"Chun Tao," Su Yuxiao said, turning away from the mirror. "Where is my father?"
Chun Tao blinked, still rattled. "The Prime Minister? In his study, miss. He always spends the afternoon there when court is not in session."
"I need to see him."
"Miss" Chun Tao's voice caught. "The Prime Minister does not like to be disturbed. And he has not said anything about you attending the banquet. Usually, he decides these things himself and informs you if he wishes you to appear. To go to him directly, without being summoned"
"Then he can tell me no himself." Su Yuxiao moved toward the door. "Which way?"
Chun Tao hurried after her, her footsteps quick and anxious on the wooden floors. "This servant will take you, miss. But please" She lowered her voice, though the corridor was empty. "The Prime Minister has been in a foul mood all week. Trouble at court. Something about the border taxes. He has been snapping at everyone. Even the stewards are walking carefully."
They passed through a courtyard where servants bent low in bows, their eyes averted. The Su compound was larger than Su Yuxiao had expected—courtyard after courtyard, covered walkways, gardens tucked into corners. Wealth that did not need to announce itself.
"What else should I know about him?" Su Yuxiao asked. "And about my family. I told you, things are fuzzy from the fever. Tell me everything."
Chun Tao looked at her and gave a slow nod. "The Prime Minister likes everything to be in order, miss. He doesn't like surprises. He expects people to obey. He has never raised his voice at you, but…" She paused.
"But what?"
"When he is disappointed, he doesn't shout. He just stops talking to you." Chun Tao spoke softly. "My mother worked here before me. She told me about a steward he trusted a lot. The man made a small mistake. After that, the Prime Minister never spoke to him again. Three months later, the steward left. He couldn't handle the silence."
Su Yuxiao filed that away. "And my mother? What happened to her?"
Chun Tao slowed her steps. "Your mother died when you were seven, miss. It was an illness. It came suddenly, and she was gone within a month. The Prime Minister…" She paused, choosing her words with care. "He did not handle it well. He closed her part of the house and never speaks about her."
"Did he love her?"
Chun Tao stayed quiet for a moment. "This servant does not know, miss. He is not a man who shows his feelings. But he never married again. And a man like him a Prime Minister trusted by the Emperor could have many wives. But he chose none of it."
"Why not?"
"I have heard the other servants speculate. Some say he loved your mother too much to replace her. Others say he saw marriage as a political variable he could not control. A new wife would bring her own family, her own schemes. The Prime Minister does not tolerate variables he cannot control." She glanced at Su Yuxiao. "The truth is likely somewhere between, miss. But no one knows for certain. He does not speak of such things."
Su Yuxiao nodded slowly. A mother dead of consumption. A father who sealed off her memory and never remarried, either out of grief or cold calculation or both. It was useful information.
They reached a pair of wooden doors carved with dragons. Two guards stood on either side, faces impassive.
"I need to see my father," Su Yuxiao said.
The older guard, a man with a scar from temple to jaw, did not move. "The Prime Minister gave orders not to be disturbed."
"I'm his daughter."
"His orders were clear."
Su Yuxiao drew herself up. "Then announce me. Tell him his daughter is here. If he turns me away, I will leave. But I will not be dismissed by someone who does not have the authority to dismiss me."
The guard's eyes widened. Beside her, Chun Tao made a strangled sound.
For a moment, no one moved. Then the guard inclined his head and slipped through the doors.
Chun Tao exhaled shakily. "Miss, you have never spoken to anyone like that. You never even raised your voice to a servant."
"The fever changed things," Su Yuxiao said.
The doors opened. The guard emerged, expression unreadable. "The Prime Minister will see you."
The study was dark wood and shadows. Scrolls lined the walls, their titles written on silk tags that fluttered when she passed. A single painting hung behind the desk a mountain landscape, peaks disappearing into mist.
Her father was seated behind the desk, a brush in his hand. He did not look up.
Su Yuxiao bowed. Waited.
The brush moved across the scroll. Characters took shape, precise and controlled. He was making her wait.
She waited.
Finally, he set down the brush. "You are recovered."
"Yes, Father."
"Chun Tao informed me you were awake. I expected you to rest."
"I rested enough. I came to ask your permission for something."
He looked up then. His face was thin, angular, the face of a man who had spent his life calculating risks. His eyes were dark, sharp.
"You came to ask," he said. "Not to be summoned. Not to be told. To ask."
"Yes, Father."
He leaned back, studying her. "You look different."
"I see things more clearly now."
"What things?"
She had prepared for this. "Myself. My place in this household. What I want."
His expression did not change, but something shifted in the air between them.
"And what do you want?"
"To attend the banquet tonight."
Silence. His fingers drummed against the desk once, twice. "The banquet honoring General Huo Lingfeng."
"Yes, Father."
