An hour passed.
Yanlong opened the door to Tianyin’s room.
Empty.
The maids were there, motionless, with that particular silence of people who sense that something unpleasant is approaching and are simply hoping not to be the cause of it.
“Where is the princess?”
The nearest maid opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Swallowed.
“We…
Your Highness…
since you left her, we haven’t…”
Yanlong walked back out.
In the corridor, the lanterns swayed gently in the evening.
Something in his gaze changed.
Within four seconds, every person present in that corridor found themselves on their knees.
Spontaneously.
By instinct.
Guard Shen Yuze came trotting over, bowed, and murmured quietly:
“Your Highness.
Yunxi Mountain.
At Grand Tutor Cangsong’s.”
Yanlong inhaled through his nose.
Of course.
He turned on his heel without a word.
Behind him, at a reasonable and steadily increasing distance, the maids began breathing again.
“Poor princess,” one of them whispered.
“She’s going to get struck by lightning.”
“I wouldn’t want to be in her place.”
“Neither would I.”
Yunxi Mountain rose just behind the imperial palace.
Covered in black pines and light mist even in the hottest season.
That was where Grand Tutor Cangsong had lived since his retirement.
There he cultivated his rare plants, gathered his mountain flowers, and raised his Linyao, those tiny fist-sized golden creatures that some called sprites and others called the children of the forest.
They lived in ancient oaks and sang at night.
Their song was the kind that made people forget what was eating away at them, at least for the duration of a song.
Yanlong climbed the path in a furious stride.
“Why,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
“The entire sky at my disposal, immortals, goddesses, daughters of great celestial clans, and she’s the one they dump on me.”
He stepped over a root with restrained violence.
“There are daughters of gods, immortals, princesses of the celestial kingdoms.
Hundreds of them.
Women who stay where they’re put.
Who don’t constantly seek to challenge you.
And she’s the one they send me.”
He stumbled over a root.
That gaze.
He stopped for half a second.
Then,
He continued faster.
“I’m getting a divorce.
As soon as I find her, I’m getting a divorce.
Or I’ll put her in a tower.
A very tall tower.
Without windows.
Or with a small window but very narrow, no, without a window.
Or maybe I’ll just twist her neck and we won’t…”
The bamboo stick came down on his head with the quiet precision of forty years of teaching.
Yanlong froze.
He turned around, already with a retort on his lips, already with his brows drawn together, already thinking Tianyin, I swear to you that…
It wasn’t Tianyin.
Grand Tutor Cangsong stood on the path behind him.
As motionless and ancient as an old mountain pine.
His long white beard fell over his chest.
His half-closed eyes carried that expression, that absolute and slightly disappointed calm of a master who had heard everything and had not yet said a word.
The stick disappeared behind his back.
One wrinkled hand stroked his beard.
Thoughtfully.
And the old master began walking along the path again without waiting for his disciple, without looking at him, as though the Crown Prince of the Yan Empire were nothing more than an eight-year-old boy who had once again been caught stealing rice cakes from the kitchen.
Yanlong put a hand to his head.
“Master, I…
forgive me.”
The master did not answer.
With one hand behind his back, without turning around, he pointed toward the flower basket resting at the edge of the path.
Yanlong picked up the basket.
Grand Tutor Cangsong’s house was small, low, utterly serene.
A quiet offense to all the splendor of the palace below.
Dried herbs hung from the rafters.
Incense and pine resin mingled into something that smelled of childhood and unfinished lessons.
The master settled into his bamboo chair with the sovereignty of a man who had nothing left to prove to anyone.
Yanlong placed the basket on the table.
And saw the cup.
Steam.
White chrysanthemum.
Mountain honey.
Who made this?
The master was with me on the path since…
A movement in the kitchen corner.
Light footsteps.
Silk against cold stone.
“Here you are, Master.
Your tea.”
Yanlong did not move.
That voice.
He would recognize it amid any sound in the world.
He did not want to know why.
Tianyin emerged from the shadows, holding the cup in both hands with a delicacy he had never seen from her before, and offered it to the Grand Tutor with a bow that was not forced in the slightest.
Natural.
Real.
As though she had been doing this all her life.
Yanlong pointed at her.
“You, how dare you…”
Cangsong looked up from his cup.
He stopped.
He had received that look for the first time at the age of seven.
