The messenger arrived at dawn.
He was half-dead when they pulled him from the saddle—lips cracked, cloak stiff with dried blood, eyes sunken from riding without rest. He collapsed before Kael's gates and whispered a single word before blacking out.
"Capital."
Xianyin felt it before she heard it.
That old, cold tightening in her chest. The kind that never truly leaves.
Kael read the sealed dispatch in silence. When he finished, he did not hand it to her immediately.
"They're asking for you," he said.
She smiled faintly. "No. They're testing if I still answer."
He watched her closely as he passed the letter.
It was written in the Emperor's hand.
—Your sister requests your presence at court. Matters of succession. Refusal will be noted.—
No greeting.
No concern.
Only command.
"She's already empress," Xianyin said quietly. "She doesn't need me."
Kael folded the letter once. "She wants to see if you'll kneel."
"Or if I'll die on the road," Xianyin replied.
The silence stretched.
Then Kael said, "You're not going."
It was not a question.
Xianyin studied him. "If I refuse, she'll mark me traitor."
"She already has," he said evenly. "She just hasn't said it out loud."
Her fingers curled into her sleeves. In her previous life, she would have gone. She would have believed obedience could still buy mercy.
This time, she felt only exhaustion.
"What would you do," she asked, "if the capital marched on the west?"
Kael did not answer immediately.
Instead, he turned toward the window, where the morning light revealed fields still scarred but standing.
"I would finish what we started," he said. "And make them regret coming."
She breathed out slowly.
That was trust.
Not blind.
Not fragile.
But chosen.
That night, she dreamed of blood on white marble.
Her sister stood above her father's body, crown heavy with gems, hands trembling—not with grief, but fear.
You should have stayed dead, the Empress whispered.
Xianyin woke with her heart pounding.
She sat upright, listening to the wind scrape against the stone walls.
In the distance, war drums echoed—faint, but real.
The capital was stirring.
And for the first time, Xianyin did not feel like running.
She felt like preparing.