look at and admire, but never to touch. She makes a mental note not to wear the hairstick again. The children of whores don’t get such pretty things, not without some catch. She should have known better. 

“Master Jinshi,” she whispers into his shoulder. “Keep your distance.”

She feels more than she hears his laugh—pressed together like this, it rumbles through his chest into hers, like their bodies have become one. “Why should I?” he asks.

Because it is improper, she thinks. Because you’re supposed to be here to find your wife, and yet you’re wasting your time here with me. “Someone might see us,” she says aloud. 

Jinshi presses his face into her hair and breathes her in. Let them, he thinks. Let them see. I was made for this.

The night’s air is chill, but their bodies, pressed together like this, are wonderfully warm. Jinshi wishes he could bask in this heat forever. Maomao finds herself missing the familiar cold. 

Against his shoulder, Maomao murmurs, “Wouldn't Consort Lishu be the safer choice?”

Jinshi stills. 

Maomao is already looking at him when he pulls back to meet her gaze. Her answer is the most logical one, she knows. Even if she saw how Basen and Lishu were looking at each other, Maomao can turn the other cheek and ignore it. 

She can ignore many things. 

Jinshi’s face slackens with shock for an instant—but then it twists. His eyes lose their warmth, sharp and cutting as a knife of obsidian. 

Desperately, he searches her gaze for a hint of something—anything—returning what he feels for her. After all this time, he thought—he hoped there might be something—

Jinshi finds nothing. Maomao’s eyes are as empty as the void between the stars above them. The silver hairstick in her hair glints in the moonlight like polished steel, cold enough to burn. 

Jinshi clenches his teeth, throat tight. The love that he has kindled for her sparks, spits, and swells into a roaring, wildfire-like rage. “The safe choice,” he echoes. Like all of the damn court wants him to pick. Like what the position he has fled from his entire life demands of him. 

For the first time in his life, he has someone he wants, and he is denied even that?

He spits, “Like hell.”

The stars of the Western Capital twinkle gently overhead. Alone in the garden, far from home, those stars bear sole witness to the moment both their worst fears come true at once—in the instant his hand locks around her throat. 

Chapter Text

Dear Maomao,

I hope you’re doing well

How are you

With the coming of the rainy season, the hydrangeas dotted around the palace gardens have come into full bloom, spreading vibrant colors throughout the Imperial City. The bushes in the Jade Pavilion’s inner courtyard have come in pink this year instead of blue. The young princess is delighted. 

It’s all thanks to

In the last few days, the first fireflies are starting to appear too. They rise from the bushes at dusk and flit around the flowers like tiny stars. I can see them as I write this in the gardens, just outside my window. 

This time of year used to remind me of chasing fireflies in the garden with my mother. We’d clasp our hands together around them to try to hold the light in, keep the little stars to ourselves for a while. Those times are one of my fondest memories in a difficult youth. 

Now, though, when I see the fireflies, all I can think about is you. 

I owe you an apology. Maomao, I am so sorry. 

I don’t know what came over me

My actions at the banquet in the Western Capital were inexcusable. I acted in anger and frustration that came on so strongly it felt like something possessed me      felt completely foreign

The next day, after dawn broke, it was strange to see you again, not half a day later. In the light of day, the previous night could have been just a dream. A half-pleasant dream, because I could still feel your lips on mine, and half-nightmarish, when you looked down at me like this all meant nothing at all

For a moment that morning, that anger I felt the previous night came roaring back. Was it just a dream? Did that moment in the garden mean nothing at all? 

But then it was doused just as quickly—when I saw the slightest bit of purple, peeking out from the collar of your robes. 

It was just a passing glimpse as you walked by, so quick I could barely see it. It might have been a figment of my imagination or a shadow, or something else entirely from the earlier commotion at the banquet. It could have been a trick of the light, and there was nothing wrong at all. 

But for a moment it looked like a bruise on your neck, from that moment in the garden when we devoured each other    tried to      when you

I don’t know where it came from. You passed by me so quickly I didn’t have a chance to look. My mind told me it was either a love bite, or the bruise of a fingerprint. I don’t know which is worse. 

And the horror of what happened—of what I did—hit like a landslide. 

All I could see was my hand around your

Maomao, I swear, I never wanted to hurt you. I swear on my life and my title and my name that I never wanted to do something like that to you. It was a nightmare made manifest. If you were angry with me, furious, never wanted to see me again, I would deserve it. 

So it was so confusing the next morning when you acted completely normal. You weren’t angry or short with me, you didn’t try to avoid me more than you usually do. You didn’t look fearful, thank every star in the sky. 

It was like nothing had changed, for better or for worse. But that shadow on your neck spoke otherwise, and the guilt of it all threatened to eat me alive. 

And then—then I asked you a question. I didn’t know if I wanted the answer, but I asked it anyway—if you thought I was a horrible person—and your answer will not leave my mind until the day I die. 

‘I don’t know,’ is all you could say. 

Is that it? Were you being honest? Did you even think about your answer before you spoke it? Did you want to say ‘yes’, but your fear from the night before kept you from it? What does an ‘I don’t know’ mean, in a moment like this?

In your eyes, am I as despicable as my father? 

I swear that I am different

I don’t know if I can claim that anymore

I will be different

If I could turn back time, I would flee back to one of those little visits to your shop and stay there forever. Back when everything was simpler. Back when I hoped that even if I had to be the Imperial Brother again, whatever we had could stay the same. 

I could still visit you, even if it was less frequent than before. You could still tell me about your medicines and teach me all the brilliant things you know. I could bring you lunch and daydream quietly about kissing you. You could still brush your hands through my hair while you thought I was asleep and we I could pretend nothing had changed. 

Or maybe I would go back to our journey west, and I could relish the feeling of your hand on my cheek as you touched up the terrible job I did on the scar; or you could catch my gaze across a room of angry farmers—before you threw yourself into that bet, you infuriating woman—and give me the most beautiful, foolish smile I’ve ever seen. 

After all of this, I thought there was something

(You’re worth much more than three hundred silver, by the way. You’ve mentioned that I should stop flashing so much coin around, so I put that advice to use and decided to show some restraint. I’d pay a hundred times that just to go back to

Or maybe I’d go back to that hunt, when you told me I was more than just a pretty face. Do you know what you truly said to me in that moment? Did you ever think about what those words meant? 

For my entire life I have been nothing but my face and my name. They are the only things anyone treated as having any value—but with you, you hated those damn things, saw through me instantly. And suddenly, with you, I was someone more. 

I have seen countless people throw themselves at me, and I’ve felt nothing but disgust or disinterest or suspicion, knowing they only want to use me for their own purposes. But with you, for the first time—I was someone beyond my face or my name. I have never felt more myself, than when I am with you.

And I’ve gone and fucked that up too, haven’t I? 

Did I ever give you that same feeling? Were you able to let your guard down around me in the same way? I want to think you do, in the moments when it’s just the two of us—how your eyes shine as you tell me about your current experiments, or the open disgust on your face half the time I open my mouth. (It’s refreshing. Please don’t stop.)

Have you ever felt as safe around me as I do around you? 

Have you ever felt that safe around anyone? 

If you did once, I don’t know if you do now. Certainly not around me. Not after what I did. I’m sorry, Maomao. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have ever

I will never

I fear what I will become

I fear what I have become

The fireflies are still dancing outside my window. Dusk has fallen now, and as I watch them, all I can think of is how I would go back to any single moment in our history in a heartbeat, if it meant I could see you again that night in the Jade Pavilion’s gardens, when I thanked you for saving my life. 

And tonight, exactly a year later, I come bearing an apology. 

Will you listen this time? Or will you shrug me off like you did back then? Like you have time, and time, and time again? 

When I look at the hydrangeas blooming outside, I think of you. Do you look at the hydrangeas at all? 

Maomao, you are a brilliant, intelligent woman. You are also very adept at looking away from whatever you don’t want to see. So if you have not figured it out by now, let me spell it out for you as plainly as I can: 

I asked you to come with me to the Western Capital because I want to spend my life with you. Because if you put me in a room with the most beautiful people in all of Li, you would still shine among them. Because your brilliance cannot be outdone by any of them. Because you can ruin me with a single kiss, and I would only thank you for the honor. 

