Temej walks toward his yurt with the careful stubbornness of a man who refuses to be seen struggling. His ruined arm hangs heavy, a dead weight that still aches as if it remembers every year it has been a problem other people solved for him. He keeps his shoulders square anyway. He has always been good at pretending.

  When he reaches the darker stretch of grass beyond the last torchlight, he slows.

  The wind is colder out here. It slips into the seams of his robe and tastes the sweat on his skin like it’s deciding whether he’s worth biting.

  Above, the sky is indecently bright.

  Stars scatter across it in a violence of light—too many points, too sharp, like a thousand arrowheads aimed downward. The Milky Way cuts a pale scar through the black, a reminder that even the heavens bleed if you look hard enough.

  Temej stops walking.

  He looks up as if he is checking the world’s ceiling for cracks.

  Then he sits down in the grass.

  The ground is cold through his clothes. Frost prickles the blades of grass.

  Temej breathes in. Breathes out.

  His chest still feels wrong. Not pain, not exactly. Something softer, which is worse. The kind of feeling that doesn’t have a battlefield name.

  Behind him, he hears a footstep that tries to be silent and fails. The grass barely whispers, but the presence announces itself anyway: mischievous, shameless, impossible to drown.

  Temej doesn’t look back.

  He speaks to the night, voice flat. “If you’re going to stalk me like a hungry ghost, at least do it properly.”

  A beat.

  Then Kuan’s voice, warm and delighted, slides out of the dark. “I am doing it properly. You noticed. That’s the point.”

  Temej exhales through his nose.

  The shaman steps into view and—of course—does not stand at a respectful distance like a normal person. He drops down beside Temej with the lazy grace of someone who has never been forced to sit with his own thoughts for more than ten seconds.

  He plucks a frost-tipped blade of grass, twirls it between his fingers. “You walk away from celebration,” he says. “That’s either tragic or smug.”

  “It’s neither,” Temej replies.

  Kuan leans in slightly, as if expecting a confession.

  Temej finally turns his head, eyes narrowed. In the starlight, Kuan’s face is half shadow, half grin—like a fox wearing a human mask for sport.

  “What do you want?” Temej asks.

  Kuan’s grin widens, offended by the implication that he might have a purpose. “Me? Want something? Never.”

  Temej stares.

  Kuan sighs theatrically and flops onto his back in the grass, arms spread, as if offering himself to the sky. “Fine. I want to admire how serious you look when you’re alone.”

  Temej’s jaw tightens. “That isn’t a thing.”

  “It is absolutely a thing,” Kuan says. “You look like the wind personally insulted you and you have filed a complaint with the mountains.”

  Temej’s mouth twitches despite itself—annoyance trying to pretend it isn’t amusement. “Go away.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  Kuan lifts a hand and points at the stars as if they are evidence. “Because you’re out here, and it’s dark, and you’re thinking, and that’s dangerous. People have died from thinking too much.”

  Temej snorts softly. “You wouldn’t know.”

  “I would,” Kuan replies. “I am a cautionary tale.”

  Temej stares up again, blinking slow. The cold makes his eyes water a little, which is humiliating. “If you came to mock me,” he says, voice lower, “you can do it from farther away.”

  Kuan turns his head toward him, still on his back. “I can mock you from anywhere,” he says. “Distance doesn’t protect you. I’m talented.”

  Temej’s irritation sparks, then sputters. He shifts his good arm, fingers digging into the grass. “Thank you,” he says abruptly, like it tastes unpleasant.

  Kuan pauses. “What.”

  Temej doesn’t look at him. “For… earlier. With Naci.”

  “Oh,” Kuan says, and it comes out smaller than his usual noise. Then he recovers instantly, like a man yanking a mask back on. “You’re welcome for the pleasure of being right.”

  “I didn’t say you were right.”

  “You implied it,” Kuan says smugly. “Which is basically worship coming from you.”

  Temej’s mouth tightens. “I’m serious.”

  “So am I,” Kuan replies, far too quickly, and then laughs as if laughter can sand down sincerity until it’s safe. “Don’t thank me. It’s unnecessary. Like pants.”

  Temej glances at him, deadpan. “Keep wearing pants.”

  Kuan’s eyes sparkle. “No promises.”

  Temej shakes his head once, as if trying to dislodge the feeling of gratitude before it infects him. “Brother told me,” he says. “He said you spoke to him too. So he would speak to Horohan.”

