HerFables

If we talk about the tradition , it is done mainly by men on women. But I guess if Arthur raised a strong daughter, then she would definitely break the norms and do it on someone, yeah definitely. And Arthur wouldn't mind one bit.

If we are talking about her being dark towards the reader, WELL, THAT WOULD BE HELL. Like imagine birthing a daughter hoping she will be your solace and friend In this wretched household and she fuckin turns out to be daddy's girl, it's like living in a red pill affected-ish family. Poor reader will go insane😭 Even worse if she has sons, too.

Like reader tries her best to keep her ears pure from even hearing bout their "love story" as Arthur says it "How I 'met' your beautiful mother" but it is futile.

Daughter thinks wow daddy is like those knights in the princess novels. Yep, that's how bad Arthur has gaslit her.

And so reader gives up and hopes that daughter grows up and finds shit by herself because Arthur threatens reader BADLY.

Like "imma cut your tongue if you fill her with negativity AND TRY TO BREAK THIS FAMILY, WOMAN!"

Like tying and locking her in a cellar for not obeying and telling daughter that mama needs to learn to love this family more.

Yeah......

And so daughter is soooo trusting of Arthur that if she interacts with people outside (school maybe) and there if someone talks about the tradition, she proudly defends it as if her life depends on it.

"It's what a man does when he truly loves you! My daddy did it on my mother and they are happy! He even beat up the bad guy who was marrying my mother by force, Omar. That's how strong and kind my daddy is!"

other kids and teacher be like

But whatever the case, Arthur himself wouldn't ever let the tradition happen on his own blood. There aint no man leaving alive from his farm then. He doesn't care if the man and his daughter are in love even. That shit ain't happening. 🙏🙏

His sons however are welcome to do it.

"ATTENTION!"

The eunuch's announcement cut through the morning air and Junlai was on his feet before the echo faded, his curtsy fluid and immediate as Emperor Dowager Wang Hua swept into the garden with all the effortless grandeur of a man who had never once doubted his place in the world.

"How is my lovely princess doing?" Hua's eyes found Wang Yi instantly, his whole face shifting into something unguarded and bright. He threw a gleeful glance over his shoulder at his attendant, Xi Ming. "Pride of my empire, isn't she?"

"Indeed, Father Dowager," Xi Ming replied warmly.

Junlai smiled with his eyes still cast downward. "Your praise is greater than any treasure in this world for us, Your Majesty." He took Wang Hua's hand and pressed his lips to his knuckles with quiet reverence.

Hua stepped forward and tilted Junlai's chin up with warm fingers, studying his face for a long, contemplative moment, as though reading something written there that only he could see. Then, satisfied, he settled himself onto the garden seat and gestured for Junlai to do the same.

The morning unfolded gently around them. Soft music drifted through the garden, unhurried and sweet. The brunch spread across the low table was perfectly measured, neither too heavy nor too light, fragrant soups, delicate pastries, sliced fruit arranged like offerings. And threading through it all, like a bright ribbon, came the occasional giggles of Wang Yi as she was lifted into her grandfather's lap and immediately set about trying to pull at the jade ornament on his collar.

"Careful, careful," Hua laughed, letting her take it anyway.

Junlai watched them, his hands folded neatly in his lap, his expression serene. But Hua, without even looking up from the baby, spoke.

"You've grown quieter this past month."

"I am always still, Father Dowager."

"Mm." Hua pressed a kiss to Wang Yi's temple before finally turning to look at Junlai fully. "You are still the way a bow is still before it releases. There is a difference." He reached for a pastry. "Is it Her Majesty?"

"....She has been away for six weeks," Junlai finally replied. "I am not troubled. I am simply... counting."

Hua's eyes crinkled at the corners. "Counting....."

"The days. The reports. The things I wish to tell her....The things that require her to be in the same room for me to say them properly."

Wang Hua was quiet for a moment, his mood suddenly subdued. And Junlai regretted his words immediately.

"I still am against the idea of a concubine involved in such matters. But no matter what I say , my dearest daughter doesn't listen." He took a fierce sip to ingest his venom before it spilled more.

"These aren't the areas of man, but what do I know, right?

*Sigh*

"Your High-

"Forget it."

Wang Hua scowled and took in the surroundings to calm himself before focusing back Wang Yi, now a gentle smile creasing his face. For Junlai, this man was a puzzle of his own. He supported him because well.....his daughter liked him, and Wang Hua supports his daughter's decisions. But also did nitpicking and occasional taunting, just because he was a "servant" at the end of the day, and unfortunately believed that Junlai had some kind of control over you. Too much for his liking. Because why wasn't the empress summoning any other man now, ever since he arrived?