Because I want you to be my

My brother has consorts, and my father did before him. I have seen what those consorts endure—jealousy, scorn, despair. You don’t deserve that. I have seen how it destroys them, and I don’t want to destroy you.

Do you feel the same way towards me? Do you feel anything at all? Have I imprinted like a stupid puppy? Am I just a moth to flame? Being destroyed by you wouldn’t be so bad. I don’t know. 

But does any of this mean anything to you? If I send this letter, will you read it? Will you listen? Will you care? Or will you tear it up, use it as kindling, and pretend nothing at all has happened between us? 

That hairstick I gave you—you know what it means, right? The imperial craftsman was unsure when I requested the emblem of a poppy and tried to suggest something more neutral. I insisted otherwise. I already knew who that hairstick belonged to. I have known it since the moment I met you. 

Do you still have that hairstick? Do you keep it somewhere you won’t have to look at it, gathering dust? I couldn’t blame you. Did you sell it already? Are you treating the feelings it represents like nothing more than a mild annoyance? I wouldn’t even mind if you used it as a paperweight. Being useful for once wouldn’t be so bad. 

-

The fireflies outside my window are dancing in the dark. They’re the only lights outside now. There’s no moon shining tonight. Too many clouds. 

I always felt a little lonely whenever I looked at them. I was never sure why. I think I remember now. 

My mother and I would chase them around the garden when I was young. No—I remember now. I would chase them. She would stand back and watch. She never chased them with me. She never did much of anything with me at all. Given our family and who my father is, I can’t blame her. 

So I would chase after them alone, and they would try to fly away. They got away, most of the time. I was a clumsy kid. Wasn’t good at much. 

But one time, when I was six, I was able to catch one of the damn things. I was so proud that I ran up to Suiren to show her. She was busy cleaning, I think. I bothered her anyway. 

I beamed with pride and opened my hands to show her. Instead of smiling with delight, though, she frowned, lip curled in disgust. I looked down at my hands, and all that was left of the little star I’d caught was goo and insect guts, smeared across my palms. 

Suiren scolded me as she cleaned the goo off my hands, and I didn’t dare try to catch them again that year. 

But the next year I was seven and I had an idea. I’d lure them in and catch them in a little pot, furnished with grasses and sticks and flowers I gathered from the garden. They’d be comfortable in there, I thought. I managed to catch three. I didn’t show Suiren this time. I smuggled them away to my room instead. 

I kept that pot next to my bed for three days, not daring to open it because that could mean they could get away. But on the third day, I came back from another lesson where I didn’t understand anything the teacher tried to explain to me, and I needed a pick-me-up. I opened the jar. A handful of wilted grass, two twigs, and three insect corpses greeted me. 

I saw something that delighted me, and I killed it, trying to catch it and keep it. 

That seems to be something the men in my family are good at. 

I love you, Maomao. I think I always will. Even if we never talk again. I couldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to see me. I’m sorry. You deserve better.

I’m so sorry. 

But selfishly I still want to see you again, I can’t bear the thought of letting you go, I think it would destroy me if I couldn’t 

I just

I miss

I am the most selfish piece of shit

Jinshi growls in frustration and, in a fit of drunken rage, seizes the paper between his clumsy fingers and rips it to shreds. Chunks of paper scatter and his fine brush rolls noisily across his desk, still ink-soaked. It clatters against the floorboards and bleeds them dark as night. His flying hands knock aside two of the empty bottles of liquor on his desk, sending them shattering on the floor. 

With the crash of shattering glass, the prince starts from his drunken haze. Looking at the shards of glass strewn around him, he realizes that his anger has gotten the better of him yet again. 

Jinshi buries his head in his hands. One scrap of the letter still lies on his desk, spared from his rage; by the time he has fallen asleep on his desk, it is damp to the touch, and the ink of its letters runs into illegibility. The paper is long soaked through. 

A few days later, Jinshi writes a second letter dead sober. It contains no personal remarks, only a report on a case in the rear palace. It is such a small matter that Jinshi would call it entirely unimportant. The day-to-day conundrums of the rear palace are no longer his responsibility. Even if they were, this matter would be too small to come to his desk. 

Jinshi dashes off the letter in a few quick strokes of his brush—businesslike, brief, detailed in the specifics of the case but void of any personal regard. Before the ink has even had a chance to properly dry, Jinshi sends it away with Basen without a second look. 

Once his makeshift messenger has retreated, Jinshi heaves a deep sigh, turns to the pile of work upon his desk, and endeavors to put it all out of his mind. 

The hydrangeas outside his window bloom violently pink anyway. 

Chapter Text

Today begins like any other day. 

It’s early enough that the sun isn’t yet peeking over the rooftops of the pleasure district when Maomao’s eyes open. Already the air presses heavy and humid on her skin as she sits up from the pile of scrap blankets she calls her bed. 

No use complaining about the weather, though, Maomao thinks, and reaches for the blue ribbon sitting next to her pillow. She ties her hair back in her usual style, then reaches for the table next to her bed. The legs are uneven, and the table rocks quietly as she takes a cloth bag from atop it, upsetting the balance. The various other pouches of her medicines sway with the movement, but none of them tumble open and spill their contents. 

She doesn’t need a mirror to tie the beads inside into her hair—she’s done it every day for over ten years now, and her hands know the way. Once they’re secure, Maomao closes the pouch, then gathers all the medicines sitting atop the table and sets all of them next to her pillow. As inconvenient as it is, her sleeping robes are thin—anything thicker would be intolerable in the summer heat—and so the various medicines she squirrels away in her robes during the day can’t stay on her person at night. 

Next to her on the pallet, Chou-u is still sleeping, completely tangled in the blanket. His mouth is open and his snores threaten to rattle the ramshackle hut apart. 

“Noisy,” Maomao mutters under her breath, poking him in the foot as she clambers around him. Chou-u’s only response is another snore, even louder than the first. 

Next, she grabs the rice balls she prepared the night before and eats quickly. Humidity already hangs heavy in the air from the summer rains, and both the moisture and the heat will only get worse the more time she wastes. Once breakfast is hastily consumed, she changes quickly into the lightest robes she owns—with all the errands she has to run today, she’ll certainly be sweating through whatever she wears. The robe she chooses is a breathable cotton of a finer weave than a simple apothecary should be able to afford. 

She throws it around her shoulders anyway, and once it’s tied, she begins tucking each of the medicines away into their proper places. First is her first-aid kit, containing a needle and thread for simple cuts. Next comes a medicine for heat stroke; she made this batch only a few days ago, but she’s administered over half of it already. She makes a mental note to restock it when she has an opportunity. 

Last is a salve, good for warding off infection in cuts. This one in particular is the remainder from a large batch she made in late winter. Maomao’s hand hovers over the little pot of medicine just a moment longer than it needs to before snatching it up and tucking it away where she doesn’t have to look at it. 

Maomao casts another glance at Chou-u. When he gives another snore loud enough to shake the ground beneath her feet, she ducks down and reaches behind the cupboard next to her bed. She fumbles open the box hidden behind it, and as soon as her hand clasps around what she is looking for, Maomao pulls it out and tucks the object into her robes without so much as a glance. 

She lets out a sigh once everything is tucked snug against her body where it belongs. Without hesitating a moment more, she grabs a woven basket from beside the door, ties her sleeves back so they won’t get in the way, and heads to the fields outside.  

Weeding the fields is about as uneventful as it always is, but it’s meditative. By the time the morning sun peeks over the pleasure district’s roofs, she’s finished with weeding and has harvested most of the herbs she needs for the day, too. 

Maomao wipes the sweat gathering at her brow and kneels next to the wood sorrel, swaying gently in the breeze. Its heart-shaped leaves and little yellow flowers would perhaps sway a gentler soul’s heart to mercy, but Maomao does not have such warmth in her heart. The damn patch is starting to creep its way into her balsam and mugwort, threatening her fall harvest. 

Her father taught her wood sorrel’s many uses—clearing heat and fever, quelling inflammation, and even treating scurvy. Its uses outweigh the nuisance of beating it back to its own patch of soil whenever it spreads too much, but the pruning is still a nuisance. 