Since then, he had learned, at his own expense and on several occasions, that when Grand Tutor Cangsong raised his eyes like that, the sentence currently being spoken had to end immediately.
Ideally, even before it began.
“Master, she is…”
“Be quiet, will you.”
Cangsong’s voice was never loud.
It didn’t need to be. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
It was the kind of voice that carried weight.
He lowered his eyes back to his cup.
Took a sip.
Closed his eyes for a second.
Opened them again and looked at Yanlong.
“You, who never come to see me since I retired.”
He simply extended a hand, caught Yanlong’s ear between his thumb and forefinger, and pulled gently, effortlessly, like plucking a flower one had known for a long time.
“Ouch…”
“Months,” Cangsong continued, gently pulling without letting go.
“I’ve been waiting for visits for months.
My disciples have all become great and busy figures who no longer have time for old masters.”
He paused.
“So when someone takes the trouble to climb all the way here and prepare my tea without being asked…”
He released the ear.
“…that person deserves all my attention.
You can return to the palace.”
Yanlong brought a hand to his red, burning earlobe.
The expression of a man realizing that the entire world had conspired against him and that no one understood him.
“But Master, she…”
“Don’t argue.”
Tianyin had sat down on the little stool at the Grand Tutor’s feet.
Her knees drawn in.
Her hands hidden inside her sleeves.
Something danced in her eyes that Yanlong identified without the slightest hesitation.
Satisfaction.
Served at room temperature with a smile she didn’t even bother to hide.
He shot her a look.
She calmly turned her head the other way, as though the wall to her right had suddenly become extremely interesting.
“How dare she sit beside…”
“I invited her,” Cangsong said simply.
“She is a remarkably lively child.
It has been a long time since such energy has come here.”
“Unlike certain disciples of mine who have become as warm as a temple pillar.”
Tianyin brought both hands to her mouth.
Something warm and irritating and absolutely out of the question slipped into Yanlong’s chest.
He crushed it immediately.
He refused to look for its name.
He crossed his arms.
I am not jealous.
This is ridiculous.
I have no feelings.
I am the Crown Prince of Yan.
I am not jealous.
The three of them descended as night fell.
Cangsong walked with his hands behind his back, serene, like someone taking a stroll and finding life generally satisfactory.
Tianyin walked at his left side, her head slightly tilted toward him.
Their voices could be heard answering one another, his patient and gentle, hers direct and unfiltered, and something between them that resembled a real conversation.
Yanlong walked behind them.
His arms crossed.
His eyes, however, had decided to do whatever they wanted.
Every fifteen seconds, they returned to her.
She has already disappeared once, he thought.
It’s normal to check.
Anyone would check.
He was very convinced by this argument.
As soon as they returned to the palace, he took matters into his own hands.
“You both change before dinner.
Master, this room.
You, that one.”
Tianyin opened her mouth.
“Don’t argue.”
She looked at him for a second.
That calm and slightly dangerous look of people who save their words for the right moment.
Then she turned and entered the room.
Yanlong waited until the door was closed.
Turned around.
Cangsong had approached without a sound, as always.
He was holding something.
A small box of red lacquered wood, the copper clasp dulled by the years, resting in his wrinkled palm like an obvious thing.
“The sky-blue color will suit her very well tonight,” the old master murmured in the tone of someone talking about the weather.
He paused.
“And this…
should complete it.”
Yanlong opened the box.
A bed of ivory silk.
A hairpin.
The jade was such a deep green that it seemed to hold its own light inside—a plum branch carved into it, each petal rendered with a precision that had no business being found on something so small.
The object was old.
Precious.
And obvious in a way that made Yanlong slightly uncomfortable without him knowing exactly why.
He looked at it for another second.
This is…
He gently closed the box.
Slid it into his sleeve.
Turned toward the empty corridor, the maids waiting silently, the closed door behind which the faint rustling of silk could be heard.
He crossed his arms.
Waited.
It was a long time.
Or perhaps it wasn’t that long.
He wasn’t really sure.
When the door finally opened, Tianyin appeared in the corridor, her hair still slightly damp as she adjusted her belt.
A plum-colored dress.
Yanlong looked at her.
“Go back and change.”
“Pardon?”
“That dress.
It doesn’t suit you.”
