The kitchen smelled of burnt ginger and regret.
Tianyin couldn’t have said which of the two was stronger.
Yanlong’s hand was still around her wrist.
Firm.
Final.
Exactly as it had been thirty seconds ago, when he’d said Our conversation isn’t over yet in that low, composed voice that left no room for argument.
She hadn’t moved.
Not because she didn’t want to—she did, deeply, with all the conviction of someone who needed to put distance between herself and a situation slipping beyond her control—but because he wouldn’t let her go, and she was beginning to understand that he wasn’t going to.
Not until he’d said what he had to say.
“Let me go.”
She had said it three times.
All three times, he had looked away, toward the man in black still standing in the corner, motionless since delivering his message and stepping back.
Dressed in black from head to toe, a dark lacquered mask covering half his face.
He was waiting.
With the patience of someone who existed only when needed and knew how to make himself disappear the rest of the time.
Tianyin had noticed him.
She had chosen to say nothing, out of dignity—or pride, the line was thin—and now he bowed, opening his palm, and she realized that the conversation she’d wanted to escape had taken a turn she hadn’t anticipated.
“Your Highness.”
A tiny bamboo tube.
No longer than a finger.
Yanlong looked at it for a second.
Then, without releasing Tianyin’s wrist—naturally, obviously, because why would he ever do anything sensible?—he turned her around in one motion and placed her in front of him, his long arm wrapping around her in the same movement, her wrist still imprisoned.
With his free hand, he reached toward the palm of the man in black and took the bamboo tube.
He rolled it between his fingers for a second.
Then brought it to his lips and bit the end open.
Tianyin felt his breath against the back of her neck.
Her brain stopped.
Not for long.
Just one second.
One ridiculous little second during which she thought absolutely nothing because something inside her head had apparently decided to go on strike without consulting her.
Pull yourself together, one part of her told herself.
His mouth is really close, another part replied, which the first part firmly decided to ignore.
Yanlong bit down on the end of the bamboo with the calm concentration of a man who did this every day.
Maybe he did.
What did she know?
The tiny silk scroll slipped between his lips.
He unfolded it.
Read it.
His face revealed nothing.
Not an eyebrow.
Not a twitch.
Nothing at all, as though his features had signed a contract long ago stipulating that under no circumstances would they ever reveal anything to anyone.
He clenched the message in his palm.
Turned toward the hearth.
Threw it into the flames without a second’s hesitation.
The silk blackened.
The characters disappeared.
As though they had never existed.
Tianyin stared at the fire for one second too long.
What was in that message?
She turned to ask, and the man in black was gone.
Disappeared.
As though he’d never existed, like a guilty conscience chased away with enough good cheer.
She took a deep breath.
“Let me go.”
This time, she said it with her elbows.
And her feet.
And every ounce of physical conviction she could gather in her body.
Yanlong didn’t release her.
Her hand found the knife resting on the edge of the table—a kitchen knife—and she turned toward him with all the dignity of a woman who had decided that today, enough was enough.
She had imagined he would step back.
Or at least take her seriously.
That there would be a moment when he’d look at the knife and think, Ah, she has a knife.
Perhaps I should…
He clearly thought nothing of the sort.
He blocked her move.
She pivoted.
He anticipated it.
She raised her wrist, and his hand was already there, closing around both her wrists at once.
One hand.
With the casual firmness of a man who wasn’t even trying.
One hand.
The humiliation of it.
He slammed her against the wall.
The impact reverberated through her shoulders, and she clenched her teeth so hard she could hear her own molars.
She didn’t lower her eyes.
Neither did he.
And there, in that cold kitchen with the fire crackling in the hearth and the smell of the burned message still lingering in the air, their gazes collided like two people turning the same corner from opposite directions and suddenly being unable to pretend they hadn’t seen each other.
Why are his eyes so dark?
Tianyin’s thought was completely irrelevant.
What kind of question is that?
Focus.
You have a knife.
Well, you had a knife.