As penance, Maomao pinches off many of the crusading stems, laying them gently in her herbal basket. One of the sprigs growing up from the ground is crooked at its base, the stem leaning hard to one side. This one she takes mercy on, but not before she plucks a leaf and pops it in her mouth. It tastes like lemons. 

At least the wood sorrel is easier to manage than mint. Maomao made the mistake once of planting mint in her father’s garden. Half the field was full of it by late summer, even after Luomen and Maomao desperately tried to pull it out to save the rest of the field. Even now, Maomao sometimes discovers errant sprigs of it, stubborn remnants of the patch that consumed the garden nearly ten years ago. Maomao always pulls them out by the roots, burns the cuttings, and pours scalding water on the roots for good measure. 

Maomao lays one final sprig of wood sorrel into her basket, gathers it up, and turns down the road towards the Verdigris House—her work for the day is only just beginning. 

The walk to the brothel is quiet at this hour. Beggars still line the back alleys, sitting atop tattered blankets spread over shattered paving stones, murmuring for coin or food; but in the morning light, the worst of the pleasure district—the pickpockets, the robbers, the more dangerous sort—are asleep for the day. Thank goodness. She’d really rather not get robbed, now more than ever. 

“Ah, Maomao,” greets a manservant with a bad haircut and worse teeth as she enters the Verdigris House. Maomao never bothered remembering this one’s name—maybe she should, given he’s evidently given her that courtesy—but their paths rarely cross. This morning, he’s lugging a bushel of rice through the door of the kitchens. “Need to see the madam? She just went to bed, I’m afraid.”

Maomao shakes her head. “Just here to tend the shop,” she says. “I paid rent to her already.” More than the tiny, cramped shop is worth for a month, the greedy hag. 

The manservant nods with a wave of his hand. “Take care, then.” 

Glancing up at the balconies on the second and third floor of the house, she doesn’t see her sisters or anyone else she knows. They must be in the baths or asleep already. One or two courtesans—lower-priced, judging by their robes—titter above like songbirds, but they don’t even bother to glance down. Fine by her—she’s not in the mood to be cornered or interrogated today. 

Once she’s settled in her shop, processing the herbs takes another two hours. With practiced movements, Maomao strips the leaves from the bottoms of the stems, to be used now, then ties each half-stripped stem into bundles with rough twine for drying. Even in the abundance of early summer, as much of her garden begins to bear its fruits, she has to think about the looming winter, which will inevitably drain her medicine stores back down. 

The herbs rustle quietly on the table, stirred by the breeze from a tiny, narrow window she threw open to let in fresh air. Maomao purses her lips at them, then glances at the hooks on the ceiling. 

Maomao has never minded how she looks. She doesn’t need to be pretty like the other girls in the brothel. In fact, being so frail and skinny comes with the bonus of making it less likely for kidnappers to try to snatch her up, or for the madam to sell her off. 

But today, looking at those drying hooks on the ceiling, Maomao can’t help but wish she were just a bit taller. 

It can’t be helped, she decides, and reaches for the tool she keeps leaned against the medicine cabinets—a long pole with a hook at the end. She loops the string of a bundle of wood sorrel around it, then, bracing herself with one arm against the wall, clumsily extends the pole towards the ceiling. 

Her arms are shaking from exertion of carrying the heavy wooden pole already, and noisily it clacks against the ceiling, surely disturbing the sleep of whatever courtesan slept in the rooms above. “Damn thing,” she mutters under her breath, reaching a little further. When the pole bangs against the wall, she huffs and pops up onto her tiptoes. 

Her arm is starting to ache when the rope loop finally catches on the hook, and Maomao breathes a sigh of relief. Then she turns to the mountain of bundles stacked on her table and sighs for an entirely different reason. 

It takes another half-hour to hang all of the herbs. “Ow,” she grumbles to herself, rolling her shoulder. “How Dad could manage that damn thing is beyond me…” It’d be nice if there was someone around who was tall enough to reach the hooks without using the fumbling, clumsy tool. Alas. 

With a huff, Maomao glances out of the open window. The breeze it carries is cool enough, but the sun is high in the sky now—it must be near noon already. Maomao fiddles with one of the beads in her hair, thinking. The list of errands to run gnaws in the back of her mind—as well as the plan she has to get a late lunch afterwards—but heat stroke is a major concern in this weather. Pursing her lips, Maomao begrudgingly decides to take a break to brew some tea. 

Since her medical equipment is much more important to keep within reach, Maomao has to strain her already aching shoulders and arms again to reach the teapot and cups. She stands on her tiptoes, fumbling blindly at the top of the shelf, flailing for a teapot and a teacup. Her hand lands on a strange lump instead. Maomao pulls it down and finds a mooncake staring back at her. 

Maomao scowls, tossing it back on the shelf. “If the brat didn’t whine about them I wouldn’t need to keep them up here,” she grumbles to herself. 

But you never even touch them! comes Chou-u’s whining voice in the back of her mind. 

Maomao’s eye twitches. The damn things are expensive, and she has to keep them in reserve just in case. Even if she herself hates the cloying sweetness of the mooncakes. Tough shit. She goes back to fumbling for the teapot.

Once the tea is drunk and her teacup washed, Maomao takes one final inventory before setting off to the market—she could use some more honey if she can find it; wood sorrel and mint are both plentiful; dried peppers could use some stocking up…

She’s running low on ginger—hers won’t be ready to harvest until fall, but it’s a common enough ingredient in cooking that she can sometimes find it in the market. There must be someone with a greenhouse who supplies the markets she frequents, if they’re able to cultivate it this time of year. 

The lucky bastard. 

Finally, Maomao reaches the end of the row of drawers. Only one left, and she knows how much is left of the ingredient without even checking. She pulls the drawer open anyway, gazing wistfully down at its contents. 

Wish I could get more of these soon, she thinks wistfully, staring down at the singular bezoar at the bottom of it. It’s the tiniest one from the bunch, and it looks so lonely in the wide drawer all by itself, the poor thing…

The apothecary sighs. They’re nearly impossible to find in markets, and they’d be exorbitantly expensive even if she could find them. Much more than a humble apothecary working in the pleasure district could afford to pay for a singular ingredient, no matter how rare or useful. 

It’s precious, Maomao decides. She’ll have to save it for when she truly needs it. Or when she could use some cheering up. 

Maomao shakes herself out of her thoughts and shuts the drawer. 

“Spare coin?” creaks the voice of a beggar. Her voice is rough with age and rougher with dehydration; her outstretched fingers are nothing but skin and bone. 

In this part of town, beggars sit on nearly every shaded corner. Few passersby stop at their cajoling. No one who lives in this part of town has any money to spare, and even if they did, here is not the place to take out one’s coin purse. Maomao presses a hand to where hers sits, tucked in her robe next to her many other valuables. The object slid in next to her purse sits long and slender beneath her fingers. 

You’d have better luck closer to the markets, Maomao thinks, and journeys on. 

The narrow alleys of the pleasure district’s underbelly are shaded and cool, but as Maomao rounds the final turn, that shadow gives way to a riot of colors, smells, and boiling heat, all sharpened to a vivid point under the beating summer sun. Lines of stalls sprawl up and down the road as far as the eye can see, all the way to the horizon piled high with fluffy clouds. The stalls peddle most anything the people running them can get their hands on: fresh, leafy vegetables laid out beneath canopies, already slightly wilted under the beating sun; glinting silver jewelry, polished wooden beads, and silky cloth for the many courtesans in the nearby brothels; a single, slightly browned bushel of sunflowers, peddled by a girl who looked no more than ten.

The sun is quite a bit lower in the sky—and Maomao’s purse is significantly lighter—by the time the final item on her list is purchased. 

“There you are,” says the kindly old man as he hands her the change. “Give my best regards to your father, dear.” 

Maomao gives a nod and tucks the ginger away, then slings the cloth pouch over her shoulder and makes towards the edge of the market. Luomen once cured the vendor’s granddaughter of a terrible flu when she was six. He always throws in an extra knob of ginger as thanks. Maomao doesn’t know his name, and she never bothered asking. 