“It suits me perfectly well,” Tianyin said in an even and dangerous voice.
“You’re the one with the problem.”
“It isn’t appropriate.
Go back.”
Silence.
Tianyin looked at him.
He held her gaze without flinching.
He was very good at that.
She went back into the room.
Yanlong turned toward the maids gathered at the end of the corridor.
He lowered his voice slightly.
“The most beautiful blue dress you have.
Sky blue.
Every one you can find.
Now.”
The maids exchanged a glance.
“Immediately,” Yanlong repeated.
They ran off.
He waited in the corridor.
Cangsong stood beside him, his hands behind his back, looking at the sky through the lattice window.
On the other side of the door: the rustling of dresses, whispered voices, the sound of something being tried on and then decided against.
“Do you see that star?” Cangsong said softly.
“The little one, to the east.
Slightly apart from the others.”
Yanlong looked up despite himself.
“Which one?”
“The one that seems alone.
Distant.
One might think it is cold, that it has no place among the others.”
“But it is the brightest of them all.
It simply doesn’t need the others to shine.”
Yanlong stared at the star.
Stars.
He’s talking about stars.
It’s not a metaphor.
It’s not…
“Your Highness.”
A maid’s voice came from the half-open door.
“The Princess is ready.”
The door opened.
And Yanlong, Crown Prince of the Yan Empire, a man of whom five armies could attest that he had never taken a step backward from anything, never, not once in twenty-six years of existence…
Took one step backward.
Then a second.
Tianyin appeared in the doorway, beneath the golden light of the lanterns.
The sky-blue dress, that first-morning blue, calm and inevitable, did something to Yanlong that he could not identify and refused to examine.
She approached.
His feet continued moving backward.
On their own.
Without asking his opinion.
As though they had made an independent decision and it was already too late to dissuade them.
Stop, he thought at his feet.
His feet did not listen.
Cangsong’s firm hand landed on his back.
Gentle.
Precise.
The old master approached him and said, without raising his head, with the quiet satisfaction of a man who had been waiting for this moment for a long time:
“When the plum tree blooms for the first time, even the stone forgets to remain still.”
And he laughed.
That low, warm laugh of an old master who has understood everything before everyone else and finds it genuinely amusing.
Something warm rose to Yanlong’s ears.
It’s hot tonight.
“You are…”
The words came out of his own mouth.
He had not chosen them.
“…presentable.”
Presentable.
The silence that followed had texture and weight.
Tianyin stopped.
Her expression passed through several stages within a second: surprise, disbelief, and something that looked very much like the desire to pick up the knife from earlier.
“Presentable,” she repeated.
Clear.
Even.
Like a blade calmly drawn from its sheath simply to show that it was there.
Cangsong’s elbow found Yanlong’s ribs with a precision that was anything but accidental.
Yanlong looked at the ceiling.
Then the lanterns.
Then some undefined point somewhere in the direction opposite Tianyin and the expression she was wearing at that moment.
He said nothing more.
They headed toward the Grand Banquet Hall.
Cangsong in the center, serene, his hands behind his back.
Tianyin at his left arm, leaning slightly toward him, their voices answering one another softly like two people who had found something to talk about.
Yanlong at the master’s right.
His arms crossed.
He looked straight ahead.
Finally.
He was trying.
In the distance, the celebration was already in full swing.
Zithers and jade flutes.
Boisterous laughter and superficial conversations.
All these brocade-clad people gathered beneath the lanterns for the Emperor’s birthday—uncles, cousins, allies, vultures.
All these beautiful people he hated seeing.
These people who smiled while counting the days.
In his left sleeve, the little red wooden box rested against his wrist.
Warm.
Presentable.
The word came back to him like a slap he had given himself.
Why that word.
Why not nothing.
Why not “good” or “acceptable” or anything else.
No.
Presentable.
He clenched his jaw.
I am an idiot.
The great golden doors of the Banquet Hall opened.
The guards bowed.
Cangsong entered as one enters a garden.
Tianyin entered with him.
On the threshold, she looked up at Yanlong.
One second.
Something that had not yet found its name, that was still searching for its shape in the space between them, that was perhaps quietly deciding what it was going to become.
She entered.
Yanlong followed her.
His arms crossed.
A box in his sleeve.
A word in his head that refused to leave.
The doors closed behind them.