The road beyond the forest was eerily calm, as if the trees themselves were holding their breath after the storm.
The air slled of sap and ash. The wheel had been fixed, the wounded tended, the dead wrapped for the journey ho.
Only the Emperor remained motionless on horseback, gaze fixed on the arrow still lodged deep in the carriage fra.
The shaft trembled in the faint breeze — black fletching, heavy iron tip.
A perfect soldier’s arrow.
But its angle was wrong.
Zhao Rui dismounted, boots crunching softly against the gravel.
He traced the path of the arrow with his eyes, following it to the seat where the Empress had been sitting.
Three arrows had struck — all within the sa mark.
Not one toward his side.
---
The Pattern
"Strange," he murmured.
The captain beside him stiffened. "Your Majesty?"
Zhao Rui’s tone was calm, too calm. "You see the pattern, don’t you? The shots ca from the left ridge. All aid here..."
He touched the spot beside the embroidered cushion. "Not one toward ."
The n exchanged uneasy glances.
Ananya stood a short distance away, speaking softly with Yao Qing and checking the wounded. She hadn’t noticed the Emperor’s quiet scrutiny — or the hardening of his jaw as he continued to study the arrows.
"They knew where we’d stop," he said finally. "Where the carriage would be trapped. They knew who sat where."
His hand clenched around the shaft and snapped it in half. The wood cracked like a neck breaking.
The guards flinched.
That knowledge wasn’t public.
Even Duke Lian’s most loyal soldiers hadn’t known the exact route.
He had changed it at the last mont — only a few had been told.
Which ant one thing:
There was a leak inside the palace.
Zhao Rui’s eyes darkened. "Find who prepared the travel list," he ordered. "And question the ssenger who rode last night. Quietly."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
When the guard departed, Zhao Rui turned slightly, gaze flicking toward the Empress. She was laughing softly with her sister’s maid, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear, unaware of the invisible noose tightening around her life.
He frowned.
This ambush wasn’t for him.
Soone wanted her dead.
And worse — they wanted it to happen on his watch.
Later that evening, camped near a stream, Zhao Rui sat alone beside the embers of a dying fire.
The forest whispered around him, and his reflection in the water looked back like a stranger.
His thoughts spiraled inward.
Who would dare strike her now — after the Purity Rite, after Heaven itself had cleared her na?
Lady Chen’s face flickered briefly across his mind, serene and poisonous.
Her uncle commanded a portion of the border’s supply lines — the sa border that had begun to starve.
Coincidence? He didn’t believe in them anymore.
He rembered the ledger Duke Lian had shown him — half the missing provisions had vanished along routes Chen’s kin supervised.
And now... an ambush, aid not at him but at the woman Lady Chen despised most.
He exhaled slowly, the smoke of the fire curling up like a serpent. "Too convenient," he whispered.
-
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