CHAPTER 1 : THE QUESTION
The kingdom of Xiānguó was ruled by Emperor Zhào Róng and Empress Xiàoyì, and on the surface, it was a kingdom of peace.
Silk roads ran like veins through the provinces, carrying tea from the south and furs from the north. Scholars debated poetry in teahouses that smelled of ink and sandalwood. Farmers brought their harvest to the capital markets without fear of bandits on the roads, because the Emperor's soldiers patrolled them. The Emperor was considered wise, the Empress gracious, and the court — from a distance — looked like a painting. Perfect. Balanced. Still.
But anyone who lived inside the capital, anyone who had a family name that mattered, knew the truth: peace in Xiānguó was a carefully balanced game. Families rose and fell not by swords, but by marriages, alliances, and whose name was spoken in the right ear at the right time. One wrong banquet seating, one daughter married to the wrong second son, and a family that had stood for a hundred years could find itself selling its ancestral house by winter.
My mother came from the kind of family that did not play games. They ended them.
The Su family was a military family. Not the kind that bought titles with gold, but the kind that earned them with blood and then refused to talk about it at dinner. My grandfather, General Sū Weìguó, was the man who held the northern pass against the barbarian tribes for forty-seven days when the imperial army was too slow to move, with only eight thousand men and a winter that killed more soldiers than swords did. My grandmother, Lady Sū, had opened the Su family granaries to the people during the famine of my mother's childhood, when the court was still debating the cost. The Su name meant discipline. Loyalty. Sacrifice. And a kind of power that did not need to be announced, because people simply moved when a Su walked into a room.
My father's family was different.
The Han family had been merchants for generations. Rich, respectable merchants who owned warehouses in three provinces, whose ships came into the capital port heavy with spices and silk. My father, Hán ZhìXuān, was brilliant with numbers and better with people. He could make a rival feel like a friend over one cup of tea, and make that friend sign a contract that favored the Han family by sunset.
But merchants do not become Prime Ministers on their own. No matter how rich. No matter how clever.
He married my mother, Sū RuìXī, when he was twenty-five and she was nineteen. With her dowry, he expanded the Han trade routes into the west. With her father's quiet recommendation, he got his first minor post in the Ministry of Revenue. With her grandfather's old war comrades speaking for him in court — men who would do anything for General Su's daughter's husband — he rose. And rose. And rose.
Until one day, he was Prime Minister Hán ZhìXuān, and people stopped saying "the Su family's son-in-law" when they talked about him. They just said "the Prime Minister."
I think that was when the problems started. I think he started to believe he had climbed the mountain alone, and forgot who had given him the rope.
---
I woke up gasping, sixteen years old and with no idea why my heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest.
There was no nightmare I could remember. No sound in the room. Just the morning light through the curtains and the terrible, animal feeling that something was wrong.
I pressed a hand to my forehead. It was damp with sweat. "You're being ridiculous, JiāYì," I whispered to myself.
I sat up, swung my legs out of bed, and the world tore.
It wasn't a dream. It wasn't a thought. It was like someone shoved a memory into my head that I hadn't lived yet.
I saw the main hall downstairs, clear as if I was standing there. I saw my mother by the door in a dark traveling robe, two trunks behind her. I saw my father in his court robe, his sash crooked, looking tired. I heard him say, "Your mother and I are divorcing." I saw my brothers' faces — Chén blank, Lì agitated, Míng crying. I saw Hán MěiLíng standing behind Father, her hand on his arm, crying beautifully.
And then I saw something else, fast and sharp like a knife: MěiLíng hugging Míng, whispering comfort to him, while her eyes — only for a second, when she thought no one was looking — were cold. Calculating. Not sad at all.
The vision snapped off.
I was back in my bed, breathing hard, my hands gripping the sheets so tight my knuckles were white.
"What… what was that?" I whispered. My voice shook. "Am I going crazy?"
My maid, Xiao Tao, came in with my washing water and stopped in the doorway. "Young miss! You're white as a sheet. Are you ill? Should I call the physician?"
"No," I said, too quickly. "No, I'm fine. Just… I woke up suddenly. I'm fine."
She helped me dress, her hands efficient and worried. As she was pinning my hair, I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd seen. It felt real. More real than a dream. But that was impossible. People don't see the future. I was just stressed. I was imagining things.
Wasn't I?
---
The voices reached me before I reached the bottom of the stairs. Low. Tired. Final.
And I froze, because I recognized them.
It was exactly like the vision.
I stopped on the last step and looked into the main hall, and my stomach dropped because it was all there, just like I'd seen it.
My mother, Sū RuìXī, stood near the front doors. She wore a plain dark traveling robe, no embroidery, no jewelry except the simple jade bracelet she never took off. Her hair was in a severe knot. Two large trunks stood behind her, already packed and tied with rope. She did not look like a woman leaving her husband. She looked like a general leaving a battlefield she had decided was no longer worth holding.
My father, Hán ZhìXuān, stood a few paces away in his full court robe, the Prime Minister's crane bright on his chest. The sash at his waist was slightly crooked, just like in the vision.
My three brothers stood together near the staircase, a miserable little unit.
Hán Chén, my eldest brother, twenty years old and already with the bearing of a scholar-official, had his arms crossed tight over his chest. His face was carefully blank.
Hán Lì, eighteen, handsome and usually laughing, was pacing a short, agitated line on the rug, running a hand through his hair again and again.