  Kuan makes a noise like he’s been accused of charity. “Borak can’t keep his mouth shut. It’s a family disease.”

  Temej’s gaze hardens. “Why did you do it?”

  Kuan sits up, finally, and the movement is oddly careful—like even he is aware the answer might cut. He brushes frost from his sleeve. He looks at Temej sideways.

  “You want the honest answer?” he asks.

  Temej’s eyes narrow further. “Yes.”

  Kuan’s grin slips, just a little. Enough to show there is a face under it.

  “I did it,” Kuan says, “because I would be sad if you died.”

  The words land in the cold like a stone dropped into dark water. There isn’t a splash. Just a quiet widening ripple.

  Temej stares at him.

  For a heartbeat, he is genuinely stunned—like someone has thrown a spear at his chest and missed, and now he has to deal with the fact it could have hit.

  Then his skepticism crawls in, reliable as pain. “Sad,” he repeats flatly. “Like… a bully would be sad if he lost his victim.”

  Kuan’s grin returns, reflexive. “Ah. You’ve noticed our dynamic.”

  Temej’s eyes sharpen. “So that’s it.”

  Kuan looks at him for a long moment. The plateau wind slides between them, tasting their words.

  Then Kuan’s voice lowers. The prankster tone peels away like a cheap costume.

  “No,” he says. “That’s not it.”

  Temej goes still.

  Kuan’s gaze stays on the stars, as if he can’t look directly at what he’s saying without breaking something. “You’re valuable to me,” he admits, and it sounds ridiculous in his mouth.

  Temej’s lips part slightly, then close. His throat tightens in a way that makes him angry.

  Kuan continues, stubbornly, like he’s daring the universe to laugh. “As for why exactly, I don’t know. It’s a feeling that goes beyond reason. I would love to put words on it too, but it wouldn’t make any sense.”

  Temej’s fingers curl in the grass.

  He says the first honest thing he can find. “I want to kill you.”

  Kuan’s eyes flick toward him, bright. Then he smiles, gentle in a way that should be illegal on his face. “That’s fine,” he says. “I’d be okay with it.”

  Temej’s brows knit, confused despite himself. “What.”

  Kuan shrugs as if discussing the weather. “If anyone kills me, I’d prefer it be you. But you’d probably apologize first.”

  “I would not apologize.”

  “You would,” Kuan insists.

  Temej’s mouth tightens, but the corner threatens to betray him again. He hates that. He hates that laughter is showing up in his throat like a stray dog that refuses to leave.

  “You’re not serious,” Temej says.

  Kuan’s gaze holds his. “I am,” he says simply.

  Temej feels the words press against something in him that has been locked for years. Something that has survived by staying shut. He doesn’t know what to do with it, so he does what he always does: he tries to push it away with logic.

  “There is no reason for you to be… attached,” he says, stiff. “I can’t reciprocate. I don’t—” He searches for the right word and finds none that don’t sound weak. “I don’t have that kind of… capacity.”

  Kuan’s grin snaps back into place like armor. “Ah,” he says. “Good. I was worried you were about to be nice. That would ruin your brand.”

  Temej’s irritation flares again, relieved to have a familiar weapon. “You’re impossible.”

  “Yes,” Kuan says cheerfully. “It’s my best trait.”

  He reaches out suddenly and shoves Temej’s shoulder—not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to topple him sideways into the grass. Temej lands with an indignant grunt, good arm catching himself, the cold biting through his sleeve.

  Kuan laughs—bright and unrestrained, like the campfire noise distilled into one annoying man.

  Temej turns his head, glaring up at him. “Stop.”

  Kuan keeps laughing. “No.”

  “Stop,” Temej repeats, voice sharper.

  Kuan leans over him, face too close, eyes gleaming. “Make me.”

  Temej’s chest rises and falls faster. His heart is doing something stupid, and he hates it. He hates the way Kuan looks at him like he’s worth any attention at all. He hates the sincerity that keeps slipping out from under the jokes like a blade under a sleeve.

  He hates—most of all—the sound of Kuan’s voice, because it keeps crawling into the quiet parts of him and lighting them up.

  Temej’s frustration swells until it has nowhere to go but outward.

  He grabs Kuan by the front of his robe with his good hand and yanks.

