Xueyu’s idea was plain as moonlight through paper: have Lingcai play the princess, then coax her own fiancée home like luring a shy bird.
After weighing plans like river stones in a palm, Lingcai realized this was the one most likely to land.
Without a word, they clicked like flint and tinder, then headed back to the palace with their scheme tucked under their cloaks.
Lingcai’s heart fluttered like a sparrow; her mouth followed. “If I get exposed, how do I explain it? I can’t wear her crown in the street, right?”
Xueyu’s calm was a lake at dusk. “No need. Breathe. I’ll dress like a guard at your side. Ever heard of traveling incognito?”
Fine, fine—incognito it is, like the moon wearing a hood.
They were whispering loud as wind through bamboo, and when they reached the Princess Manor’s gate, a heavy slam rolled out from inside like thunder off a cliff.
Thud!
It rang sharp and familiar, like a temple bell struck too hard.
Lingcai sighed with a bitter smile, as if tasting cold rain. “Bet Her Highness is raging again.”
Xueyu’s voice was a blade of sunlight. “Be sure of it. Lose the ‘bet.’”
They paused at the threshold like hunters under eaves, and Kelor’s voice tore from the study like a hawk’s screech.
“I’m warning you, Xia! Two years squatting in the Seven Northern Towns doesn’t mean I don’t know your breed! Look at that rat-face and those sneaky eyes! Not a drop of royal air! And you dare dream of being elf queen? You’re a toad mounting a frog—ugly and tricky, playing dirty!”
Kelor’s curses poured like a drumbeat in a storm—no breath, no break, all fang, all fire.
It sounded like they were in the study, her words clashing with Princess Sia’s like steel on stone.
Princess Sia’s voice snapped back, a bonfire kicking sparks. “When I said we needed to kill one to scare a hundred—make an example—wasn’t it you preaching virtue and morality? Now trouble hits and you blame me? So when it works, you claim the glory; when it fails, I clean the mess?”
Kelor’s reply cut like ice. “Yes, I preached. And I told you to keep a wary heart and watch their private dealings, didn’t I?”
Sia shot up from her chair like a flame leaping. Her finger nearly speared the air in front of Kelor’s nose. “Easy for you to order mountains to move! Got the coin for endless surveillance? You think I sent no one? They aren’t fools! Their secret lines are more tangled than your schemes!”
“If you can’t do it, don’t grab the reins!”
“Then let someone else serve you. I’m done! If you’ve got guts, swing the blade and take my head today!”
Their voices were blades clashing; best not walk into flying sparks.
Xueyu and Lingcai traded a look, then pressed to the wall like shadows in a corner, listening to the storm inside.
Kelor’s roar surged again, all antler and rage. “Think I don’t dare?! Where’s my bow… I’ll end you myself!”
Click.
Sia’s side answered with iron in her breath, her courage a wolf’s grin. “You mad now? Hands itching? Today I’ll beat you till you hunt for teeth on the floor!”
Ting.
Blue light flared inside like foxfire on snow, and the bowstring sang like wind on a wire.
“Courage Loading—One Fierce Arrow!”
The other half of the room bloomed red as lava, with Sia’s staff slicing the air like a comet.
“Magma Surge—Storm Burial!”
And then they were truly fighting, storm for storm.
Outside, Lingcai and Xueyu crouched like field mice under a bush, and saw the door blown apart by a hot blast like a broken wave.
The study turned to wreckage—papers like leaves, chairs like snapped bones.
Good thing we didn’t step in, the thought fell like cool rain.
Lingcai hugged her head in the corner, heart drumming, and whispered, “They’re that strong?”
Head down, Xueyu peered up like a fox from brush. “In Ariex’s founding war, those two cut a road of blood through the chaos. They crawled out of a heap of corpses.”
Lingcai stole a peek into the smoky room—only mist and ash, no figures—and sank back down like a stone. “Princess is seventeen today, right? Regent for three years… that’s fourteen three years ago… how young did she hit the field?”
