The sun bled orange across the treetops before they finally stopped.
They'd walked most of the day in near silence—Sùyīn leading, Mei trailing a half-step behind like a shadow that hadn't quite learned how to behave yet. The forest had thinned into rolling hills dotted with scrub pine and the occasional ruined watchtower. Every so often Mei caught glimpses of distant smoke plumes—villages, bandit camps, maybe both. She didn't ask. She was too busy trying not to trip over roots while her new body adjusted to moving like it expected to die at any second.
Sùyīn chose a shallow dip between two boulders, out of the wind and mostly hidden from the path. She dropped her wooden box with a soft thud, then knelt to clear a small circle of stones.
"No fire until full dark," she said without looking up. "Smoke shows too far in daylight."
Mei nodded, even though her legs felt like they'd been replaced with wet noodles. She lowered herself onto a flat rock, wincing as every bruise announced itself at once. The borrowed silk robes were filthy now—torn at the hem, streaked with dirt and someone else's blood. She looked less like exiled nobility and more like a ghost who'd lost a fight with laundry day.
Sùyīn worked quickly: kindling first, then larger sticks, arranged in a low, smokeless pyramid. She struck flint with the edge of her sickle—once, twice—and a tiny ember caught. She nursed it with careful breaths until flames licked upward, small and controlled.
Only then did she sit across from Mei, cross-legged, and pull a small iron pot from her pack.
"Rice. Dried mushrooms. Whatever herbs I can spare." She glanced at Mei. "You eat meat?"
Mei blinked. "I… yes?"
"Good. Rabbit I snared this morning. Already skinned." Sùyīn produced a small, neatly wrapped bundle from somewhere inside her cloak and dropped it beside the fire. "You're too skinny. Noble girls usually have more padding. What did they feed you at that academy—ink and disapproval?"
Mei managed a tired half-smile. "Probably."
They worked in quiet tandem—Sùyīn slicing the rabbit with economical flicks of her knife, Mei feeding the fire just enough twigs to keep it steady. The smell of charring meat and simmering broth eventually drowned out the pine-and-blood scent that had clung to Mei since waking.
When the food was ready, Sùyīn divided it into two battered wooden bowls. She passed one to Mei without ceremony.
"Eat slow. Your stomach's probably shrunk."
Mei took the first bite and nearly cried.
It wasn't gourmet. The rice was slightly scorched at the bottom, the rabbit tough from too many days on the run, the mushrooms tasted mostly of forest floor. But it was warm. Real. And her body—this body—was starving in a way her old one had never known.
She ate in careful silence until the bowl was nearly clean.
Sùyīn watched her over the rim of her own bowl, firelight painting copper along the sharp line of her cheekbone.
"You really don't remember anything?" she asked at last.
Mei set the bowl down. Wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Bits. Flashes. A hall full of old people in white. Someone reading a sentence. A girl with silver hair and eyes like winter standing at the front. She didn't blink when they said 'exile.'"
Sùyīn's expression didn't change, but something tightened around her mouth.
"The Frost Sovereign's daughter," she said quietly. "Lán Xīuyīng. They call her the Unmelting Blade now."
Mei's fingers found the jade hairpin without thinking. It was cool again—almost cold.
"She's the one who…?"
"Read the verdict. Yes." Sùyīn poked the fire with a stick. Sparks drifted upward. "Word is she did it without hesitation. No plea. No mercy. Just clean-cut justice."
Mei stared into the flames. "I want to go back."
Sùyīn laughed—short, disbelieving. "To the place that threw you out like spoiled rice?"
"To her."
The words came out before Mei could stop them. They hung between them, fragile and stupid and true.
Sùyīn went still.
Mei rushed on, voice low. "I don't know why. The memories aren't mine—not really. But every time the hairpin shows me her face, something… pulls. Like a thread tied around my ribs. I need to see her again. I need to know if the look in her eyes was hate, or something else."
Sùyīn studied her for a long time.
Then she sighed, rubbed the back of her neck. "You're either the most romantic idiot I've ever met, or the hairpin's messing with your head worse than I thought."
"Maybe both."
Another silence. The fire crackled. Somewhere far off, a night bird called—lonely, sharp.
Sùyīn reached into her cloak and pulled out a small cloth pouch. She untied it, tipped a few dried snowdrop petals into her palm. They glowed faintly in the firelight—pale, almost translucent.
"These grow where the ground stays frozen year-round," she said. "Rare. Expensive. I was going to sell them in the border town." She held them out. "Take one."
Mei hesitated. "Why?"
"Because if you're stupid enough to chase a girl who sentenced you to die, you'll need luck. Or poison. These can be either, depending on how much you use." Sùyīn's gaze was steady. "Keep it close. Don't eat it unless you mean it."
Mei took one petal—fragile as rice paper. It smelled faintly of winter and clean steel.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"Don't thank me yet." Sùyīn tucked the rest away. "We're still three days from the town. And Black Lotus won't stop at two scouts."
Mei nodded. Tucked the snowdrop petal into the fold of her sleeve, right against her skin.
The hairpin warmed—just a little.
Sùyīn banked the fire until only embers remained, then stretched out on her cloak with her wooden box as a pillow.
"Sleep," she said. "I'll take first watch."
Mei lay down on the opposite side of the dying glow. The ground was hard. The night was cold. But for the first time since waking up in this body, she didn't feel completely alone.
She closed her eyes.
The last thing she heard before sleep took her was Sùyīn's quiet voice, almost too soft to catch:
"Stupid romantic."
The jade hairpin pulsed once—gentle, like approval.
And somewhere in the dark behind Mei's eyelids, a silver-haired silhouette turned her head, just slightly, as though she'd heard her name on the wind.