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This shouldn’t have surprised me. Regardless of the banners they flew, regardless of how righteous they saw themselves, power corrupted everyone who possessed it.

The guards bowed when they saw Yexue dismounting his horse and opened the double red doors of the manor before we reached the front steps. The guards we had come with followed us in, but trailing at a distance.

The interior was organized. If Yexue hadn’t already told me the occupier was a general, I would have guessed. Despite the decorations and the swallow-tailed roofs with their intricate carvings, the manor looked more like an army’s training field than a respectable home. Rows and rows of weapons were lined up neatly along the walls, and the center of the courtyard was cleared to make space for sparring.

For all its beautiful structure, the manor was not well kept. The paint was peeling from the brown beams, which could have been red a long time ago, and the stone tiles beneath our feet looked like they had not been washed in years.

“Is this the biggest house you could steal?”

“It was the biggestemptyhouse. Unlike your prince, I do not have the habit of stealing homes and kicking their inhabitants out.” Yexue grimaced. “Once the war is over, I will make sure these borderlands never suffer again. I will bring them the peace and stability that they deserve.”

“You and Siwang both say that.”

“Unlike your prince, I mean what I say and I don’t go back on my promises.”

I bit back the urge to remind Yexue that every man on the continent believed they would be the just ruler this land needed, but everyone who had tried to unite these Warring States had failed.

How long would Lan remain as a revered power, and how long until they eventually crumbled like all the mighty empires before?

The empress of all empresses…Could I change things, put us on a new path where the people could finally see peace?

As we walked through the manor, a young man in plain black robes came to greet us. He was tall but lean, with the posture of a soldier. “Your Highness.”

“Peizhi.” Yexue greeted him with a nod. “Is your father still at the training camp?”

“He is. Your visit is so sudden, he—”

“No need to call him back; we will leave tonight at the latest. Where is the seer?”

“Right this way, Your Highness.”

The young man, Peizhi, brought us to what seemed to be the library of the house. At the center of the room was a young woman kneeling at a table covered with plain white paper, with her eyes closed. Except there was something peculiar about how her eyelids seemed to sink into her—

I gasped.

“The Rong emperor tried to kill her with poison,” Yexue explained in a quiet voice as we entered the room. “When they discarded her body, they took her eyes and cut off her tongue as a precaution. But Ping’s teacher knew this would happen when she left the palace, and gave her an antidote that would cure ten thousand poisons, the same one you had used to save me. She was able to escape the capital with her life, but there’s no way to replace what the emperor took from her. She can still hear you, so if you have questions, ask away.”

Yexue gestured at the seat across from Ping. I sat down across from her. From here, I could see that she was still young. Late twenties, perhaps, and beautiful. “You are the disciple of the stargazer who foretold my fate?”

Ping nodded.

“Where is your teacher?”

She fled,Ping wrote on the paper placed before her.

“Do you know where?”

She shook her head.

“The prophecy, do you know…is it real?”

She wrote:I was a child, but I was with my teacher the night she foresaw your fate, and I have never seen her so shaken by the stars as shewas that night.

“Why did she leave the palace? Did she know something that the emperor didn’t want her to know? Did he try to????,kill the person and silence the lips? Is this why he tried to kill you as well?”

Ping’s brush hovered over the paper until a drop of ink splattered onto the stark white, staining the words before it. I was suddenly struck with guilt at how many questions I was asking her.

“You can tell her, Ping,” said Peizhi. “She won’t hurt you. No one will ever hurt you again.”