Junlai never understood why men can't stand seeing a woman devoted to one man. Isn't that what they would want for themselves? Like he gets it when it's the other concubines who dream of being with you, such pettiness suits them, but why does your own father...hold such bitterness for him? 'Shouldn't he be happy for us both?'

As far as Junlai knows, he never interfered in what lies under Wang Hua's control in the harem. Never. He might be vicious behind the scenes to some bullies, but whatever plot he uses, he makes sure it doesn't involve Hua in any way because he respects what you respect, and if you love and value your father so much, then so shall he. After all, his loyalty lies with you, and he will accept every taunt and insult for that.

Maybe well, Hua suspects that concubines' deaths are my doing. Well, he, along with others, is only capable of suspecting, not pointing fingers. Because I never leave evidence behind.

But you have become too soft ever since you had her baby-

'No--no--not fucking now- STOP!'

"She was like this with her campaigns even as a child. Always wanted to be away, exploring and conquering. Her mother was the same." He glanced at Wang Yi, now drowsy against his shoulder, and handed her to Mei Han. "But she comes back. She always comes back."

Junlai said nothing. He only looked at his daughter, her small chest rising and falling, her fingers curled loosely around nothing.

"I know," he said at last. "She comes back to the empire. Then I will keep counting," he murmured, "until she does."

Wang Hua watched him for a long moment, then let out a quiet breath that was almost a laugh, fond and a little sad at once, something common between them for once.

"To patience," he said.

Junlai met his eyes and lifted his own cup. "To her safe return."

The announcement came just as Mei Han was settling Wang Yi back into Junlai's arms, the baby warm and drowsy against his chest. "Presenting Noble Consort Chun Wei and the First Princess Wang Hao, have arrived!"

Junlai did not stiffen. He was far too practiced for that. But something behind his eyes shifted, quietly, the way a candle flame adjusts when a draft enters a room without quite going out.

Chun Wei entered the garden with the easy, his purple luscious hair floating like silk behind him. He was lovely in the way spring mornings were lovely, soft-featured, bright-eyed, his robes a pale gold that caught the light pleasantly. Trailing behind him was Wang Hao, two years old and already carrying herself with a toddler's oblivious confidence, one chubby fist knotted in her father's sleeve.

"Father Dowager." Chun Wei's curtsy was fluid, his smile genuine and warm as sunlight on water. "Forgive the interruption. You are too kind to have extended the invitation."

"Nonsense, nonsense." Wang Hua was already reaching for Wang Hao, who went to him without hesitation, ranting something about her boring lessons. Hua laughed, delighted. "There she is. There is my first jewel."

"Noble Consort Chun Wei." His voice was warm enough. "It has been some time."

How strange of Father Dowager to invite them both here at the same place when everybody knows that Junlai doesn't tolerate a second being in the same room with any of the harem men ever since he got quarters of his own. Hiding behind excuses or sickness during the festivities of men. And there you go, exactly the reason Wang Hua did this. He, too, of course, had to find chances of annoying Junlai once in a while just to make sure he didn't forget his real lowly 'status'.

'Great, just fucking great, exactly what i needed on this beautiful day.'

This is what you deserve. Happy now? This is the price of being kind. Seeing them breathe around you-

"Consort Junlai." Chun Wei settled himself across the garden table with utmost grace, something Junlai lacked more than most men around here having less training than them. These men were bred to enter here.

"Oh, she has grown since I last saw her. She looks just like Her Majesty around the eyes, doesn't she?"

"Many say so," Junlai replied pleasantly. "Wang Hao has Her Majesty's chin, I always thought. You must be proud."

"I am. Every day."

"Of course you are." Junlai looked back down at Wang Yi, adjusting the silk wrap around her with fingers that were perhaps a fraction more forceful than necessary. "It is a particular kind of pride, isn't it, watching them grow. Knowing they carry something of her in them." A pause, soft and unhurried. "Something that can never be taken back."

Across the table Wang Hao had commandeered a pastry from Wang Hua's plate and was eating it with enormous self-satisfaction. She was a sturdy little thing, bright and loud and utterly at ease in a way that two years of imperial doting had clearly produced. The First Princess. The one who had come before.

Junlai watched her for just a moment longer than was polite, then he lifted his tea. The conversation flowed around him, Wang Hua laughing at something Chun Wei said, Xi Ming refilling cups, the music continuing its soft, indifferent thread beneath everything. Even Wang Hua, sharp and observant as he was, looked at Chun Wei with a particular fondness...

