There was never a choice, only a question. Will you marry a farmer, or a merchant?

Your parents were from the countryside, poor and practical in the particular way poverty makes people practical. They knew the price of rice by the handful, silk by the bolt, and exactly how many good harvests it took before a family could stop worrying about the next bad one. They had no influential relatives, no ancestral fortune, and certainly no son to carry the family name into some comfortable future. They had you.

Noblewomen read literature. Poor women read account books.

You learned both. Your mother taught you poetry, your father taught you arithmetic and bargaining, and neither of them ever quite managed to teach you obedience. By sixteen, you had decided that marriage was not going to happen. Not because you were particularly romantic about independence, but because there were examinations to take, academies to enter, and a world beyond the village that seemed considerably more interesting than becoming somebody's wife.

Everyone knew about Fenglei.

One of the Eight Sovereign Imperial Academies, Fenglei trained the empire's future officers, strategists, and generals, offering its students education, connections, and appointments that could turn an ordinary nobody into somebody the Court had to listen to. Its entrance examinations began with the Six Foundations, testing everything from history and mathematics to literature, science, languages, and reasoning, but passing them only earned a candidate the right to attempt the academy's individual trial.

Fenglei's was notorious.

Every year, candidates were sent into the northern mountains in the dead of winter, divided into teams with basic supplies and deliberately vague instructions, and expected to survive for one month. Their teammates were competitors, their provisions were limited, and the examination had almost nothing to do with what could be memorised from a book. It tested whether you could think when frightened, endure when exhausted, cooperate when cooperation was inconvenient, and keep moving when nobody was coming to help.

You knew how to do that. You knew how to make one meal last two, how to sleep badly and wake up anyway, how to keep working when you were tired, frightened, or angry. Other candidates had been taught how to command. You had been taught how to endure. And so, with your shorn hair, your strange pills to suppress your period, and your chest binding, you entered the mountains as someone you were never supposed to become. And you got in.

By the time he discovered the truth, you had already been at Fenglei long enough for him to thoroughly despise you.

Shen mo. The Third Imperial Prince.

Tall, pale, with those elegant features that looked like they belonged on a painting rather than in real life and long black hair, all features that seemed to be a hereditary requirement among the imperial family. He was the sort of person who had never once been permitted to forget that he had been born above everyone else. He carried himself with the effortless arrogance of someone who had grown up surrounded by servants, tutors, guards, and people who thought twice before disagreeing with him.

He was brilliant, undeniably so, which was perhaps the most irritating part. He was excellent at strategy, frighteningly quick with a blade, and consistently among the highest-ranked students in every examination. Unfortunately, he also possessed the confidence of a man who had never encountered a consequence he couldn't charm, threaten, or simply outlive.

You had been rivals since your first year, though neither of you had ever formally declared yourselves as such. You simply happened to be the two students who consistently ended up competing for the highest marks, arguing with instructors, finishing drills first, and finding increasingly creative ways to prove that the other was wrong. He thought you were arrogant, insufferable, and possessed of an almost supernatural talent for making him look foolish. You thought he was loud, reckless, and so convinced of his own brilliance that you occasionally wondered whether anyone had ever bothered to tell him he was not, in fact, the emperor.

Or even the crown prince. He was the third, for crying out loud. He'd probably be old and senile before he could even dream about becoming the emperor.

You had told him just that one summer afternoon during sparring practice, after he had spent nearly ten minutes boasting about how naturally suited he was for command, as though being born into the imperial family had somehow granted him a divine understanding of military strategy. You had knocked his sword aside, stepped past his guard, and informed him that perhaps he should worry about becoming the third prince before he started planning the succession.

The class erupted into laughter.

He had hated you ever since.

Not ordinary hatred, either. The kind that developed roots.

Which was precisely why, when he finally discovered that the person who had spent the last two years humiliating him in examinations, beating him in sparring matches, and repeatedly reminding him that being born royal did not make him clever was actually a girl, his first reaction was not embarrassment.

It was an outrage.

You had been careful about it from the beginning.

The academy's communal bathing rooms were crowded at dawn and again after evening drills, which made them entirely unsuitable, so you had developed a habit of bathing during the oddest hours imaginable, usually while everyone else was at lunch, studying, or eating dinner. It was inconvenient, occasionally meant going half a day without washing properly, and required you to keep track of everyone else's schedules with the precision of a military campaign, but it worked.

For nearly two years, nobody had questioned it.

Winter had settled over Fenglei by the time Shen Mo discovered the truth, the academy grounds white and made every breath emerge as pale mist.

It had been snowing since morning, thick flakes gathering on the roofs and bare branches until the entire mountain looked almost painfully beautiful, as though someone had decided to bury the world beneath silk.

You had been sent to retrieve equipment from one of the smaller training halls at the edge of the grounds, and, because apparently the gods had decided that two years of careful secrecy were enough, he followed you out of habitual suspicion and curiosity.