She has better things to worry about anyway. The heavy, greasy smell of grilling meat hits her nose, and Maomao can’t help but give a wild grin. There’s only one thing she wants to eat. 

“And how many for you, young miss?” asks the kindly old man, though he doesn’t take his eyes away from his grill—the chicken skewers lined neatly atop it sizzle and spit grease into the fire. 

Two! her mind’s voice cries—her mouth is already watering at the sight and smell of the food. And besides, the last time she was here she ordered two, because…

“…just one, please.”

The old man gives a cheeky grin. “Just one, eh? You don’t sound so sure.”

“Just one,” Maomao snaps, harsher than she needs to. 

The old man shrugs. “Suit yourself,” he says, pulling a single skewer off the grill, the meat still sizzling. “Best when it’s fresh. And if you want another, you know where to find me.” He winks. 

Maomao resists the urge to roll her eyes and snatches up the skewer, marching off to a shaded area to eat. The only spot of shadow she manages to find is in the opening of a narrow alley, next to a young woman, trying to coax customers to buy her slightly wilted cabbages. 

The meat is well-salted and perfectly greasy. As Maomao wolfs down the last bite, she can’t help but wish for another one. 

But it’s for the best she only got one, she thinks, looking down at the bare skewer. She needs to save money, and so getting only one was the economical decision. 

“Are you alright?”

Maomao starts, turning to the girl. She immediately flinches back, hands up. “I—I’m sorry! You just—you looked…”

Maomao realizes she is scowling and schools her face into something more neutral. “It’s fine,” she says. She tosses the skewer into some gutter—going back to the stall she got it from just to return it is more than she feels up to doing right now—and slings her bag of purchases over her shoulder once more. Its weight knocks against her spine painfully. 

A rumble sounds overhead just then. The young farmer glances up at the sky, then back at Maomao; then, her eyes flit away yet again. “I—” she laughs awkwardly, rearranging her cabbages just for something to do. “I heard that we might get some ra—”

A second, crashing boom rattles the paving stones. All along the market street, vendors and customers alike glance up at the sky in unison—while the sun is still shining at a low, mid-afternoon angle, clouds pile high directly above. 

A single raindrop lands on Maomao’s shoes, then a second, and then the sky opens up above her. 

All at once, the entire market full of uncovered stalls scrambles into action. 

“Shit,” Maomao mutters to herself, ducking past the now-frantic cabbage lady into the alley and curling around her purchases—but with no roof overhead, the rain crashes down on her anyway.

No place to hide, and many medical ingredients in the bag will rot if drenched—home is too far away, but—

Tucking in her chin and curling her meager form around the bundle of medicines, Maomao turns and sprints in the direction of the Verdigris House. 

Maomao flings open the doors of the brothel and throws herself inside, shoes squelching on the polished wood floors. Her soaked hair hangs in her eyes as colorful blurry shapes turn towards her at once; one cries, “Oh, Maomao!” in the instant another squawks, “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Getting out of the rain,” Maomao grumbles. She dumps the bundle of her purchases (still mostly dry, thank goodness) onto a chair and wrings her hair out, ignoring the madam’s second squawk of protest. 

“Goodness, the sun was just shining a few minutes ago!” Meimei frets, cupping Maomao’s face in her hands. “Look at you, you’re leaving a puddle!” 

“What happened to you?” asks a third voice—Joka, arms crossed and pipe in hand. 

“Sun shower. The sky just opened up.” Maomao wipes her hands on a part of her skirt that didn’t get too drenched. Glancing behind her at the still-open doors, the rain is pouring down, but the sun is still shining, golden rays streaking through the storm. Maomao scowls. That’s not fair. 

As soon as her hands are dry, she descends upon the package. The cloth wrapping it is still damp, but the contents inside are mercifully dry. “At least these didn’t get wet…”

“You should be more worried about yourself!” Meimei frets. “You’ll catch a cold, soaked to the bone like that!”

“It’s fine,” Maomao protests, carefully bundling up the package once more. “I’ll just process these and—”

“Not soaked like that, you’re not!” the madam scolds, bashing Maomao on the arm with her pipe. “The entire place will grow mold!” 

“Trust you to be more concerned with the property value,” Joka retorts with a glare. “We can’t have our apothecary catching a cold. Come for a soak.” 

“I should process these first,” Maomao protests. “The ingredients need drying and—”

“—and they’ll still be there in the morning. Is there anything in there likely to spoil immediately?”

“…there shouldn’t be,” Maomao begrudgingly admits. The ginger needs to be sliced and dried, but the whole root can keep for a day or two; the hot peppers are already dried. 

“Then come for a soak.” 

“Don’t you have customers?” Maomao tries. 

“I’m taking tea tonight.” With a single look and a wave of Joka’s hand, a manservant trots over. “Take this to my sister’s shop,” she says, snatching up the whole bundle and dropping it in his hands before Maomao can grab it back. 

“But—“

“If you get sick, you won’t be able to make medicine until you’re better.” Before Maomao can protest (yes she can, thank you very much), Joka puts a hand on her back and starts steering her towards the baths. 

“Lay everything in that bundle out on the table and floor!” Maomao calls back over her shoulder. “The honey can stay in its container, but the hot peppers should be spread out to ensure no moisture is trapped, and the ginger—”

Joka smacks Maomao on the back of the head. “Shut up, and come on.” 

As Joka half-leads, half-drags Maomao down the halls, the Verdigris House around them becomes more and more plain. There are, of course, a select few bathing rooms for customers to enjoy with whoever they bought for the night—those are proudly displayed near the entrance, with the character for bath written enticingly on the curtains. Sometimes curious customers inquire as to why the baths are not separated by gender. In Maomao’s experience, they tend to be both new and particularly stupid. 

Those baths are all beautiful carved stone and hanging silks and fragrant steam; stones warm on a specially-designed brazier for massage services; wide, stout windows cut high into the walls spill moonlight onto the stone tile while maintaining privacy. The courtesans, for the most part, greatly enjoy the opportunity to partake, especially when they don’t have to please a customer to do it. 

Unfortunately for them, these baths also tend to be quite filthy come daybreak. So while the courtesans prefer that bath for its perfumed soaps and lovely atmosphere, it is rarely in any shape to properly clean them before they go to sleep. As a result, while the manservants scrub less-than-savory fluids off the fine tile, the courtesans have their own, simpler baths to use, tucked deep into the heart of the brothel where customers cannot enter. Given the setting sun, promising an influx of customers very soon, Joka brings her here. 

“You need to get out of those clothes,” Joka scolds, nodding at Maomao’s shoes—they squelch on the floor with each step, and the space between her toes feels horribly grainy and soaked. Joka strips her own sash off with a courtesan’s ease, and the rest of her robe soon follows. She drapes it over one of the bamboo frames provided, tugging the seams until the fabric doesn’t wrinkle, and says, “Come on.”

Raised in a courtesan’s world, privacy and modesty with the women of the brothel was a luxury Maomao never found any need for. Bodies were bodies, as far as she was concerned, and she saw plenty of them, dead or alive, in her upbringing. But today, Maomao hesitates. She glances towards Joka, already bare and preparing towels for the both of them; her back is turned. Now would be as safe as time as any, but there’s no place to put the contents of her breast pocket that would hide it from her sister’s prying eyes—

“Here.” Without looking up from her preparations, Joka shoves a cloth drawstring pouch into her hand. She rises, sweeping her hair out of her face and grabbing a basket. “Put anything important in there and come on.” 

Once her sister has turned the corner to the baths, Maomao springs into action. Fishing around in the front of her robes, where various loops and strings sewn into her clothes keep her valuables secure, she frees each precious item one by one. First is her coin purse, lighter than before her fruitful shopping, then comes her sewing kit, then several small salves and medicines. She unties the little bag of hair beads from the loop holding it in place and puts it in the pouch. 

And then only one item is left. Fumbling with the ties secured around it that keep it pressed to her body beneath her robes, she doesn’t dare look at it. She doesn’t need to—she would recognize the smooth, thin metal in her sleep. It’s still warmed by her body heat. After a final glance around her, she shoves it into the bag and draws it tightly closed, before the glinting silver inside can catch her eye. 