Xueyu caught the drift of her whisper and let the story fall like snow. “Eleven. She had two elder brothers; both died in war. Her and Princess Sia’s current ranks were gambles made with their lives. Elves train as fighters from childhood; eleven is not rare.”
Lingcai’s face went pale as winter glass. “I thought elves would be more elegant… didn’t expect it to be this Spartan.”
Xueyu’s laugh was a puzzled breeze. “So what’s an elf like in your head?”
Lingcai searched for images like a painter’s brush. “Believers in nature’s gods… good with bows, nimble in trees, listening to the wind. Young elf girls trafficked at high prices, noble and unbending… something like that?”
Xueyu tapped Lingcai’s forehead like flicking a raindrop. “What messy, mossy stereotypes are those?”
“Novels write it like that,” Lingcai murmured, small as candle flame.
Xueyu’s eyes flashed, a cat unhappy with the weather. “Who wrote them? What trash was it? What did it even say?”
Glare all you want, Lingcai thought like a quiet pool. I didn’t write it.
She scraped up memories like shells from sand. “An elf princess of a fallen nation. On the run, caught, sold in a slave market. A Blood Queen buys her as a pet and keeps her.”
Xueyu’s expression went hard to read, like cloud over moon. “Nonsense! What’s it called? I’ll look it up.”
“I forgot. And it’s not the kind of thing you put on a shelf. All soft-erotic edge-ball scenes… Why ask? Don’t tell me you want to read it.”
Something snagged, and Lingcai’s eyes narrowed like a hunter’s. She flipped the spear. Xueyu stalled, tongue tripping like a colt. “I… I don’t. Please. Who serious reads that? Do you?”
“I don’t. Do you?” Lingcai pressed, voice smooth as silk rope.
“If you don’t, how do you know so much?” Xueyu lunged back, teeth bright as a small blade.
Lingcai’s stance held, solid as a stone lantern. “Of course I don’t. Anyone who reads that isn’t a serious person.”
Xueyu set her jaw and rose like a storm breaking. “Serious people not only don’t read, they burn it to ash! Catch the author—tear him to pieces! Grind bones to powder! Five-horse dismemberment! Kill body and soul! If I learn his name, tomorrow I storm his house! I—cannot share the sky with evil!”
She lifted her hand high, oath like lightning cleaving cloud.
From the smoke inside, Princess Korol’s voice drifted like a fox peeking out. “Who can’t share the sky with whom? Who are you chopping up? Whose bones are you grinding?”
Soon the blasted doorway coughed out two figures, gray-faced like chimney sweeps—Kelor and Princess Sia. Both wore stone masks; they stepped out together, but their silence was a sheet of frost.
Kelor marched to Xueyu and tapped her head with a half-broken bow like a teacher with a ruler. “Shrimp-hearted, pig-headed! You’re a big pig’s head!”
That rage was spillover thunder, meant for Sia but landing on Xueyu like a stray gust.
There’s nothing for a subject but to take the wind and bow.
Kelor turned to Lingcai next, the broken bow still in hand. She opened her mouth, swallowed the words, and let the bow clatter to the ground like a dead branch.
She couldn’t find a reason to lash Lingcai, and half her fire blew out like a lamp.
“Anyway, A-Cai,” she said, calmer, voice like iron cooling, “think up more ways to investigate the cannons. Tell me what you need; I’ll add silver.”
Her temper ebbed like a tide, and clarity crept back. She faced Princess Sia, eyes steady as slate. “Also, write a note. I’ll take people and pull one cannon—any with known origin—from the warehouse as a comparison piece. No idea if they have shells. If not, better.”
“Fine. We’ll do that. Meeting adjourned,” Princess Sia said, hands spreading like wings folding.
The two who had just fought like storm and fire walked out side by side, backs straight like spears, leaving the Princess Manor together.
Lingcai watched their twin silhouettes fade like cranes into mist. “So… are they good with each other, or bad?”
Xueyu thought and thought, like counting stars, then offered a rotten peach of an answer. “It’s good—just a little rotten.”