  Kuan’s laughter cuts off in surprise as Temej hauls him down into the grass. Their bodies collide with a soft thud. Frost-crisp blades bend under them. The stars spin slightly overhead, as if the heavens are leaning in to watch the disaster.

  Kuan’s grin flickers, startled, delighted. “Oh?” he breathes.

  Temej’s breath is hot in the cold air, his face inches away. His eyes are furious—at Kuan, at himself, at the fact that sincerity exists and refuses to die.

  “There is only one way to solve you,” Temej growls, and the threat is half ridiculous, half real.

  Kuan’s eyes widen just a fraction, then soften, like he already knows the punchline and is willing to be hit by it.

  Temej doesn’t give himself time to think.

  He topples fully over Kuan and, with the only solution his overwhelmed brain can conjure, tries to shut his lips by placing his own on top of them.

  ...

  Fol and Jinhuang’s new yurt smells of fresh felt and old smoke, of sheep fat rubbed into seams, of herbs tucked beneath the threshold to confuse whatever jealous thing might crawl after happiness. Someone has tried to make it romantic by placing two candles in a bowl of sand. Their flames sway with each gust that sneaks in.

  Jinhuang stands just inside, hands at her sides like she is waiting for a decree to be read.

  The veil Lanau draped over her earlier lies folded on a low trunk.

  Fol closes the flap behind them and leans his forehead against the felt for a second, exhaling. It is the sound of a man finally alone with the thing he has been bracing for all day.

  Then he turns.

  For a heartbeat, they just stare at each other like idiots who have survived too much to believe in simple sweetness. Jinhuang’s mouth twitches first.

  “Well,” she says, voice dry. “You look… alive.”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Fol steps closer. His hair is still damp from ceremonial washing, his cheeks flushed from drink and dancing and being hauled around by Ta and Dukar like a sacrificial goat. He looks at her with something steady, not the shy scrambling she expected. It makes her blink.

  “I am alive,” he says. “I checked twice. Ta threatened to check for me.”

  Jinhuang’s laugh is small, surprised. “That sounds like Ta.”

  Fol’s hands hover, not touching yet, as if he is giving her the space to decide what kind of night this becomes. “If you want to sleep,” he says, “we sleep. If you want to talk, we talk. If you want to run, I’ll run with you.”

  Jinhuang exhales, and the breath shakes once. She hates that it shakes. “I don’t want to run,” she says, then adds, too quickly, “I didn’t marry you to run.”

  Fol’s eyes soften. “No. You married me to make Naci proud.”

  Jinhuang’s brows lift. “Excuse you.”

  He smiles, and there it is—the boyish thing that made her furious, that made her feel seen and mocked at once in those first months in Tepr when she was still learning how to breathe in the open.

  Jinhuang’s throat tightens.

  Then she tilts her chin, eyes narrowing like she’s about to argue for sport. “And you?” she asks. “Why did you marry me, Fol?”

  Fol’s gaze flicks down, then back up, and something shifts in his posture—an unspoken decision clicking into place. He steps closer until their toes nearly touch. “Because I like you,” he says plainly.

  Jinhuang’s breath catches. The directness hits her like a slap, not painful—just startling.

  She tries to make a joke. “You’re very confident for someone who nearly fainted multiple times before and during the ceremony.”

  Fol’s mouth curves. “I was not fainting. I was… honoring the spirits.”

  “You were turning green.”

  “I was turning respectful,” Fol insists, and steps in fully, close enough that his warmth bleeds into her. He lifts a hand and touches her jaw with his knuckles.

  Jinhuang doesn’t flinch. She leans into it, just slightly, surprised by her own hunger for contact.

  He moves then, decisively—no fumbling, no apology—pressing his forehead to hers, breathing her in like he’s memorizing her. When he kisses her, it is not gentle in the way of fragile things. It is careful in the way of sharp things handled properly.

  Jinhuang’s hands clutch his robe, fingers tightening until her knuckles pale, and she is suddenly aware of how badly she wants to be held.

  Fol pulls back just enough to look at her, his voice a rough whisper. “Let me,” he says.

  Jinhuang stares at him. Her mouth opens, closes.

  Then, she says, “If you disappoint me, I will tell Naci you cried first.”

  Fol grins, teeth flashing. “Cruel.”

  Jinhuang lifts her chin. “I learned from the best.”