“Is it that important?” Joka asks her when Maomao enters the bath, wearing nothing except the drawstring pouch looped around her wrist. Maomao sets it carefully at the edge of the wooden bath, high enough that she doesn’t splash it as she slides into the warm, milky water. The wood beneath her feet is worn smooth from decades of wear, and the water chases away any traces of the cold of the rain. She hugs her knees to her chest, making herself small.

“No,” she says, not taking her eyes off the little pouch. “It’s nothing important.” 

Once the bath has warmed her back up and she's wrapped in a towel (extra fluffy--Joka picked it out special for her), Maomao morosely pokes at her robes hanging on the bamboo rack to find them quite soggy still. “Your clothes won’t be dry for a few hours yet,” Joka comments as she wrings out her hair.  “Come up to my rooms while you wait. I can feed you.” 

“Chou-u’s waiting for me to make dinner,” Maomao protests. 

Joka scoffs. “You want him to be more self-sufficient, don’t you?” She hands Maomao a soft cotton robe. “I can send extras for you to take home for him, and heaven knows he’ll come knocking on our door to whine at you if the hunger pangs really hit. Stop sweating and come upstairs.” 

Before she can manage to think of any protests, Maomao finds herself changed into the clean robe and slippers. Designed for customers, the former hangs a little on her thin frame, even though Joka went looking for the smallest size she could manage. Maomao follows her sister up the stairs to Joka’s chambers, eyes trained on the floor to ensure she doesn’t trip over the hem of her robe. The drawstring bag still hangs from her wrist. 

“Make yourself comfortable,” Joka tells her, throwing open the windows to let in the breeze. Dusk is falling now, and while the roof still drips stray beads of water, the air is cooler; the storm swept out the worst of the oppressive summer heat. 

“Which tea do you want?” Maomao asks. She dodges around a go board to the little cupboard where Joka keeps refreshments. 

“White tea is fine. Second shelf, on the left.”

They work in quiet unison—Joka opens every window, the breeze stirring the curtains and silks hanging about the room. Once the cups are set out on the table by the window and the tea served, Joka plucks a book from the well-stocked shelf in the corner. “Help yourself,” she says, settling on the couch. 

“Do you still have the one with the flowers?” 

“Of course I do. Bottom shelf, towards the right.” 

Maomao finds the book easily and pulls it from the shelf. The cover is worn and ragged from over a decade and a half of little hands on it. Maomao was always careful with it, even when she was young, but age and childish clumsiness took its toll regardless of how cautious she was. 

When she settles next to her sister on the couch, leaning against a plush pillow, though, she finds the contents are near-pristine. Diagrams of flowers bloom on every page—everything from azaleas to zinnias, common snowbells to exotic lavenders. Maomao could recite this book cover-to-cover if someone pressed her, and she already knows every bit of knowledge she could possibly squeeze out of it. The comfort of an old favorite, however, remains. 

The two sisters don’t speak, and they don’t need to. Meimei and Pairin always ply Maomao with questions about her life, what she had learned from Luomen last week, whether she was eating well. They ask because they love her, and while Maomao (usually) doesn’t mind their questions, they can get tiring after a while.Joka, however, seems to more innately understand how Maomao ticks. In her childhood, she spent countless hours just like this—curled up on the couch by the window, reading, barely saying anything save for Maomao’s questions about words she didn’t know. Joka is the one who taught her how to read, after all. 

The setting sun spilling through the window darkens to burnished gold, then vivid orange, then powder-blue. It’s not until the crickets outside begin to chirp and the apprentices light the final lanterns of the pleasure district that Joka reaches over. Without looking up from her book, she runs her fingers through Maomao’s hair, mostly dried from the bath. 

“I’ve heard an interesting rumor,” Joka begins. 

Maomao hums, leaning into her sister’s touch but not taking her eyes off her book. “What sort of rumor?” 

“It’s a strange one. From some of my customers who work in the bureaucracy.” She chuckles. “Suspicious things, they are. Always afraid someone’s seeking to upset their positions. The court’s a brutal place, and they whisper about anything and everything. But starting last winter, a few of them kept insisting that a particular high-ranking official—high-ranking enough to share a part of my name—keeps coming to visit the pleasure district. Always masked, they say. He would be too recognizable otherwise.” 

Maomao takes a sip of her tea, gone cool but not quite cold yet. “What an odd rumor.” 

Joka laughs again, low and warm. “It’s the strangest thing. I have one client who insists on this conspiracy. He’s always so terribly paranoid—he has been since he was promoted to work directly under the Minister of Ceremonies.”

“Does he have any evidence, or is it just paranoia?” An overworked and overtaxed mind could convince itself of anything.

“A little. For a while, this official would be absent every ten days, like clockwork. It’s not unusual for high-ranking officials to be busy, but no one could get in contact with him the entire day. A covered carriage was often stopped outside this official’s villa, for another.”

“Sounds like paranoia.” In her experience, the palace was chock-full of carriages and busy ministers. It could be anything.

“That’s what I thought.” Joka takes another sip of her tea, still running her fingers through Maomao’s hair. “This client of mine, though, claimed that this esteemed personage was coming to our humble establishment.”

Maomao says nothing. The current page of her book is about lavender, a plant that grows in the arid plains of the West. Luomen had some dried samples to show her, and he told her how vividly purple it blooms, how it’s so aromatic that some cultures use it for therapies. She’s never seen the living plant with her own eyes, though. To her chagrin, she didn’t have a chance to see it while she was away in the Western Capital. 

Too much happened. 

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about this rumored official and his visits, would you?” Joka asks.

Maomao replies, “Not a clue.” 

Joka laughs quietly. “I thought so,” she says, scratching at Maomao’s scalp with her nails. After a moment, she says, “No one else suspects you might know, for the record. That paranoid bastard only ever hires me.” She takes another sip of tea. “I didn’t tell him anything, of course—I took a page out of your father’s book. Didn’t think it worth speaking on speculation.” 

Maomao’s shoulders relax of their own accord. “Good.” She says. “It’ll only get you into trouble.” 

“That’s rich coming from you, you nosy little cat,” Joka retorts, and the conversation ends. 

Another half-hour passes like that, as they sit together reading. Outside the room comes the chatter of customers and the laughter of courtesans. The night air turns a summery chill against Maomao’s skin, but here, next to her sister, she doesn’t find herself getting very cold. The curtains of the window behind them flutter in the gentle evening breeze. 

Finally, Joka takes a little breath, and says, “I don’t know what happened while you were gone. Not that I care to ask. That’s your business, and I know you can take care of yourself.” 

The drawstring bag pressed into Maomao’s side feels a little heavier. She says nothing. She certainly can take care of herself. 

Joka gives a quiet chuckle. “Yes, I know, don’t bristle. You can take care of yourself just fine. We’ve taught you that much, at least. But let me give you some advice. More advice.” 

For the first time, Maomao glances up from her book. Joka is framed in gentle moonlight. Her eyes are still trained on her own reading, so Maomao, too, turns her gaze to her book. 

This page is about hydrangeas. 

“Men are shit,” Joka begins. “They can be miserable creatures. They will proclaim their undying love for you and find another woman the week after. They’re unfaithful. They lie. They get angry. They use you, and they pull you along, and they toss you aside when they’re done.

“But that doesn’t mean you can’t grieve, anyway. If you thought they were different.” 

Maomao’s fingers still on the page. She blinks slowly at the drawings in front of her. Watercolor pinks and blues swim in her vision. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” is all she can say. 

“I didn’t expect you to,” Joka says without judgement. “You were always so literal as a child. We think similarly, I think, in many ways.” 

She at last turns from her book, leaning over to press a kiss at Maomao’s temple. “I don’t know what happened, and I don’t claim to. If any of what I’ve said seems to hit home, take it. Discard the rest.” 

The two of them continue to read together in silence, only pausing to wordlessly light some candles once the room becomes too dark to properly see. After their dinner is eaten and their tea long cold, a young servant comes knocking, her arms full of Maomao’s dried clothes and a delicious-smelling box on top. 

