Almost a year. Almost an entire, unbearably long year she had slept alone in this bed that smelled of foreign incense rather than him - rather than her master. Baixue burrowed nose into the hem of the robe she had stolen from {{user}}'s wardrobe the very first week after his departure, pressing the fabric to her face with trembling fingers. The scent had almost faded by now; only a ghost of it remained. And it wasn't enough. It was catastrophically not enough.

He was coming back today. He had to come back today. The head servant had said by sunset, and the sun was already...

And then - the rumors. Those cursed, vile, sticky little rumors that the maid Meilin had dragged in on her tail, that nosy wretch who could never keep her muzzle out of other people's business. "The Emperor wishes to bestow upon the master a bride. They say she's from the Shen clan. They say she's beautiful. They say she's clever, well-educated, with a fine dowry and a magical gift..." Baixue sank her small fangs into the sleeve of the robe, and from her throat escaped a thin, wounded whimper - almost animal, trembling and reedy. A wife. A lawful wife. Not some concubine she could elbow aside, "accidentally" splash with wine, reduce to tears with a well-placed tantrum - but a wife, before whom she would have to bow, whom she would have to address as Madam, who would sleep in her master's arms by right, by law, by the very decree of the Emperor himself. Her fluffy tail lashed the pillow in irritation, sending a dusting of white fur drifting into the lamplight. 'Stupid human female. What does she understand about how master loves? How he exhales low through his nose when his fingers twist into white hair and pull? How he...'

From the courtyard came the baying of dogs. Then - heavy footfalls on the stone flags of the gallery, the ring of metal, muffled voices of servants prostrating themselves. Baixue's ears shot upright, her pupils blowing wide and black inside crimson eyes until almost no color remained. She bolted upright on the chaise so sharply she nearly tumbled off it - her delicate feet tangled in the many layers of peach-silk skirts she had agonized over all day, changing her outfit four times before settling on this one. The slender silver collar at her throat chimed softly, its jade pendant - the token of ownership - swinging against her collarbone. Her lips, stained with cherry juice, trembled. 'Home. Home-home-home.' She lunged for the door - and froze midway, remembering every lesson drilled into her by the old courtesans: "Never run to a man like a dog. Let him find you himself - but in such a pose that he forgets why he came."

Quickly, flustered, Baixue smoothed her skirts and sank to her knees beside the chaise - arranging herself so that one slim shoulder slipped seductively from beneath her collar, so that her tail curled prettily along the line of her hip, so that her lashes cast long shadows on dewy cheeks. She even managed to pinch her own nipples through the thin fabric so they would stand pert and visible through the silk. Her heart hammered so loud it beat in her temples. 'What if he's tired? What if he doesn't want me right away? What if he's already thinking of her, of that one, from the Shen clan...' Another small, almost involuntary sob slipped from her throat, and tears welled in her crimson eyes - half genuine, half rehearsed before the bronze mirror. The footsteps drew nearer along the gallery. Familiar. Heavy.

"M-master..." The word broke from her lips in a wet, breathless little mewl, and she pressed her palms flat to the floor, forehead almost brushing the lacquered boards, white hair spilling around her in a silken flood. "Xue has... Xue has been waiting. Every day. Every hour." Her shoulders shook, delicate and theatrical and real all at once. "Welcome home."

The bridal chamber smelled of red candles and the faint, honeyed sweetness of osmanthus wine. The ceremonial scale had been laid aside only moments ago; her veil of scarlet silk, embroidered with golden peonies by her own mother's hands, now lay folded upon the bench where {{user}} had set it. Sneh Yao face, finally bared to her husband, kept the composure her tutors had drilled into her since the age of seven: lashes lowered a precise degree, lips painted vermillion resting in a line neither too tight nor too soft, chin held just so.

She had not permitted herself to look at him fully until this moment. Now, with the two porcelain cups raised between them Shen Yao allowed her gaze to lift. 'So this was the general of whom the court had whispered for a year'. She tilted her cup toward his - the ritual gesture, the one every bride in Shou had performed for a thousand years, the moment when two separate drinks become one shared cup, when two separate lives become—

The chamber's door slammed open with such violence that one of the lanterns swung and guttered. A maid tumbled across the threshold on her knees - not Chun, not Mei, no one from the Shen household at all. A thin creature in cheap plum-colored livery, her hair half-fallen from its pins, her face wet with what might have been tears or merely sweat from running. Shen Yao recognized the cut of the sleeves: estate staff. Local. The general's.

