The ink had dried on the treaty. The trumpets had sounded. Smiles had been exchanged across lacquered tables and silvered wine cups. But peace, like rot, could bloom in silence and spread in shadow.
In the public eye, I had signed defeat. Five years instead of ten. Tariffs that bled the northern roads. A humiliation carved beneath banners of unity.
But the Kingdom of Liang had long since shattered beneath those banners.
A name shared between two kings. An emperor held hostage in his own court in the north, and a self-proclaimed guardian of the realm here in the south — righteous, crowned, gilded in decay. The South claimed legitimacy, but they were rotting inside. I had seen it. Heard it in the whispers of tired ministers, in the desperation behind smiles.
And so I moved.
Not with fire.
But with poison.
Liao Yun arrived by dusk. He had come quietly, cloaked in merchant silks, escorted by two hand-picked guards who swore false names and bore calluses from sword hilts.
We met beneath the old lotus pond of the southern palace — a ruin once used by the late queen as a bathing garden. Its pool was now dry, choked with weeds, the stone bench warm with sun-rot.
"You signed," Liao Yun said, not as accusation, but calculation.
"I did," I replied.
He glanced at the skies. "And yet you summoned me. What thread remains to pull?"
I handed him a scroll.
It was not a message.
It was a list.
Names of southern ministers. Merchants. Generals. Men who had smiled as I signed. Men who had conspired to profit off the treaty's terms. And hidden among them, the true hand behind the tariffs — the King's younger brother, cloaked in silk and ambition.
"I want them discredited. Quietly. One by one. Their ledgers exposed. Their ships delayed. Let the nobles of Jīn Lóng tear at each other before the ink even sets."
Liao Yun smirked, eyes sharp. "And the King?"
I said nothing.
But my silence was answer enough.
He opened another scroll, this one his own — a map, inked in fine strokes, showing military routes and grain paths. He tapped the northern frontier.
"You were right. The Southern Kingdom can't last. Their harvests failed last year. They've disguised it with southern imports, but the famine creeps."
"Military strength?"
"Dwindling. They have twenty thousand fit for front-line war, and fewer still who've seen real battle. Their best commanders were sent east to quell rebellion. Most never returned."
"And our position?" I asked.
"The Northern Command still holds three hundred thousand men under arms. Spread across three fronts, but disciplined. Loyal to your name and the Lord Protector's seal."
I closed my eyes briefly.
The Lord Protector. My father.
He would not send help. Not yet. Not until the South bled first. That was always his way — let the wolves weaken one another.
Which meant I had to act alone.
Or appear to.
That evening, I attended the palace feast.
Wine flowed like water. Dancers whirled in crimson veils. The King toasted loudly, his voice slurring pride and self-assurance.
"The Prince of the North," he declared, lifting a jeweled cup, "has wisdom beyond his years! May this peace bind us in golden chains!"
I smiled. Shallowly. Bowed my head.
But beneath the table, my foot pressed gently against the carved sigil of the old Southern Queen.
They had forgotten what real power looked like.
And I would remind them.
That night, in a shadowed corridor outside the old archive vault, three of the Black Tigers emerged from behind the wall panels. They were dressed as cellar guards, their blades soaked in oil to muffle the draw.
One carried a satchel of documents.
Southern tax ledgers.
Royal correspondence.
Secret troop placements.
All stolen in less than thirty minutes.
The Tigers delivered the satchel to one of my agents — a boy no older than fifteen, mute by training, whose eyes never lingered. By dawn, it was in Liao Yun's hands.
By noon, half the Southern Council would bleed secrets into their own wine.
That morning, I returned to Wu Shuang.
She still had not spoken more.
But she watched me differently now.
As if she knew the mask I had put on. As if she remembered the games we played in the garden — not the childish ones, but the ones with knives in our eyes and truths buried in riddles.
"Peace," I told her softly, "is nothing but a delay. A wound dressed in silk."
She blinked.
I smiled — not kindly.
"Soon, they'll realize what they've done. And when that day comes, I'll need you. You're not just a forgotten daughter anymore. You're leverage. A truth the world buried too early."
She did not respond.
But I could feel her breath sharpen.
She remembered.
And when the time came — she would choose.
Whether to rise with me.
Or stand in my way.
Either path would burn the South.
And Liang would remember its name.
Not as a fractured kingdom.
But as a blade unsheathed.