  Fol’s hands slide to her waist, firm now, sure, and he guides her backward toward the furs. The candlelight throws their shadows huge against the felt wall.

  ...

  Naci’s yurt is messier than it should be for a Khan, which is how everyone knows she has actually come home.

  There are boots kicked off near the entrance. A spear leaned against the wall at a careless angle. A half-empty cup that smells of harsh liquor and ash. Someone—probably Lanau, with spiteful affection—has hung a ribbon from a tent pole in a blessing knot that looks suspiciously like a noose.

  Horohan stands in the center of it, hands on her belt, gaze flicking over the clutter as if assessing a battlefield. Her hair is loose, dark with white streaks, and heavy down her back. She looks less like a warlord and more like a woman who has been holding herself upright out of habit.

  Naci closes the flap and presses her back to it for one breath, eyes closed. The world outside is too loud, too full of faces and duties and people who want pieces of her.

  Horohan turns. “You’re staring at the door like it insulted you.”

  Naci opens her eyes, mouth twisting. “It did. It’s letting wind in.”

  Horohan’s lips twitch. “You should execute it.”

  “Tomorrow,” Naci says, and then her gaze catches on Horohan’s throat, the bruised shadow there from a strap or a hand or a moment in Seop that tried to kill her. Anger rises in Naci like fire finding oil. “Come here.”

  Horohan’s brows lift. “Is that an order, Khan?”

  Naci pushes off the flap and crosses the yurt in three strides. She doesn’t answer with words. She answers by grabbing Horohan’s coat and yanking her close, fingers digging in as if fabric is the only thing tethering Horohan to the world.

  Horohan inhales sharply, surprised by the force, and then—after a heartbeat—she melts into it, arms coming up, wrapping around Naci with equal hunger.

  Naci’s forehead presses against Horohan’s, their breath mingling. Her voice is rough. “I thought you were going to die,” she says.

  Horohan makes a low sound that is almost laughter, almost a sob. “How rude. I personally never thought I was going to die.”

  Naci’s hand slides up to cradle the back of Horohan’s head, fingers threading into her hair. She holds her like she is afraid that if she loosens her grip, the war will reach in through the smoke-hole and steal her back.

  Horohan’s hands, calloused and scarred, cup Naci’s face with a gentleness that feels obscene on a woman who has split men open with a sword. “You’re shaking,” Horohan murmurs.

  “I’m not,” Naci lies.

  Horohan huffs. “You are. It’s fine.”

  Naci’s jaw clenches. “I don’t want it to be fine,” she whispers. “I want to be—” She cuts herself off.

  Horohan understands anyway. She kisses Naci, slow at first, then deeper, like she is answering the unspoken word with her mouth. Naci’s hands tighten, and something in her finally unclenches—just a fraction—enough that she can breathe without counting costs.

  They move together toward the furs, boots forgotten, weapons forgotten, the world shrinking to the warmth between their bodies and the simple fact of being alive in the same place at the same time.

  Naci doesn’t let go.

  ...

  Dukar’s yurt smells like sweat and leather and the faint medicinal tang of whatever Pragya and Pragati have forced on Ta earlier. It is quieter here.

  Puripal lies on his side with his back to the felt wall, hair spilled loose, face pale in the low lamplight. He looks smaller than he does in palaces. There is a bruise blooming along his collarbone where someone’s armor struck him earlier, and a thin healing cut near his jaw that still holds a line of dried blood like ink.

  Dukar lies close, one arm around him, a hand resting on Puripal’s ribs as if counting breaths.

  Puripal’s fingers absently trace the seam of Dukar’s sleeve. It is a nervous habit.

  For a long while, neither speaks. Outside, the camp still celebrates, but here the sound is distant, muffled by felt and exhaustion.

  Then Dukar clears his throat.

  Puripal shifts, wary. He has learned to read that sound the way soldiers read the wind before arrows.

  Dukar’s voice is careful, not because he is afraid of Puripal’s temper—Dukar has seen Puripal at his worst and stayed anyway—but because he is afraid of hurting him by accident. “My sister wants you to leave the Yohazatz to her,” he says.

  Puripal goes still.

  The sentence hangs between them like a blade suspended by a single thread. It is not news, not really. It is the thing they have circled for years without naming. The throne in Qixi-Lo is a hungry beast. Someone always has to feed it.

