The morning after the wedding smelled of ash.
The halls were heavy with whispers: poison at the feast, a minister dead, the Empress unveiled before the vows were done. No one spoke the words "cursed" aloud, but every bow bent deeper, as if Heaven itself was listening for excuses.
The South did not move. Not yet. But their silence was worse than words. Messengers carried reports from across the border: the Southern King's fleets stayed moored, their soldiers drilled in plain sight of their envoys. Watching. Waiting. Like wolves who had scented a wound but had not yet chosen where to bite.
Liao Yun and Shen Yue moved quickly.
The kitchens were overturned, every vessel inspected, every servant questioned. Fear clung to the air, but Shen Yue's voice cut through it like frost. "The poison was not for all," she said. "It was meant to fall into one cup. The others are theater. Someone wanted chaos, not slaughter."
She was right. Of the dozens who drank, only the Minister of Revenue died. The rest sweated, trembled, but lived.
"Who gains most from his death?" Liao Yun muttered. "The ledgers he carried tracked tribute from the South, taxes from the river ports, the flow of grain northward. Whoever killed him wanted more than disruption—they wanted silence where numbers spoke."
Shen Yue's gaze sharpened. "Or they wanted suspicion cast elsewhere."
Her eyes flicked to me. I understood. The court would already whisper: the poisoned minister had once served in my retinue. The ink still on his nails could be made to look like my stain.
But evidence leaves footprints, even in ash.
It was Shen Yue who found the thread.
A servant, young, trembling, caught trying to slip from the palace grounds before dawn. He swore he had been given coin to place the vial in the kitchens. He swore he had never known the powder's weight. And when Liao Yun's men struck him down and searched his robe, a token fell from his sleeve: a seal carved in the shape of a falcon.
I knew it before I touched it.
My mother's clan.
My own blood.
Shen Yue looked at me across the chamber, her expression unreadable. "So close," she said softly. "It will cut deeper than steel."
Liao Yun's hand tightened on his sword hilt. "If we present this now, the hall will fracture. Ministers will demand heads before truth."
I weighed the token in my palm. Cold, heavy, cruel.
"No," I said. "We bring it to Father first. The Lord Protector will decide where to cut. Better his blade than theirs."
The council was already convened when we arrived.
The northern hall smelled of sandalwood and iron. The Lord Protector sat at its heart, his armor unfastened, his eyes sharp despite the weight of sickness in his frame. Around him gathered the generals, their banners folded behind them; the ministers, pale and sweating; and Wu Jin, smiling faintly, as though he had been waiting for this very moment.
The hall stilled as we entered.
"Prince," the Lord Protector said, his voice steady. "You bring something."
I bowed, the seal heavy in my hand. Shen Yue stood beside me, unveiled, unafraid. Liao Yun flanked my other side, his presence silent steel.
But before I could speak, Wu Jin rose.
He bowed to the Lord Protector, then to the generals. His voice was smooth, cold.
"The prince comes with proof, no doubt," he said. "But proof is a blade. It cuts forward and back. Let us hear whom he means to wound—before the wound is ours."
The ministers murmured, shifting uneasily. The generals' eyes flicked between us.
The silence beneath my ribs stirred, patient as a tide.
I closed my fist around the seal.
Trouble had already loomed on the horizon. But here, in this hall, trouble had already arrived.