The letter arrives via Tan, who hands it over with the specific expression of a man delivering news he already knows I’m not going to like.
“From the palace,” he says.
“Official seal.
Came through the Emperor’s office directly.”
I break the seal, unfold it, and read exactly one line before deciding I need to sit down for the rest of it.
The Emperor, in his wisdom, has identified a suitable match for the former Empress Liora, to formally resolve her status and ensure the continued stability of the succession.
“A match,” I say out loud, to nobody, to the chicken currently investigating my shoe.
“They found me a husband.”
“A what?” Mei looks up from the laundry so fast she nearly drops an entire basin of water.
“A husband, Mei.
A groom.
A suitor.
Apparently the fastest way to make an inconvenient disgraced empress stop being inconvenient is to marry her off to somebody with a title small enough that nobody cares what happens to her afterward.” I keep reading, and the name at the bottom makes something in my chest sink even further.
“Lord Weiran Xu.
Never heard of him in my life, but apparently he’s very eager, since this letter also mentions he’s arriving today.
Today, Mei.
As in several hours from now, today.”
“Today,” she repeats, faintly.
“Today.” I fold the letter back up with the specific violence of someone who would very much like to fold the entire concept of arranged marriage into a small paper square and throw it into the well.
“Okay.
New emergency.
Forget the fence, forget the garden, we have approximately four hours to make me the least marriageable woman in the history of this empire.”
Lord Weiran Xu arrives precisely on schedule, which is already a bad sign, because punctual men who show up excited to meet a woman they’ve never spoken to are rarely the kind of punctual that bodes well for anyone involved.
He’s younger than I expected, decent looking in a soft, well fed sort of way, dressed in robes so aggressively embroidered they practically announce his arrival before he does, and he steps through my gate with the wide, hopeful smile of a man who has clearly built an entire fantasy in his head about rescuing a tragic, delicate woman from ruin.
I am, unfortunately, standing in the middle of the garden with dirt to my elbows and a dead chicken feather stuck in my hair, which should immediately disqualify me from anyone’s rescue fantasy, and yet.
“My lady,” he says, bowing with a flourish that involves entirely too much wrist movement.
“I’ve heard so much about your unfortunate circumstances.
I’ve come to see for myself.”
“Have you,” I say, already deploying phase one of Operation Least Marriageable Woman Alive.
“Well, welcome to my unfortunate circumstances.
Mind the chicken droppings, we’ve got three now and they’re not particular about where they leave their opinions.”
He does not, in fact, mind the chicken droppings, stepping neatly around them with the ease of a man who has clearly decided nothing here is going to dampen his enthusiasm.
“How resourceful,” he says, gazing at the garden like it’s a charming little hobby rather than the difference between eating and not eating.
“I’m told you’ve managed remarkably well, given your reduced circumstances.”
“Reduced circumstances is one way to put it.” I lead him toward the main room, where I have very deliberately left several things out that I suspect will help my cause.
A basket of compost, still actively composting, sits by the door, doing its aromatic work with real dedication.
“Would you like tea?
From weeds, mostly.
Very good for digestion, I’m told, though I haven’t fully confirmed that.”
“Tea from weeds,” he repeats, delighted, like I’ve said something charmingly whimsical rather than a genuine description of my Tuesday afternoon.
“How resourceful.”
He says resourceful a lot.
I’m starting to suspect it’s the only compliment he owns.
I pour him a cup of the bitterest weed tea I can manage on short notice, watch him drink the entire thing without complaint, and feel my strategy quietly failing in real time.
“Delicious,” he says, and I genuinely cannot tell if he’s lying or if his taste buds have simply given up on him at some point in the past.
Dinner does not go better.
I’ve instructed Mei to serve everything in the least appetizing manner physically possible, which she executes with the enthusiasm of someone finally getting to weaponize her cooking skills for good instead of nutrition, and I personally commit to eating with my hands, loudly, while discussing compost ratios at length.
“The key,” I explain, mid bite, “is getting the carbon to nitrogen balance right.
Too much green matter and it goes slimy.
You want a good mix of dry material, leaves, straw, that sort of thing, layered properly, or the whole pile just turns to sludge and smells like—”
“Fascinating,” Lord Xu says, leaning forward with genuine interest, and I want to scream into my weed tea.
“I also talk to my chickens,” I add, desperate now.
“At length.
About my feelings.
Would you like to hear about my feelings regarding Duchess’s laying schedule?”
“I would love to.”
I stare at him.
