Chapter Text
The winter banquet shimmered beneath a hundred lanterns, orange glow flickering like distant stars trembling over a frozen lake.
The main hall of the imperial palace was transformed into a scene of opulence and artifice, Ivory pillars wrapped in crimson silk rose toward a ceiling adorned by gold, while clouds of incense drifted lazily between crystal braziers and banners bearing the imperial crest.
Shining trays passed from hand to hand, piled up with dumplings shaped like lotus buds, candied fruits, and roasted duck carved so delicately it seemed to melt before reaching the tongue. Court officials murmured beneath embroidered sleeves, their words coated with courtesy and caution. A banquet, yes, but also a battlefield, wreathed in perfume and politeness.
At a modest table on the outermost edge of the hall, the woman kept her gaze low and her presence lower. Her robes, dyed in the mossy green and soft gray of the La clan, held no ornaments. While her hair, bound in a practical scholar’s knot, was held by a single wooden pin. As the daughter of La Zhen, known to many as Lakan, and her presence here was not born of favor, but, obligation.
She wasn’t here to dazzle or flirt.
She was here to watch.
The feast wore, all shimmering illusion and hidden steel. At the head of the hall, the emperor reigned in silence, his bearing that of a man accustomed to being obeyed even while still. Beside him, Empress Ah Duo, dignified and distant, nodded graciously as tribute-bearers toasted and curtsied.
But it was the man seated to the emperor’s left who held Maomao’s attention for a flickering second longer than she intended.
Crown Prince Zuigetsu.
He shone.
Not metaphorically(though that was true too). His skin, his robes, his bearing. But literally. His garments were pale gold threaded with silver; his hair fell in perfect lines around his shoulders, bound with a phoenix hairpin that gleamed in the lamplight. He accepted cups and compliments with that same mask Maomao had seen from afar in court reports. Poised, unreadable, divine.
And underneath it all— exhausted.
Their eyes didn’t meet. Of course not. Though they had known of each other’s names for years, their worlds had been carefully kept apart. He, the Crown Prince, a symbol of order. She, the infamous daughter of a notorious recluse whose tongue was as sharp as his intellect. There had never been a reason letting them interact.
She sipped her wine slowly. Not because she enjoyed the taste, but because it gave her time to think. Lakan’s command had been simple: attend in his place, keep your head down, and observe. Yet from the moment the first dish was laid down, Maomao’s instincts had stirred. Something off.
The banquet's warmth wasn't quite right. The tension in the air wasn't only political. And somewhere amid the perfume of plum blossom, roasted chestnut, and rosewood smoke...
A hint of bitterness?
The scent is all wrong. Almost green, like damp leaves crushed beneath iron.
Her fingers tightened around her cup. She lowered it to the table and let her gaze drift back carefully toward the dais.
The prince had just accepted a bowl of fish belly soup. He lifted a spoon, tasted it politely, nodded. Perfect etiquette. Nothing outwardly amiss.
Except for the twitch.
Subtle. Almost invisible. A slight tremble in the hand that held the spoon.
Then another. A rapid blink, too fast and too focused to be fatigue.
She set her cup down and rose clean enough not enough to draw notice. Just another bored noblewoman excusing herself to the courtyard.
But every step she took between pillars and shadows was measured. Calculated. She passed behind a serving maid, noted the tray she carried. Not the wine. Not the soup. That eliminated a few options.
Still too many left.
The performers entered then, their arrival loud and bright. All attention shifted toward the central stage as acrobats in shimmering silk bowed low and struck the drum. The timing was fortunate.
At the center of the hall, Crown Prince Zuigetsu lifted his wine cup, his expression effortlessly pleasant. The embroidered dragons on his crimson robe shimmered in the lanternlight as he raised the vessel to the dignitaries gathered around him. Their eyes gleamed with ambition, caution, and calculation. Zuigetsu’s gaze, however, betrayed none of the weariness buried beneath his powdered elegance. He offered a shallow smile, as if the weight of the court, the empire, and the evening’s burdens could be dismissed with the curve of his lips.
