NOVEL NEXT Chapter 303: The Clinging Shadow
Her hand was already on Longzi's sleeve when I turned.
She had a badge crooked at her throat, her hair was half-torn free, and her breath was loud enough to draw every eye in the music garden.
Xiaoyun arrived like a rumor that had grown legs. She reached higher, fingers finding purchase where cloth met muscle.
"General," she blurted, words spilling too fast to choose. "You promised—after my brother—"
Two junior ministers leaned forward as one, pretending to admire a frost branch while their ears climbed the air. A matron with lacquered nails stalled mid-step. Even the crow in the cypress cocked one eye.
Longzi didn't tear free of her grasp. His jaw was tight, his shoulders were set, and he stood the way men stand when training has hammered reflexes into obedience: do not shove the grieving; do not let a scene become an accusation you can't outrun.
"Release him," I told her.
Xiaoyun's head snapped, eyes red-rimmed, a boy's badge pinned crooked over a woman's heart.
"You can't make me go," she threw at me, grief borrowing courage it hadn't earned. "He gave me his word. He told me—after my brother died for Daiyu—he told me I wouldn't be left—"
"Grief does not make a rope," I returned. "It is not something you tie around a man's wrist or in your case, his neck."
Her fingers tightened. "He owes me," she insisted, voice pitching high enough that the far pergola caught the echo. "My brother bled under his command. My brother's name is a debt in his mouth…"
"Your brother's name is honor," I cut in, stepping close enough to share breath. "You turn it into leverage and you will spit on what you say you love."
She flinched but didn't loose her grip. "If I let go, there's nothing left of him. If I leave, there's nothing left of me."
"Then you require work that returns you to yourself," I answered. "Not a sleeve to hold."
Deming's weight shifted behind me—the slow roll of a man preparing to peel a hand from an officer's arm whether the hand belonged there or not.
I didn't look back.
If I looked, he would move. Yaozu leaned where cypress shadow cut the path, expression that wonderfully useless mask other men mistook for boredom. He had already counted everyone's breaths.
Longzi finally moved a fraction—enough for Xiaoyun to feel the muscle under her fingers and remember that strength was not consent. He still didn't speak. He left that to me. Correct.
I kept my voice level. "Xiaoyun. Your brother served under Captain Sun. He did his duty where men fall. This garden is not the place to open him again. Release your grip."
Tears stood, hard and unshed. "You don't understand."
"I understand perfectly," I told her. "You are tired of being nobody. Attachment looks like a ladder when you are small and the world is too high. I'm giving you a better tool than a ladder. I'm giving you a job."
Her chin jerked up. "What job—spying? One more whisper in your pocket?"
"The hospice," I answered. "Temple quarter. Boil water until your hands know time better than gossip. Strip linens, wring them, lay them clean. Measure pulse; count breaths; change poultices. Carry bodies when winter wins. Earn the right to speak your brother's name without turning it into a key for doors that aren't yours."
A ripple went through the garden. Not outrage. Recognition. Even the ministers could taste the offer's shape: not punishment, not pity—purpose.
Her mouth opened, then closed. "You would send me away to scrub floors."
"I would send you where your grief becomes useful," I returned. "I do not waste tools."
Longzi's arm gave the smallest twist—permission to let go. He didn't look down. He looked at me. There was a line at the corner of his mouth that hadn't been there an hour ago.
Xiaoyun finally released him. The cloth she left behind kept the memory of her hand for a breath and then forgot.
She wasn't finished. "You think you can decide where every life belongs," she flung, shaky but aiming for steel.
"I don't think," I replied. "I decide. That is the shape of my day. If you want me to spend it on your drama, go waste your breath somewhere elsewhere."
The nearest junior minister arranged his face into concern. "Your Majesty," he attempted, eager to be important to someone, "compassion for the families of the fallen is—"
"—handled by the hospice," I finished for him. "Unless the minister of compassion would like to lift buckets."
He found sudden interest in the frost.
I tipped my chin to the Guard Commander, who had drifted within range with impeccable timing. "Assign her," I directed. "First bell to last. A matron who doesn't care about tears. Rations in kind, not coin."
"Yes, Majesty."
Xiaoyun's shoulders hitched. "No coin?"
"Coin buys stories," I replied. "Food buys time."
"You can't send me like a servant," she whispered, voice shredding. "I belong here."
"You belong where I say you do," I answered, not unkind and not soft. "You want to belong near him? Earn it by not being a problem for him first."
For a heartbeat I thought she'd lunge again. Grief makes strange choices. Instead she turned her face toward Longzi, all the gathered eyes watching like lanterns.
"General," she appealed, dropping her voice in a way that would read as intimacy to anyone who wanted to see it that way. "Tell her I am useful. Tell her my brother—"
Longzi looked at her the way a winter river looks at a reed: present, unchanging, not moving toward. "Do as the Empress directs," he replied, tone stripped to service. "If you serve well, you won't need to beg in gardens."
The fight went out of her knees, but not out of her eyes.
Two guards took position—not hands on, not rough, just existing where the path narrowed so her choices had no room to misbehave. The Guard Commander angled them toward the west cloister with the sort of courtesy that leaves no alternative.
Xiaoyun swallowed, hands in fists at her sides, and bowed. The gesture had edges. "Very well, Your Majesty," she managed, the honorific scraped raw against her teeth. "I will scrub floors. I will boil water. I will carry bodies."
"Good," I returned. "Then your brother will be proud of you."
She turned—and couldn't resist a last barb, flung at me without skill. "Is that how women without titles keep their place near your men? Boiling water?"
I didn't let it touch me. "Women with titles keep their place by knowing what needs doing and doing it. You'll learn."
Yaozu's eyebrow went up a hair. Deming's jaw set; he didn't move, which meant he wanted to.
The little procession started: Xiaoyun between two guards, anger in her spine, duty already sharpening its teeth on the back of her neck. The court watched like theater patrons forced to admit a drama had turned into work.