"When no one listens, speak to yourself. You're the only altar they cannot burn."
The snow melted for only one day.
It happened suddenly—no warning. As if winter had drawn back her hand, just briefly, to remind the palace of what warmth used to feel like. The sky brightened to a color softer than blue, almost pearled. A shy sun hung overhead, not strong enough to dry the stone, but gentle enough to be noticed.
Yue'er handed Feiran her cloak without a word.
"You're sure you want to go alone?" she asked.
Feiran nodded once. "It's not a prayer if someone else hears it."
Yue'er bowed. "At least let me wait nearby."
Feiran hesitated, then reached out and lightly touched her arm.
"No," she said softly. "This one is only mine."
The ancestral shrine of the Crown Household stood at the southernmost edge of the inner palace. Few visited. Fewer lingered. It was a cold place—not for the temperature, but for the silence it held. Everything there felt older than the palace itself. Older, even, than loyalty.
Feiran had not stepped inside since the seventh day of her marriage, when she was led here with incense sticks and bowed before names carved in polished stone.
The names had not known her.
She had bowed anyway.
Now she entered on her own, quiet as dust, her footsteps making no sound against the polished floor.
The shrine was empty.
No candles had been lit that morning. No priests. No ceremonial incense. Just the carved altar, the low mats, and the wooden plaques stacked against the back wall, each inscribed with the names of the royal dead.
She stood in the center for a long time.
Then knelt.
She did not bow.
She placed her hands on her lap, fingers interlaced, and stared at the floor.
Her breath moved slowly.
And then, finally, she spoke.
"Your blood is not in my veins," she said softly. "But your weight is in my spine."
She looked toward the altar.
"I don't pray to gods. I've stopped believing they listen. I pray to memory instead. And today—today I offer mine."
She closed her eyes.
"I remember a pavilion with curved eaves. A crooked lantern. Osmanthus flowers in my mother's sleeve."
Her voice did not tremble.
"I remember being led by the hand into a hall of red, and being told this would be my home."
She opened her eyes again.
"And now I remember what it means to be married to silence."
The sunlight passed through a lattice window, striping her robe with soft gold.
"I offer you this," she whispered. "Not because you deserve it. But because I am not afraid of being watched."
She stood slowly.
"You can haunt me, if you like. I've already buried the worst parts of myself."
She turned—
And froze.
Commander Wen stood in the doorway.
He did not speak.
He bowed, deeply, but not formally. Not the way guards were trained to. Not the way men bow to women in power.
He bowed like a man who had seen something he was never meant to.
Feiran said nothing.
The room between them held the words too tightly.
He stepped inside, slowly. His boots made a faint sound across the old stones.
"I didn't know," he said quietly, "that anyone else came here."
"Few do," she replied. "It's not a place people visit unless they want to be seen doing it."
Wen smiled faintly. "Then I should leave."
"You didn't interrupt."
"You were praying."
"I was remembering."
He studied her face.
"No incense?" he asked.
"No fire," she said. "Just thought."
"You spoke aloud."
Feiran tilted her head slightly. "Perhaps I meant to be overheard."
A beat passed.
Then he said, "Then I'm listening."
They stood in silence for a moment more.
Then he said, "I used to think of temples as places for asking."
"And now?"
"Now I think they're for confessing."
Feiran stepped forward, letting her cloak shift behind her as she moved to the side of the altar.
"I haven't confessed anything," she said. "Not yet."
Wen raised an eyebrow.
"But you plan to?"
She met his eyes.
"I think I've been confessing in every breath I've taken since my wedding night."
He did not flinch.
"You speak as if it's already over."
Feiran walked to the low window and placed her fingers on the edge of the frame.
"Nothing's over. Not until I decide what ending I want."
"And do you know?"
She turned her face toward the sunlight.
"No," she whispered. "But I know who won't write it for me."
Wen said, "Him."
Feiran didn't nod.
She didn't need to.
The shrine held its silence.
And then, almost carefully, Wen stepped closer.
He said nothing.
He only knelt, beside her this time. Not too close. Not too far.
And together, they faced the wall of names.
Feiran let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
She said, "Why are you really here?"
Wen looked ahead.
"There are rumors."
"About me?"