Junlai noted all of it. He also noted how Chun avoided speaking to him almost as if his presence made him uneasy. Of course....the harem believes the 'rumours'. Where does he even start with them? There are millions. Junlai is possessed, not a human, but a demon. He does black magic and that too on the empress, that's how he got his sister and himself bestowed with glory as if both of them didn't have any talent of their own.

He had his family vanished from capital, except for Tai, who was still the General? They left themselves....well....he kind of 'asked' them to. He couldn't have been more lenient than this. But it hurt to know that people thought all this about him when he saved their lives....sometimes he wished he didn-

No, I did it for my beloved Empress not for the filth that resides in this empire.

He contributed to the conversation when it was expected of him and smiled when smiling was appropriate. He was, by every visible measure, perfectly content. Only if he knew how unsettling he seemed to Chun Wei.

Only Mei Han, standing discreetly behind him, noticed the way his free hand had settled over Wang Yi with a grip just slightly too tight.

Wang Hao toddled over at some point, totally unafraid, and placed both hands on Junlai's knee to peer up at Wang Yi with the intense investigative focus that children possess.

"How is Bao Bao?"

"Doing well, princess" Junlai said, his voice gentle. "She's happy to see you today, aren't you, Bao Bao? " On cue, the baby in his arms giggled, seeing her sister up close, making silly faces.

Then to everyone's surprise Wang Hao stared at Junlai's eyes and for a moment Junlai's throat tightened. He swear he saw a glimpse of you in her eyes. Wang Hao scratched her head and said looking dead in his eyes. "Pretty...." as she gestured a finger to her own eye and then having an attention span of a goldfish went back to the gardens to swing a wooden sword and jump around.

Pretty? My eyes?...

'You have such venomous features. You are something women would avoid, not bed.'

'Oh Junlai, look at yourself. Do you think people believe that you are our brother? Look at yourself and then us. Your ugliness can only be inherited by a blood of a whore like your father-'

These were the things he heard growing up...until you came into his life and made him love himself. But the men in the harem didn't let the cycle stop. Such words in your absence were like a vial granting him one last breath.

"She has no fear of anyone," Chun Wei said abruptly, shock evident in his voice. "Her Majesty says she will make a fine empress one day."

The words landed in the garden like a smooth stone dropped into still water.

There he goes, changing the topic instantly.

"Her Majesty is generous," Junlai replied, setting the cup down with quiet precision, "with all her children. And so is Wang Hao. Such a kind child."

"Indeed...." A calculated reply or one full of envy? Junlai didn't bother to notice. He didn't care. A child was more sincere than this virulent palace combined...

Which, Junlai thought, looking back down at Wang Yi's sleeping face, was something he was a part of now.

═════ ◈ ═════

The chambers were quiet in the way only night could make them, thick and total, broken only by the distant sound of Wang Yi's soft breathing from behind the nursery screen and the occasional flicker of the candle flame on the vanity. Mei Han had left while Junlai sat before the mirror.

His reflection looked back at him, same face, same eyes, same carefully held posture. He studied himself the way he sometimes studied the court, looking for the crack, the soft place, the thing that would give way under pressure.

He felt empty. Not the emptiness that came when you were away. That emptiness at least had a shape, a hollow carved specifically in the outline of you. This was different. This was the feeling of something dreadful gathering itself at the threshold of him, waiting to be let in.

It was the opposite, actually. It was because of too many people....

That was it. That was the rot beneath the pleasant morning, beneath the music and the brunch and Wang Hua's warm laugh. The harem breathed with bodies and agendas and soft smiling mouths that said one thing and meant three others. The court was worse. Even the gardens, even the gardens were full of eyes now.

And Chun Wei's daughter, toddling over, hands on his knee, peering up at Wang Yi with that open, uncomplicated curiosity. She's a child. Junlai's reflection did not blink.

How can I feel something like that, what my own stepfather felt toward me? Disgust. Hate. She is my lover's flesh and blood.

He stared at himself. "But she has the whore's blood too." The voice came from the mirror.

His own voice. His own mouth, forming the words, but he had not spoken them. Junlai recoiled, the stool tilting beneath him, and he hit the floor hard, one hand catching the edge of the vanity. The candle flame shuddered. He sat on the cold ground for a moment, chest heaving, staring up at the mirror.

His reflection was still sitting on the stool.

Upright and composed. Watching him on the floor with an almost patient expression. Slowly, Junlai stood up.

The reflection did not mirror him.