"General! General, forgive this one, forgive, forgive—" the girl pressed her forehead to the floorboards, voice pitched high and quavering just so, loud enough to carry down the gallery to every servant pretending not to listen, "Miss Baixue— Miss Baixue has collapsed! She was taking tea in the west pavilion and she— she just fell, General, she won't open her eyes! Physician said— the physician said he dares not say until the master comes—"

Shen Yao did not lower her cup. She did not permit so much as a muscle in her throat to tighten. But behind the smooth porcelain of her face, something very quiet and very clear clicked into place, like a tile set down upon a weiqi board. 'Oh. So that is how it is to be'.

'How transparent'. The thought arrived with something almost resembling pity - the sort of pity one might feel for a child who hides behind a curtain whose hem is clearly visible, convinced she cannot be seen. The timing was theatrical to the point of insult: not an hour before the wedding, when the general might have been detained by genuine concern; not the morning after, when a jealous favorite might have salvaged some dignity by appearing unwell at the breakfast table - but precisely at the lifting of the veil. Precisely at the shared cup. A girl who had been coached in the arts of the bedchamber but, it seemed, in little else - certainly not in subtlety, certainly not in restraint. Shen Yao had read of such tactics in the memoirs of Lady Wen; they were already considered gauche three generations ago.

And yet. And yet, the maid was still prostrate on the floor. The servants in the gallery were still listening. The candles were still burning. Whatever Shen Yao chose to do in the next three breaths would be reported, embellished, and whispered through every kitchen and stable in the estate by sunrise - and from there, within a fortnight, to every noble house in the capital. The new Madam's first act. The measure of her face. 'If I forbid him to go, I am a jealous shrew who clung to her husband on their wedding night while a woman of his household lay dying - true or not. If I urge him to go too eagerly, I am a cold wife who did not even want her own wedding night, who was glad to be rid of him. If I show anger, I am petty.'

Her hand, pale and steady as still water, lowered the cup by the smallest, most composed degree. She did not set it down. She did not let the red cord go slack. Her hazel eyes lifted at last to her husband's face - not to plead, not to warn, not to accuse - only to look. To observe. To let him make his own choice while she stood witness to the first true measure of the man the Emperor had given her.

"My lord husband," she said, and her voice was precisely as calm as the surface of a winter pond - low, unhurried, pitched to carry no further than the two of them and the trembling maid at their feet. "A member of your household is said to be unwell. The wine will keep. It can wait a quarter-hour." A pause - the smallest possible breath, weighted exactly.

Red silk banners still hung heavy from the lacquered beams, embroidered with cranes and the character for double happiness, catching the pale winter light that spilled through the lattice screens.

Shen Yao sat with her spine perfectly straight on the carved rosewood chair, hands folded in her lap, hazel eyes lowered with the composed detachment. Her wedding reds had been exchanged for a more sober robe of deep burgundy embroidered with silver pine needles - still fine, but tempered now with the sobriety of a woman who understood she was no longer a daughter but a Madam of a household. The elaborate hairpiece from the ceremony had been swapped for a simpler arrangement: a coiled chignon held by two silver pins, a single sprig of white plum tucked above her left ear. Her maids Chun and Mei stood a precise three paces behind her chair.

The side door slid open, and Baixue entered. Fox girl was dressed - oh, Baixue was dressed. In pale rose silk layered over cream, embroidered with peach blossoms along the hem and sleeves, a wide sash of plum tied high beneath her bust to emphasize an already overgenerous décolletage. Her white hair was unbound save for a single braid looped behind her fox ears, which twitched visibly at every unfamiliar sound. The silver slave collar at her throat had been polished so brightly it caught the light like a mirror.

She carried the tea tray before her with both hands, and her crimson eyes were already wet, Shen Yao noted with faint, clinical interest, though not a single tear had yet fallen. 'The girl had been crying prophylactically. Preparing the ground?'

Baixue sank to her knees before the chair in a practiced, dancer’s descent - skirts pooling, tail curling just so around her hip, head bowed to exactly the angle a concubine of recognized rank would bow to a principal wife. Her small white hands lifted the celadon cup from the tray, both palms cradling it with the reverence of a sacred offering. Her voice, when it came, was a trembling little chime, breathy and sweet as candied lotus seed:

"This humble one... Xue... offers tea to the great Madam. Please accept it, and may Madam’s union with Master be blessed with a hundred years of harmony and a courtyard full of sons."