“I’ll send a manservant to walk you home,” Joka says once Maomao’s dressed, running a fine wooden comb through Maomao’s mostly-dry hair. “There should be enough in that box for the brat’s dinner, as well as breakfast for both of you tomorrow.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Maomao protests weakly, stringing the beads back into her hair. The drawstring pouch sits at her side, with all but one item inside returned to its usual location. If Joka notices the long, thin shape clearly bulging from either side of the pouch, she doesn’t comment on it. 

Joka kisses her forehead. “We won’t stop fussing over you just because you’re grown now, Maomao,” she chides. “Now get home safe and sleep well.”

After talking to the manservants (and pointedly ignoring the madam’s protests), Joka secures not one but two manservants to walk Maomao home. Definitely overkill, Maomao thinks, feeling rather oddly like a noble lady rather than the common peasant she truly is with the guards on either side. They bow to her when they leave—especially strange when they do it in front of the ramshackle, dirt-floored hut Maomao calls home. 

As soon as she slides the door open, a head pops up from the bed and Chou-u leaps to his feet, whining, “Where were ya, Freckles?! I almost starved!!”

Maomao chucks the cloth-wrapped box at him. It catches him in the cheek, but his expression of anger vanishes as soon as she says, “That’s your dinner. And our breakfast tomorrow, so don’t eat it all.” 

“Aw, thanks, Freckles!” Chou-u cries, tearing the cloth in his eagerness to get at the contents inside. Maomao sighs to herself and decides she’d much rather do some weeding than deal with him. 

And so Maomao ends her day much as she began it—crouched in her fields, methodically clearing any weeds that threaten the growth of her crops. Fireflies rise lazily around her, meandering from leaf to leaf. 

There is one small difference, though—something missing, from the front pocket of her robes. She finds she can’t quite settle. 

Chou-u is snoring by the time Maomao reenters the hut. In silence, she goes about her nightly routine—brushing her teeth, changing into sleeping robes, taking each item out of her robes and laying them out for the next day…

She glances at Chou-u one last time, and when he snores again, she produces the drawstring pouch once more. She opens it, and a gleam of silver stares back. 

Maomao glances again at the little hiding spot behind the cupboard next to her bed, where its box lies. Will Chou-u discover it someday, in the rare instance he wakes before her? Would robbers chance upon it and try to steal it if they were to break in? 

If someone found this hairstick, bearing the emblem of a crescent moon and poppies, it would cause uncomfortable questions at best, and dangerous assumptions at worst. Dangerous for her, and for others around her. 

It doesn’t mean much at all to her, this stick of silver. But if someone were to see it, it would only cause her trouble. 

After a moment of debate, Maomao tucks the stick of silver into her robes and hums. Pressed against her body, its shape is familiar, and her mind finally settles a little. Now no one can see it and make any strange assumptions. 

Despite her ease, though, sleep does not come so easily; through an hour of tossing and turning, her mind still spins. By the time the moon is past its crest in the sky, she finds herself looking out the window of her little hut, over her fields of herbs. Fireflies dance like little swirling stars among the sorrel and mugwort and ginger and balsam, flicking on in a lazy pulse. Frogs croak from the patches of grass damp with evening dew. 

Maomao watches the little lights flit about her garden, and through the neighbor’s bushes of hydrangeas, splashes of color touched monochrome in moonlight. In a few weeks, they will be gone, and the weather will grow hotter and muggier still. 

Oddly, her mind drifts to a stack of papers that lies beneath her bed, gathering dust. All of them are written in an elegant, flowing hand; all are carefully scented with sandalwood perfume. Only one is dated from after her trip to the Western Capital, and it is the shortest and coldest by far. 

Joka’s words, unbidden, echo in her mind. 

The fireflies flit about the fields outside, drifting about the watercolor hydrangea blossoms in her neighbor’s gardens. Maomao leans her head against the windowsill to watch them, and she wonders why her chest aches. 

Chapter Text

The velvet antler is soft in Jinshi’s palm. 

It’s a strange texture in his hand—a delicate velvet wrapped around the bone-hard core creates a strange contrast. It’s not like anything he has ever held before, though Jinshi has hunted deer many times, whenever he couldn’t get out of an imperially-sanctioned hunting trip. Those trips are more of an opportunity to make nice with various simpering ministers than actually hunt, though; anytime he was able to bring a deer down with a well-placed arrow, it was in fall, long after the antlers had shed all their velvet. 

He didn’t even know the velvet antler was considered a medicinal ingredient until Maomao mentioned it to him offhandedly, during one of his visits. It took some combing of the archives to learn how, when, and where to collect such a prized ingredient. Jinshi went and did all the research himself instead of sending a servant to look in his stead; this resulted in him scaring an archival attendant or two in the process, as the presence of the Moon Prince often does. Once he explained what he was looking for, they nervously guided him to the medical archives. 

He carved time out of his busy schedule, too, to go on an emergency hunting trip, when he realized he had a scant few weeks at most before the deer shed their velvet. The papers piled up on his desk and Gaoshun’s weary looks both made their protests known, but Jinshi can only do this with his own two hands. Maybe a bolder man would call it something like atonement. 

The velvet antler is soft in Jinshi’s palm. That softness is more than he deserves. 

The carriage rumbles to a stop on a familiar street, in front of a familiar establishment. Basen, sitting at his side, gives Jinshi an odd glance. 

“Are you ready, sir?” he asks. 

No, Jinshi thinks, and steps out of the carriage without a word. 

The Verdigris House has not changed in the months since he last laid eyes on it. Grand as ever, it looms high over the streets of the pleasure district—though in the stark white light of day, some of the blemishes hidden by the glow of evening lanternlight make themselves visible. The vermillion paint on the gate is chipped in places. The roof is missing a few shingles. One of the paving stones is cracked, and its pebbles scatter beneath his boots. Jinshi’s heart leaps into his throat at the sight of it anyway. His grip tightens around the velvet antler in his hand. 

“Let’s go,” he murmurs—to himself more than Basen—and he strides inside. 

As he enters the hall, his eyes strain at the dim interior. Jinshi blinks to clear his vision, and sees that not much has changed. The halls are painted in the same colors, as grand as ever; manservants and some courtesans bustle about at this early morning hour, but no customers remain. The Verdigris House’s fantastic, riotous colors dull in the light of day, but his heart aches all the same. 

Nearest to the door stands the madam, talking with a manservant. Her pipe sits between her fingers. When she looks up and sees who just came through her door, though, her eyes narrow. 

She was always on him in an instant before—all wringing hands and gleaming eyes and sweet words trying to convince him to spend a night patronizing one of the brothel’s workers. Now, though, the old woman doesn’t so much as lift a finger—she only looks him up and down without so much as a hint of the hospitality she showed in the past and asks, “What do you want?”

Jinshi has dealt with enough mask-wearing slimes in his life to almost be relieved at her authenticity. 

Almost. 

Above him begins a choir of tittering whispers as courtesans gather, swarming to the railings of the balconies to leer down at him, pointing and whispering behind their hands. Jinshi’s own fingers tighten around his gift. Despite the vibrant colors of the swarm looming above, he can’t help but think of carrion crows. 

“I want to see—” His voice cracks, and Jinshi licks his lips, forcing his voice level. “You know who I’m here for. I’ll see no one else.” 

“Oh, is that so?” 

From up on high descends a familiar woman. Her cream-and-rose robes spill off her shoulders, and a single white magnolia sits delicately behind her ear, stark against the black of her flowing hair. The smile on her blood-red lips does not reach her eyes. 

Pairin, Jinshi remembers. One of the women Maomao calls her sister. 

The courtesan before him pouts theatrically, stepping forward. “You don’t care to visit the rest of us? All that time away, and all you can ask for is the usual?” Her voice is lilting and delicate as a spring’s breeze, but her eyes are sharp enough to cut glass. 

She takes another step forward, but a blur of brilliant turquoise races down the stairs after her. “Pairin,” hisses the other courtesan—Meimei, dashing down the stairs and grabbing Pairin’s arm. “Leave it alone.” 

Pairin shakes off Meimei’s grip, not even bothering to look at her. “Well, why should I?” she asks, not taking her eyes off Jinshi. “A whole season has flown by now, and not a single visit? It’s nearly autumn now, and we were quite lonely all summer.” 

