Once, there was laughter in the palace.
Not the strained, polite kind that echoed through court banquets and hollow chambers, but the real kind — warm, unguarded, full of mischief. It lived in the old garden courtyard behind the southern kitchens, where the pomegranate trees bent low and the walls were too high for watchful eyes.
It was there that we once played.
Five of us. Before war and titles, before rot and curses, before mothers whispered warnings in silk-lined chambers.
Wu Jin and I, always shoulder to shoulder. Me, silent and sharp; him, clever and restless, constantly challenging me to run faster, climb higher. Wu Kang — older, brash, convinced he would rule not just our family but the whole Empire. He cheated in every game, and still we let him. Wu Ling — strange even then. She rarely smiled, but when she did, it was with half her mouth, as if the other half had already seen something the rest of us hadn't.
And then — her.
Our cousin.
She didn't wear jade like the rest of us. Her robe hems were frayed, her sash faded. Her mother was from a minor concubine line, only allowed in court on ceremonial days. But when we gathered in that courtyard, it didn't matter. She was the glue. The peacemaker. The one who could make Wu Jin stop brooding or Wu Kang stop bragging.
She was the one who made Wu Ling laugh. Not just a breath, but a real laugh — once. I remember it clearly because it never happened again.
Her name is still there, somewhere inside me. But I haven't said it aloud in years. Not since the day she disappeared.
That morning had been like any other. Wu Jin and I had stolen candied hawthorns from the kitchens and dared each other to eat them before lunch. Wu Kang was drilling with the palace guards, barking orders too loud for his age. Wu Ling watched ants drown in a bowl of milk.
She arrived last — hair unbraided, tunic stained, cheeks flushed from running.
"Late again," I had said.
She'd grinned and tossed a broken peach at my chest.
But that was the last time.
The next morning, her courtyard chamber was empty.
Her brush and scrolls were gone.
Her shoes remained, still damp from the rain the night before.
I had run to my mother. Asked where she had gone.
She had only shaken her head. Not in confusion — in fear.
"She is no longer spoken of," was all she said.
Wu Jin didn't ask.
He knew not to.
Wu Kang pretended he didn't care. He barked louder at drills that day.
Wu Ling didn't speak at all. She stayed by the Bodhisattva shrine for three hours and came back with ash on her hands.
None of us asked why.
That was the rule. To survive in this palace, you learned which names to forget.
We never spoke of her again.
But I remembered.
In the silence between court lessons.
In the hollow of every unspoken question.
When I passed that old courtyard and the wind shifted the pomegranate leaves just so.
Even after my mother died, I remembered.
Even when Wu Jin turned his mind to colder things, I wondered if he remembered too.
And now, she was lying on the pallet in front of me.
Not dead.
Not gone.
Returned.
Like a splinter pressed out of the flesh after years of festering.
She hadn't spoken since I brought her here. Her breathing was shallow. Her wrists bore bruises where the ropes had chafed. Her fingers were dirty, cracked at the edges, but still she looked more like herself than any memory I had clung to.
I sat across from her, watching the way the shadows danced across her cheekbones. She had grown leaner. Her face more angular. But there — just beneath the curve of her eye — the faint scar from the orchard fall. I had pushed her by accident. She forgave me before I could apologize.
Even now, I could hear her voice in my mind:
"We're all just little gods until the world teaches us shame."
She had said that once, when Wu Kang bragged about inheriting the sword of the Lord Protector.
And we had laughed. Even Wu Ling.
I closed my eyes.
How many years had passed since then?
I remembered my mother brushing my hair back before court sessions, whispering that I had to stay quiet, not draw attention. She had warned me that second sons were never safe.
But even she had once smiled when our cousin visited.
Even she had allowed a girl from a ruined line to eat dumplings in her chamber — something she never allowed servants or even minor nobles.
And yet…
She had said nothing when that girl vanished.
No one had.
I opened my eyes and looked at the woman sleeping before me.
What had been done to her?
Who had sent her away?
Why now — after all these years — did Wu Jin ask for her return?
And why had he not told me who she was?
Unless…
Unless he wanted me to see for myself.
Not just to recognize her.
But to remember what we had all become since she vanished.
I stood slowly and walked to the basin. The water was still. My reflection was faint, but not unfamiliar — the lines under my eyes, the flicker in the pupils, the quiet rot that had crawled up from Cao Wen and nested behind my ribs.
When I returned, I sat beside her and reached for a cloth. I dipped it in water, wrung it once, and gently pressed it against her forehead.
She stirred — a faint flinch.
But did not wake.
I hesitated, then whispered her name — the one I had not spoken in over a decade.
It hurt more than I expected.
As if calling it back into the air broke something sacred.
She didn't respond. Not yet.
But I would wait.
Tomorrow, the treaty would be signed.
Flags would rise. Trumpets would sound. The Emperor's seal would be pressed in wax while ministers smiled with hidden knives.
And I would stand among them, holding a secret no one expected.
Because this woman — this prisoner — was no longer just a shadow from my past.
She was proof that the palace eats its own.
And if Wu Jin had brought her back now, of all times—
Then he was not preparing for peace.
He was preparing for war.