Morning came slow.
The fire had burned down to embers overnight. Someone had kept it going — I don't know who, probably Old Man Shen — but it was low now, just enough warmth to make the air around it feel different from the rest of the forest. People were still asleep. A few of the villagers were curled up near the cabin wall. Little Carp was inside somewhere, I could hear her breathing from the doorway.
I sat on my log from last night and stared at the embers.
I'd been awake for a while. Not because of anything dramatic — no inner world, no sword, no fog. Just the normal kind of not sleeping where your brain decides 4am is a great time to start thinking about everything at once.
Like, for example.
Princess.
I turned the word over again. I'd been doing that since last night, in the gaps between watching the fire and trying to sleep. Just sitting with it. Chen Wei. Princess Chen Wei. The girl who stole the better bedroll without asking and corrected my meditation posture approximately eight hundred times and once told me my punching form was "embarrassing, even for a mortal."
Princess.
I looked across the dying fire.
Liu Hao was sitting against a tree on the other side, awake, sharpening that small blade she always had on her. Eyes down. Focused.
I watched her for a second.
She'd known. Obviously she'd known. The way she called Chen Wei "Young Lady" — I'd thought it was just some cultivation world thing, a companion thing, a respect thing. And maybe it was all of those. But it was also just... accurate.
I stood up, stretched my back, and walked around the fire.
Liu Hao didn't look up. "You're up early."
"Couldn't sleep." I sat down on the ground nearby, close enough to talk quietly without waking anyone. "Hey."
"Hey."
"You knew," I said. "Didn't you."
The blade stopped moving.
Just for a second. Then she kept going. "Knew what?"
"Liu Hao."
She looked up. Her expression was doing that thing where it was trying to be neutral and not quite getting there. "...What exactly are you referring to."
"You know what I'm referring to."
She looked back down at the blade. A beat of silence. Then: "I don't know what you think you—"
"I found a sign," I said. "In the ruins. Stone. Carved. Said Wei Clan Estate, under the protection of Her Royal Highness, Princess—" I paused. "And then it was broken. But I can read enough now."
Liu Hao was very quiet.
"So," I said. "You knew."
Another pause. Then she let out a breath through her nose — not quite a sigh, not quite a laugh. "...Yes," she said. "I knew."
"For how long?"
"Since always." She said it simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Because to her, it probably was.
I nodded slowly. Looked at the embers. "Okay."
"Okay?" She glanced at me sideways. "That's it?"
"I mean, what do you want me to say?" I shrugged. "It's not like it changes anything. She's still the same person who threw a rock at my face."
"She didn't throw the rock. I threw the rock."
"On her behalf."
Liu Hao opened her mouth. Closed it. "...That's fair," she said.
I almost smiled. Stood up. "Where is she?"
Liu Hao tilted her head slightly toward the far side of the cabin. "Walking. She does that in the morning sometimes. Thinking."
I nodded and headed that way.
I found her at the edge of the tree line.
Not far — just far enough that the camp sounds went soft behind her. She was standing still, looking at the forest, hands loose at her sides. The morning light came through the branches in long pale lines and caught the edge of her face.
She heard me coming. Didn't turn around. "You're up early."
"People keep saying that." I stopped beside her. Looked at the trees for a moment. "Hey."
"Hey," she said.
We stood there in silence for a second. The forest was quiet this early. Somewhere above us a bird started up and then stopped.
"So," I said.
"So," she said.
"Princess."
The word landed between us. I watched her from the corner of my eye.
Chen Wei — calm, composed, never-caught-off-guard Chen Wei — went very still for exactly one second. Then something moved through her expression that I had genuinely never seen before. Not embarrassment exactly. More like the very brief, very controlled version of being caught without your armor on.
Her chin lifted slightly. "You found the sign."
"Yeah."
"In the ruins."
"Yeah."
She was quiet. The controlled look was back — mostly. But something around her eyes was still slightly off, still slightly not-settled, and I was ninety percent sure she knew I could see it.
"I was going to tell you," she said.
"When?"
A pause. "...When it was relevant."
"Is it relevant now?"
She looked at me then. Straight on, the way she always did, like eye contact was easy for her. But there was something behind it that was working harder than usual. "Does it change anything?" she asked. "For you."
I thought about it. Actually thought about it, not just as a reflex.
"No," I said. "Not really."
Something in her face settled. Just slightly. "Then it wasn't relevant yet."
"Okay," I said. "But just so you know." I looked back at the trees. "I'm going to think of something to call you now. Like, Your Highness. Your Majesty. Oh Exalted Chicken Princess—"
"Qin Mu."
"I'm just saying, the options are—"
"Qin Mu."
"—really endless, and I feel like I should explore—"
"I will have Liu Hao throw another rock."
I shut up. But I was smiling at the trees and she could probably tell.
After a moment, she made that sound again. The almost-laugh. Quiet, barely there.