“Oh, look what the cat dragged in,” drawls another voice—a third courtesan, standing behind the greedy madam. She wears near-black robes trimmed with crimson, matching the blood-red petals of the spider lily curled in her hair. Her eyes are as sharp as Pairin’s, and she does not bother hiding it with a smile. “We thought you got bored of us,” Joka says. 

Basen steps forward, hand shifting towards the hilt of his sword. Jinshi puts a hand on his chest. “Not here,” he hisses through his teeth. 

The courtesans above titter and whisper from the balconies. Carrion crows indeed. Do they treat all customers like this, if they disappear for months at a time?

Or do they only do this to the ones who hurt their little sister? 

Jinshi swallows the lump in his throat. He is more than used to dozens of eyes on him, watching him. He repeats, “I don’t want to see anyone else. You know who I’m here for.” 

“Do we?” Pairin snaps. “If you won’t even bother to say her name?” 

Meimei glances pleadingly at Pairin again, hand half-outstretched towards Pairin’s shoulder but not daring to touch. Next to the madam, Joka crosses her arms. The courtesans titter incessantly above. 

Jinshi opens his mouth, but before he can speak, the madam raises a hand. “Enough. From all of you.” All three glance at her, but they do not protest. The madam looks Jinshi up and down, her eyes lingering on the gift in his hand, and says, “You know where to find her. Same place as always.” 

Jinshi, since he has reclaimed the title of Moon Prince, does not bow to many people nowadays. Here, masked and surrounded, he makes a grateful exception. “Thank you,” he says, turning down the familiar hallway leading to the apothecary shop. 

Before he can get very far, a hand on his shoulder stops him in his tracks. 

Basen is already reaching for whoever grabbed him, but Jinshi again stops him with an arm and a pointed glare. Behind him, his assailant leans in close enough for her fragrant hair to tickle his cheek. 

“You know, us courtesans are paid handsomely for our time,” Pairin purrs in his ear. “Our attention is quite valuable, but we are happy to give it to whoever can pay.” 

Her mouth is close enough to brush Jinshi’s neck, and he shivers, not daring to move. From the corner of his eye, ruby lips part to reveal a flash of pearl-white; her black eyes could cut glass as her gaze drifts to the velvet antler locked in Jinshi’s hands, and she continues:

“But our sister is not one of us. Her time is hers to give, and all the silver in the world cannot buy it.” Pairin smiles with all the fake pleasure of a seasoned courtesan. “So I would recommend you don’t waste it.” 

Jinshi swallows hard. “I have no intention of wasting her time.” 

Pairin’s nails dig into his shoulder hard enough to sting. “No more than you already have, at least,” she hisses, and finally lets him go. 

“Like a den of vipers in here,” Basen growls at Pairin’s retreating back. “At least we’re out of…sir?” 

Jinshi takes a deep, steadying breath. If it rattles in his chest more than it should, Basen is kind enough to be quiet about it. Maybe he’s learning some tact after all. 

“Into the fire, as they say,” Jinshi murmurs to himself, and he carries on. 

Their footsteps echo loud down the halls of the Verdigris House, mirroring the thoughts ricocheting in Jinshi’s mind: The courtesans that she calls her family are furious on behalf. If his presence was welcome here, once upon a time, that goodwill has long been squandered. 

But those thoughts all swirl around the main worry in his mind: If they were all that angry, just how upset is Maomao?

Is she alright? Did she feel he abandoned her the same way her father left her mother? He couldn’t blame her if she did—the two months since they last talked have stretched so, so long, but he needed space to sort out his own feelings, to think—to take the time to fully understand how horribly he fucked it all up—to give her the space to process, given how cold and uneasy she seemed—

Perhaps Jinshi is a coward here, too. Maybe by avoiding the problem this long he has squandered any hope of mending this yawning gap that he caused. 

…is the one velvet antler a good enough apology? Jinshi still has the second one in his palace, part of the matched set of the deer he brought down. Taking two would have been cumbersome and clumsy, so he left one at home. He figured he could use it as a gift later, if things went well, but now he can’t help but wish he brought both and just made Basen carry the extra one. 

With the echo of his own footsteps on the floorboards as quick as the pounding of his heart, he comes to that familiar, innocuous door tucked away in a little hallway. 

He stares it down for a minute, fighting the urge to turn tail and run like a coward. Will she even want to see him? Will she be angry? Their exchanges of letters haven’t stopped, but they’ve become cold and businesslike. 

What version of Maomao waits for him behind that door?

Jinshi has known her joyous and frustrated and fearful. He has learned how her eyes narrow in thought and how her entire face brightens with interest. In the years since he met her, he has never seen her truly shaken—not even with lips kissed swollen or the ghost of a bruise around her neck. He has not seen her despair or her pain, and he doesn’t know if he could bear to see it for the first time. 

But with the perceived failure of the banquet in the Western Capital, the court is jostling louder and louder for the Moon Prince to marry. Jinshi knows whose hand he would choose, if the court so demands it. In any lifetime. 

And he’d like to prove it to her, if she’d give him the chance. 

Jinshi takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. He raises a hand to knock on the door thrice. A long moment passes. No response comes. 

Had she not heard him somehow? Jinshi knocks again. “Hello?” he calls when the second knock, too, is met by silence. Is she out of the shop, despite what her sisters said? Basen gives him a glance filled with something that looks dangerously like pity. Absolutely unacceptable. “Stay here,” he orders his guard, and slides the door open. 

The pungent smell of medicine hits his nose first, a cacophony of sweet florals and the bitter tang of herbs. The little shop is as humble as he remembers—shelves of medical ingredients and equipment still line the walls, crowding into the already-cramped floor space. The tiny table still sits in the center of the room, so small he had to hunch over a little to eat at it; the limp cushions laid out on the floor are still squashed and a little dusty. Herbs still hang in neatly-organized bundles from the ceiling. In the nearly three months it’s been since Jinshi set foot in this place, it’s like nothing at all has changed. 

And in the center of the room, staring idly at a couple of pots in the corner…there she is. 

At first glance, Maomao, too, looks as unchanged as ever, sitting at that little table with a book spread out in front of her. She still wears the same soft cotton robes he provided when she came to work at his palace. Her dark eyes are downcast, staring at a spot in the corner of the room, unseeing. Her hair is tied back in its usual style with its ribbons and beads. The gift he gave her in the Western Capital is nowhere in sight, and Jinshi’s heart sinks. She must have thrown it away. He can’t imagine she kept it. 

And looking closer…is her face thinner than it was a few months ago? Her cheeks look a little hollower, her complexion a little paler, but she was always thin and frail. Is it a trick of the light in the dim little shop? Or does her face hold the same gauntness he sees reflected in the mirror every morning? 

With a twinge of anxiety, Jinshi wonders—did she change at all?

Jinshi certainly didn’t: the sight of her is enough to punch the breath from his lungs. 

He missed her so much. 

Dumbstruck and foolish, his grip slackens around the antler—and with his palms slick with sweat, the cloth-wrapped bundle falls form his grasp with a clatter. 

Her dark, intelligent eyes turn in his direction with confusion and disdain, and heaven above, he missed that too. 

Maomao’s eyes catch on the tip of the antler, poking out from the cloth, and her eyes brighten in childish delight. She’s crawling across the floor with a squeal in the next second, eyes glittering with glee. As her fingers wrap around it, Jinshi can practically see the gears turning in her head about her plans to use it. 

Jinshi scowls. Is she going to pay any attention to him at all? 

Before he can help himself, Jinshi snatches the antler just as her grasping hands stretch for it. Maomao’s fingers snap around nothing and her face twists into a sneer, following the offending hand up his body until—

Her scowl drops—or perhaps it softens into something blanker. Even after this long of knowing her, he can’t quite read her expression. Is it wonder? Confusion? The look in her eyes is harder to parse than ever. 

It’s Maomao who breaks the silence, after a too-long pause: “It’s been a while, Master Jinshi.” 

Jinshi can’t help but close his eyes. The shape of his chosen name on her lips makes his heart ache. 

