The next morning, the mist over the Shadow Pavilion's training grounds was thick enough to swallow a man whole.
Lin Kai was sharpening a short blade, the rhythmic scritch-scritch of the whetstone the only thing keeping his mind from drifting back to Su Cheng at the carriage.
"Seven."
The voice was low, like gravel shifting. Lin Kai didn't jump—the "Identification" wouldn't let him—but his hand tightened on the stone.
Standing behind him was Number Twelve. She was older, her face scarred by a jagged line that ran from her ear to her jaw.
In the Pavilion, Twelve was as close to a mentor as anyone got. She was the one who taught him how to stitch a wound without flinching.
"You look like you haven't slept," she said, leaning against a wooden pillar.
She watched him for a second, then her voice softened into something dangerously quiet. "I heard about the mission. Are you holding up? I know it was messy."
Lin Kai didn't look up. "It was a failure. The target escaped."
"I'm not talking about the target, Seven," Twelve said. She stepped closer, her shadow falling over his whetstone.
"I'm talking about the Marquis. I heard he was the one who signed the decree. I'm sorry about your sister, Kai."
Lin Kai's heart stopped.
Sister?
He didn't have a sister. He had a mother who worked two jobs and a younger brother who was obsessed with video games. He opened his mouth to ask what she was talking about, but the words died in his throat.
The world tilted, and suddenly a memory that wasn't his flooded in—smelling like ash and old wood..
Suddenly, he wasn't in the mist anymore. He saw a dusty village square. He saw a girl—no more than ten, with a crooked braid and a laugh that sounded like bells.
He saw himself, younger, holding her hand. Then he saw the Marquis's seal on a scroll. He saw the fire. He saw the girl's small shoes left in the ash.
The memory was so sharp it tasted like copper.
His knuckles turned white, his grip on the whetstone so tight the stone cracked in his hand. A red-hot rage, thick and ancient, surged through his chest.
Su Cheng did this? The guy who let me borrow his high-end pencils?
His breathing hitched, his vision tunneling into a dark, murderous red. He wanted to find the Marquis's estate and burn it to the ground.
Tap.
Twelve's hand landed on his shoulder. The touch was heavy, grounding.
"Don't," she whispered. "That's the grief talking. In this life, we are the blade, and the officials are the hands. If you let the hate sit in your gut, it'll slow your draw. And a slow Shadow is a dead one."
The red fog cleared as quickly as it had come. Lin Kai blinked, the "Identification" settling back into a cold, dull ache. The rage was still there, but it was buried under miles of professional ice.
He looked down at the cracked whetstone. He didn't feel like an assassin. He felt like a hollowed-out tree.
"Come on," Twelve said, pulling her hand away. "The sun is up and the tavern in the lower market is opening. You need a drink, or you're going to snap in half before the next moon. They've got a fresh batch of rice wine that tastes like medicinal poison, but it shuts the mind up."
Lin Kai stood up, his legs feeling like lead. He thought of Su Cheng's face in the rain. He thought of the little girl with the braid.
"Yeah," Lin Kai rasped, his voice sounding like it was being dragged over broken glass. "A drink sounds good."
He followed her toward the market, his hand instinctively checking the dagger at his belt. He had a meeting with the Marquis tonight.
And for the first time, he didn't know if he was going there to protect his friend or to kill a monster.
In the Imperial Forward Camp, Li Feng slumped in a chair made of wood so hard it made his lower back ache. He rubbed his face with his hands, feeling the grime from the night before still stuck in his pores.
"I'm so tired of this," he groaned. His voice was flat, echoing against the high stone ceiling. "I don't know what happened or why I'm even here. No one gives me a straight answer, and then another problem just drops in my lap? I'm actually going mad."
The servants stood frozen along the walls. They didn't look at him; they looked at the floor, their shoulders hunched.
They had seen the "Tyrant" go off before, and the way the Prince was muttering in that strange, clipped tongue made their skin crawl. They waited for the snap.
A eunuch scrambled into the room, his silk slippers skidding on the polished floor. He held a letter out with trembling hands.
"Your Highness... a message from the Marquis. It's urgent."
Li Feng snatched the paper. As his eyes hit the words—Willow Bridge, Merchant, Ledger—the air in the room seemed to get sucked out.
The "Identification" didn't just rise; it slammed into him. The confusion and the "Captain" persona were drowned out by a surge of cold, imperial venom. His spine went rigid. His vision sharpened until the eunuch's heavy breathing sounded like a roar.
He didn't think. He didn't even stand up all the way.
Li Feng's hand blurred. He drew the sword resting against the table and swung in one fluid, horizontal arc.
The sound was a sickening thwack-slide. The eunuch didn't even have time to scream before he collapsed, the letter fluttering out of Li Feng's hand and landing in the red pool spreading across the floor.
The servants bolted for the corners, one of them stifling a sob.
Then, the yellow light in Li Feng's eyes flickered and died.
