Wu Kang's grief had turned to iron, and iron to blood.
The eastern palace groaned with it. Servants whispered that the chambers had become a cage, where a hawk beat its wings until nothing living dared move. Two serving women were found in the courtyard, throats cut like offerings. A steward vanished, his ledger cast into the pond, ink bleeding across lily leaves. Every night, more bodies disappeared into the darkness of his halls.
He did not weep. He did not speak of Wu Ling. He killed as though the act itself might keep her voice alive.
And when he passed the corridors, armor unfastened, blade in hand, even the guards stepped back. They said the shadow of his grief was heavier than the man himself.
While the East drowned in silence and screams, the rest of the capital busied itself with the matter of marriage.
The announcement of my union with Shen Yue had calmed ministers, if only briefly. But still the omens gathered.
On the morning the first silks were ordered, a raven fell dead in the courtyard, its beak smeared with foam. That evening, a fire consumed three wedding banners before they left the dyeing hall. And in the night, the well outside the bridal chamber ran red for an hour before returning clear.
The priests muttered of ill fortune. The Lord Protector told them to hold their tongues. The ministers bowed deeper, hoping the floor would eat them whole.
And yet preparations continued. For what else was there but to proceed?
One night, Shen Yue came to me as the lamps burned low.
Her face was bare of powder, her hair pinned simply. She sat across from me, her hands folded. Her eyes held the steel of a soldier who had walked battlefields without armor.
"They will say we marry too quickly," she said. "That our union mocks the ashes of your sister."
"They already say worse," I replied.
She did not smile. "Then we will let them. And still we will stand."
I studied her then—not as ally, not as bride, but as equal. She had stood at my side through courts that spat my name, through halls where silence bent the lamps. She had not faltered.
"Do you understand what comes?" I asked. "The court will dress this as peace, but peace is only another battlefield. They will strike at you, not me. They will call you witch, usurper, foreign seed. Can you bear it?"
Her gaze did not shift. "I have already borne worse. You know this. We are alike, Wu An. We do not wait for the world to give. We take. Together."
The silence beneath my ribs stirred, listening.
I reached across the table. Her hand was cold, but steady.
"Then next month," I said. "Not for love. Not for peace. For power, and for the house we will make from it."
She nodded. "And if they strike?"
"Then they strike iron," I said.
The silence pressed closer, not cruel, not kind. Simply present.
The days bent toward ceremony. Silk workers bled their fingers to weave crimson veils. Musicians rehearsed songs no one believed would last past the first note. Priests drew spirals of ash and claimed them to be blessings.
But still the omens grew.
A jar of wedding wine split without touch. The incense in the bridal chamber sputtered black instead of white. In the kitchens, the head cook swore that the rice turned to worms when left overnight.
The Lord Protector dismissed them all as superstition. But I saw his eyes darken, the way a general marks strange banners on the horizon.
Wu Jin's voice was colder. "Sabotage," he said when the broken wine jar was brought to him. "Or warning. Which matters more—the hand that struck, or the shadow it leaves?"
And though no one said it aloud, every gaze turned toward the east wing where Wu Kang's shadow walked.
He had withdrawn from the court, but whispers trailed him like smoke.
Some said he drank until his words turned to madness. Others claimed he sharpened his sword each night until the stone itself cracked. Servants swore he carved Wu Ling's name into his walls, letter by letter, until blood seeped from the cuts.
No one approached him. Not even Father.
But I felt him. His grief was no longer silent—it was a blade whetted on loss. And I knew blades do not stay sheathed when the world offers them a throat.
The night before the first offerings for the wedding were to be laid, Shen Yue returned again.
She wore no veil. Her hair was loose. She stood in the doorway long enough for the shadows to bend toward her.
"They will try," she said.
"Yes."
"They will try at the wedding feast. Not before."
"Why?"
"Because omens weaken hearts. And hearts already weak will crack easier when the cup is passed."
She spoke it plain: poison.
I did not flinch. "Then we will drink, and the world will see whether silence kills faster than venom."
For the first time, her lips curved. Not a smile of warmth, but of recognition. "You are more dangerous than they think."
"And you?" I asked.
She stepped closer. "I will stand beside you. If the wine is poisoned, I will drink. If the hall burns, I will burn."
The silence inside me shifted. For a moment, it felt almost like breath.
Wu Kang sharpened his blade that same night. Servants heard him whisper. Not prayers. Not Ling's name. Only numbers, spoken slowly, as though he had taken up the monk's last beads and counted them himself.
One. Two. Three.
The halls of the East shuddered with it.
And the bells, those patient bells, tolled once at midnight.
No one said for whom.