He took a sip.
A breath later, something changed. Not visibly— at first. But Maomao, watching from behind the screen, noticed the subtle hitch in his throat, the too quick blink. His long fingers paused slightly as he set the cup back on the table. Her eyes narrowed. The color on his cheeks dulled. A faint barely perceptible tremor rippled through his left hand before he tucked it beneath the table.
He didn’t speak. That, more than anything, was telling.
He turned his head slightly toward his personal eunuch, murmured something too low to hear. The man stiffened and immediately gestured to the palace musicians, who began to play more loudly, creating an odd, artificial cheer. Servants moved quickly, replenishing wine, offering delicacies, bustling just enough to distract the other guests. Maomao’s pulse quickened. It was a quiet signal. The kind only those raised among danger and subterfuge would notice. A warning wrapped in music and motion.
Then came the second sign: a sheen of sweat bloomed at the edge of Zuigetsu’s temple. One that had no business appearing in the cool autumn night.
Poison.
Maomao’s eyes sharpened like a drawn blade. She slipped a hand into her wide sleeve, where a few emergency packets of powdered herbs were hidden, habitual borne of Luomen’s lettered teachings. Her breath slowed. She thought fast.
Not many poisons could affect someone so quickly without causing obvious convulsions or vomiting... unless the substance attacked the nervous system directly.
Nightspur root? No, too bitter to mask. Bloodleaf oil? Unlikely.
Bluefire blossom.
A rare plant. Nearly scentless, almost tasteless, it could be powdered and dissolved into wine without altering the flavor. Found only in the mountains beyond the northern border. It was used in assassinations centuries ago before its use faded from common knowledge. But Luomen had spoken of it once, absently, with a grimace. The symptoms matched: slight hand tremors, facial numbness, slowed breathing.
And if left untreated for longer than an hour, paralysis. Then heart failure.
Her hand tightened around the powder in her sleeve.
No one else in this court would know what it was. No one could save him, unless she acted now.
When Crown Prince Zuigetsu rose from his seat with slow grace, murmuring some polite excuse about fatigue or a mild headache, the entire table bowed with appropriate deference. His personal eunuch, tight-lipped, escorted him with practiced speed, half a step behind.
The moment he disappeared through the side corridor of the banquet hall, Maomao was already in motion.
She slipped through the folds of the screen. No one looked twice at a La clan daughter who had disappeared from her seat. The La were aloof, eccentric, and rarely interested in courtly pleasures. A passing court maid glanced her way, but Maomao had already swept up a servant’s cloak from a hook, draped it over her embroidered robes, and pulled her hair free from its pins. Unadorned, unassuming, she melted into the palace's undercurrents.
The corridor Zuigetsu had taken was quiet, lined with flickering lanterns and guarded by only two men at the far end. Neither saw her. She ducked into a side passage she remembered from following her father walking around the palace on duty. There were always other paths maintenance routes, servant alleys, narrow wooden stairs behind silk tapestries. She followed one, then another.
By the time she reemerged in the inner corridor, she had already pulled her sleeves up, unfastened the medicinal pouch hidden at her hip, and composed her breath. She didn’t knock. The Crown Prince’s private doors were unattended— highly irregular. And she took that as confirmation of her suspicions.
Inside, the room was dark, save for the faint flicker of an oil lamp on the far wall. The sweet, cloying scent of sandalwood hung in the air, masking the sharpness of sweat.
Zuigetsu was collapsed halfway onto the bed, one hand clutched to his chest, the other trembling near his mouth. His robes were tangled, loosened hastily as if he’d tried to relieve pressure on his ribs. His breath rattled unevenly, and his normally luminous skin had taken on an unhealthy pallor, tinged faintly green. His lips were dry and cracked.
Somehow still looks like something out of an explicit novel.
"High fever, shallow breathing, arrhythmic pulse," she muttered, kneeling beside him.
He flinched at the sound, weakly turning his head toward her. "Who—"
"Shh. You're not in a state to ask questions." She pressed two fingers against his pulse. His pulse was fast but thready, like a drumbeat echoing from underwater. “Not good.”