  Puripal doesn’t reply.

  Dukar waits. He has learned Puripal’s silences: some are anger, some are calculation, some are grief wearing a straight face.

  When Puripal still says nothing, Dukar continues, voice gentler. “If you do,” he says, “we will be free.”

  Puripal’s lashes flutter once.

  Dukar presses on, because sometimes the only way to get through Puripal’s walls is to lean into them until they crack. “We can go wherever we want,” he says. “We can stop living like we’re bracing for a knife at every meal. We can go look for your mother too. We will make sure to find her.”

  At that, Puripal’s breath catches.

  It’s small, almost nothing, but Dukar feels it under his hand like a tremor.

  Puripal curls tighter into Dukar’s arms, face turning inward as if he is trying to hide from his own mouth. His voice, when it comes, is low and raw. “I remember everything now,” he says.

  Dukar’s grip tightens slightly. “Everything?”

  Puripal swallows. The next words scrape their way out. “My mother is dead.”

  Dukar’s chest tightens. He doesn’t interrupt. He doesn’t soften it. He lets Puripal say it, because truth that’s been swallowed too long comes up sharp.

  Puripal’s voice turns strange—half laughter, half poison. “The last time I saw her, she was going to be executed. And Kan and First Brother…” He pauses, jaw working. “They told me she was sent into exile instead.”

  Dukar exhales, slow. He doesn’t know Kan and Aral?n the way Puripal does, but he knows enough of siblings and lies. He knows what kindness looks like when it’s disguised as deception.

  “They were kind,” Dukar says quietly.

  Puripal’s fingers dig into Dukar’s sleeve. “I would have preferred to know the truth,” he says, and his voice is steady in the way a man’s voice gets when it is finally too tired to pretend. “I built my whole spine around a lie. I kept a place open in my head for her to return. Like a chair no one sits on, collecting dust.”

  Dukar’s throat works. He presses his lips to Puripal’s temple, a brief touch. “I’m sorry,” he says, and it is not an apology for the world. It is an apology for being unable to fix it.

  Puripal doesn’t answer. He just breathes, once, as if he is testing whether grief will let him.

  After a moment, Dukar shifts just enough to look at Puripal’s face. “What do you think should happen to Kan,” he asks carefully, “after we kill Nemeh?”

  Puripal’s eyes open, dark and flat in the lamplight. The name Nemeh sits on his tongue like old bile.

  “She won’t be satisfied until she becomes queen,” Puripal says.

  Dukar’s brows knit. “And if you abandon the throne—”

  “That means Naci will kill her as a pretender,” Puripal finishes. He says it without drama. This is simply how the world works.

  Dukar studies him, confused. “I thought you hated her.”

  Puripal’s mouth twists. “I do.” Puripal’s voice drops. “But she was always there for me. Even when she was spying. Even when she was—” He stops himself, swallowing whatever memory is trying to claw out. “She suffered a lot. She doesn’t deserve to die.”

  Dukar’s gaze hardens. He is not gentle when it comes to threats. “If she touches you again,” he says, tone calm and murderous, “I will kill her myself.”

  For a heartbeat, there is silence.

  Then something in Puripal loosens—just enough to let sound escape that isn’t pain.

  Puripal laughs, “thank you.”

  ...

  The Qixi-Lo palace sits in the desert like a jeweled carcass, its courtyards bright as polished bone by day, its corridors cold as throat-water by night. Sand creeps into the seams of every tile no matter how often servants sweep; it nests in the carved dragons’ mouths, it settles in the folds of silk curtains, it sighs beneath doors like a patient listener. The city outside shifts and huddles, rebuilding itself around whatever the palace decides to be this week—fortress, theatre, slaughterhouse, shrine.

  Inside, the air smells of incense and old perfumes and the faint metallic whisper of coins changing hands.

  Kan moves through it like a wrong thought.

  She should be dead. She knows it the way a tongue knows a missing tooth. The day her own blade in Nemeh’s hands went into her, the world made a clean, confident decision—this one ends here—and then it didn’t.

  Kan’s wound closes badly. The flesh around it puckers like a mouth that refuses to forgive. Some days it is only a dull ache, a reminder pressed under her ribs like a folded note in a shoe. Other days it burns hot enough to make her vision tremble, hot enough that she imagines the rot is not infection but history chewing its way out.