"Yes."
"Which ones?"
"That the pond was a suicide attempt. That the Crown Princess has taken ill from grief. That she poisoned herself."
"And which do you believe?"
He turned his head.
"The one where you're still standing."
She met his gaze.
Steady. Unblinking.
Then, softer than she meant: "I didn't fall by accident."
"I know."
"You could have told them it was a misstep."
"I did."
"But you didn't believe it."
"No."
Feiran let out a soft laugh.
"Why not?"
Wen looked down.
"Because you don't misstep. Not unless you mean to."
For a long time, the room held only the sound of breath.
Then Feiran said, "Do you ever get tired of guarding people who don't deserve it?"
Wen didn't answer.
Not at first.
Then: "Yes."
Feiran turned to him.
And in the low light of that ancient place, she saw it for the first time—not pity, not admiration.
Recognition.
Like meeting someone who carried the same scar.
Wen said, "I won't ask what you're planning."
Feiran smiled, faintly.
"But you'll help me if I ask?"
He looked at her.
"You've never asked."
She stepped closer, cloak shifting over the stone.
And whispered, "I will."
Outside the shrine, the snow had begun to fall again.
Soft. Relentless.
Feiran did not look back.
She walked the long corridor back with a strange sense of calm. The sun was warming the outer wall. The snow had stopped two days ago. The stones beneath her feet were dry.
The silence followed her like a shadow.
She did not notice the figure standing at the corner of the side path. Not until he stepped forward.
Eunuch Lin.
"Niangniang," he said, bowing.
She stopped.
He looked pale. Tight-jawed. Unsettled.
"There's word," he said, "of a closed meeting in the inner court. Without your name on the registry."
Feiran tilted her head slightly. "Whose name is on it?"
"Lady Meilin."
Of course.
"I see," she said.
Lin hesitated. "I can have someone—"
"No," Feiran said gently. "Let them gather."
"Why?"
She smiled.
"Because they think they've already won."
By the time she returned to her chamber, the light had shifted.
Yue'er was gone. Fetching new linens, she assumed.
Feiran stepped inside.
The room was quiet.
Too quiet.
Then she saw the teacup on her table.
Steam still curling from its rim.
She had not asked for tea.
Her heart did not quicken. She did not panic. She simply walked to the low table and sat.
A folded note lay beside the cup.
No seal. No signature.
"Your highness, this is for you. I figured you might be a little cold when you get back from the shrine- Yue'er"
Feiran stared at it.
Her tensed shoulders dropped softly and she smiled.
She picked up the cup and brought it to her lips.
The osmanthus was strong. Too strong. As if brewed twice over.
It went down smooth.
Warm.
She placed the cup back down. Reached for the note again.
Folded it carefully.
And closed her eyes.
It began quietly.
A pressure behind her eyes. Her breath shortened.
Her hands trembled.
She stood—staggered.
What was wrong?
She glanced at the cup and the back to the note in her hands.
This was a set up.
The note wasn't from Yue'er.
She had been tricked,
And poisoned.
She took three steps.
Then fell.
The world tilted.
The floor rushed up.
The sky disappeared.
A single tear dropped from her eye.
She was found about twenty minutes later.
Yue'er returned first, linens in hand, a soft hum on her lips that broke into a scream the moment she saw her.
Feiran lay on her side, robes unwrinkled, one hand curled near her face, the other still resting lightly on the table's edge.
As if she had simply fallen asleep.
The note was gone.
The cup was clean.
The tea tray had been taken.
By the time Commander Wen arrived, there was nothing left to hold onto but her hand.
He knelt beside her.
Did not speak.
Yue'er sobbed, clutching her mistress's shoulder, pressing her forehead to silk already going cold.
Outside, a single plum blossom fell.
Even though the tree had not yet bloomed.
That night, the Crown Prince did not mourn.
He did not speak Feiran's name.
He signed the notice for the imperial records:
"Due to a prolonged illness."
No autopsy.
No investigation.
No ceremony.
By morning, her name was no longer spoken in the palace.
But someone, somewhere, left osmanthus flowers on the shrine steps before dawn.
And in the frost, a whisper lingered that would not be silenced:
She died too quietly to be natural.
And too gracefully to stay gone.