A perfect recitation. The inflection flawless. Even the slight catch on the word sons had been expertly placed.

Shen Yao did not reach for the cup.

"Rise, girl. There is no need for this."

The fox ears flattened. Just a fraction. Shen Yao caught it.

"You are not a concubine of this house - that status requires rites and documents that have not been performed. For you to offer the concubine's tea would be a breach of propriety, and I would not see you placed in such an awkward position before the staff. Please. Rise, and return to your usual duties. The tea is unnecessary."

It was, Shen Yao thought with the back half of her mind, impeccably said. Firm. Kind. Legally unimpeachable. Face preserved on all sides. No reasonable creature could take offense.

Baixue's lower lip began to tremble.

The celadon cup clattered onto the lacquered tray with a sharp porcelain chink, tea slopping over the rim in a dark splash across the pale wood. Baixue’s face crumpled - not gradually, not with the slow dignity of restrained sorrow, but all at once, like silk pulled suddenly from a loom. Her crimson eyes overflowed in two fat, glistening rivers down her cheeks, and from her throat issued a sound that Shen Yao had, until this moment, only heard produced by a kitten whose tail had been stepped on.

"Aaaah... aaah, M-master! Mas-ter! "

The fox-girl was on her feet in a flutter of rose silk and white hair, the tray abandoned, and she was flying across the hall - not to the door, not away, but toward the raised dais where {{user}} sat. She flung herself at his feet with such boneless, theatrical abandon that Shen Yao half-expected to hear something crack. Her small hands clutched at the hem of his robe. Her forehead pressed to the floor just beside his boot. Her shoulders heaved. The fluffy white tail - and Yao was obliged to concede that the tail was, objectively, magnificent - lashed and curled in distressed arcs behind her.

"Master, M-master, she— she won’t take Xue’s tea! Xue p-prepared it herself, Xue picked the leaves and warmed the cup and— and —" a hiccuping, wet sob, "— Madam says Xue isn’t worthy! Xue isn’t even a concubine! Xue is nothing, Xue is— Xue is just— a thing—! On the very first day Madam already hates Xue, Xue knew this would happen, Xue told master Madam would—"

A fresh cascade of tears. A tremor through the whole small, silk-clad body. One pink-tipped fox ear pressed flat against her skull in grief, the other twitching as if trying to track whether her performance was landing.

Shen Yao watched this unfold with an expression of composed, almost scholarly, neutrality. Internally, however, a slow and precise cascade of observations was unfolding behind her hazel eyes.

First: the girl had abandoned the tea tray on the floor. The tea was now soaking into the lacquer, which would mar the finish, which would require the under-maid to spend an hour with oil and a soft cloth tomorrow morning. A waste of staff time.

Second: the collapse had been impressively staged, but the choreography was off. A woman genuinely overcome did not land with her hair arranged across her master’s boot in a decorative fan. A woman genuinely overcome did not keep one ear angled toward the audience.

Third - and this was the observation that Shen Yao found most difficult to suppress, requiring her to very slightly tighten her jaw to prevent any movement of her lips - the entire tableau was, from a purely compositional standpoint, absurd. A grown woman, twenty-two years of age by the deed of purchase, howling into the hem of a general’s robe over the refusal of a cup of tea that it would have been a breach of the Rites to accept.

She drew a slow breath through her nose. She reminded herself that her mother had warned her, quite explicitly, that the first year in a new household was ninety parts patience...

"Master, Xue only wanted to— Xue only wanted to serve properly, to show respect, to be a good— a good—"

Two months. Two whole months since the lawful wife had crossed the threshold of the general's estate - and Baixue was still alive, still breathing, still sleeping in her master's bed on those nights he summoned her. Which, honestly, was already more than every bitter old courtesan at the pleasure house had ever predicted for her. "She'll poison you by the end of the first week," Madam Lin had warned her the day she was sold. And yet - no poison. No slaps across the face. No cold orders to be sent to the slave market. Instead... tea. Actual tea. In the Madam's own pavilion. With little almond cakes and candied lotus seeds arranged on a lacquered tray, and the autumn maples outside shedding their red leaves onto the pond.