He stares back, hopeful and completely undeterred, and somewhere behind me I can hear Mei making a small, strangled noise that might be laughter or might be despair on my behalf.
“You’re very unusual,” Lord Xu says, warm and sincere in a way that makes my stomach drop even further.
“Most ladies at court would never dream of discussing compost over dinner.
I find it refreshing.”
“That’s certainly a word for it.”
“I think we’d suit each other quite well, actually,” he continues, entirely oblivious to every single red flag I have personally, painstakingly waved in his face for the last several hours.
“A woman who isn’t afraid of hard work, who speaks her mind.
My estate could use someone with your particular talents.”
I open my mouth to say something, anything, that might finally puncture this man’s relentless optimism, and that’s when Casimir walks through the gate.
I don’t know how word reached him this fast, but there he is, unannounced, dressed in something more formal than his usual thatching clothes, jaw set in a line I haven’t seen from him before, and the temperature of the entire evening drops several degrees the second he steps into the yard.
“Lord Xu,” he says, voice perfectly level, perfectly controlled, and somehow twice as sharp for it.
“I wasn’t aware you’d be visiting the wing this evening.”
Lord Xu, to his credit, does not seem remotely intimidated by a prince appearing out of nowhere in the middle of his marriage prospecting dinner, which either speaks to real confidence or a genuine inability to read a room.
“Prince Casimir,” he says, standing to bow, entirely pleasant.
“I didn’t realize crown business extended to dinner hours.
The lady mentioned you check in periodically.”
“I do.” Casimir’s eyes flick to me, then back to Lord Xu, something tight and careful working behind his expression.
“Regularly, in fact.”
“How thorough of you.” This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
“I take my duties seriously.”
There’s a very specific kind of silence that follows this exchange, the kind where two men are clearly having an entire second conversation underneath the words they’re actually saying, and I sit there with weed tea going cold in my hands, watching it happen, feeling something warm and treacherous unfurl in my chest that I absolutely do not have time for right now.
“Well,” I say, standing, mostly to break the tension before it does something structural to my dining room, “Lord Xu, it’s getting late, and I imagine you have a long ride back.”
“I’m staying at the guest quarters, actually.
I intend to visit again tomorrow, if that’s agreeable.”
Of course he is.
Of course he does.
“How resourceful,” I say, deploying his own word back at him with more bite than he seems to notice, and walk him to the gate with the particular exhaustion of a woman who has failed spectacularly at scaring off a suitor for the first time in her entire second life.
He bows again, entirely too pleased with himself, and disappears into the dark toward the guest quarters, leaving me alone in the yard with Casimir, whose composure has not fully returned even now that the audience is gone.
“He seemed very taken with you,” Casimir says, and there’s an edge in it he’s not quite managing to hide.
“I tried everything, Casimir.
I discussed compost at length.
I ate with my hands.
I offered to discuss my chicken’s laying schedule in detail.
Nothing worked.
I think I actually made it worse.”
“You made yourself more interesting to him, is what happened.”
“That was extremely not the goal.”
He’s quiet for a moment, looking toward the guest quarters where Lord Xu presumably went to dream happily about compost ratios and weed tea, and something in his jaw stays tight in a way that tells me this isn’t just about crown duty or protecting an investigation anymore, if it ever fully was.
“I don’t like it,” he says finally, low, like the admission costs him something to say out loud.
“Don’t like what, specifically?”
“Any of it.” He looks at me then, properly, something raw and unguarded flickering behind the careful composure he usually wears so well.
“The idea of you married off to a man you’ve never met, for the sake of convenience.
Sent somewhere I can’t easily follow.
I don’t like it, and I’m finding it very difficult to pretend I don’t.”
The yard goes very quiet.
Even Duchess, roosting nearby, seems to have picked the worst possible moment to stay uncharacteristically silent.
“Casimir—”
“I know it’s not my place to have an opinion on it,” he continues, faster now, like he’s decided he’s already said too much to stop halfway through.
“I know the sensible thing is to let politics run its course and focus on the investigation.
I’m simply telling you that I don’t like it, and I wanted you to know that, whatever else either of us decides to do about it.”
I stand there in the dark, dirt still under my fingernails, chicken feather probably still in my hair, and feel something in my chest go warm and terrified all at once.
“Well,” I say eventually, because someone has to say something, and apparently it’s going to be me.
“For what it’s worth, I’m not exactly thrilled about it either.”
It’s not a confession.
It’s not enough, not nearly enough for everything sitting unsaid between us.
But it’s honest, and out loud, and in the quiet of the garden, for tonight, it feels like it might just be enough to be going on with.