You slipped into the empty hall and shut the door behind you, intending to change out of your soaked underclothes before returning to the others. The snow had melted through your uniform during training and into your bindings, and you were already shivering.

You had barely loosened your binding when the door opened again.

He stepped inside.

Snow clung to his dark hair and shoulders, the loose strands of black falling around his face, his pale skin almost luminous against the winter gloom. The dark Fenglei uniform clung to his narrow waist and broad shoulders. For one ridiculous second, he looked less like a military student and more like some beautiful, deeply unpleasant spirit who had wandered down from the mountains specifically to ruin your afternoon.

Then his eyes found you.

He stopped. You stopped. The snow continued falling outside.

His expression changed slowly, disbelief giving way to confusion, confusion to realization, and realization to absolute outrage.

“You're a girl.” His face hardened.

“Girls have no place here. You're not supposed to be studying military strategy, you're not supposed to be training with men, and you're certainly not supposed to be pretending that you're their equal.” His eyes travelled over your uniform with open disgust, an ugly sneer forming across his usually calm and elegant features, as though the clothes themselves were an insult, a stain upon the pristine cleanliness of Fenglei.

He continued, seemingly riling himself up, face flushing a delicate pink as he took a step closer, using his height to loom over you, eyes dark with anger.

“You should be at home, learning to manage a household, learning proper conduct, preparing yourself for marriage. That's what women are meant for. Not swords, examinations, military command, or whatever ridiculous ambition convinced you that you could simply walk into Fenglei and make a mockery of its rules.” He crossed his arms, lips spread in a triumphantly cruel smile.

“You passed the examinations as a fraud.” He declared, staring at you in sadistic triumph, his elegant face slowly settling into the now familiar mask of disgust.

It was an unfortunate face to put such an expression on. He had the sort of beauty that seemed almost deliberately designed to make people forgive him before he had even spoken: pale skin, fine features, dark eyes framed by long lashes, a straight, elegant nose, and the sort of composed, almost delicate appearance that made his arrogance all the more offensive. Even now, with his brows drawn together and his lips curled faintly in contempt, he looked less like a furious young man and more like some exquisite portrait that had been taught to sneer.

“Girls have no place here.” His voice was a velvety caress, silk wrapped in steel, remarkably calm.

“You are not supposed to study military strategy. You are not supposed to train beside men, carry weapons, compete for military appointments, or stand in a lecture hall listening to instructors who are preparing future officers for the imperial army. There is a reason these things are reserved for men.”

“You should have remained at home. Your parents should have taught you proper conduct instead of filling your head with ambitions that were never meant for you. A woman does not need to command soldiers. She does not need to understand battle formations or military logistics. She needs to understand her household, her husband, her children, and the duties expected of her.” His expression remained perfectly composed, which somehow made every word worse.

“You could have married well. You could have had a respectable household, servants, security, a comfortable life. Instead, you cut your hair, bound your chest, swallowed whatever ridiculous medicines you needed to hide the fact that you were a woman, and came here pretending that you were entitled to stand among men.” His gaze swept over you again, cold and disdainful.

“And for what?” He gave a quiet, humorless laugh.

“To prove that you are clever?” His eyes narrowed.

“You passed the examinations as a fraud. Every achievement you are so proud of was obtained under false pretenses. Every man you defeated was competing against someone he had no reason to believe was a woman. You have spent two years deceiving this academy and humiliating men who never even knew they were being deceived.”

He stepped closer, his expression almost serene, except for the ugly sneer on his face that contorted his beautiful features.

Outside, it continued to snow. “Do you truly think that makes you my equal?”

Everyone knew about Fenglei.

One of the Eight Sovereign Imperial Academies, Fenglei trained the empire's future officers, strategists, and generals, offering its students education, connections, and appointments that could turn an ordinary nobody into somebody the Court had to listen to. Its entrance examinations began with the Six Foundations, testing everything from history and mathematics to literature, science, languages, and reasoning, but passing them only earned a candidate the right to attempt the academy's individual trial.

Fenglei's was notorious.

And with your shorn hair, your strange pills to suppress your period, and your chest binding, you entered the mountains as someone you were never supposed to become. And you got in.

By the time he discovered the truth, you had already been at Fenglei long enough for him to thoroughly despise you.

Shen mo. The Third Imperial Prince.

You had been rivals since your first year, though neither of you had ever formally declared yourselves as such. You simply happened to be the two students who consistently ended up competing for the highest marks, arguing with instructors, finishing drills first, and finding increasingly creative ways to prove that the other was wrong. He thought you were arrogant, insufferable, and possessed of an almost supernatural talent for making him look foolish. You thought he was loud, reckless, and so convinced of his own brilliance that you occasionally wondered whether anyone had ever bothered to tell him he was not, in fact, the emperor.

Or even the crown prince. He was the third, for crying out loud. He'd probably be old and senile before he could even dream about becoming the emperor.

You had told him just that one summer afternoon during sparring practice, after he had spent nearly ten minutes boasting about how naturally suited he was for command, as though being born into the imperial family had somehow granted him a divine understanding of military strategy. You had knocked his sword aside, stepped past his guard, and informed him that perhaps he should worry about becoming the third prince before he started planning the succession.