"Why?"
Because I need to meet Murong Qian. She couldn't say that. "I have been ill for three days. I have been confined to my rooms for weeks before that. I am tired of staying in the background. I am the Prime Minister's daughter. I should be seen. I should be known. If I am to be married off for political advantage someday, I should at least understand the politics I am being married into."
His fingers stopped drumming. "You are more direct than you used to be."
"The fever made me realize that being quiet has not served me well."
Something flickered in his eyes surprise, maybe. "And what do you think you will learn at a banquet? You will sit in the back. Eat the food. Listen to music. You will learn nothing that matters."
"Then I will learn that there is nothing to learn. And I will never ask to attend another banquet again."
He picked up his brush, examined the bristles, set it down. "General Huo Lingfeng has returned from the northern border. The Emperor wishes to reward him. There is talk of a marriage."
A marriage. Su Yuxiao kept her face neutral. "To whom?"
"The General is young, unmarried, favored by the Emperor. Several factions are vying for the match." His eyes narrowed. "Lin Yourou. The granddaughter of the late Grand Secretary. Her family has been angling for a connection to the military for years."
"And if she succeeds? How does that affect you?"
He studied her for a long moment. "The Lin family has been trying to expand their influence for a decade. A marriage to the General would shift the balance of power. It would create new alliances. New enemies." His voice was flat, clinical. "Your question suggests you understand more than you have let on."
"I understand that politics is about who stands where when the ground shifts."
A ghost of a smile crossed his face. It was not warm. "Who told you that?"
"No one. I figured it out."
He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was different. Not softer, but less dismissive. "Princess Murong Qian will be at the banquet. She is always at these events. Watching. Waiting. She has been maneuvering in this court since she was twelve. She destroyed Consort Liu when she was a child. Do you know what that means?"
"Consort Liu poisoned her mother. The princess avenged her."
"She eliminated a rival." His voice was cold. "She was twelve years old, and she understood that power is not given. It is taken. You will stay away from her."
Su Yuxiao did not answer immediately. She was thinking about what Chun Tao had told her. Her mother, dead of consumption. Her father, never remarrying. It was the opening she needed.
"Father," she said, "may I ask you something? About my mother."
The change in his face was subtle. A tightening around his mouth. A stillness in his eyes.
"Why do you ask about her now?"
"Because I was ill for three days, and when I woke, I realized I know almost nothing about her. Chun Tao told me she died of consumption when I was seven. That is all I know. I thought perhaps you could tell me more."
He was quiet for a long moment. "She was quiet," he said finally. "She did not involve herself in court matters. She raised you, and she stayed in her rooms, and she died. That is all."
"That is all you have to say about her?"
"What else is there to say? She is dead. She has been dead for years. Dwelling on it serves no purpose."
Su Yuxiao looked at him the tightness in his jaw, the way his fingers had gone white against the desk. "Chun Tao told me you never remarried. Why?"
His eyes snapped to hers. "You discussed this with a servant?"
"I asked her about my family. She told me what she knew. She said there were rumors that you loved my mother too much to replace her, or that you did not want the complication of a new wife's family."
"She talks too much."
"Is it true?"
He stared at her for a long moment. Then, slowly, he picked up the brush and set it down again without writing.
"A new wife would bring her own family," he said. "Her own ambitions. Her own schemes. I have spent my career navigating factions, balancing interests, keeping the empire stable. Bringing another family into this household would complicate things I need to remain simple."
"So it was political."
"Everything is political." His voice was flat. "Your mother understood that. She kept to herself. She did not seek influence. She asked for nothing. When she died, I saw no reason to introduce a variable I could not predict."
You saw no reason. Not love, then. Or maybe love that had been buried so deep it looked like calculation. She could not tell.
"I understand, Father."
"Do you?" He studied her for a long moment. "The fever that changed you. Is it truly gone?"
She met his eyes. "I think it showed me things I should have seen a long time ago."
He nodded slowly. "See that you do not forget them."
She was almost at the door when he spoke again.
"Yuxiao."
She turned.
He was looking at her with an expression she could not name. "Your mother was not quiet because she wanted to be. She was quiet because she had to be. The court consumes women like her. It chews them up and spits them out. I could not protect her. I could not save her. All I could do was keep her out of the game entirely." He paused. "You are not quiet. You never were, even as a child. You asked questions. You wanted to know things. I tried to keep you out of sight because that was safe. But you are not staying out of sight anymore."
It was the most he had ever said to her. The most he had ever revealed.
"Father"
"Go." He picked up his brush again. "Prepare for the banquet. Be careful. And stay away from Princess Murong Qian."
She bowed and left, closing the doors behind her.
She sat at her dressing table while Chun Tao worked on her hair, running through everything she knew about Murong Qian. The mother who had been poisoned. The assassination attempt at fifteen. The young captain who saved her life, who worked beside her for months, who became the first person she trusted since her mother died.