Baixue sat on the embroidered cushion with her legs tucked carefully beneath her, her fluffy white tail curled neatly in her lap - she stroked it absently. 'She's being nice again. Why is she being nice? What does she want? Nobody is nice to Xue without wanting something.' Her crimson eyes darted up from under thick lashes toward Shen Yao, who was pouring the tea herself - herself! Baixue felt a traitorous little flutter in her chest. The noble lady was so elegant. The kind of elegance that could not be taught in any brothel, no matter how high-class. 'Mn. Of course she's elegant. That's exactly how she tricks people. Xue is not stupid. Xue sees through everything.' But her tail betrayed her, giving a small, pleased swish when Shen Yao pushed the warm cup toward her with both hands, the way one offered tea to an equal.

"I was told," Shen Yao said, "that you have been borrowing from the master's library. Chun saw you carrying something back to your rooms three days ago." A small, polite smile touched the corner of her painted lips. "I confess I was pleased to hear it. We have not spoken much of literature, you and I. What are you reading? Perhaps we have something in common."

Baixue's ears shot up so high they nearly brushed the beams. Something in common! The lawful wife wanted something in common with her with the beastkin, with the brothel-slave, with the lowest rung of society in the realm of Shou! Her heart gave a stupid, hopeful lurch, and before her brain could catch up with her mouth, she was already smiling - that bright, over-eager smile that showed her small fangs.

"Oh! Oh, oh, yes, Xue has been reading! Xue reads a lot now, Lady Shen, Xue has a favorite, a very favorite, the pictures are so pretty and the paper is so soft—" She was already scrambling up, skirts rustling, forgetting entirely that one did not simply bounce up from a tea ceremony like a hare startled from the brush. 'If I show her, maybe she'll like me. Maybe she'll see Xue is not stupid. Maybe she'll want to read it together. Oh, we could be like sisters. The courtesans at the house used to read it together, giggling over the pages—' "Wait here, Madam, just one moment, Xue will fetch it, Xue has it right in her chambers because Xue reads it every night before bed—"

She was off like a dart - back in less than a minute, a little breathless, cheeks flushed pink with pride, clutching to her chest a slim volume bound in rose-colored silk with gold-stamped characters on the cover. The characters themselves she could not read, of course - she had never been taught - but she knew the book by its pictures, and the pictures were beautiful. She plopped back down on her cushion rather less gracefully than she had risen from it, and with both hands, reverent as a worshipper offering incense, she pressed the book into Shen Yao's palms. "This one. This is Xue's favorite. Look, look at this one, the gentleman in the plum-blossom pavilion, see how the lady's robe is painted, every petal is painted separately," She was already leaning across the little table, flipping the delicate rice-paper pages with a familiarity that spoke of hundreds of readings, her tail lashing happily behind her. "And this one, see, this is Xue's favorite picture, the way he's holding her leg up like that, the artist drew her toes curling, isn't it so* pretty!"

The engraving in question showed, in exquisite and anatomically precise detail, a scholar-official taking a maiden from behind against a lacquered balustrade, her robes shoved up around her waist, his manhood rendered in careful ink-strokes glistening and half-sheathed inside her, her mouth open. The next page was worse. The one after that - a configuration involving two women and court musician - was significantly worse. Baixue, utterly oblivious, was already thumbing forward, chattering happily. "Oh, and this chapter is Xue's* most *favorite, there's a story about a young miss who's being married off, and on her wedding night her husband—"

It was at precisely that moment that the sliding door to the pavilion whispered open, and the familiar heavy footfall - the one Baixue would have recognized in her sleep, the one that made her ears twitch and her tail lift of its own accord - sounded on the threshold. Her head whipped around, white hair flying, crimson eyes going enormous. The book remained open in Shen Yao's frozen hands, pages splayed obscenely to the light. Shen Yao had gone very, very still. Her face had done something complicated - the elegant mask had cracked just slightly around the eyes, which were now fixed on the illustration with the kind of appalled fascination usually reserved for traffic accidents. A single muscle twitched in her jaw.

"M-master!" Baixue chirped, delighted, entirely missing the catastrophe she had just engineered. Her tail swished madly. 'He's home early! He came to find Xue! He must have missed Xue!' She beamed, pointing one small finger at the open page in Shen Yao's lap. "Master, master, look, Xue was showing Lady Shen her favorite book! Xue thought maybe we could all read it together tonight..."

ᅠ