MARISSA

The door of blood-red rootwood breathed open, and Marissa stepped through, fan snapping wide with a soft, satisfied crack.

“Try to keep up,” she murmured to no one in particular—

and the room obliged.

It was a banquet hall, but not like any she’d ever attended.

It went on forever.

Tables unfurled in both directions in cascades of lacquer and silk. Lanterns hung low—amber skins painted with night birds and moonflowers—casting a honeyed light that made the air look candid and costly. Perfume and incense twined together along the floor like tame serpents, and wherever the scents touched her skin, they hummed with approval.

And every seat was full.

A thousand heads turned as one.

The room inhaled her the way a thirsty orchard drinks the first rainfall after a parched season. Applause rose sharp and clean; voices tumbled over one another, delighted and adoring, saying her name as if it were a title.

“Lady Lin!”

“Marissa!”

“Beauty of the Empire!”

“Save us with that smile!”

She laughed—because she was not a thief; she took what was freely offered—and closed her fan just enough to hide her mouth without hiding anything at all.

“Finally,” she said to the halls and lanterns and the waiting faces, “a proper reception.”

A dais pulsed into being at the far end—pearl and scarlet velvet—gleaming with promise. A circlet rested on its arm as if it had been waiting a very long time and had grown tired of subtlety.

“You see?” murmured a woman shaped of light and patience. “There is always a place for those who step where others hesitate.”

“You belong here,” said a man on her right, eyes clever as cards. “Take what is already yours.”

She began to walk.

The applause moved in waves ahead of her, smoothing the way. Hands reached out—not touching, not quite—leaving offerings in the space where she might choose to take them: cords of pearls, sugared fruit, folded letters sealed in gold wax. Compliments came like a tide cresting only in her direction.

“Your fan could sway a council.”

“Your laugh will make an army forget fear.”

“Your eyes could teach queens to kneel.”

She let the words wash around her because she had spent whole seasons learning how to swim in rooms like this—learning which smiles bore teeth and which bore knives. If this was a trap, it was an honest one. And she respected that.

At the base of the dais, the lanterns flared, deepening their gold until the air itself looked drinkable. The circlet pulsed like a heartbeat.

And then she saw him.

Not on the dais.

Not in any place of pride.

Not anywhere she would have staged him, had she designed this illusion herself.

He sat halfway down the nearest table, half in lantern shadow, head bent slightly as he wrote symbols of light in the air with a casual mastery that made the rest of the room feel overacted.

No crown. No robe.

Just rolled sleeves and the line of a mouth unbent by performance.

Ethan.

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No one applauded him.

No one noticed him.

People’s gazes slid off him like water over slate.

Marissa’s step didn’t falter—she allowed nothing she chose to falter—but her wrist tightened under her fan.

“Why is he there?” she asked—

and only realized she’d spoken aloud when the room answered.

“Because you put him there,” said the clever-eyed man, amusement warm and lazy. “He is already yours. Do not pretend he is not.”

“Yours,” agreed the woman made of light. “Shadow to your brilliance. Signature to your flourish.”

“Take the dais!” cried someone farther back. “The crown will not wait forever!”

Her fan closed with a gentle click. She turned it once between her fingers, then let it hang open again—no longer mask, not yet weapon.

He still hadn’t looked up.

The dais brightened—petty, if she wasn’t mistaken. She had the sudden, perverse urge to make it wait.

It is unwise to indulge urges merely because they are perverse.

She indulged it anyway.

“What if I want him to look?” she said, airy as a pond-house girl and twice as dangerous.

The room hissed—soft, singed-silk irritation.

“He will never look at you as you wish,” someone murmured, almost kindly. “Not while he works. Not while he loves another.”

“Throne first,” said the card-eyed man. “Everything follows. Always in that order.”

She took two steps toward the dais. The crown pulsed. The room leaned.

And then she stopped.

Because Ethan wrote something delicate and complicated in the air, symbols glowing before dissolving—as if being understood would kill them—and he still hadn’t looked at her.

Somehow, that bothered her far more than it should have.

He had never looked at her like other men did—never devoured, never postured, never worshipped. He looked at her like she wasn't even a woman.

It was almost offensive.

At the far end of the table, she caught the faintest whiff of perfume—not hers; the other one’s. A scent that was cool as a winter river and brisk of wind on a snowy plain.

It was Vivian.

Vivian’s kind of calm had always felt like a room with the windows open. It was absolutely Infuriating.

The dais waited. The crown glowed. The room leaned harder.

She took a breath and asked herself a question she rarely allowed:

Who do I want to be when no one is watching?

The silence answered and it was honest and ugly.

“You were born to be adored,” the light-woman coaxed. “Do not pretend otherwise.”

“Adoration is useful,” Marissa replied lightly. “It opens doors.”

“Of course it is. It opens thrones,” the man said, lifting her hand the way men do when they think they’re directing destiny. “Stand with me. Shape our world.”

She slid her hand from his with such grace he could pretend he’d meant to let her go.

“You do not know what I think the world should be.”

A ripple went through the hall—annoyance and disbelief mix in with an unsatiated hunger.

Marissa smiled, precise as a blade. Then she turned her back on the dais.

The gasps were delicious. Ethan didn’t notice her until she sat across from him and swept her fan through the air toward his light-script. His hand caught the fan gently, without looking up.

“Don’t,” he said. “I’m mid-line.”

“Hello to you too,” she murmured, fanning herself with the other hand.

He finished the line, let the characters lock and vanish, then finally looked up.

His gaze didn’t devour, didn’t crown, didn’t judge. It simply recognized her. As if he had chosen—stubbornly, quietly—to keep seeing her until seeing her became its own kind of vow.

“Marissa,” he said, as though he’d been expecting her.

The hall leaned closer to listen.

And then—

A voice slid through her thoughts, quiet and dangerous:

What if he never sees you the way you see him?

She froze.

“What do you mean?” she demanded.

What if Ethan—the center of all your devotion, the man you’ve built your story around—never makes a place for you? What will you be when the dream doesn’t come true?

Her fan stilled.

It was a question she had never allowed herself to ask honestly.

Ethan was already married. Vivian Li was not the sort of woman a man forgot. And Ethan wouldn’t discard his obligation even for someone he valued simply to soothe that woman’s longing.

So what then?

Could she live without Ethan Zhou? Without the dream she’d polished into a jewel since childhood? The thought, the prospect hollowed her inside out for a heartbeat the pain it was unbreathable for that moment for that overwhelming gut wrenching moment.

Then she remembered him pulling her from the river with calm hands and steady breath. He didn't looke for praise and didn't scold. She remember the warmth of his body. Even after all these years.

She straightened her spine, and made a choice.

“I will keep going,” she whispered. “I will love him—even if he never loves me back. If he chooses Vivian—if he never looks my way because she fills his world—then that is his path. Vivian can be the light that carries him forward.”

Her fan snapped shut with a quiet, decisive resolve.

“But I will be the one who steadies him in the dark. The one who keeps him whole when no one else sees.”

But the voice pressed again:

What if fate asks for more? What if there is a price to pay? What if your part is yet written?

Marissa drew in a long, steadying breath.

“Then I will pay the price,” she said, “and do it with a smile.”

A soft click echoed behind her and a door she hadn’t noticed before swung open.

But something waited beyond the threshold; something that had been watching.