"I… know you," he rasped. His voice was a ghost of itself. "Lakan’s… daughter?"
“So your mind still works. Barely.” She pulled a pouch from her sash and began selecting powders with a speed born of habit. “You were poisoned. Something refined, slow-acting but vicious. It won’t kill immediately. How lucky for you. I recognized the symptoms when you started losing focus during the wine toast.”
“You… watched me?”
“Observed. There's a difference.”
She tilted his chin up, poured a crushed herbal dose under his tongue, and followed it with a measured trickle of water from a bamboo flask. He tried to swallow and nearly choked, coughing weakly.
Zuigetsu groaned. “You’ve… no right…!!”
“And yet here I am,” she snapped. “Saving your life, so perhaps you can scold me more properly later.”
Despite himself, a corner of his lips twitched. “You’re very… blunt.”
“I’m very uninterested in letting you die on ornamental bedding.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, grimacing as a wave of nausea surged through him. She held a cloth to his mouth, just in case. “I wasn’t careless,” he muttered. “I watched every dish.”
“It wasn’t in the food. It was in the lacquer of your wine cup. That’s why none of the tasters caught it.”
His eyes opened again, barely slits now, but they fixed on her with dawning clarity. “Clever… of them.”
“Clever enough to think no one would notice the early signs.” She reached to feel his wrist again. The heartbeat was still fast but no longer slipping. His breathing was still shallow, but no longer ragged. She exhaled. “You’re stabilizing. It’ll get worse before it improves, but you won’t die tonight.”
“That’s… reassuring.”
“I wasn’t aiming to be.”
For the first time, silence hung between them. Not the urgent silence of medical crisis, but something more cautious. He looked at her— truly looked. Not just as a healer or Lakan’s daughter, but as someone who had trespassed every layer of decorum to be here, pressing life back into his veins with her bare hands.
And then—
The door flew open.
A young servant girl froze in the threshold, her eyes going wide as saucers. Her gaze darted from Zuigetsu, half-reclined on the bed with his robes still loosened, to Maomao kneeling beside him, a hand still on his bare wrist, her other holding an opened flask above his lips.
The girl let out a horrified squeak, dropped the linens she was carrying, and bolted, red-faced, her footsteps retreating in a panicked clatter.
Maomao blinked.
Zuigetsu blinked slower.
The door slammed behind the fleeing servant.
For a long second, the only sound in the chamber was the faint creak of Zuigetsu’s shallow breathing and the drip of water from the edge of Maomao’s flask onto the floor.
She slowly straightened up, tucked the flask back into her sash, and exhaled.
And then she cursed under her breath.
Zuigetsu winced as he tried to move, his hand briefly rising to touch his temple. “What… did she think she saw?”
“You, half-undressed and flushed,” Maomao said tonelessly, though with a frustrated brows. “Me, kneeling over you, touching your throat. Shall I go on?”
He groaned—not in pain, but in dread. “If that gets out…”
“Rumors always do,” she said, rising to her feet and dusting off her knees. “You may be the Crown Prince, but you’re not immune to gossip. Especially not when it’s this… vivid.”
His expression, though weak, twisted into something caught between frustration and amusement. “You speak so freely.”
“I’m not a court lady.” She moved to the washbasin in the corner and soaked a cloth. “And you’re not in a state to scold me. Besides, if I didn’t speak freely, you’d be dead by now.”
She returned, dabbing the cloth gently along his brow. Zuigetsu flinched but didn’t pull away.
“…You were prepared for this,” he said after a moment. “For poison.”
Maomao didn’t answer immediately. “I wasn’t sure until you collapsed. But I’ve seen this toxin before. Once, in a brothel. A courtesan who insulted a wealthy client.”
His brows furrowed faintly. “So it wasn’t meant for me?”
“Oh, it was meant for you.”
She continued, “The dosage was too precise. It was timed to strike after the banquet, when you’d be alone and less likely to be noticed until too late. Sloppy, but effective. If no one had interfered, your attendants would’ve found your body by morning.”
