Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Moonlight fell over me, gentle as a hand stroking my hair.

Three days after I left, the Emperor invoked the Empress Dowager's final decree and held the prince's household to account for everything.

The Prince of Pingnan had deceived the throne and concealed the confusion in his family's bloodline for years. He had also angered the Empress Dowager and brought on the illness that killed her.

No one at court dared plead for him.

His Majesty stripped him of his title and rank and reclaimed his fief. Overnight, the Qin family fell back to where it had begun. Military command was returned to the court, leaving them an ordinary military household once more.

When they returned to Zhenjiang, even the residence the imperial family had bestowed on them was sealed. Their new house was less than half its size. Their servants dwindled, and their enemies took advantage of their fall.

Hanzhu and Ruoheng were implicated too. Former friends avoided them, and fellow students shunned them. They had incurred the Emperor's wrath. No family dared associate with the Qins anymore.

The Qin family had no hope of rising again.

When the news reached me, I was already aboard a boat bound for Yangzhou.

During a stop ashore, I received a letter carried day and night by the imperial relay stations. I looked at the sender's name.

The Prince of Pingnan.

The winter cold numbed my hands. I breathed into my palms, then held the letter in stiff fingers, reluctant to unfold it.

The boatman called from nearby.

“Miss, the river will freeze in winter. We need to reach Yangzhou before the snow. We ought to hurry.”

“I'm coming!” I called back.

A gust of wind caught the letter. My frozen fingers could not hold it. It tumbled along the bank, then fell into the water.

A few bubbles rose.

Then it quietly disappeared.

I did not go after it.

If even Heaven did not want me to read it, I would leave it unread.

The prince's household and I would take separate paths from now on.

The clouds had parted. The sky was clear.

The journey by water was swift. We reached Yangzhou a day before the snow began.

I wandered around the town first and spent a night at an inn. I had expected it to take a great deal of effort to find the Xu family, but the next day, after only a few inquiries, someone pointed me to their home.

It stood deep in a lane shared by a handful of households. Everything was quiet.

I stopped before the gate and looked up at the sign.

Xu.

My biological father's surname.

I hesitated for a long time.

For all those years, the Xu family had raised Hanzhu as their own. The switch had only been discovered three years earlier. They had never met me. They did not know what sort of person I was.

Would they really like me?

Only now did I begin to feel nervous. Perhaps this was what it meant to fear coming home.

Before I could sort out my thoughts, the gate opened.

A young servant on his way out stopped short at the sight of me.

I forced a smile and tried to think how to introduce myself. But his eyes widened.

“You! You're...”

He spun around and ran inside, stumbling as though he had seen a ghost.

“Young master! She's home!”

He had startled me so badly that my heart almost leapt out of my chest. Holding my bundle, I rested a hand against the wall for a moment, unsure whether to laugh or cry.

9

A young man came running out to meet me.

His clothes and cuffs were embroidered with bamboo. His sharp brows might have made him look imposing if he had not rushed out in such disarray.

I laughed as soon as I saw him.

No wonder the servant had recognized me so easily.

We really did look alike.

He stopped in front of me and looked me over. Then his eyes reddened.

“You're home?” His voice was hoarse.

I smiled at him.

“I'm home, Brother.”

How strange that someone you had never met could feel so familiar. It was as though we had been family in another life, bound to each other instinctively by our blood.

I stayed with the Xus.

My brother told me his name was Xu Hanqing. My rooms were in the courtyard next to his. Everything had been prepared with such care that I could see how much thought had gone into it.

He told me our parents had arranged these rooms for me while they were still alive.

I stopped.

“For me? Not for Qin Hanzhu?”

He laughed. Even his tense shoulders relaxed, as though he could finally stop worrying.

“Why are you laughing?” I asked.

“They really are for you,” he said teasingly. “Mother and Father always hoped you would come home. There's only one of each of these things. They're yours alone.”

They were not the things Hanzhu had left behind.

Everything I had once been given was something I had to accept reluctantly. I did not want to pick up what others no longer wanted.

I moved in happily.

Yangzhou looked much like Zhenjiang, but its people were different.

I had traveled a long way to reach them, covered in the dust of the road.