Chapter 144: The Night Before the Festival
The capital had gone quiet.
Not the tense quiet of curfews or closed gates, but the soft lull of a city exhaling at last — lanternlight swaying in warm breezes, distant laughter threading through streets, the faint pluck of a lute from somewhere near the river.
Hei Long sat alone in his study.
Before him: a wooden box, carved with phoenix feathers and bound with a silk ribbon.
It had been untouched for years.
He pulled the ribbon free.
Inside lay letters — each sealed but never delivered, written at moments when silence had seemed safer than truth.
The First Letter: To Mu Yexin
The parchment smelled faintly of plum blossoms, the ink faded in places where the brush had hesitated.
Yexin,
I once thought you were dangerous because you saw through me.Now I know you were dangerous because you saw me.
The Isles suited you — I saw it in the way you breathed there, as if the world had finally remembered how to hold you without tightening its grip. I wish I had given you that peace sooner.
You turned fear into flowers that day in the capital. You called it redecorating. I called it home.
— Hei Long
He sealed it with wax the color of moonlight, the stamp an imprint of his personal crest — not the imperial one, just his own.
The Second Letter: To Zhao Yuran
Yuran,
You made a ring of mercy and then laughed when the enemy mocked it. That laugh carried farther than any threat.
You have always made space for others to be braver than they thought they could be — even me.
I used to think kindness was a luxury I couldn’t afford. You’ve taught me it’s the sharpest weapon I own.
— Hei Long
He pressed a lotus petal into the fold before sealing it — a real one, dried from the garden of their first shared evening.
The Third Letter: To Qingxue
Qingxue,
You bowed before you drew your sword. I know the discipline it takes to offer respect before violence.
You once told me you became strong because you had to be. I hope you know you can rest now, because you choose to.
In another life, I might have been your opponent. In this one, I am grateful to be your ally.
— Hei Long
This seal he pressed with the shape of a single drawn line — her preferred mark when signing dueling challenges.
The Fourth Letter: To Yan Yiren
Yiren,
When you said "together," the city believed you.
I have known women who commanded armies, toppled clans, shaped dynasties. You are the first to make me believe a hearth can be stronger than a fortress.
You guard not just my life, but the part of it I didn’t realize was worth guarding.
— Hei Long
For this one, he broke a small strip of silk from his own sleeve and tied it around the seal.
The Fifth Letter: To Mingyan Zhu
Zhu,
You ask the questions no one else thinks to ask. That is your weapon, and it is sharper than mine.
I have fought wars for less than what you gave me when you decided to call me Father.
You are not like me.
You are better.
— Hei Long
He didn’t seal this one. He wanted her to read it immediately.
Deliveries
Morning came soft and gold.
Hei Long carried the letters himself. No servants. No guards.
He left Yexin’s on her pillow while she still slept, her fingers curling around the wax seal in her dreams.
Yuran was already in the garden when he placed hers beside her tea; she looked down, read the seal, and smiled in that quiet way that meant don’t speak yet.
He handed Qingxue’s to her at the training yard. She accepted it without a word, then, to his surprise, bowed — the same bow she had given the doubles.
Yiren’s was placed on the kitchen counter as she prepared breakfast; when she saw the silk tie, she stilled for a heartbeat, then resumed chopping with a faint, unshakable smile.
Finally, he found Zhu in the courtyard feeding spirit-cranes. He knelt, held out the unsealed page, and waited as she read every word.
Her eyes softened. She hugged him without asking.
"You’re better too," she said.
The letters weren’t grand gestures. They weren’t part of a scheme or a ploy.
They were what remained when nothing was left to prove.
Hei Long returned to his study afterward.
The box was empty.
For the first time in a long while, so was his chest — empty in the way a room is empty after you’ve opened the windows and let the air move.
They came down the lantern street together, five women and a girl flanking Hei Long in a loose, comfortable formation that the crowd parted for without being told.
Yan Yiren walked on his right, elegant as ever, the pale crimson of her gown matching the phoenix motif of her hairpiece. Her hand was linked with Mingyan Zhu’s, whose excited gaze darted from stall to stall.
On his left was Zhao Yuran, the pale green of her hanfu making her seem carved from moonlight. She carried a folded paper lotus in one hand, an unspoken promise to place it in the river later.