  She can smell it sometimes—sweet and wrong, like fruit left too long in the sun.

  She is thin now. Not the thinness of a dancer or a hungry child, but the sharpened thinness of a knife honed past comfort. Her cheeks have lost their softness; her eyes have not. If anything, her gaze has gotten heavier, as if she has been carrying too many names and finally stopped putting them down.

  She wears plain robes still. Habit, at first. Camouflage. A memory of her mother’s voice: Plain girls are invisible girls.

  Kan learns the rest of the sentence the palace never bothered to say out loud:

  Invisible girls bleed without witnesses.

  In the corner of an abandoned pavilion—one of the small, unfashionable ones no consort begs for and no prince pretends to renovate—Kan builds her new life out of quiet, careful trespasses. She steals time. She steals ingredients. She steals the tiny liberties no one counts because no one imagines a girl like her would dare to take them.

  The room she claims is low-ceilinged and cool. Once it was a perfumed storage, shelves meant to cradle jars of rose oil and powdered amber. Now it is a workshop.

  The shelves are still there. The jars are still there too, in a way. But the labels have changed. Some are scratched out. Some are written in a hand that is steady even when her body shakes: bitter, sleep, truth, quiet, mouth-foam, king’s kiss.

  On a small lacquer tray—black and glossy as a calm lie—rest three glass vials.

  Kan’s fingers hover above them and pause.

  The shape of the glass, the way light bends through it, stirs an old picture in her mind: a mother setting a box down like a toy, a child’s hands trembling around a clear drop that promises a polite death. The memory is not warm. It is not even sharp anymore.

  It is simply there, like bone under skin.

  Kan touches the first vial and feels her pulse throb at the tip of her finger. She caps it again, slower than necessary, as if the poison might climb out on a breath.

  A laugh slips out of her. It startles even her—small, dry, humorless.

  “Mother,” she murmurs to the empty room. “You’d hate how messy I am.”

  If her mother’s ghost answers, it does so through the palace itself: a distant shout, a sandal scuffing stone, the clink of metal as a guard changes his grip on a spear.

  Kan turns her attention back to what she can control.

  Tonight, she needs proof.

  Not because she doubts herself. She hasn’t had that luxury in years. Proof is for the future—the moment when she stands in a room with Puripal and Nemeh and watches them realize that a girl trained to listen has finally learned to speak in their language.

  Proof is also for her own sanity. Pain and fever are liars. Rot makes you dream strange dreams. She needs to know that what she makes works in the waking world.

  She has brought someone.

  The servant lies on the floor, bound at wrists and ankles with braided curtain cord. A gag is wedged between teeth, soaked through with spit. There is a bruise blooming on one cheekbone where Kan’s elbow caught him when he tried to run; there are scrape-marks on his palms from clawing at stone. His eyes are huge, white-rimmed, pleading.

  Kan kneels beside him. The movement pulls at her wound and sends a hot lance up her side. She lets her breath hitch once and then smooths it out. She will not give pain the satisfaction of interrupting her.

  “You,” she says softly, as if addressing a pet that has misbehaved, “were going to sell a rumor to Nemeh.”

  The servant shakes his head so hard the gag strap digs into his skin. His eyes dart toward the door as if someone will burst in and rescue him.

  No one rescues people here. People are reclaimed, sometimes, if they are useful enough to fight over.

  Kan’s mouth twitches. “I am flattered,” she says. “But I have been sold so many times I’m starting to suspect I should have my own market stall.”

  She reaches up and unties the gag—not with tenderness, but with economy. The servant coughs, sucks in air like he is drowning on the floor.

  “Please,” he gasps. “Lady—Princess—Kan, I didn’t—”

  “Don’t,” Kan says, gentle as a knife laid down. “If you lie, I’ll waste more time, and time is one of the few things I still like.”

  He makes a broken sound, half sob.

  Kan reaches for a small cup—ceramic, plain, chipped at the rim. In it, a thin dark liquid sits perfectly still. It does not steam. It does not smell of anything pleasant or obvious. It looks like tea.

  She holds it close enough for him to see. Not too close. She has learned from watching men like Puripal: you do not offer the prey your hand unless you want to feel teeth.

  “It’s funny,” Kan says conversationally, “how you think screaming will matter.”

  He opens his mouth. Words tumble out—names, promises, bargains. He offers her money. He offers her information. He offers her his loyalty.

