The candle on Yunan's desk burned low, a timid flame compared to the presence outside her window. She lay still, eyes half-open, her breath measured to the rhythm of someone who pretends to sleep yet listens to every faint sound.
The roof tiles held their silence like a cupped secret.The intruder shifted—barely. Too precise for a guard. Too controlled for an assassin.
The emperor always moved as if the palace itself obeyed him.
Yunan's fingers slipped beneath her pillow, brushing the cold edge of the hidden hairpin she'd sharpened days earlier. Her pulse didn't spike. It settled, like a lake hiding its undercurrents.
After a long, unbroken moment, the presence lifted away from the window.
Gone.
Or simply repositioned somewhere she couldn't see.
The bullet comments cracked like distant fireworks:
[No because WHY is bro perched on the roof at midnight?][Ma'am your emperor brother has boundary issues.][He's giving 'If I can't protect her, no one can' energy.][Someone hold my tea, this is getting spicy.]
Yunan slowly sat up, the moonlight sliding across her cheek like a cool hand of encouragement. She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and padded to the low table, pouring herself tea even though it was far past midnight.
The steam unfurled upward, whispering secrets.
"Why watch me?" she murmured to the empty room.
Her voice held no fear. Only irritation sharpened by betrayal.
The nights had been growing uneasy ever since she retrieved her mother's pendant. Someone had been reopening old corridors in the palace. Someone had been moving the pieces.
Her brother rarely entered a battlefield without preparing the grave.
A soft knock sounded at her door.
Not the emperor. He would never knock.
"Princess?" a nervous voice whispered. "It—it's Eunuch Bai. There's been an… incident near the Eastern Pavilion."
Yunan's jaw tightened. "An incident?"
"A body, Your Highness."A swallow."Someone attempted to infiltrate the emperor's private study."
Ah.
So the shadow tonight wasn't the only one moving.
Yunan tied her sash tighter and followed him into the corridor where lanterns flickered like anxious heartbeat pulses. They reached the Eastern Pavilion, which smelled faintly of blood and charred silk.
Guards crowded around a crumpled figure.
A spy—or an assassin—but the odd detail was that half of his clothes were burned clean through, as if he'd triggered some hidden defense mechanism.
She studied the body.No insignia.No clan marker.
But the hands… the calluses… the faint ink stain still caught beneath a fingernail…
A scribe.
A palace scribe.
This wasn't an attack.It was a silence attempt.
Someone within the palace had been working with forbidden documents, and this man probably saw something he wasn't meant to see.
She tucked that thought away.
A guard bowed deeply. "Princess, the emperor ordered that no one approach this area without his permission."
Yunan lifted an eyebrow, undeterred. "I am not no one."
The guard swallowed hard and stepped aside.
She crouched beside the body, ignoring Eunuch Bai's tremble behind her. The wound was precise, inflicted by someone who knew anatomy with surgical ruthlessness.
But there was something else.
A faint scent.Jasmine smoke.
Her breath caught.Only one person in the palace used jasmine incense in their weapon sheath.
Prince Yuanxiu.
The emperor's shadow of a shadow.
Her brother's most loyal hound.
The bullet comments went ballistic:
[WE HAVE A SUSPECT, PEOPLE.][Prince Yuanxiu… that man screams 'dangerous devotion.'][If he's cleaning up secrets at night… what exactly is the emperor hiding?][Yunan girl you're in the middle of a snake pit.]
Yunan rose, cool, unshaken, her shawl whispering against the stone.
She turned to leave, but the moment she stepped into the corridor's mouth—
A figure appeared at the far end.
Tall. Cloaked in imperial night-black. A mask obscuring the face, but the way the shoulders angled…
The way the air bowed around him…
Her heart stilled.
Not a guard.Not Prince Yuanxiu.Not Song Xiao or Jang Linghu.
This was the emperor himself.
Watching her investigate the corpse that he clearly didn't want her touching.
He didn't speak immediately.The lantern behind him cast his shape long and thin across the floor, like a blade sliding toward her feet.
Finally—
"Little sister," he said, voice soft but slicing. "What are you doing here?"
The temperature dropped.
Yunan offered a level, practiced smile. "Following your orders, naturally. The palace is too unpredictable recently."
His gaze flicked to the dead man. Then to her hands. Then to her face.
"Indeed," he murmured. "Unpredictable."
The quiet tension coiled. Every guard held their breath. Even the night seemed to lean in.
The emperor stepped closer, each footfall deliberate.
Yunan did not move away.
They stood only a few paces apart now—two threads twisting, tightening, neither willing to bend first.
His fingers gently lifted a strand of her hair that had fallen loose.
"You should be sleeping," he whispered. "Not wandering."
Yunan's smile never faltered. "You should be ruling the empire. Not patrolling roofs."
The emperor's hand froze midair.A crack of emotion.A flash behind his eyes.
But instead of anger, something colder surfaced.
Something possessive.
Something that made even the shadows hold still.
"Go back to your chambers," he said quietly. "Before the palace devours someone it shouldn't."
She turned sharply and walked away, not letting him see the shiver that ghosted down her spine.
Once she disappeared into the corridor's bend—
Only then did the emperor speak again, his voice a low thread of prophecy:
"I warned you, Yunan. Stay out of what doesn't belong to you."
Another guard shuddered as the body at his feet seemed to shrink into nothing.One more loose end tied.