"This is what life is, Junlai." His own voice, from his own face, from something that was not him. Calm and certain, the way a blade is certain. "Survival. It started the moment you decided to dance for her that night. To give yourself to her. To bear children for her. When you vowed to die and kill for her." A pause, almost thoughtful. "It is not easy. Especially being a man. But you are here, aren't you? And you want to remain here, don't you? To have your name written in the golden pages of history. To be mentioned not before, or after, but beside her. To see your blood rule this empire." The reflection tilted its head, just slightly. "Or you always have a choice. Die as your father did. Unremembered. And without love."

"Th-at is not true!" Junlai's voice came out steadier than he felt. "He-- I remember him. I don't care if no one else does! People remember him when they look at me. How a son of a concubine became a regent."

"Yes." The reflection smiled, and it was his smile, it was exactly his smile, and that was the most horrifying thing about it. "They speak of your glory. Not his. That is the difference."

Junlai turned away from the mirror. His heart was burning, a furious pressurized thing behind his ribs. His hands found the edge of the windowsill and gripped it. The night outside was still and dark and indifferent.

Is this real. Did someone poison him. Drug his tea. Was it Chun Wei, was it one of the court women, was it-

"Junlai."

The voice came from everywhere now, untethered from the mirror entirely, drifting through the room like smoke finding the gaps in a sealed door.

"There will be tests. So many you will lose count. And you will have to pass every single one of them. For that you will have to turn your heart to stone."

"I DID." He spun around, his voice cracking open like something that had been sealed too long. "I burned those dogs- first you don't get out of my head and now you are here?! GET AWA-"

"IT DOESN'T END THERE! IT WILL NEVER. YOU CAN'T SURVIVE A MINUTE WITHOUT ME, YOU NEVER HAVE!'

The candle went out, and then the dark turned red. Not the red of fire, not the warm red of lanterns or spilled wine. This was the red that lived behind closed eyelids, deep and arterial, the color of the inside of a living thing. It seeped up through the floor, bled down from the ceiling, filled the corners of the room like water filling a vessel and Junlai stood at the center of it, motionless. The mirror was gone. The nursery screen was gone. Wang Yi's breathing .....was gone.

"WANG YI!? WHERE ARE--MEI?! WHERE IS MY BABY!? WANG YI!? NOOOO!" He ran around frantically looking for his child in the place until...he recognized the place.

The dancing hall of his childhood.

Except the floor beneath his bare feet was warm and wet and he did not look down because he already knew, the way you always know in dreams, what color it would be....

His brothers were there. They were arranged the way he had arranged them, bound, laid out, their faces turned toward him. But they were not screaming now. They were still. Their eyes were open and their mouths were open and from their mouths came not sound but smoke, thin and pale, drifting upward toward a ceiling that went on forever.

"You did this," said the reflection, standing beside him now, wearing his face, wearing his robes....the ones he wore when he first arrived at the palace that night. "And you felt nothing."

"That is the same thing. You will do it again. And again. And each time the feeling will be smaller. That is not cruelty, Junlai. That is simply the cost."

"The co-ost of what?!"

"Of being hers."

The hall shifted. The red deepened. And then Chun Wei was there, standing across the room, Wang Hao on his hip, and he was smiling his easy guileless smile and Junlai felt something move through him that he did not have a name for, something that frightened him more than the blood on the floor or the smoke from his brothers' mouths.

Because it was not hatred. It was something colder and more considered than hatred.

"She-- your so-called lover, called her a fine empress," the reflection murmured pleasantly, right beside his ear. "One day."

"Stop."

"Wang Hao. First princess. Two years older. Born first, breath drawn first, name written first in the imperial records."

"STOP!"

"And Wang Yi, your Wang Yi, second. Always second unless-"

"I SAID STOP!!!"

His own voice tore out of him and the hall shattered and he was on the floor of his chambers. His cheek was pressed against the cold stone. His robes were twisted around him. His hands were fisted against the ground so tightly that when he finally opened them, his fingers ached. He immediately ran behind the nursery and gasped in relief seeing Wang Yi and immediately scooped her up, heaving. "My baby..."

He held her like this for the longest time , out of his senses. When morning came and Mei Han entered to find him already seated at the vanity, hair unbound, hands folded in his lap, eyes fixed on his own reflection, he said nothing. He simply picked up the comb and began his work, muttering a morning greeting in a soft voice Junlai watched himself in the mirror.

Mei Han was seventeen and had not yet learned how to be unafraid.