Chun Tao's hands moved through her hair, pinning and arranging. "Miss, may this servant ask you something?"
"You may."
"Why do you want to go to the banquet so badly? You never cared about such things before. You always said they were boring, that the people were false, that you would rather stay in your rooms with your books."
Su Yuxiao looked at her reflection. The girl in the mirror was young and soft, her cheeks lightly rouged, her lips touched with color. But her eyes were the same eyes that had cried over Murong Qian's ending.
"There is a woman in this city who has been fighting alone her whole life. No one has ever stood beside her. No one has ever told her that she doesn't have to fight alone."
Chun Tao's hands stilled. "Miss... you cannot mean Princess Murong Qian."
"Why not?"
"Because she is dangerous. Because everyone says so. "
"My father is afraid of her. Everyone is afraid of her. But do you know what I think?"
Chun Tao shook her head.
"I think she is lonely. I think she has been lonely for so long that she has forgotten what it feels like to have someone on her side. And I think that if someone just one person stood beside her and refused to be scared away, it might change everything."
Chun Tao was quiet for a long moment. Then she picked up the brush again. "This servant thinks you are very brave, miss. Or very foolish."
"Perhaps both."
Chun Tao hesitated. "But if you are going to do this there are things you should know. Things the Prime Minister would never tell you."
"Tell me."
Chun Tao glanced at the door, ensuring it was closed. "Princess Murong Qian does not show her heart to anyone. But the old servants tell stories. When she was young, before her mother died, she was different. Laughing. Bright. She loved to paint. Her mother would sit with her for hours, teaching her the strokes, showing her how to capture light on water."
"What happened to those paintings?"
"No one knows. After her mother died, she stopped painting. She stopped laughing. She became the woman she is now." Chun Tao's voice dropped. "But sometimes, when she thinks no one is watching, she goes to the old gardens where her mother used to walk. She sits by the lotus pond and does nothing. Just sits. For hours."
Su Yuxiao's chest tightened. "How do you know this?"
"My aunt works in the palace. She has seen it. She says the princess looks like a different person in those moments. Softer. Younger. Like the girl she might have been, if things had been different."
Like the girl she might have been. Su Yuxiao thought about that. About Murong Qian as a child, laughing, painting, bright. About the woman she had become. About the cost of survival.
"Chun Tao," she said, "help me choose my robes. I need to look like someone she might want to talk to."
Across the city, in a palace of purple silk and jade, Princess Murong Qian stood at her window and watched the sun set.
The sky was on fire, red and gold bleeding into each other, the clouds edged with light. In an hour, she would walk into a room full of people who feared her, hated her, whispered about her. She would smile her cold smile, wear her mask of ice, and watch as the man she had loved for seven years smiled at other women.
She was tired. Not physically tired though she had slept poorly for weeks but something deeper. A bone-deep exhaustion that had been building for years. Since she was twelve and had destroyed her mother's murderer and learned that justice did not fill the emptiness in her chest. Since she was fifteen, when a young captain had pulled her out of an ambush and then, for months afterward, had worked beside her in the shadows, feeding her information, helping her navigate the court.
He had been the first person she trusted since her mother died. The first person who saw her not as a princess or a pawn, but as an ally. As someone worth fighting beside.
And then, slowly, he had changed. Or perhaps he had always been this way, and she had only seen what she wanted to see. He began to distance himself. He stopped sharing information. He started appearing at court events with Lin Yourou on his arm, smiling at her the way he used to smile at Murong Qian.
She had watched it happen and had done nothing. Because what could she do? He was a hero. She was a woman who had built her reputation on fear. She could not ask him to choose her. She could not make herself small enough to fit what he wanted.
"Young miss." Her maid appeared in the doorway. "The palanquin is ready. The Emperor expects your presence."
"I will be there shortly."
The maid withdrew. Murong Qian watched the last sliver of sun disappear behind the palace walls. She thought about the night ahead. The speeches. The music. The General, surrounded by admirers. The whispers that would follow her.
She would endure it. She always did.
But as the light faded, she found herself thinking about a rumor she had heard this morning. Whispered by servants who did not know she was listening. The Prime Minister's daughter, Su Yuxiao, had been ill for three days. A strange illness. She had collapsed in the courtyard, and when she woke, she was changed.
Changed how? Murong Qian did not know why she was curious. The Prime Minister's daughter was nobody. A quiet girl, forgettable. She had never mattered to anyone.
And yet.
She turned from the window and walked toward her dressing table. Her maid had laid out her robes deep purple, silver embroidery, the colors of royalty. She would wear them tonight. She would be the princess everyone expected her to be.
But she would watch for the Prime Minister's daughter. Just in case.