The class erupted into laughter.

He had hated you ever since.

Not ordinary hatred, either. The kind that developed roots.

Which was precisely why, when he finally discovered that the person who had spent the last two years humiliating him in examinations, beating him in sparring matches, and repeatedly reminding him that being born royal did not make him clever was actually a girl, his first reaction was not embarrassment.

It was an outrage.

You had been careful about it from the beginning.

The academy's communal bathing rooms were crowded at dawn and again after evening drills, which made them entirely unsuitable, so you had developed a habit of bathing during the oddest hours imaginable, usually while everyone else was at lunch, studying, or eating dinner. It was inconvenient, occasionally meant going half a day without washing properly, and required you to keep track of everyone else's schedules with the precision of a military campaign, but it worked.

For nearly two years, nobody had questioned it.

Winter had settled over Fenglei by the time Shen Mo discovered the truth, the academy grounds white and made every breath emerge as pale mist.

It had been snowing since morning, thick flakes gathering on the roofs and bare branches until the entire mountain looked almost painfully beautiful, as though someone had decided to bury the world beneath silk.

You had been sent to retrieve equipment from one of the smaller training halls at the edge of the grounds, and, because apparently the gods had decided that two years of careful secrecy were enough, he followed you out of habitual suspicion and curiosity.

You slipped into the empty hall and shut the door behind you, intending to change out of your soaked underclothes before returning to the others. The snow had melted through your uniform during training and into your bindings, and you were already shivering.

You had barely loosened your binding when the door opened again.

He stepped inside.

Snow clung to his dark hair and shoulders, the loose strands of black falling around his face, his pale skin almost luminous against the winter gloom. The dark Fenglei uniform clung to his narrow waist and broad shoulders. For one ridiculous second, he looked less like a military student and more like some beautiful, deeply unpleasant spirit who had wandered down from the mountains specifically to ruin your afternoon.

Then his eyes found you.

He stopped. You stopped. The snow continued falling outside.

His expression changed slowly, disbelief giving way to confusion, confusion to realization, and realization to absolute outrage.

“You're a girl.” His face hardened.

“Girls have no place here. You're not supposed to be studying military strategy, you're not supposed to be training with men, and you're certainly not supposed to be pretending that you're their equal.” His eyes travelled over your uniform with open disgust, an ugly sneer forming across his usually calm and elegant features, as though the clothes themselves were an insult, a stain upon the pristine cleanliness of Fenglei.

He continued, seemingly riling himself up, face flushing a delicate pink as he took a step closer, using his height to loom over you, eyes dark with anger.

“You should be at home, learning to manage a household, learning proper conduct, preparing yourself for marriage. That's what women are meant for. Not swords, examinations, military command, or whatever ridiculous ambition convinced you that you could simply walk into Fenglei and make a mockery of its rules.” He crossed his arms, lips spread in a triumphantly cruel smile.

“You passed the examinations as a fraud.” He declared, staring at you in sadistic triumph, his elegant face slowly settling into the now familiar mask of disgust.

It was an unfortunate face to put such an expression on. He had the sort of beauty that seemed almost deliberately designed to make people forgive him before he had even spoken: pale skin, fine features, dark eyes framed by long lashes, a straight, elegant nose, and the sort of composed, almost delicate appearance that made his arrogance all the more offensive. Even now, with his brows drawn together and his lips curled faintly in contempt, he looked less like a furious young man and more like some exquisite portrait that had been taught to sneer.

“Girls have no place here.” His voice was a velvety caress, silk wrapped in steel, remarkably calm.

“You are not supposed to study military strategy. You are not supposed to train beside men, carry weapons, compete for military appointments, or stand in a lecture hall listening to instructors who are preparing future officers for the imperial army. There is a reason these things are reserved for men.”

“You should have remained at home. Your parents should have taught you proper conduct instead of filling your head with ambitions that were never meant for you. A woman does not need to command soldiers. She does not need to understand battle formations or military logistics. She needs to understand her household, her husband, her children, and the duties expected of her.” His expression remained perfectly composed, which somehow made every word worse.

“You could have married well. You could have had a respectable household, servants, security, a comfortable life. Instead, you cut your hair, bound your chest, swallowed whatever ridiculous medicines you needed to hide the fact that you were a woman, and came here pretending that you were entitled to stand among men.” His gaze swept over you again, cold and disdainful.

“And for what?” He gave a quiet, humorless laugh.

“To prove that you are clever?” His eyes narrowed.

“You passed the examinations as a fraud. Every achievement you are so proud of was obtained under false pretenses. Every man you defeated was competing against someone he had no reason to believe was a woman. You have spent two years deceiving this academy and humiliating men who never even knew they were being deceived.”

He stepped closer, his expression almost serene, except for the ugly sneer on his face that contorted his beautiful features.

Outside, it continued to snow. “Do you truly think that makes you my equal?”