Hán Míng, only twelve, stood pressed against Chén's side, his face blotchy, his lower lip trembling violently.
And Hán MěiLíng stood just behind Father, her hand resting lightly, possessively, on his forearm. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her cheeks wet. She looked small and breakable.
It was all exactly right. Every detail.
A cold feeling spread through my chest. I saw this. Before it happened, I saw this.
I took the last step down. The floorboard creaked. Every head turned.
"JiāYì," Mother said. Just my name. But there was relief in it.
"Good, you're awake," Father said, his tone business-like. "Come here. We will talk as a family."
I walked forward slowly, my slippers silent on the polished floor, and stopped a few feet from them. My mind was screaming. How did I know? How did I see this?
"What's happening?" I asked, and I hated how small my voice sounded.
Father looked at Mother, then back at us. He exhaled. "Your mother and I are divorcing."
The words were the same. The tone was the same. Exactly like the vision.
Hán Míng made a choked, wounded noise and buried his face in Chén's sleeve.
"Why?" Lì demanded, stopping his pacing. "Father, just tell us why! You've been married seventeen years! We're a family!"
"It's not one thing, Lì," Father said, tired. "It's… we don't agree on what this family's priorities should be anymore. We haven't for a long time."
"That's not an answer!" Chén said, his voice flat and hard.
Father's jaw tightened. "Your mother believes I have forgotten the values of the Su family. Discipline. Duty to the people before duty to the court. Honor above advancement." He said the words like they tasted bad. "I believe… I believe she does not understand the compromises I have to make every single day to keep this family at the Prime Minister's level."
Mother finally spoke, her voice cool and clear. "You call it compromise, ZhìXuān. I call it forgetting who helped you stand up in the first place. You are embarrassed by my father's men when they come to the house in their uniforms. You ask me to dress softer, speak softer, for your banquets. You tell our sons that the military is a 'rough life' and they should aim for the civil exams, as if their grandfather's service is something to be ashamed of." She looked at him directly. "You have been managing this family's priorities, husband. You've just been managing them away from me."
The silence after she spoke was awful.
Then MěiLíng stepped forward, her voice trembling, tears spilling fresh down her cheeks. "Father, Mother, please don't fight like this. Please. It's hurting everyone. Especially the boys." She looked at Míng, who was now crying openly, and went to him, pulling him gently away from Chén and into her own arms, rubbing his back in slow circles. "It's alright, Míng. Shhh. I'm here. Jiejie's here."
Father watched her comfort Míng, and his whole face softened. He reached out and touched MěiLíng's hair briefly. "Thank you, Ling'er. Thank you for taking care of your brothers."
I watched his hand on her hair, and the air flickered again, just for me.
I saw MěiLíng, weeks from now, sitting in Mother's chair at the dinner table, serving Father his favorite soup while he smiled at her. I saw my brothers, all three of them, leaning in to listen to something she was saying, laughing. I saw my own chair, at the end of the table, empty.
And I saw her face, in that future moment, when she thought no one was looking at her — not sad, not loving. Cold. Pleased. Victorious.
The vision vanished, and I felt cold all over.
The affection was fake. All those years, the hugs, the "jiejie" — it was fake. I just saw it.
Father cleared his throat. "There is one more thing. You are all old enough to choose. You will decide who you want to live with. Your mother, or me. I will not force any of you."
Hán Chén was the first to speak. He looked at Father, then at Mother, his expression unreadable. "I will stay with Father," he said, his voice steady. "My tutors are here. My exam preparations are here. The connections I need for the imperial exams are here, in the Prime Minister's household. It is the practical choice."
Father nodded. "A wise choice, Chén."
Hán Lì looked torn. He glanced at Mother, opened his mouth, closed it. Then he looked at MěiLíng, who was still holding Míng, and she gave him a small, watery, encouraging smile and a tiny nod. "I… I'll stay with Father too," Lì said, his voice rough. "I'm sorry, Mother. I just… I don't know how to live anywhere else."
Mother's face didn't change. "I understand, Lì."
Hán Míng pulled away from MěiLíng just enough to speak, his face blotchy and wet. "I want to stay with Father. And Ling jiejie." He looked at MěiLíng like she was the only solid thing in a world that was spinning. "You promised you'd take care of me."
MěiLíng smiled at him, a beautiful, sad smile, and wiped his tears with her own sleeve. "I did promise, didn't I, Míng? And I always keep my promises to you. Always." She looked up at Father over Míng's head, her eyes shining. "I'll take good care of them, Father. I promise you."
Father's expression softened completely. "I know you will, Ling'er. I know."
Then they all looked at me.
Hán JiāYì. Sixteen years old. The only daughter. The real daughter.
My heart was hammering. Another flicker hit me — not an image this time, just a feeling, strong and certain: if I stayed, I would fade. I would become a polite ghost in my own home while MěiLíng filled every space I left, until one day they would forget I was ever there at all. And I would never be safe from that cold look in her eyes.
And another flicker, immediate and warm: Mother's hand, strong and steady, taking mine. A sense of solid ground. Of a wall at my back. Of the Su name, which meant something.
I didn't understand the visions. I was terrified of them. But I had just seen the divorce happen exactly as I saw it in my room. They were real.
And they were showing me the truth about my sister.
I looked at my mother. Then at my father. Then at MěiLíng, who was watching me with those red-rimmed, waiting eyes, her head tilted just slightly.
The question hung in the air between all of us, unspoken but deafening, the only sound in the whole hall:
JiāYì, who will you go with?