He had tried. He told himself every morning as he prepared the comb and the oils and the hairpins that there was nothing to fear, that his master was simply a man, that the Regent Consort put on his robes the same way anyone did, one arm then the other. He told himself this and almost believed it until he actually entered the chambers and felt the particular quality of silence that lived around Xu Junlai like a second skin, and then the belief dissolved entirely.

It was not that his master was cruel to him. He wasn't. He had never raised his voice at Mei Han, never struck him, never looked at him with anything that could be called contempt. That would have almost been easier to navigate. Cruelty had edges you could learn, distances you could measure and keep.

He was trembling.

He noticed it the same moment his master did, the faint unsteady rhythm of his own hands as he drew the comb through Junlai's unbound hair, the slight chattering tension in his fingers that he could not, no matter how hard he willed it, make stop.

"You are trembling."

Mei Han's heart lurched into his throat. "Ah, M-master, I j-just, I haven't had breakfast yet. I apologize."

He saw his master's eyes in the mirror. They did not widen or narrow or do anything at all. They never did. Rarely, if you ask him.

Then Junlai reached up and took the comb from his hand without a word. "Go and check on the princess. I will get ready myself."

There it was. The voice that lived in private, unhurried and colorless, carrying no warmth, unlike the one in the gardens yesterday.

"As you wish, Master." Mei Han bowed and retreated behind the nursery screen, his heart still knocking against his ribs.

He looked down at Wang Yi, still sleeping, her small chest rising and falling with perfect indifference to the tensions of the world beyond her crib. He did not know why he had been chosen for this. Of all the attendants in the palace, of all the boys who could have been assigned to the Regent Consort's chambers, it was him. He had asked once, carefully, obliquely, and received no answer. He had stopped asking.

He wished sometimes, in the honest dark of his own quarters, that it had been someone else.

But then he thought about what it meant to stand this close to the center of things. To serve the man who had saved the capital, who held the Empress's trust.

Something told him, some quiet, persistent instinct that he trusted more than he trusted most things, that he was on the right side of history. He should be proud of it, that he is not serving some spoiled brat at least. It was simply that the right side was very cold.

And he was still very young. Behind the screen he could hear the soft precise sounds of his master dressing himself without help.

Just then, Wang Yi had opened her eyes while he wasn't paying attention. He smiled at her despite himself.

"Good morning, Your Highness," he whispered.

Wang Yi blinked at him slowly, unbothered, and grabbed his finger when he offered it. Mei Han stood there in the quiet, the baby's grip warm around his finger.

═════ ◈ ═════

You had come back and the first few days were beautiful as usual. Not to mention the nights. But Junlai wasn't dull enough to miss your extra silence, the one you usually filled with your tender gestures and sometimes poetry that made him feel as if his body's flesh was being drained of all evils. He couldn't get enough of your voice.

Tonight Mei Han had been thorough. The jewels at his throat caught the candlelight and held it. His hair was pinned with the jade pieces you had gifted him after the campaign, the ones you had pressed into his hands without ceremony or explanation, which somehow made them more precious than anything wrapped in silk. His robes were the same colour of deep blue you had once paused on for just a moment too long, which was as close to a declaration of preference as you ever came in matters like this.

He moved through the vast marble hallway toward your chambers, his steps unhurried, the soft sound of his anklet a quiet rhythm against the silence of the corridor. The candles along the teal walls burned low and even. The palace at this hour had a particular quality of stillness that he had grown to love, all its daytime performances put away, everything reduced to its essential self.

At the far end of the hallway the guards stood at their post.

He watched as one of them noticed him approaching. Watched the barely perceptible shift, the glance exchanged between them. One of them muttered something under her breath to the other, too low to catch, and he saw the ghost of something that might have been a wry smile. Then, before he had reached even a quarter of the usual distance, one guard stepped forward. Not halting him with her spear, as protocol would have it. Instead abandoning her post entirely to come halfway down the corridor to meet him, positioning herself as a soft barrier rather than a hard one, which told him, immediately, everything about how much she did not want this conversation to happen any closer to those doors.

"I am afraid, Master Junlai." Her voice was carefully respectful. "You cannot enter today."

Junlai stopped. He regarded her from behind his veil, the sheer silk doing nothing to obscure the composed line of his expression, the slight angle of his head.

"Why is that?" The voice that came from behind the veil was unhurried. Almost amused. The particular amusement of someone who has already understood the situation completely and is simply giving the other person the courtesy of explaining it themselves.

The guard held his gaze. To her credit she did not look away. "Because," she said, with the careful steadiness of a woman who had faced things considerably more dangerous than this and was not entirely sure this did not belong on that list, "someone else is already inside."

