The golden light of the memory shattered, plunging the Pavilion of Echoes back into its profound, sepulchral silence. The image of Li Xun, young and grim, watching her from the shadows, was seared onto the back of her eyelids. He had not been a bystander. He had been a witness. And in her world, to witness a crime and do nothing was to be an accomplice.
The ancient, genderless voice of the mountain resonated in the still air, not as a question, but as a statement of fact.
"You see the first thread of the web. You see the truth of the poison."
Yingluo's breath was a shard of ice in her lungs. The betrayal was even more vast than she'd imagined. It wasn't just her lover, her sister, the future Empress. It was him. The quiet, crippled prince in the library, the man whose mind was a fortress she had only begun to map. He had known. He had watched her walk to her doom and had done nothing.
