Mingyu sat in his study long after the lamps should have been trimmed.
The room had always been a map disguised as furniture. The long table was a river. The shelves were ranges of mountains quietly holding borders in place.
Even the window, with its carved lattice, cut the sky into squares the way a general turns open ground into boxes he can move men across. Tonight, the map looked smaller than he remembered and the squares were not enough.
Lin Wei was alive.
His son was alive.
He let the truth take up space in his chest, heavy and breakable as a cup filled to the rim.
He had carried treaties and sieges and winter campaigns like they were only other ways to breathe. He had never once felt his hands shake doing it. At the gate, when he'd seen the set of Xinying's shoulders and the small, raw fists dug into another man's robe, something tight behind his ribs had threatened to split.