The "Tyrant" vanished as quickly as a blown-out candle, leaving only a twenty-something guy standing over a cooling body. The heavy, metallic smell of fresh blood hit him like a physical punch to the stomach.
Li Feng's fingers went limp. The sword hit the stone floor with a clatter that sounded like a gunshot in the silent room.
"Oh god," he wheezed. His knees buckled, and he caught the edge of the heavy oak table just before he hit the ground. His breath came in shallow, panicked stabs. "Oh god, I didn't—I didn't mean to—"
He looked at his right hand. It was steady a second ago, but now it was vibrating so hard he had to tuck it against his chest.
He looked at the eunuch—a man who had just been breathing, just been holding a letter—and now he was just... meat.
Li Feng's vision blurred. He felt a hot, acidic surge in the back of his throat and had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting right there on his own gold-threaded boots.
I just killed a guy. I just killed a guy.
The modern part of his brain screamed that he needed to call an ambulance, that he needed a lawyer, that this was a nightmare he'd wake up from.
But the "Identification" was already crawling back, a cold, oily pressure at the base of his skull. It didn't care about his guilt. It wanted the Bridge.
"Your Highness?" a guard whispered from the doorway, his voice trembling.
Li Feng didn't look up. He stared at the blood on his sleeve, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He felt small. He felt like a fraud wearing a monster's skin.
He forced himself to stand, his legs feeling like they were made of water. He didn't wipe the blade this time. He just left it on the floor.
"Clear the room," he rasped. His voice was a broken shadow of the Prince's roar. "And get my horse. If I stay here... I'm going to lose my mind."
He stumbled toward the door, not because he was a king, but because he couldn't stand to be in the same room as the person he had just become.
---
The room smelled of bitter herbs and scorched linen. Zhou Yan opened his eyes to a ceiling of dark, heavy beams—not the jagged stone of the cave.
He was lying on a cot, his torso wrapped so tightly in bandages he felt like a mummy, but the screaming fire in his side had faded into a dull, heavy throb.
He sat up, his head swimming. The movement was slow, lacking the effortless, lethal grace of the "God of Death." Right now, he was just Big Cat, and he felt like he'd been hit by a semi-truck.
"General? You shouldn't be moving."
Zhou Yan turned his head. A man stood by the door—bruised, mud-stained, but wearing the heavy iron plates of a Commander. Zhou Yan blinked, his brain dragging through the fog until he recognized the face.
This was one of the guys from the front lines, the one who had been shouting orders before everything went to hell.
"Wei... Da?" Zhou Yan rasped. His throat felt like he'd swallowed a handful of sand.
"I am here, sir." Wei Da stepped forward, his face etched with a relief so deep it looked like pain. "The physician said you lost enough blood to kill three men. It is a miracle you are awake."
Zhou Yan ignored the talk of miracles. He looked around the small, clinical room, his heart starting to thump a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
The last thing he remembered was the flickering orange light of a pathetic little fire and a guy in indigo silks crying over him.
"Where's Han Jue?" Zhou Yan asked. The modern name slipped out naturally, his voice sharp with a sudden, spiking anxiety. "Did he make it out? Is he okay?"
Wei Da froze, his hand hovering over a basin of water. He looked at Zhou Yan with a mask of pure confusion. "Han... Jue? Sir, I do not know this name."
"The guy in the cave!" Zhou Yan snapped, wincing as the sudden movement pulled at his stitches. "The one with the messy hair and the expensive blue robes. Where is he?"
Wei Da's expression hardened, his relief curdling into a dark, soldierly suspicion. "You mean the Shadow Merchant? That rat who was hovering over you like a vulture?"
"Merchant? No, he's—" Zhou Yan stopped, the "Identification" buzzing in the back of his mind. He realized how he must sound. "Yeah. The Merchant. Where is he?"
"I snatched you from his clutches before he could do more damage," Wei Da said, his voice dropping into a growl.
"The coward fled into the woods when he realized the rescue had arrived. My scouts reported he was seen heading toward the ravine with a message. He's likely trying to trade the location of our forward camp to the Prince's men to save his own neck."
Zhou Yan felt the blood drain from his face. "Trade me? No, you don't get it. He was trying to save me."
"He was holding you hostage in a hole, General," Wei Da countered firmly. "He is a dealer of secrets and lives. Do not let the fever trick you. He is exactly what the Pavilion says he is: a man who only cares about the highest bidder."
Zhou Yan sank back into the furs, his mind racing.
Han Jue isn't a Merchant, and he sure as hell isn't a traitor. But if Han Jue was out there alone, trying to "trade" with the Prince to get his friend back, he was walking straight into a slaughterhouse.
"Sir?"
"Nothing," Zhou Yan said, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the edge of the cot.
He needed to get up. He needed to move.
Because if the Prince and the Merchant met, only one of them was coming back—and he knew his best friend didn't stand a chance against a Wolf.