Eight months was all it took. Less than a year.

Zhang Yue came for her in the middle of the day, an hour when desire and danger were supposed to be at their lowest ebb. The Pavilion was abuzz with preparations for the Qixi Festival, a celebration of the annual meeting of Zhinü and Niulang.

Bao Zhu looked out from the second floor of the Pavilion as women stood before an altar praying to Zhinü for improved skills in weaving, embroidery, and needlework—and, perhaps, for love and a good marriage. Every hallway was choked with laughing girls in their best robes, but Zhang Yue's presence sliced through the frivolity like a blade through fruit.

He arrived with no warning—no sweet cakes, no secret notes, not even a borrowed poem. When Sparrow announced him, her voice trembled so violently that Bao Zhu almost rose to comfort her. Instead, she smoothed her hands over her robe, set her face in a mask of polite indifference, and went to greet her lover.

He was waiting in the West Receiving Room, a small space usually reserved for awkward reunions and business negotiations. The room was airless, every window closed against the afternoon dust, and Zhang Yue stood by the window, his hands folded behind his back.

When she entered, he turned and bowed, lower than any client had ever bowed to her. His face was wrong: the skin too tight, the eyes bloodshot and a shade too dark. She felt the world constrict around her.

"You asked for me?" she said, her voice unwavering.

He nodded, not looking at her. "I am to be married. The contract is signed. Lady Zhao's family have agreed, and the date is set for next month."

She waited, refusing to offer him any easy lines.

He swallowed. "You must understand—this is not what I wanted. It is what my family wants. Her dowry will—"

"Open the gates to the Ministry," she finished for him, lips curling in something like a smile.

He winced. "I will honor my promises. When I have secured my post, I will pay off your debt. I will—"

She raised a hand, cutting him off with the same casual cruelty she'd reserved, in another life, for the worst of her interns. "Don't. Don't make this worse than it already is."

He bowed again, lower this time, as if hoping to disappear into the lacquered floor.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "The world is not kind to dreams. Forgive me."

He left then, closing the door with a soft click.

She stood motionless for a while, breathing through her teeth. Then she turned and watched his shadow retreat down the corridor, saw the hunched set of his shoulders, the way he avoided looking back.

When he was gone, she returned to her room unhurriedly, closed the doors behind her, and sat on the bench by the window and let the sunlight burn her face.

A few minutes later, Sparrow entered, silent and trembling. She placed a heavy silver ingot on the table, along with a sheet of paper folded in half. On it, in Zhang Yue's hand, were the words:

"Bao Zhu, forgive me. I am yours forever, but the world is not mine to bend. —Yue"

She read it three times, each time expecting the meaning to change.

When it didn't, she took the ingot, the note, and the bracelet—the jade bracelet he had given her, now suddenly a joke—and placed them in the lacquered box beneath her bed.

She closed the box. Then, calmly and methodically, she took her favorite jade hairpin, the first precious thing he had given her, raised it over her head, and threw it down violently. The hairpin shattered, green shards skittering across the floor like beetles.

"I will make him taste the salt of his betrayal," she said, her voice unrecognizable even to herself.

*

Tao Tao found her that evening, sitting on the balcony outside her room, a cup of wine untouched at her side.

"Come inside," Tao Tao said, her voice gentle. "You'll catch cold."

Bao Zhu shook her head, unable to meet her friend's eyes. "I am not cold. I am burning."

Tao Tao knelt beside her, wrapped an arm around her shoulders. For a long time, neither spoke.

"I loved him," Bao Zhu said finally, the words heavy and raw. "I believed in him."

Tao Tao nodded. "I loved, too. I loved the Autumn Crane. He promised me the moon, but gave me only a poem."

Bao Zhu looked at her, truly looked, and saw the old wound beneath Tao Tao's bravado.

"How did you survive?" she whispered.

Tao Tao smiled, sad and sweet. "You survive because you must. And because, eventually, you see that what remains—sisters, wine, music—is better than any man's promise."

Bao Zhu let herself lean into the embrace, the tears finally coming, hot and unrestrained. For the first time since her arrival in this world, she let herself be weak, let herself be comforted by another.

They sat together until the lamps guttered out, and the night wrapped them in a cocoon of silence.

*

The next day, Bao Zhu sought out Xue Ling. She found her in the practice room, teaching a new girl to walk.

"I was wrong," Bao Zhu said, without preamble. "About you. About everything."

Xue Ling raised an eyebrow. "You're allowed to be wrong, you know. It's how we learn."

Bao Zhu offered a thin smile. "I'm sorry. Sisters will always be better than men."

Xue Ling laughed, bright and sharp. "You finally figured that out?"

Bao Zhu nodded. "I have. And I want to be a better sister, from now on."

They hugged, awkward and brief, but it was enough.

*

That night, alone in her chamber, Bao Zhu let the grief take her. She sobbed, face pressed to the pillow, until the sound of it startled even herself. She did not cry as Eric would have—dry-eyed, in secret, already translating the pain into anger or sarcasm. She cried as Yu Lian, as Bao Zhu, as every woman who had ever believed in something impossible and been left with only the echo.

It hurt more than she'd expected. It hurt in places she didn't know existed. But when the tears were done, she wiped her face, lit a fresh stick of incense, and stood before the mirror.

She no longer saw Eric. She no longer even saw Yu Lian. She saw only herself—tired, red-eyed, but not broken.

She swore, softly, to never be made a fool by a man again. She swore to protect her sisters, to savor what joy she could steal from the world, and to use every scrap of knowledge and power at her disposal to ensure that she—and the women she loved—would never again be left helpless.

As for the world, she decided, that could go to hell.