A cold silence settled between them.
Then, Zuigetsu said softly, “Thank you.”
She blinked.
It wasn’t sarcasm. He looked at her directly, exhaustion etched deep into his features, but the words had weight.
Maomao’s face remained carefully neutral. “Don’t thank me yet. There will be consequences.”
A knock suddenly echoed from the outer corridor. Sounds more than one person.
Really? Again?
Maomao moved quickly, disappearing behind the screen again just as the door creaked open.
Voices rose. Courtiers, maybe guards. Searching for the prince.
And Maomao, hidden in the shadows, silently cursing the coming storm. She pressed herself more, barely daring to breathe while she tries to stay hidden.
The footsteps grew louder. Measured and quick. One set. Male. A higher-ranking servant or junior guard, perhaps. The door slid open with a dry, scraping sound, and she heard the soft rustle of cloth as someone stepped inside.
“Your Highness?” The voice was cautious. Not alarmed, not yet. “We heard… the attendant said…” A pause. “Are you well?”
Zuigetsu didn’t answer immediately. Maomao frowned from behind the screen. His breathing was still too shallow.
“I… am awake,” he finally said. “It was nothing. I was unwell. Tell no one.”
“My lord, she said a woman—”
“There was no one,” He said sharply.
Silence. The servant shifted on his feet. “Understood.”
A few more seconds passed. Maomao counted them in her head. Ten. Fifteen. Surely he was leaving—
Then the soft creak of a footstep sounded far too close.
Her elbow bumped the edge of the screen with a dull thud.
She froze. Zuigetsu froze. The servant froze.
The servant’s voice came again, far more alert now. “Who's there?”
Maomao stepped out from behind the screen, expression perfectly calm despite the flush creeping up her neck.
“Ah.”
The servant looked from her disheveled appearance to Zuigetsu, still half-reclined on the couch, his outer robe undone and damp from sweat, his cheeks flushed and shirt clinging to his skin.
His mouth parted. He stared at her. Then at Zuigetsu. Then back at her.
“Oh...”
“Wait,” Zuigetsu croaked, already dragging himself into a more upright position. “It’s not what it looks like...”
Maomao straightened, brushing dust from her sleeves. “Indeed. This is not what it looks like.”
The servant blinked rapidly, then made a strangled choking sound somewhere between a cough and a gasp. “I—Forgive me, I’ll—”
“No, stay,” Zuigetsu said, struggling to find his footing. He gestured weakly toward Maomao. “This woman… she’s the daughter of La Kan. She was at the banquet.”
“Miss Kan?” the servant echoed in a daze. “But then what is she doing—”
“She saved my life,” Zuigetsu said firmly. “There was poison in the wine. I collapsed. She followed me and administered an antidote.”
Maomao added coolly, “If I’d waited for you to summon a physician, His Highness would have died.”
The servant’s mouth opened and closed. “I— No, I didn’t mean to assume— It’s just…”
“Because I was disheveled? Because she was kneeling beside me?” Zuigetsu gave a faint smile, pale but dignified. “Would you prefer I’d been found dead and alone?”
The servant bowed his head quickly. “N-no, Your Highness! I only— I misunderstood!”
“Good. Then forget what you think you saw,” Maomao said dryly. “Unless you want your head decorating the gate by morning.”
Zuigetsu gave her a glance. “Dramatic touch.”
“Am I wrong?”
The servant, thoroughly pale now, stammered, “No! Not at all! I saw nothing!! What are you talking about!!”
Zuigetsu sighed. “Go. Summon only the palace physician. No one else. Tell them I am unwell, but recovering. Say nothing about poison.”
The servant bowed so deeply his forehead nearly hit the floor. “At once, Your Highness!” And fled like a man with wolves at his heels.
When the door shut, Maomao let out a breath and turned back to the crown prince.
“…So,” she said. “Now what?”
He closed his eyes and muttered, “Now I owe you my life. And we’re about to be the center of ten thousand whispers.”
She looked at him, expression unreadable. “How unfortunate.”