We stood together at the edge of the forest a little longer. Not talking. Just existing in the same space, which somehow felt easier than it used to.
Then from behind us, voices. The camp was waking up.
By mid-morning everyone was moving around, doing the small tasks that came with surviving somewhere that wasn't meant for this many people. Collecting water. Tending to Old Man Shen's bandage. Keeping the kids occupied.
I was sitting near the cabin entrance, watching Little Carp explain something very serious to two other children using a stick and a patch of dirt, when one of Chen Wei's noble friends sat down nearby.
She was the one who'd grabbed Chen Wei's hands yesterday — the first one out of the cabin, the one who hadn't been able to get words out. She looked better today. Not good. But better. Her hair was properly done now, her clothes straightened as much as they could be. She had the kind of posture that said she'd been raised to always look composed, and she was trying very hard to hold onto that.
"You're Qin Mu," she said.
"Yeah."
"You brought the food last night."
"That was mostly Liu Hao," I said. "And Old Man Shen. I just convinced them."
She was quiet for a second. Then: "Thank you."
I didn't say anything. It didn't feel like something that needed a response.
She looked at her hands in her lap. "I keep trying to remember exactly what happened," she said. "The night of the attack. I've been going over it since we ended up here."
I stayed still. Didn't push.
"It was fast," she said. "That's the thing I keep coming back to. It was so fast. One moment everything was normal and then—" She stopped. Took a breath. "The sky. There were people in the sky. A lot of them. Moving in formation."
"Formation," I repeated quietly.
"Like they'd planned it. Like they knew exactly where to go." Her voice was steady but her hands weren't. "There was a symbol. On their outer robes. I only saw it for a second — I was running — but I keep seeing it when I close my eyes."
By now Chen Wei had appeared at the edge of the group without making a sound. Standing still. Listening.
"What did it look like?" Chen Wei asked. Quiet. Careful.
The girl looked up at her. "A circle with a line through it. Diagonal. And something underneath — I couldn't make it out. It happened so fast."
Chen Wei said nothing.
But her expression did something that I hadn't seen since we walked into the ruins. That same look — controlled on the surface, something colder and harder underneath.
She knew something. Or suspected something.
She wasn't going to say it yet.
Liu Hao appeared beside her, close, and the two of them exchanged one of those quick glances that carried whole conversations.
The noble friend kept talking — fragments, pieces, things she'd seen and couldn't explain. I listened. Everyone nearby listened. The details piled up into a shape that didn't fully make sense yet but felt heavy with meaning.
When she finally stopped, the clearing was quiet.
Little Carp had stopped explaining things with her stick. She was just sitting, holding her dried flower, looking at the ground.
Old Man Shen, from his spot against the cabin wall, said nothing. But his eyes were sharp and somewhere far away.
It was Liu Hao who noticed first.
We were still sitting in the aftermath of the conversation — nobody had moved much, nobody was quite ready to — when she stood up. Quiet. Fast.
Her hand went to her sword.
"Someone's in the forest," she said. Low. Calm. The kind of calm that meant the opposite of calm.
Everyone went still.
I was on my feet before I'd decided to stand up. Old Man Shen pushed himself upright despite his arm. Chen Wei was already turned toward the tree line, her eyes moving through the gaps between trunks.
"How many," Chen Wei said. Not a question. A request for information.
"One," Liu Hao said. "Moving careful. Trying not to be heard."
"Scout," Old Man Shen said.
Nobody argued with that.
Liu Hao looked at Chen Wei. Chen Wei looked at the cabin — at the people inside, at Little Carp still sitting in the dirt, at the villagers who had no way to fight.
"Get everyone inside," Chen Wei said quietly. "Now. Quietly."
People moved. No panic — just fast and silent, the way people move when they've already been through something terrible and know what urgency sounds like.
I stayed where I was.
Liu Hao glanced at me. "You too."
"I'm not going inside."
"Qin Mu—"
"I'm not going inside," I said again. Flat. Final.
She looked at me for a second. Then at Chen Wei.
Chen Wei didn't tell me to go inside.
The three of us spread out slightly — Liu Hao toward the left side of the clearing, Chen Wei to the right, me in the center near the dead fire. Old Man Shen positioned himself at the cabin door, bad arm and all.
The forest was very quiet.
Then a figure stepped out of the trees.
Young. Maybe my age, maybe a little older. Robes that had been good once but were dirty now, travel-worn, with something dark dried on the sleeve that I didn't look at too long. Eyes scanning the clearing fast — assessing, calculating.
And on the chest of the robes.
A circle. A diagonal line through it. Something underneath I couldn't make out from here.
The same symbol.
The clearing felt very small suddenly.
The scout's eyes landed on Chen Wei and stopped moving.
For a long second nobody spoke.
Then the scout smiled. Slow and thin. Like finding exactly what they'd been looking for.
"Well," they said quietly. "There you are."