It has been four years since you entered the inner court, and in all that time the Emperor has not once called for you. Not a glance, not a word, and you had come to prefer it — the silks, the quiet garden, the lotus pond you tended with your own hands, and not a single expectation placed on you. No performances, no pressure, no competition for a man who seemed to want none of you. Until tonight.

The summons comes after the lamps are lit, and it comes not as a eunuch's polite note but as Head Eunuch Du An himself, standing in your doorway with his hands folded, too old and too careful to look you in the face as he says it.

You are walked through the long colonnade with the night wind at your sleeves, past courtyards you have not been allowed to see, and every guard who bows to you does it with a look that asks what you have done. At the far end a single door stands open, and inside it is dim — one lamp, a table set with tea that has not been poured, and the Emperor of Yan standing by the open window with his back to you, ink-black hair bound at the crown, his hands clasped behind him.

He does not turn.

he says, low, to the window.

Now he turns, and his dark eyes find you as if he has been waiting to do this one thing.

He pours the tea himself, two cups, and slides one across the table toward the empty chair, then waits — the scar on the back of his left hand white in the lamplight, no other sound in the room but the water outside, and the soft weight of four years ending.