ZE ZHI WEI (萴智危)

  Day 1, 5th Month of the Lunar Calendar, 6000th Year of the Yun Dynasty, Taishan Province, Tian’an Sect

  I do a lot of stupid things. And committing murder at one of the grandest occasions in all the realms, the Imperial Autumn Hunt, has got to one of the more stupid ones. Except now, both my mother and her mysterious benefactor were onto my case.

  And to make matters even better, Yijun still hadn’t returned home from that day when he bluntly told me he betrayed our family. All that just made my insides tingle with worry.

  How much had he divulged to the Empress? Should we continue? Were we caught? Was this some trap?

  “Son, what do you think? Do you think it fits? Zhiwei?”

  “Huh? Oh yes, of course,” I instinctively replied. What?

  We were sitting at the table eating zhōu, if eating was equivalent to pushing food around the bowl. On the opposing side, my mother was smoothing out some female clothes. She tended to do that if she hadn’t taken her medicine, and she wasn’t in a crazed state.

  “Have you taken your medicine mother?”

  She waved me aside with her hand. “Yes, yes.”

  I tilted my head. “Mother.” She looked up at me with wide eyes. So clear. “Is everything well?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” She flicked out the outfit and lifted it up for me to see. “Isn’t this beautiful? Your sister will love it.”

  She rarely spoke of my sister, who might as well be called an acquaintance on the account that I had never seen her before she passed away, killed in the butchering of Liantai Sect. But whenever my mother did, she always had a clear gaze, not like when her mind was off into the stars, nor that cruel sharpness she had after eating her medicine. It was…pure.

  I reached for my mother’s hand. She looked at me, her eyes shining like a newborn’s, her cheeks rosy and somehow filling despite her obviously hollowed face. It would be wrong for me to take this memory from her.

  I returned a smile. “Yes, of course she would love it.”

  I wished that her sanity hadn’t been attached to those foul pills. Perhaps, she would be like this all the time. Not cold. Not crazy.

  She gasped and I reflexively grasped at the knife strapped to my thigh before she broke into a chuckle. “You know, Zhiwei. I have a secret.” She drew her face closer, beaming a smile that was brighter than the sun. “I’ve been spending time with Little Socks.”

  On revealing her secret, she leapt back, clasping her hands to her lips and wiggling her torso like an excited baby.

  My adorable little mother.

  The maniacal widow.

  If only she hadn’t been discarded, would things have been different? People would see her laugh and smile and cry. They would see her brilliant mind and clear eyes of pure amethyst. Now, she lived in her dreams. Stuck in the past and unable to move forward.

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  But even though it was a figment of her imagination, even though the dream would not last, even though Little Socks was long dead…it felt good to see her laugh.

  ***

  “Has it been done?”

  “Yes, I have prepared it accordingly.”

  “It is time to make those two pay dearly for their crimes.”

  I kept my head lowered as the man spoke—his voice was soft, but every word landed with an unmistakable edge. I thought keeping my gaze to the floor might help, but unfortunately, it brought his shoes into clear view. Embroidered slippers. Clean and tailored.

  I knew them immediately.

  A tight, sinking feeling pulled at my gut.

  I lifted my head to confirm what I already suspected. Our eyes met, and the pieces that had been drifting aimlessly in my mind suddenly aligned.

  “Yu Haifei,” I said.

  He smiled. “So what?”

  It was just like him to say that. So what? As if the name, the secrets, the betrayals meant nothing. And maybe they didn’t. Maybe all that mattered was that someone—anyone—still cared enough about my mother to avenge her.

  But even so, I didn’t feel relief. I felt wary.

  “So what,” he repeated, almost lazily, as he moved through the old guest hall.

  He came to a stop by a chair and ran a hand across the armrest. His fingers came away coated in dust and old grease. Displeased, he wiped his hand across his robes with a sharp frown, then perched gingerly on the edge of the seat, like the whole room might collapse beneath him.

  “Zhiwei, I see you have many questions.”

  I met his gaze briefly, startled. “I—”

  “It’s smeared all over your face, boy. Man up! You’re a Captain, aren’t you? A deposed one, sure, but still.” His muttering trailed off toward the end, but the meaning stuck.

  I winced inwardly and looked away, my shoulders curling slightly as if that would hide how poorly his words struck home. The truth was, I had never been more than a decorative title. A figurehead granted a small retinue of soldiers out of courtesy by the Crown Prince. A token. Everyone knew it.

  I used the moment to glance around the room.

  The hall hadn’t seen use in years. Dust clung to the beams and spider silk threaded between the corners of paper lanterns, which hadn’t been lit in what felt like a decade. The walls were thin—paper stretched over wood—and in the far corner, something shifted behind one of them. A shadow moved just slightly, barely enough to catch the eye.

  My pulse stumbled. Yijun? Is that you?

  Yu Haifei didn’t notice. Or perhaps he didn’t care.

  “You want to know ‘why you?’ Why it has to be you who kills the Crown Prince,” he said, as if narrating a conversation I hadn’t dared to start aloud. “You think of him as a brother, don’t you? And why not? He is your blood.”

  He wasn’t wrong. I blinked, trying to keep my expression steady, and pinched the inside of my wrist lightly beneath my sleeve. Anything to anchor myself.

  Yu Haifei leaned forward, his voice softening. “Because there’s no one Jin’er trusts more than you.”

  I flinched at the way he said my mother’s name—so familiar, so easy, like it still belonged to him. Like he’d earned the right to say it gently.

  The figure behind the paper wall shifted again, deliberately now. Pressing just enough to create an outline. A presence. I could feel their attention like a weight on my neck.

  Yu Haifei, unbothered, let out a quiet breath. “I shouldn’t have let Jin’er fall for that bastard.”

  The silence that followed was dense. Not the empty kind, but the type filled with things that were never said.

  She should have trusted me. But she only trusts you now.

  And you’re all I have left.

  You, who hesitate. You, who is so pathetic.

  You, who is a useless son with divided loyalties.

  “Ze Zhiwei,” he said, voice firmer, “don’t you want the suffering to end? Don’t you want your mother to reclaim what’s rightfully hers?”

  I looked past him—past the room, the dust, the weight of expectation—and toward the faint shape behind the paper divider.

  “Yes,” I said. I wanted my voice to sound even, but even if it did, my hesitation was plain visible.

  Yu Haifei narrowed his eyes. “Are you with me or not?”

  Are you prepared to kill Yun Rongxian?

  The question sat in the air like a blade held just above my skin.

  I… I didn’t know. I hated how they had humiliated my mother—how they locked her away, whispered behind fans, and treated her grief like madness. But that wasn’t Yun Rongxian’s fault. That was the Emperor. That was the Empress and her brood. The Crown Prince…he hadn’t done anything, really.

  He was just born to the wrong woman.

  That was all.

  The shadow behind the wall leaned closer. Not intruding. Just letting me know he was there. Watching.

  “I am with you,” I said at last.

  I wasn’t sure if he believed me. I wasn’t sure if I believed me.

  But if I was going to be a weapon in Yu Haifei’s hand, I wanted the right to choose my target.