Chapter Text
Reunion (from ep 4)
Her Jingyan stood at the end of the room, hands loosely clasped behind him, back a strong line, eyes sweeping out over the courtyard and its minute details with a keen light. For a moment, Mei Changsu’s mind superimposed a different figure—a little more coltish, a little looser even in armor—, standing on battleground and watching the troops ready themselves. She could almost still feel the tense heat of him, right by her side.
Her breath caught, and this time it had nothing to do with the familiar grip of poison on her heart, the ascent up stairs she could manage alone now only slowly.
He turned. His brow furrowed at her slow entrance, and then at her lack of attendants.
Mei Changsu approached with a bland smile, and reached for the teapot, ducking to hide her face behind a fall of ink black hair.
“It appears that Tingsheng and the others have been receptive to Lady Su’s training thus far,” Jingyan said, in a voice devoid of inflection, turning back to the window.
The warm scent of tea wafted up at her. She breathed in deeply, willing both her pale hands to stay steady as she rose and delivered the cup to him.
“It seems Your Highness was not assured and came by to personally check,” she said.
He took the cup with a polite nod. It was the first time she had been alone with him, this close to him, in twelve years. She thought, with a slight note of hysteria, that Jingyan of the past would have laughed uproariously at a vision of her demurely serving him like this.
“I would apologize for not sending word in advance, but your servants appeared to have been expecting me. I have also heard about your feat in the palace several days ago,” Jingyan said. “It appears what I discovered about your background is true.”
His eyes tracked hers, and she kept the mild curl of her lips firmly in place.
“I hope you have only heard good things?” Mei Changsu said. She tilted her head a fraction, to let the fall light catch the curve of her cheek.
He moved farther away as he drank, but kept his gaze steady on her. She missed his warmth immediately.
“Though I am slow to receive news at the borders, we are not so cut-off as to have never heard of the elusive Sir Mei of Jiangzuo,” he said. “I must confess, however, to being surprised when I discovered that not only was the one of the great sect leaders of the jianghu, the first on the Langya List of Talent, here in Jinling, but that this famed Divine Talent was in fact Lady Su, whom I had already met,” he said.
“It came as a surprise to many when I also ranked first in the Lang Ya List of Beauties this year,” she conceded.
“I also learnt that you have been a guest of my brothers Prince Yu and the Crown Prince. I have been impolite,” he continued. His eyes grew colder as he gave a mock bow over his cup.
She smiled, sweeping one hand out over the room, “As Your Highness may observe, I am here in my own home, with my own household. I am neither a guest nor a friend of theirs. Only a simple woman, with the good fortune to be courted to join their cause."
“Then you do not intend to be an advisor? Mei Changsu, whom even Grand Duchess Nihuang told me possesses many talents, is only here to regain her health and meet old friends, as the official story goes?” His tone made it clear what he thought of the possibility.
“Oh no,” Mei Changsu said, with a light laugh. “I certainly do. But I do not intend to choose them.”
She stared straight at him.
“I choose you. Prince Jing.”
The blank scorn in his face dropped in an instant. He stared at her, eyes wide, cup held thoughtlessly in his hand. Mei Changsu relished in it.
But then, as expected, he laughed, loudly and dismissively.
“I would have expected someone with ambitions to insert themselves into the court's political battles to have more foresight,” he said. He sat down, and she sat with him, arranging herself carefully.
“I am a 31 year old prince who has never attained higher ranking. My mother is a lowly concubine with no connections. I have spent the better part of the last ten year on battle fields." His smile turned bitter. "You would do better to choose one of the others.”
“I have shown you a little of my talents through Tingsheng, have I not?”
“You are seeking to rescue him to impress me then?” he said, and there was real disapproval in his voice.
She hesitated. She could not let him know she was aware of Tingsheng’s true parentage yet, and while it was dangerous to get too close to him, to lose his goodwill was also not conducive—
“If you have indeed researched me," he continued, his face sharpening, "then you must know I hate people like you most—those who scheme in the background to arrange other people’s lives as they see fit. I will tell you now, even if you help me ascend the throne, do not expect rewards. There is nothing to gain by helping me."
Still so straightforward after so many years, her water buffalo. She tried not to let the barb land, to keep her face as placid as the still waters of a lake.
He has always sneered at the quiet, sycophant ministers and concubines that surrounded the royal courts. His eyes had burned brightest at her when she was in movement—piercing dummies on horseback with the red bow he gifted her, her hair indecorously streaming in the wind; flying down a tree with a dagger at his throat, just to see how fast he could catch and overpower her; coming back to camp, smudged with the blood of others on her face and blade.
It was only to be expected that he would hate Sir Mei of Jiangzuo, who pulled strings behind shrouded curtains, who was so far removed from battle that it was ten long years after Mei Changsu first surfaced before her gender was known by anyone outside the Jiangzuo Alliance’s inner circles.
