The Vermilion String

Chapter 10: The Line Between

The Cold Palace smelled like wet ash.

Wen Shuyan sat on the floor. Stone leeched the heat from his bones. No bed. No brazier. No blanket. His hands were bound in front of him with rough rope. The rope had rubbed his wrists raw by Day 4. By Day 7, they’d stopped bleeding. Not iron. The Dowager wanted him alive until the trial. Presentable. Breathing. A son of a traitor who hadn’t died too soon.

The bars didn’t creak. Nothing did. Four days of silence did that. It made you listen for ghosts. For rats. For the drip of water somewhere in the dark that might be a leak or might be nothing at all.

No knock.

Li Shen stepped up to the iron. Two Cold Palace guards hung back in the corridor. Close enough to see. Far enough to claim they heard nothing. Li Shen flicked two fingers. The guards retreated another three paces. Their shadows stayed.

“Your Highness sends this,” Li Shen said. He kept his voice low. Low enough that stone wouldn’t carry it. He pulled a folded paper from his sleeve.

Shuyan didn’t look up. Looking up took energy. Energy was for breathing. For staying awake during guard shifts. For not thinking about Day 1. “Did he.”

Li Shen crouched. The hem of his robe pooled on filthy stone. He didn’t seem to care. He set the paper on the floor between the bars. Just out of reach. After four days alone, after the doctor stopped coming, Shuyan had to drag himself forward to take it. The rope cut his wrists open again. He took it anyway.

He unfolded it. One line. Vermilion ink. Still wet. It caught what little light bled through the high slit window.

The line between us.

After five years of written orders, of messages passed through other servants, of don’t let them see and hide this after, Shuyan knew: Yichen only sent messages when there was no other choice. Drawn hours ago in East Palace, after General Fu Zhao’s words still rang in the courtyard. Court meets in three days.

Li Shen stood. His knees didn’t crack. He was too young for that. “His Highness said you’d understand.”

Shuyan folded the paper. Slow. Careful. Like it was glass. Like it was the last piece of Yichen he’d ever hold. “I do.”

“Then destroy it,” Li Shen said. “Before the next guard shift. They check the cells when the bells ring.”

Shuyan didn’t answer. He pressed the paper to his chest, over his heart. The vermilion was still wet. It bled through the thin prison robe, through the inner layer he’d been wearing for seven days. It would stain his skin. Mark him.

Let it, he thought.

“Go,” Shuyan said.

Li Shen looked at him for one second too long. Then he left. The guards followed. Their footsteps faded down the corridor until even the echo died.

Shuyan looked at the bars. No door. No privacy. No way to shut the world out. Just iron, and that line in red drying against his skin.

The line between us.

Ten days in the Cold Palace. Day seven. The trial is in three days.

He had three days left to decide which side of the line he was on. Which side he’d always been on, since Day 1, when the string first burned between them.