.

.

.

.

Junlai did not move. The candlelight caught the jade in his hair. His hands, folded in front of him, remained perfectly still.

"I see. Who is it?"

"It's...Consort Chun Wei."

Mei felt as if he would be buried by the weight of the silence that walked alongside them to Xu Junlai's chambers and of course...he master, wanted solitude, with doors being shut on his face. His heart was filled with worry for his owner. 'Just please don’t do anything rash...master.' He could only fathom at this age what it felt like to have your lover..being shared. Stolen , more like it.

With a sorrowful sigh he made way to the princess's chambers, where other attendants were present caring for her, all the while keeping a calm expression and not letting them get a whiff of the situation, even though they soon would due to the harem. They were a loyal bunch and would obviously take Junlai’s side but Mei thought it was best to be silent. That’s what his master would want.

═════ ◈ ═════

At first it was Chun Wei.

Junlai had told himself it would stop there. Not because he had any real evidence that it would, but because the alternative was something he had not yet built enough interior architecture to house. He had arranged himself carefully around the fact of Chun Wei. ‘You had a child with him...and that man used it to his advantage under the excuses of meeting you with Wang Hao...and you, well you of course would house a soft corner for the father of your child.

But it hurts....so bad. Didn't you once think about him?! How he would feel being----He had managed....barely.

And then came Zhu Yan.

Son of a minister to secure good political relations. Beautiful in the way that required no effort and knew it. Giggly, they said. Gentle and youthful.... He arrived like a rumor that turned out to be true, which was always the worst kind, and he entered the harem with Wang Hua's blessing, as a homecoming gift for you. And you... keeping politics in mind, allowed it, too. Soon, Zhu Yan was in your bed...the bed that you shared with...him. The same chambers...

Did you talk softly with him too? Gift him stuff? Recite poetry-- NO... No... that's idiotic. That would never happen. You wouldn't...

Junlai heard the news the way you hear something that your ears receive, and your mind refuses, for several long seconds, to process.

Then it processed.

"This cannot be true."

His voice came out strange. Too quiet. The quiet of something structural giving way. Mei Han, who had made the catastrophic error of being the one to deliver this information, took a careful step backward.

"This cannot be true." Louder now. His hands had found the edge of the table and were pressing into it with a force entirely disproportionate to the stillness of the rest of him. "No."

"Ma-aster-"

"NO!”

The word came out of him like something physical, like something that had been stored under pressure for a very long time and had finally found its exit point. He turned away from Mei Han, then turned back, then away again, his composure, that immaculate lifelong composure, cracking visibly at the seams for the first time in recent memory.

You. Who had, in the quiet after a passionate night had spoken about your mother with that particular controlled contempt reserved for the things that had genuinely wounded you. Who had said, not in those exact words but in every word adjacent to them, that you would not become what she had been, would not let appetite and politics fill your bed with bodies until the people in it stopped being people and became furniture. He had listened and believed you the way he believed very few things, completely and without reservation, because you were the one person he had decided to trust with the undefended parts of himself.

Zhu Yan.......Wang Hua's permission.

"NO! HOW FUCKING DARE THEY!?" The sound tore out of him, raw and uncontrolled and entirely unlike anything that had ever come out of him in a palace setting. Everything was swept off the table. His chest was heaving, his hair coming loose from its pins, and for a moment, he was not the Regent Consort, was not the man who had moved armies with birds and bluffed ministers into silence from behind a mere veil, was not the composed and careful creature he had spent years constructing. He was simply a boy who had burned his feet on glass floors for you and had not once regretted it and was now standing in a room that felt like it was contracting around him.

He came back to himself in pieces. Wang Hua's voice. His name, spoken with a particular sharpness that cut through the wailing in his head the way cold water cuts through fever.

He finally surfaced and saw Wang Hua standing across the room, appalled, pale in a way that sat strangely on a face usually so composed, staring at him with a baffled look.

Junlai straightened slowly. His hair fell across his face. He did not push it back.

"What," Wang Hua said, with the careful enunciation of a man exerting considerable restraint, "is the meaning of this?"

Something in Junlai's chest, that last unraveling thread, pulled completely loose. He laughed.

It was not a good laugh. It was the laugh of someone who has just heard the cruelest joke of their life and cannot locate the appropriate alternative response. "You....you of all people ask me that?"

Wang Hua's expression shifted decisively into fury. He gestured once, sharply, to his attendant. The man withdrew immediately, understood that what happened next was not for outside ears.