“Any passable strategist could maneuver either Crown Prince or Prince Yu into power. Only someone worthy of being called the Divine Talent would be able to put a prince in a position such as yours on the throne,” she replied mildly. “You may consider freeing Tingsheng a proof of concept if you would like, but I knew you cared for him, and meant for him to be a gift. A show of my sincerity.”
Then, Mei Changsu couldn’t help adding, “Any other terms in this relationship, we have a long time to negotiate.” She put just the barest innuendo behind relationship, looking at him from beneath her eyelashes in a well-worn move.
Unlike most men who received this look from her, he stiffened and turned away, and she smiled, more genuinely this time.
“And you cannot tell me you would be happy, watching Da Liang fall to either of them?” she said.
She saw his jaw in profile clench.
“You do not know me,” he said, but she knew she already had him. He would not stand aside, not when there was now a way. Not when Prince Qi died in service to Da Liang. Not when injustice had never been acceptable to him.
“Men with networks far smaller than mine know your morals well. All of Jinling know how you differ from the Crown Prince and Prince Yu, and none of the other princes are suitable. The third prince is too weak, the sixth prince without ambition, and the ninth prince too young,” she said. “There is no other choice.”
He was not looking at her, but if he were, she wondered if he could see hidden in her quiet expression the words, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for this path I am putting you.
But her old face was gone now, like her old identity. It was unreasonable to think that he might still be able to read her as well as he once did.
She made to pour him another cup of tea, but his hands blocked hers. He stood instead, and she rose with him.
“We will see,” he said. “I will speak to you after the competition tomorrow, after we know whether your confidence proves true.”
A flare of irritation caught her by surprise. How dare he imagined that she would fail, when she had already promised, when she had spent so long preparing for this—
She bowed to him, and called on Li Gang below to escort him out.
Li Gang gave her a judgmental stare when he came, his eyes flickering meaningfully between her and Jingyan, while Jingyan swept out with a whisper of robes, inscrutable and oblivious.
Mei Changsu was not sure if Li Gang was censuring her for receiving Jingyan alone, or if he was questioning again her refusal to divulge her identity to anyone besides Meng Zhi, particularly a certain seventh prince—but she ignored him, like she ignored the annoyingly long list of insubordinate people who kept telling her the same.
She gestured her head in Jingyan's direction, and with a sullen pause, Li Gang followed him down.
Tongues were undoubtedly already wagging, given multiple of the most eligible men in Jinling had already paid visits to her residence. What was one more, especially when it was only the famously frigid Prince Jing? In some ways, the gossip was almost convenient.
There had been no way to avoid attention with her arrival. Within the first three days, she had shocked the city with her gender, visited an unsuspecting but ecstatic Jingrui—who might have wanted to personally invite her to Jinling, but certainly could not have, short of taking her as his concubine—, and then promptly purchased a home. Let them think she was a flirt, meddling while on break from the Jiangzuo Alliance. It would delay more serious investigation into her aims until later.
As to the other decision—
Mei Changsu sat and traced the rim of Jingyan's cup, still warm, and listened to the sound of him striding across her courtyard. In the distance, Fei Liu's laughter mingled with the boys. She let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding, her heart clenching.
Lang Ya Hall received regular reports on all of Da Liang’s nobles from Jiangzuo Alliance agents. She had read about how Jingyan had been changed by the years of dismissal, of grief and anger, of a life lived away from her. She had predicted how scathing he would be of Mei Changsu and her life. She had assumed he would not simply commit to seeking the throne, in his first meeting with a woman he neither knew nor trusted.
But to know these things intellectually was not the same as to see him in the flesh, so proud and angry and weary. To have his eyes stare at her like a puzzle he did not particularly want to solve.
No, she did not regret her decision to hide her identity from him. It was only harder than she expected.
Despite how high the fires of Meiling burned, it still left enough of Lin Shu to bleed.
She closed her eyes, and let herself indulge, just for a moment.
So many years ago now, they had stood outside the gates of Jinling, Jingyan resplendent in his red armor. The horses had neighed impatiently to start the journey to the East Sea, while his surrounding soldiers looked politely away.
“Come back with my gift quickly,” Lin Shu had said, standing just a tad too close for decorum. She was his betrothed, it was allowed.
“Of course,” he said, a bright smile on his face.
Those words had been repeated multiple times by that point, said whenever either of them left for military campaigns separately. But still, they lodged in her heart and glowed.
She had answered his smile with a wide grin of her own.
Lin Shu had watch him leave thinking only of how harried he’d be in a month or two, and laughing at her mental image of him running up and down the coast trying to find her a pearl the size of a pigeon’s egg. But she had no doubt her Jingyan-ge would come back to her with one.
They had been invincible soldiers then.
Mei Changsu breathed, swiped beneath her eyes with a quick hand, and stood to call a servant to send word to Commander Meng to come by tonight. There was more to be done.