The palace corridors stretched before me like veins of a living beast, pulsing with old betrayals and new dangers. I had walked these gilded halls in shadows before—first as a trembling girl, then as a eunuch with secrets stitched into every seam of my robes. Now I returned as neither, yet both.
A woman unveiled.
A storm given form.
Li Jun found me where the moonlight pooled between vermilion pillars, his presence both comfort and complication.
"Must you always watch me?" My voice cut colder than the autumn wind slicing through the colonnade.
He smiled—that infuriating, familiar smile—though his eyes betrayed something raw. "Old habits." A pause. "And new fears."
I turned away before the ache in my chest could take root. This was no place for tenderness. The very stones here drank blood like wine.
"Your protection is unnecessary." My fingers brushed the dagger hidden in my sleeve—a recent acquisition. "I wield my own blades now."
Then came the serpent's whisper.
"How touching."
Liu Rufeng emerged from shadow, his merchant's silks whispering against marble. That smile—the one that had once coaxed secrets from my lips—now set my teeth on edge.
Li Jun stiffened. "Your games aren't welcome here."
"Games?" Liu Rufeng's laugh was a knife drawn slowly. "This is no game. It's a reckoning." His gaze slid to me. "And she knows it."
The air between us crackled with unsaid things—past alliances, broken trusts, the poison we'd once fed each other in dark corners.
I stepped forward, letting moonlight carve my face into something sharp. "If you've come to offer help, name your price."
"Clever as ever." He inclined his head. "But some bargains are better discussed... privately."
Li Jun's hand found my elbow. A warning. A claim.
I shook him off.
Three players now in the lamplight.
The loyalist.
The viper.
And me—no longer pawn, but pivot.
"Enough." My voice silenced them both. "This palace has bled its fill from secrets. I mean to make it vomit them back up."
Liu Rufeng's eyes glittered. "Even if it chokes you in the process?"
I smiled then, slow and terrible.
"Let it try."
Somewhere beyond the courtyard, a nightingale sang—its melody swallowed by the coming storm.
The game had changed.
And so had I.
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