Song Mei didn't flinch as my boots echoed softly on the wooden planks of the bridge. She didn't call for her guards, and she didn't reach for a weapon. She simply watched me approach, her dark eyes reflecting the flickering light of the lanterns, her expression carved from the same stone as the mountain she sat on.
She wore a simple, unadorned black silk robe. The regal, untouchable aura she usually projected was still there, but it was edged with a cold, brittle tension — the kind that comes when a woman who has never been vulnerable is about to be.
I stopped at the edge of the pavilion, looking down at her.
"You bypassed my perimeter security," Song Mei noted, her voice perfectly calm. "My guards did not alert me to your arrival. Twenty men, six Shadows, and not one of them saw you."
"Your guards are looking for a threat they can understand," I said, stepping into the pavilion. "They're looking for armed men at the gates. They aren't looking for a ghost."