You don’t have a knife anymore.
That’s a problem.
With a smooth, almost lazy movement of his wrist, Yanlong turned the knife around and placed its sharpened tip against her throat.
Right there.
Just enough to make the meaning clear.
Tianyin didn’t move.
He wouldn’t hurt me.
The thought arrived without invitation, carrying a certainty that had absolutely no reason to exist.
And it irritated her deeply because she didn’t know where it had come from, much less whether she was right.
Their eyes still hadn’t broken contact.
Why doesn’t she look away?
The thought surfaced somewhere in Yanlong’s mind, in a region he didn’t often inhabit.
There was no answer to it.
He didn’t try to find one.
Three knocks sounded against the door.
Eunuch Weiqing’s voice slipped through the wood with the caution of a man who had learned, through experience, that closed doors in this palace remained closed for a reason.
“Your Highness…
all your uncles have arrived for His Majesty the Emperor’s birthday banquet.
Their families as well.
If Your Highness would be so kind as to—”
The door cracked open.
Yanlong looked away.
For a fraction of a second.
Just one.
The bamboo tube left the table in a movement the ordinary eye wouldn’t have followed.
It embedded itself in the wooden door.
The door slammed shut, narrowly missing Weiqing’s cheek with a precision that no one in the palace ever found reassuring—not the first time, nor the hundredth.
A sharp squeak.
The dull sound of knees striking stone.
Eunuch Weiqing had collapsed into a pleading position with the speed of a man who had practiced that particular exercise extensively.
A thin red line marked his cheek.
He probably hadn’t felt it yet.
“Your Highness, this wretched servant begs you to forgive me, a thousand deaths would not be enough to, this unworthy worm deserves to—”
“Silence.”
The eunuch fell silent.
His mouth continued moving soundlessly.
A useful talent in this palace.
Yanlong had already removed the knife from Tianyin’s throat.
Tianyin exhaled.
Discreetly.
She thought.
But he was still too close not to hear.
He leaned toward her.
No, she thought, and her heart did something ridiculous and entirely unauthorized by the rest of her body.
He’s not going to…
His face moved closer to hers.
Slowly.
With all the time in the world.
Her lips remained closed.
Her eyes darted violently toward the left wall, toward the hanging pots, toward anything that wasn’t him.
And somewhere in her mind, a tiny voice said, But why are you looking at the pots, Tianyin?
She had no satisfactory answer.
He tilted slightly to the side.
Placed the knife on the table behind her.
It took Tianyin two seconds to understand that was all.
Two seconds during which she remained perfectly still against the wall, staring at the pots as though they owed her something.
Yanlong simply reached toward the door and said one word.
The door cracked open.
A maid slipped through the narrowest opening possible, shoulders drawn inward, a clean towel between her trembling fingers.
Poor thing.
She had probably been waiting outside, praying she wouldn’t have to enter.
He wiped his hands with the leisurely calm of a man who was never in a hurry.
Then headed toward the door.
“In one hour,” he said without turning around, “I’ll come get you for the banquet.
Get ready.”
“I’m not going.”
He kept walking.
“And you can’t force me.”
“No,” he said.
His tone was flat.
Almost pleasant.
“At least one thing obeys when called.”
The door closed.
Tianyin stared at the door for three full seconds, fists clenched inside her sleeves, something tight and inexplicable lodged somewhere between her throat and her chest.
What was in that message?
The question returned without warning.
Dry.
Insistent.
She looked at the cold ashes in the hearth.
There was nothing left—not even a thread of silk, not a trace of ink—and she understood that was exactly what he’d wanted.
Nothing.
Only emptiness.
And she was the one staring into it.
She exhaled through her nose like someone who needed to exhale through her nose and did so without apologizing.
Then, despite herself, she thought of the knife behind her against the wall.
His hands around both her wrists.
That face that never revealed anything.
And that moment—
A fraction of a second—
When his eyes had said something anyway.
She didn’t know what.
She preferred not to look for the answer.