The Blue-Gray Horse - Chapter 4

“Do you think Li Zaiyang’s ghost is still around, haunting the sect master so he can’t sleep? Maybe that’s why he picked the Feng family at random to make trouble for.”

Yuan Er, a disciple delivering messages from the Listening Wind Hall, sat beneath the corridor peeling a tangerine and spitting out the seeds.

“I heard he’s really going after them this time. He had our banking house in Jianghuai cut off the Feng family’s transactions. Which of these great households doesn’t have a few dirty ventures in the south? They get money by using their power up north, then transfer it south to collect. Cutting that off hits them where it hurts. Is the sect master breaking with the Feng family for good?”

Yuan Er had the face of a clever schemer. He slanted his narrow eyes toward me.

What was he looking at?

“Stop making wild guesses,” I warned him.

He grinned slyly and leaned in against my shoulder. “I have evidence, little Yihuan. He’s doing this for you.”

I glared at him.

He looked even less serious as he went on. “The Feng family abandoned you for more than a decade. Then, just when the sect master announced he was searching for your birth parents, they reached out to Partridge Mountain. They must have seen what happened to Li Zaiyang and learned how fond the sect master is of you. Now they want to cling to him for protection.”

He sighed. “But the sect master went back on his word and demanded they cut all ties with you. Why do you think that is?”

I frowned.

Yuan Er lifted a long finger and gave my thick skull a little push. “If you went back to the Fengs, they’d call you a cherished young lady, but you’d really be a pawn. They might spoil you because they fear him, but their affection would never be real.”

“He won’t let you go back because he’s afraid you’ll leave him and suffer some hurt he doesn’t know about.” Yuan Er’s eyes lit up, as though he’d stumbled onto a startling discovery. “You wouldn’t make a sound even with a broken bone. How could he stop worrying about you…?”

A light breeze rustled the thick leaves of the courtyard trees. A ripple stirred.

*Thwap.* A tangerine flew over and struck Yuan Er on the head.

He looked up. At the sight of the figure leaning beside the latticed window, he sprang to his feet and hurried away from me. He stood below the steps with his hands tucked into his sleeves, timid and obedient.

“Sect Master…”

The dappled light hid Shi Wuhen’s face. He stared at Yuan Er without speaking until sweat trickled down the disciple’s forehead. Only then did he slowly look away and go back inside.

Yuan Er wiped his brow, bent low, and went in to deliver his report. When he emerged, he was paler than before. He didn’t joke with me again; he bolted as if I carried the plague.

“…” I watched his retreating figure in bewilderment.

A leaf landed on my head. Before I could lower my chin, a broad sleeve fell beside me and someone plucked it away. I looked up and saw Father.

I moved to stand in alarm, but his hand pressed gently down on my head, and he sat beside me instead.

The leaf glowed green between his pale fingers. Slowly, he brought it down from the top of my head, past my forehead, my brows, my eyes…

“An elder once told me that some foolish people are born stubborn. A single leaf can block their sight, and they can no longer tell right from wrong.”

His voice was like springwater running through a mountain gorge. I stared at his face, barely thinking about what he said. *That fool must be me.*

But Father said he meant himself.

He crushed the veins of the leaf between his fingers and looked at my face unobstructed. His gaze lingered as though I had been away from him for a very long time.

“Yihuan, you do whatever I ask. If I tell you to become someone’s empress, you will. Is that right?”

I nodded without thinking.

Then he asked, “What if I asked you to become *my* empress?”

The wind kept blowing, but everything else seemed to stop.

Slowly, my lashes trembled.