The gates of the palace were far behind them now.
Zhao Xinying didn't know how long she'd been walking—only that the stone roads had long since given way to packed dirt, and the frost was beginning to bite through the soles of her boots. Her breath curled visibly in the air, but she wasn't cold. Not really. Not in any way that mattered.
Behind her, Shi Yaozu walked without speaking, his footsteps measured and quiet, matching her pace without ever overtaking it. Shadow padded farther back still, so silent he might have disappeared into the treeline. But she could feel both of them. Two steady presences at her back. One made of blade and loyalty, the other of teeth and old blood.
Neither asked where they were going.
Because neither of them needed to.
The sky overhead had shifted from slate to bruised gray, and a thin sheen of ice glittered across the ridgeline. In another life, she might have thought it beautiful.
But her eyes weren't on the sky.