Behind them, Mu Yexin wove lazily through the crowd, her shorter frame making her movements catlike and mischievous. Every so often she’d slip a folded origami crane into a passing child’s pocket without being noticed.
Qingxue kept to Hei Long’s immediate right flank, expression cool, hand resting lightly on her sword hilt—not because she expected trouble, but because habit is a harder teacher than fear.
The people noticed. They whispered, pointed, smiled. Some bowed; others simply looked relieved, as if seeing them together meant the city itself would be safe for another year.
The first stop came at Yexin’s insistence.She tugged Hei Long’s sleeve toward a row of small tables set under a blooming plum tree, where shallow dishes of plum wine shimmered in the light.
"This," Yexin announced, "is the Isles’ Lantern Oath."
Each participant dipped a brush into the wine and painted a symbol, word, or picture onto the thin paper of their lantern. As the lantern warmed from the candle inside, the wine’s scent would rise, carrying the meaning of the mark upward.
Hei Long took the brush first. His mark was simple: a single horizontal line, the character for stillness
.Yexin glanced at it and smiled knowingly. "So you can’t be accused of wishing for anything at all."
She painted next—a full moon, imperfect and smudged at the edges. "Because nothing perfect is interesting," she explained.
When they released their lantern, it drifted upward slowly, as if savoring the weight of their combined marks. Hei Long noticed that Yexin’s fingers lingered on the frame a moment longer than necessary before letting go.
Further along the festival road, the lantern river split the city in two. The water carried hundreds of small paper lotuses, each lit from within by a pea-sized spirit flame.
"This is from my mother’s province," Yuran told them, kneeling gracefully by the water. "We write the name of someone we wish to protect on the inside petals."
She pressed one lotus into Hei Long’s hand.He turned it in his fingers, then wrote six names—hers, Yiren, Yexin, Qingxue, Zhu... and his own.
"Your own?" Yuran asked, softly amused.
"Someone has to," he replied.
Her smile held a weight that said she understood more than the words. She set her own lotus afloat, and the two drifted side by side until the current took them under the bridge.
The square at the center of the market had been cleared for performances. Musicians stood ready with guqin, drums, and flutes, but Qingxue stepped forward to the center and raised her hand.
"No music," she told them.
Her tradition, she explained, came from her sect—dances meant to be done in silence, the movements themselves creating the rhythm.
She began slowly, each step deliberate, a story told in balance and stillness. Then she turned toward Hei Long and extended her hand.
He stepped into the circle without hesitation.
They moved together, not as fighters this time, but as partners in a quiet duel of grace—mirroring, turning, drawing lines in the air only the two of them could read. When they stopped, the crowd applauded, but Hei Long’s gaze stayed on Qingxue’s faint, rare smile.
Near the outer ring of the festival, where the poorer districts gathered, Yiren took a small bag of steamed buns from a vendor and began handing them to anyone without a lantern.
"This was my father’s way," she said to Hei Long when he gave her a questioning look. "If someone cannot carry a light, you give them warmth instead."
Zhu helped her, running ahead to offer bread to children, who accepted it shyly before darting away.
Hei Long took one bun for himself. "You’re sure it’s not bribery?"
"Only if you expect something in return," Yiren replied.
"And if I do?"
"Then it’s courting," she said without looking at him.
They reached the highest point of the capital wall just before midnight. The final tradition belonged to Zhu.
She took a small wooden whistle from her sleeve and blew three soft notes. From the shadows, a small spirit-crane emerged and landed on her shoulder.
"This is the Isles’ way to end the night," she said proudly. "You ask the crane your question, and if it flies toward the moon, the answer is yes."
Hei Long raised an eyebrow. "And if it doesn’t?"
"Then you didn’t ask the right question," she said simply.
She leaned to the crane’s ear and whispered. The bird tilted its head, then took off—straight toward the moon. Zhu grinned.
Hei Long did not ask what the question was.
By the time they returned to the residence, their hands were full—plum wine stains on lantern frames, the smell of river lotus on their clothes, crumbs from bread wrapped in pockets, the sound of a silent dance echoing in their bones.
Hei Long poured tea for all of them. No words were needed.
It was not a night of victories or schemes. It was a night that asked nothing of them except to be together.
And that, he thought as Yiren’s laugh joined Yexin’s teasing and Qingxue’s quiet warmth filled the room, was the rarest kind of victory he’d ever won.