"You." Wang Hua's voice dropped to something quieter and more dangerous than shouting. "How could you behave this way. Don't forget who you are talking to! Have you lost your mind entirely?!"

"How could you let this happen." Junlai's voice cracked like a child complaining with his father. "How could YOU let this happen. Why can't you let me be happy-"

"Mind your tongue, boy."

"WHY SHOULD I? THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED ISN'T IT?! BECAUSE YOU WENT THROUGH THIS-"

Crack.

The slap landed clean across his cheek, snapping his head to the side. The sound of it filled the chamber completely for one suspended moment and then dissolved into silence.

Junlai did not move. His hair fell forward across his face. His cheek burned. He stood with his chin slightly angled away, the way it had landed, and did not correct it, did not raise his hand to his face, did not make a sound.

Wang Hua's breathing was audible now too.

"Because you forget your place. This is your greatest flaw. You entered this harem with an edge to you that I first took for confidence. I respected it. I allowed it. But it has grown into something else entirely, and I will not stand in my own palace and be shouted at by a consort."

"This is how the harem works. It was bound to happen. And this is MY harem, Junlai. Her Majesty's Harem. And you? You are a consort. Nothing more."

Junlai said nothing. His hair still covered his face. "Regent Consort." Wang Hua spat the title. "That exists when my daughter is absent. Managing charities and making small decisions in her name does not make you the emperor. It does not make you anything more than what you are. Keep. That. In. Mind."

Still nothing from Junlai. Still that same posture, head slightly turned, hair across his cheek, chest rising and falling with a steadiness that cost him considerably more than it looked like it did.

Wang Hua was not finished.

"My daughter needs heirs. She cannot rely on one man for that. You have shown no signs of pregnancy since Wang Yi and the healers have told me plainly that your chances are slim now, given the complications of her birth. And alliances inside the empire are equally important! Loyalty isn't always for free!"

 "You want my daughter to waste her years waiting on you alone? Women do not remain loyal to one man, Junlai. That is not weakness, it is nature, it is history, it is the way of this world, regardless of what fairy tales your father may have filled your head with."

The words landed one after another, each one placed with the precision of someone who knew exactly where the soft places were.

"No more tantrums. No more scenes. No more of whatever this was." The rustling of robes as Wang Hua moved toward the door. "Or everything that happened in this room today finds its way into my daughter's ears. And never ever, speak ill of the late empress or my past. You have no right. Otherwise, punishment will be beyond your imagination."

A swish of silk and he was gone. Junlai stood in the center of the chamber alone. His hair fell across his face. His cheek still burning. The place where his hands gripped his own robes was white at the knuckles.

The room was very quiet, and Mei...he didn't dare enter back inside.

Outside, somewhere distant, he could hear the ordinary sounds of the palace continuing its ordinary life, footsteps and birdsong and the faint melody of someone practicing an instrument several courtyards away, the world moving forward with its customary indifference to whatever was happening inside any given person at any given moment.

Junlai stood in the quiet and did not move for a long time.

When he finally raised his head, his face was composed. His eyes in the middle distance were very still and very dark and were looking at something that was not there..

He breathed in once, slowly, all the way down and out. Then he crossed to the vanity, sat, and began to pin his hair back as if nothing had happened.

His reflection...still again, stared back unimpressed.

"Told you so..."

"Bollocks…" She exhaled a slow ring of smoke, staring up into the starry night.

Then she heard it , a small noise. Small enough to be missed.

Suki.

Curled up beside your and Arthur's tent. Shit. They'd forgotten her in all the drama and hurry.

"Hey… there, girl." Molly crouched, scooping the cat into her arms with a gentle smile. For a moment, she forgot all her worries in the quiet warmth of soft fur , well, except for Bill and Pearson's thunderous snoring rattling across the camp.

"Let's see if there are any leftovers for you…" Her feet turned toward the wagon, but something made her stop.

The tent flap, slightly open.

At first, it was only curiosity , a passing wonder at how seamlessly you had settled in beside Arthur. She told herself it was nothing more than that. Her gaze swept over the dim space, lit only by the lantern hanging outside on Dutch's tent, its amber glow bleeding faintly through the canvas.

What an analogy. Dutch, a shining light in that orphan boy's eyes, and now that boy had gone and left this whole gang for his woman.

Ah, Dutch. When will you ever realize…

There was a quiet sting of envy as her eyes drifted over the space. The way your hairbrush lay beside Arthur's comb. Homely. Domestic. All the small, tender things missing from her own life. How was that even possible , more warmth tucked into what began as a hollow, vengeful arrangement than in a relationship built on something real? Something like love?