  Kan listens as if she is considering it, because listening is something she is very good at.

  When he finishes, breathless, she nods once.

  “That was a good performance,” she says. “If you had been born into a better family, you might have survived longer.”

  His face contorts. “Please—”

  Kan’s voice stays soft. “Drink.”

  He tries to jerk away. Kan catches his chin with two fingers and squeezes. His eyes squeeze shut. Tears leak out anyway. She tips the cup to his lips.

  He chokes, swallows, gags. Some spills down his chin. Kan wipes it away with her sleeve like an annoyed nurse.

  “See?” she murmurs. “It’s not that dramatic.”

  For a few heartbeats, nothing happens.

  The servant’s breathing is ragged. His eyes are locked on Kan’s face as if trying to carve an answer out of her expression—Why? Why me?

  Kan watches him the way her mother watched other consorts: like a board game.

  His pupils begin to change. Not dilating in the theatrical way people expect from stories, but shifting subtly, as if his body is quietly negotiating with the idea of stopping. Sweat beads along his hairline. His hands strain against the cords. A tremor runs through his legs, then another.

  “Ah,” Kan says, almost pleased. “There you are.”

  He convulses once. Twice. The cords bite into his wrists. His breath comes in sharp, shallow pulls like a bellows failing. For a moment his gaze fixes on the ceiling, unfocused, as if he sees something waiting above the smoke-hole.

  Then his body stills.

  His mouth opens once, soundless. His eyes remain open too, staring at nothing with a kind of baffled offense.

  The silence afterward is thick.

  Kan sits back on her heels.

  Her wound pulses, a reminder that her own body is also negotiating with time.

  She reaches for a cloth and wipes her hands, slow and thorough. The servant’s bloodless face reflects faintly in the lacquer tray beside the vials. Kan’s own face looks back too—paler, harder, stranger.

  “You see?” she says aloud to the room, to her mother’s memory, to the palace that has tried to swallow her and failed. “No smell. No taste.”

  Her voice drops. “No blood. I surpassed you.”

  She stands. The movement makes her sway. She grips the shelf until the dizziness passes.

  She laughs again, dark and brief. “We’re on a schedule,” she tells her own body. “Try to keep up.”

  Kan drags the servant’s body into the corner, covering it with an old felt rug the way one might cover a spill. The palace will find him eventually. The palace always finds its missing pieces. It will blame someone convenient. It will invent a story.

  Kan returns to the vials.

  She uncaps one and inhales—careful, like a priest checking incense. She caps it again and sets it down. She has no interest in dying for her own plan. That would be embarrassingly symmetrical.

  She begins preparing the next mixture with instinct and obsession and a library of stolen knowledge that lives in her fingers. She crushes dried petals into powder until they stain her nails. She stirs a paste until it shines. She tests it on the tip of a blade, watching how it clings, how it slides, how it catches light.

  Each motion is precise.

  Each motion is a prayer to revenge.

  As she works, she talks—not to the dead servant, not to the palace, but to the idea of the two men she wants in the same room.

  She has been a spy, an errand-runner, an eye, a knife. She has watched others move pieces and call it love.

  Now she sets her own board.

  In her mind, she lays the room out: cushions, wine, a table set with sweetmeats. She sees how Puripal enters—too charming, too calm, pretending he isn’t counting exits. She sees how Nemeh enters—polished, bright-eyed, surrounded by guards who have never bled for him and will anyway.

  She imagines them both turning when they hear her voice.

  Kan smiles faintly, the expression not soft but sharp, like the edge of a coin.

  Outside the pavilion, the palace shifts in its sleep. A patrol passes, lantern light sliding across the reed screens. Kan goes still until the footsteps fade, then resumes, unbothered. She has learned to be invisible again, not by dull cloth but by certainty. People notice trembling. They notice pleading. They notice guilt.

  “I am done trusting anybody,” she says.

  Somewhere deeper in the palace, a gong sounds the hour.

  Kan blows out the lamp.

  Darkness swallows the room, leaving only the faint glimmer of glass where starlight sneaks in through the smoke-hole. Her breath is steady. Her eyes are open.

  She waits for Puripal to come home.

  She waits for Nemeh to be foolish enough to share air with him again.

  And in the dark, with rot in her flesh and vengeance in her hands, Kan plans the moment she becomes queen.