The Lord Protector's shadow filled the Hall of Judgement before his boots crossed the threshold.
Black armor drank the light, the scent of oiled steel and cold iron drowning the sandalwood haze. The scar along his cheek lay pale and unimportant, the sort of mark a man forgets until the world reminds him. His eyes — clear, steady, terrible in their composure — swept the court as if to measure whether the rafters would hold the weight of his return.
He had been sick for days only, yet those days had been enough for whispers to grow teeth. Factions had begun to move under the cover of his absence; now they froze, as if the boards they stood on had turned to ice.
And beside him, as if she had always been there, stood Wu Ling.
She was veiled in crimson, but the stillness of her bearing revealed more than her face could have. The silk clung to her as though the air itself were obeying her will. Her hands were folded — a posture of humility for those who did not know her. For me, it was a warning.
The Emperor rose, his expression unreadable. "The mountain walks," he said softly, the words carrying like a drumbeat through the chamber.
The Lord Protector gave him a single nod — not deep enough to be submission, not shallow enough to be insult. Equal, or something older than rank.
Then his gaze turned to me.
"Prince," he said, voice steady, the old steel without rust.
The thing beneath my ribs was silent, as if it too was measuring this man who had shaped my life before I could speak. I bowed, but I did not kneel.
Wu Ling moved then — only her head, only enough to bring her gaze to mine through the veil. "You went south," she said. "You brought back Wu Shuang."
The name spread through the hall like oil on water. Eyes shifted toward me, toward her, toward the Lord Protector — who did not look away from the Emperor.
"She was imprisoned in the Southern Kingdom," I said evenly. "The Southern King released her into my custody as a gesture of goodwill."
"A gesture," Wu Ling repeated. "You let the South place a piece on our board and call it family. You think she is a gift; I think she is a ledger we have not yet read."
"She is our cousin," I replied.
"She is a message," Wu Ling said, her voice gaining weight. "And I know who will pay for it when the seal is broken."
My father's gaze cut between us like a whetted blade. "No king frees a prisoner without weighing the price," he said at last. "If he placed her in your charge, then you are the one he means to spend."
Before I could answer, Wu Kang's voice rose from the side of the throne — harder than iron, sharpened on her tongue.
"Ever since his return from the South, the city has burned with strange fires. The Hall of Still Waters is ash. Our soldiers whisper of marks in the streets. And now this cousin — a ghost from the South — walks among us under his protection."
His eyes did not leave me. But his stance, the stiff pride in his shoulders, was not his own. Wu Ling had carved that into him.
I saw it now — how she had changed him. In the few days of our father's illness, she had fed his pride, honed his grudges, drawn him close like a falcon kept hungry between hunts. He spoke like a man whose cause was his own, but the cadence was hers.
The Lord Protector exhaled once, slow, as though deciding whether to break the hall in half with his words.
"This will wait," he said at last. "There is more in motion than the South's little gifts."
The Emperor's gaze flickered to me — a dragon's eye, too still to read. "Then we will speak again, Prince. Until then, walk carefully."
I bowed.
And the bells outside — the patient, listening bells — began tolling again, each strike a question the city was too afraid to answer.
Wu Ling's Chambers
When the hall emptied, the Emperor did not retreat to the inner court. He walked with Wu Ling at his side, past silk screens painted with mountains and storms, into her chambers where the air smelled of sandalwood and cold lotus.
The moment the doors closed, her voice sharpened.
"You let him stand in your hall unbroken. Before all of them."
The Emperor moved to the lattice window, hands clasped behind his back. "He is my father's sword," he said. "Breaking it too soon leaves me unarmed."
She stepped closer, the silk of her veil brushing his sleeve. "You are the Son of Heaven. The court bows to you — or should."
He did not turn. "Should, yes."
Her tone was no longer coaxing; it was command. "Then make them. Make him."
His silence stretched until it became its own answer. Wu Ling's hand closed on his arm, her nails pressing through the silk. "Do not think you can hold both — his loyalty and the throne. He will choose one for you."
The Emperor turned then, and for a heartbeat his eyes were not those of a puppet. There was something in them — a depth that could have been ambition or patience sharpened into a weapon.
"Perhaps," he said quietly, "I mean to choose for him."
Wu Ling's breath stilled. "You speak as if you are waiting for the right moment."
"And you," he replied, "speak as if you fear it."
She held his gaze. The air between them was a drawn bowstring.
Outside, the bells fell silent.