Still not looking away from him, with—caution? Confusion? Nothing at all?—in her eyes, Maomao rises from her crouch, fingers still locked around the antler. Her head cocks, and bafflingly, the next thing out of her mouth is, “Have you been sleeping properly?” 

“That’s the first thing you ask me?” Jinshi grumbles. He tugs lightly on the antler. She does not let go of its cloth. “What’re you reaching for?” 

“The velvet antler,” she replies. “I thought it might be for me.” 

“I’d say that’s why I brought it.” 

Maomao’s lovely dark eyes narrow. “Then I’d like you to give it to me.” She tugs again on the cloth. “Please.” 

She didn’t change at all.

Jinshi can’t help but smile, falling into a familiar, well-trodden routine. “Well,” he drawls with a grin, “now I’m not so sure if I want to…” 

His apothecary gives a squeak as he pulls the item from her grasp, holding it teasingly above her head. She scrambles to her feet, then her tiptoes when that isn’t enough, but her fingers fall a hand’s width short. He waves the antler up and down, and she bounces up and down on the balls of her feet like a cat chasing a particularly interesting toy. 

It’s like nothing has changed at all. Jinshi doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. 

Before Jinshi can even think to stop himself, he steps forward, sweeps her feet out from under her, and catches her before she can hit the ground. Smooth, he thinks to himself, as she blinks a few times, disoriented. The skin of her back is warm beneath his palm. 

“Master Jinshi,” Maomao says, ignoring their current position. “The antler, please.” 

Jinshi takes a deep breath. “If you listen to what I have to say, I’ll consider it.” 

“Please change ‘I’ll consider it,’ to ‘I’ll give it to you.’” She takes another futile swipe at the antler, high over her head. “Please.” 

Her body is so warm, pressed together like this, and Jinshi’s heart sings with proximity. “Fine,” he agrees readily. This isn’t so bad—he can say his piece, and maybe even get her to listen like this. Maybe all hope isn’t lost. “I’ll give it to you—but you have to listen to what I have to say.” 

Maomao raises an eyebrow. “Fine. If all I have to do is listen.” 

Heaven damn it, she hasn’t changed at all. Jinshi glares down at this wonderful, infuriating woman in his arms, but he doesn’t protest. He missed everything about her--even this easy back-and-forth, this little game they always play. 

….the chase has lost some of its excitement after so long, though. 

“While you’re at it, would you mind letting me go?” Maomao asks. 

After so long of not seeing her? Jinshi tightens his grip on her. “No.” 

Maomao falls silent, blinking up at him expectantly. Her brow is furrowed, lips turned into something neighboring a scowl. Make it quick, her eyes demand. Jinshi opens his mouth to speak. He blinks, and the stars of the Western Capital gleam in the black of her eyes. 

A lump catches in his throat, and every single word he carefully planned, rehearsed, scrapped, and planned again falls away. 

This brilliant woman in his arms was always able to render him speechless. That hasn’t changed. 

Everything else has, though. 

What does he say? There are plenty of nobles who gleefully do what he did, taking what they want by coercion or by force. Hell, Jinshi could name a few in his family tree. In most retellings of their stories, their forcefulness is celebrated as a conquest, a victory. Another note in their list of accomplishments. 

But Jinshi spent his formative years in the rear palace, and he knows how women actually talk about those conquests when they think no men are around to hear. History doesn’t take that into account—they are rendered a footnote, a flower to be picked, a prize to be won. 

And Maomao is so much more than what he reduced her to in that moment. 

I want this, Jinshi thinks. He wants her more than he has wanted anyone.

But I want you to want this, too.  

And so when Jinshi finally speaks, the words that come out are, “Have…have you considered what I proposed?” 

Maomao blinks up at him, face unchanging. At his words, she glances off to the side, thinking, but she stays silent. 

No, Jinshi thinks, his heart sinking. 

Maomao is a smart woman; it’s one of the many reasons why he loves her. Surely she has put together the significance of the hairstick, the significance of that night. Willful ignorance has always been one of her many talents. That hairstick is probably sold already. Or she’s stashed it somewhere to use as a bookmark or a paperweight or something else inconsequential—treating this feeling he’s only ever had once, for her, like it means nothing. 

Jinshi’s anxiety only grows as her eyes drift to the side, looking anywhere but his face. “Do you really hate me that much?” he whines. He wants to bury his head in her shoulder and forget the world, but that was how he got himself into this mess in the first place, wasn’t it? 

Maybe a better man would leave now, let her live her life unimpeded and undisturbed. But Jinshi, of course, is a selfish coward. 

Maomao’s lips part to take a breath. “I suppose I don’t…hate you.” A pause. “So much.”

Jinshi blinks. What the hell is that supposed to mean? 

As Jinshi turns the words over in his head, Maomao, still not looking at him, adds, “The cordyceps made me very happy.”

Jinshi scowls. “Is that all you have to say?”

“No,” she protests. “The bezoars were helpful, too.” 

“And?” 

“And I want that velvet antler.” 

This wonderful, lovely, infuriating woman he has set his heart on. 

As soon as the words leave her lips, Maomao surges forward, hands flailing for the antler. Even with her meager body weight, her enthusiasm knocks them off balance. To keep her from tumbling herself down onto the hard floor, Jinshi plants a hand on her stomach and pushes her back down. Maomao shrieks and kicks at him, though her tiny silk slippers threaten no harm at all. Still, a kick to the jaw wouldn’t be pleasant for either of them—so before Jinshi can stop himself, he catches one of her flailing feet, and his fingers brush the top of her foot. 

Maomao jerks again beneath him, back arching with the oddest, most inelegant noise he has ever heard from her. Xiaomao is quite ticklish, Suiren absently mentioned to him once, when Maomao was working in his palace. 

He has not seen her in months, and in a split-second decision, Jinshi comes to the conclusion that this is simply not an opportunity he can pass up. He runs his fingers along the arch of her foot again with focused intention this time. Maomao squirms, gasps, and bursts into the most beautiful peal of laughter he has ever heard. 

“Ngh—that’s not—fair—” Maomao gasps beneath him. Her eyes are bright with mirth, face flushed, and her spine arches again when he can’t help but run teasing fingers up her leg. 

“Fair?” Jinshi slides his fingers further up the arch of her calf, and his grin widens as her laughter only gets louder. Fair indeed—the last time he saw her, she reduced him to a panting mess beneath her. Call this payback. “I don’t know what you mean.” 

Jinshi grins, leaning over her to watch as she squirms and writhes and giggles beneath him. A flush is steadily traveling from the tips of her ears down her neck, and when she glares up at him, there’s little venom. 

With another touch of his fingers, her spine arches again, head thrown back with another peal of laughter. She squirms against him, and the flailing of her body knocks the on the table down to the floor. He pays it no mind—the arch of her leg is brushing against his belly, and he leans even closer. 

She’s so close, her body warm and pliant beneath him. The collar of robe is disheveled, showing how the flush of her face is steadily traveling down her neck and chest to the shadow of her collarbone, and he wants to kiss along it, taste the planes of her skin, and—

There are tears in her eyes. 

Jinshi releases her immediately, pushing up off of her like a cold bucket of water was dumped over his head. After a few moments of lying there, chest heaving, Maomao props herself up on an elbow, wiping the tears from her eyes with her free hand. A stray giggle or two still bubbles up from her, shaking her shoulders, and her breathing is still heavy. A small smile still lingers on her face as she glances around. 

Maomao seems entirely unaware of just how compromising a position they are tangled in. Jinshi wishes his mind were so merciful. Here she is, robes disheveled and face flushed, lying beneath him as he has fantasized quietly for years. Her legs are open, bracketing his hips, and the fabric of her skirt pools at her calves. The warmth of her body seeps into his skin, pooling in his lower belly, and…

He just wanted to see her again, make sure she was alright, and offer an apology; and yet here he is, on top of her and tangled between her legs, her pushed-up skirt the only barrier between his abdomen and the core of her. Blood throbs noisily in his ears, and he wonders if she feels the same hum in her belly and pulse in her veins—or maybe the feeling would pass from him to her, sensation flowing through their connected bodies. They’re already halfway to it here, tangled together in a mimicry of the embrace he has dreamed about in his most explicit fantasies—