The house had never been so quiet.
No one dared speak of what had happened. Not openly. Not even behind the lattice screens. Yueli's words still echoed through the corridors like an unshakable ghost. The spilled soup had been scrubbed clean, but the stain of her defiance lingered far deeper than the silk.
The Dowager had taken to her room. Suyin and Minhua had not dared leave theirs. The servants, once cackling shadows, moved like mice beneath a hawk's eye.
And Yuan… Yuan stood at the threshold of the women's quarters for the first time in years, hands clenched at his sides. But he could not walk in.
He could still see her—fists clenched, eyes like burning ice, voice thunderous in its ache.
"I gave you everything, and you gave me nothing but silence."
He had always believed that enduring quietly was strength. That being still was the same as being in control. But in that moment, she had made him see how loud silence could be. How violent.
He hadn't just failed her.
He had undone her.
And now, there was nothing left between them but cold distance and the pieces of a marriage she no longer wished to hold.
….
The next day, Xu Jin arrived at the estate.
The guards were surprised to see him at the gate, dressed plainly, without fanfare. But he was a minister, and a trusted one, so they let him in without question.
He had come under the pretense of a delivery—papers, scrolls from the southern court. But his true concern wore ink and bruises, and spoke like the very wind had betrayed her.
Yueli sat in the garden pavilion, eyes cast on the plum blossoms.
Her posture was poised, as ever. But she didn't rise when he arrived. She didn't smile.
Xu Jin sat beside her without asking permission. He didn't offer pleasantries.
Instead, he placed a scroll gently on the table.
"You're still bleeding," he said quietly.
"I am not," she replied. "Not on the outside."
A beat of silence passed.
He leaned forward slightly, voice low. "You could leave. I could arrange it. Say the court requires you longer. Say your skills are needed elsewhere. You don't have to return to this."
Yueli looked at him then, something fragile flickering behind her composure.
"Do you think I stayed because I couldn't leave?" she asked.
"I think you stayed because you were still hoping he would see you."
Her silence was answer enough.
Xu Jin exhaled, slow and reluctant. "He's beginning to."
"Too late," she murmured, almost to herself.
But Xu Jin saw the pain in her eyes—the wound that still ached, not because it was recent, but because it had been ignored too long.
….
Elsewhere, Yuan stood in the main hall, the familiar walls closing in around him. He remembered the first time he'd seen Yueli. Dressed in mourning white for her grandmother, calm and radiant, speaking of politics with ministers twice her age. He remembered thinking she was far too brilliant for someone like him. And yet, his father, when he was still alive, had insisted—marry her, bind her to this house.
She had loved him. That much he knew now.
Not because she said it.
But because of how she bore everything.
Only someone who loved him that deeply could have stayed this long.
Now, she had stopped staying.
….
That night, Yueli sat by her window, candlelight playing across her features. She held her brush in hand, but the paper before her remained empty.
A poem half-formed in her throat.
A melody she could no longer hum.
Something inside her had broken, yes—but something else had also awakened.
She was no longer waiting to be saved.
She was choosing what to save of herself.