The torches had gone out.
Only the echoes remained — the whisper of old stone, the silence of breath held too long.
I stood in the dark, my hand clenched around the prisoner's shoulder. My palm throbbed with heat — not from exertion, but from the old scar. The spiral. The mark. It pulsed like a second heartbeat.
The Black Tigers said nothing.
No orders passed between us.
Only instinct now.
Retrieve. Escape. Bury the blood.
Then — light returned.
One by one, the torches flared to life again, flames shivering without wind.
The Southern King stood where he had been, unmoved. Behind him, Lianhua's expression had shifted — still composed, but her veil of serenity was thinner. I could see it in her eyes: the smallest crack.
He spoke again, voice even.
"Take her, then."
Her?
I looked down at the shape in my grip — still hooded, still bound. Her?
But his next words cut deeper.
"Know this, Prince of the North: peace has weight. You've tipped the scale."
He turned toward the stairs, not looking back.
"The treaty is to be signed tomorrow. You've made sure it will bleed before the ink dries."
My stomach tightened. "You'll break the agreement?"
He paused.
"I won't," he said. "But the court might. The ministers who begged me for truce, who offered tribute and grain — they will whisper now. They will wonder if I let you in on purpose. If you left with something I gave."
He looked over his shoulder.
"Trust is a vase cracked at the base. It may hold water a while longer. But only until someone notices the leak."
Lianhua spoke then — soft, venom-laced.
"You could leave the prisoner behind," she said. "No one would know. No one but us."
I met her gaze. "And Wu Jin?"
She smiled. "He would adapt. He always does."
But I was already turning away.
I motioned for the Black Tigers.
Two moved ahead, checking the corridor. One remained close, blade half-drawn.
The prisoner stirred under the cloak — her breath no longer steady. Her wrists twitched, as if fighting against bonds she no longer believed in.
I didn't tighten the rope.
I didn't speak.
We moved quickly, silently — retracing the steps that brought us into the belly of the palace. Past ritual chambers, damp stone, flickering braziers where old prayers had burned to ash. We passed the corpses of the two elite guards, their blood dried against the bell tower base. No alarm had been raised.
No one dared.
The night outside was cold. Cleaner, but not gentler. The wind carried the scent of jasmine from the river and the stink of horse manure from the royal stables. Above us, stars pierced the clouds like nails driven into heaven's skin.
We didn't take the main paths.
We moved along the servant tunnels, over storerooms, down forgotten hallways where the floorboards buckled and the lanterns swayed without light. This city was polished on the surface. But beneath — it was as rotten as ours.
By the time we reached our temporary compound near the embassy pavilion, dawn was beginning to stretch its fingers across the eastern ridge.
I dismissed the Tigers.
No words. Just a glance. They nodded, disappeared into their quarters.
No one would speak of what happened.
Not yet.
Inside, the room was simple — one table, one brazier, one basin of cold water. No mirrors. Mirrors weren't safe anymore.
I laid the prisoner on a low pallet and secured the door behind me.
She lay still, breathing shallow.
I could feel it.
The scar in my palm had not stopped burning. But now… it pulsed differently. Not in warning.
In memory.
I stepped closer.
Then slowly, carefully — I removed the hood.
The cloth fell.
And the world didn't shatter.
It stopped.
Just for a moment.
My breath caught in my throat.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
Hair matted and short. Skin pale. Bruised. But the shape of the jaw. The line of her brow. The scar on the cheekbone — faint, but familiar. A mark she got after falling from a horse as a child. The lips were cracked, but I remembered the crooked way they curled when she lied. The way she stared at me now — half-defiant, half-dead — was a gaze I had once seen across garden paths, behind palace pillars, in that secret courtyard behind the jasmine walls.
I had not seen that face in over a decade.
I had thought her dead.
Cast out. Forgotten. One of the royal bastards erased after a scandal. A whisper. A name I hadn't dared speak aloud in years — not even to Wu Jin.
But she was here.
She was alive.
And Wu Jin had sent me for her.
The wound in my palm stopped pulsing.
It throbbed, once.
Hard.
I sat beside her slowly, knees heavy.
She didn't speak.
Neither did I.
Her eyes flicked to the basin of water in the corner, and for the first time, I realized — she wasn't afraid of me.
She was watching the shadows.
The kind that moved without light.
The ink inside her had not bled yet. But I saw it behind her eyes — that same hollow weight that clung to me after the vault, after Cao Wen, after the spiral door opened beneath the shrine.
She'd seen something too.
She bore the mark.
My hand trembled.
Not because I feared her.
But because I feared what we shared.
Tomorrow, I would attend the treaty ceremony. I would stand before silken banners and masked diplomats and false priests chanting peace while the foundations cracked beneath them.
And I would do it knowing that what I carried out of the dungeon was not just a girl once cast out.
She was a door.
And I had just opened it again.