Her gaze wandered to a chest near the far side of the tent. A beautiful one. Nearly as fine as her own. Yours.

"Maybe your snack is in there, hm?" she murmured to Suki, knowing full well it was wrong. But one glance outside confirmed the camp was still and silent, and , well. Recent events had given her reason enough. She just needed to be sure. To know that you were someone worth trusting. A woman who was a victim, not a…

"Mhm. Doesn't seem like it."

Her hand glided over folded garments until her fingers met something solid beneath a satin dress. A perfume bottle? Her brows knitted as she lifted it , small, dark, filled with what looked like dried leaves and herbs.

But Molly O'Shea was no fool. She was not one of the naive girls giggling around the campfire. She had knowledge, and she had sense , enough of both to recognize exactly what she was holding.

These herbs.

Something clicked in her mind. Several things, in fact. And several others… didn't.

She stood there a breath too long. Should she take it with her , no. No.

She placed it back carefully, tucking it beneath the satin just as she'd found it, closed the chest, and made certain everything was exactly as it had been. Then she slipped out of the tent with Suki still warm against her chest, her breathing heavier than she'd like to admit, and made her way to the wagon without looking back.

❀˖°

"Hosea… got a minute?"

"Yes, what is it, Miss O'Shea?"

"It's , I wanted to ask about Abigail's condition. Is she doing any better?"

Hosea skimmed the camp for the girl's presence, but it seemed she was still sleeping in. Good. She needed it.

"Doing better, yes. Though she gets cramps often now." He exhaled quietly. "It worries me."

"I know. But do you know why? It wasn't happening before…"

"Well, when I took her to the clinic, the doctor said she may have eaten something that didn't agree with her." He glanced away, rubbing the back of his neck. "I didn't mention the rising tensions here, of course , the shootout with the law, all of that. And John… that stupid boy, keeping his distance. He's been gone for days now. I just hope he went after Arthur and nothing else."

"Hm." Molly nodded slowly. "Well. I'll be sure to look after Abigail more."

And that was how she found out , mid-conversation, almost in passing.

"Oh, it could be a reaction to those chocolates I had…"

Molly's fingers stilled around her cup. "Which ones?"

"(Y/N) gave some of them to me." Abigail shifted, pressing a hand absently to her middle. "Everything's been unsettled since, if I'm honest. Suppose they didn't suit me. They were so delicious, though."

…Chocolates.

The box in the chest. The bottle. You taking Abigail to the clinic in those early days , and then the law arriving not long after. Was any of it a coincidence?

Molly held her expression carefully, even as her mind turned it over and over, fitting the pieces together like a puzzle she wasn't sure she wanted to finish.

"Mhm. Could be," she said at last, her voice smooth and unhurried. "Next time, don't eat anything like that , nothing artificial from the market. All you need are fruits. Pure, simple things."

Abigail's expression softened, a warmth blooming in her tired eyes at the steadiness of Molly's voice . something almost motherly in it. It nearly brought tears to her eyes. With everything so tense, and John gone…

He never cared anyway.

"Thank you so much, Miss Molly," she said quietly. "Your words mean a lot. They really do." The thudding of hooves stole their attention. After two weeks , guess who was back? Arthur and you.

You were wearing different clothes than the night you'd left, and Arthur had a bag slung over his shoulder. A long silence swept the camp as everyone registered the sight of the two of you riding in together, unhurried, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Seems like someone had a good holiday." Molly smirked, arms folded. "At least some people around here are enjoying themselves."

Abigail was already on her feet, crossing the camp toward you both.

"Arthur, son ... you're back." Dutch stepped forward, pulling him into an embrace that Arthur returned stiffly. Then Dutch held him by the shoulders, studying his face for a long moment, something unspoken passing between them. "Knew you would be," he said gruffly, with the quiet certainty of a man who had never truly doubted it.

His contemplative gaze swept briefly to you , acknowledging, nothing more. Certainly not with the same warmth he reserved for Arthur.

"Well. There's something I'd like to speak to you about, son." Dutch gestured toward his tent. "Would you mind?"

He was surprised when Arthur's hand found yours.

"Yeah, we do." Arthur's voice was even, unhurried , and all the more final for it. "Whatever you've got to say on behalf of that bastard, she hears it too."

The camp went quiet. Arthur Morgan...saying no to...Dutch? Unheard of. Dutch held his gaze for a beat, then two. Something shifted behind his eyes , not quite surprise, but close to it. He exhaled slowly through his nose.

"I understand." He turned his head. "Pearson... fetch us some (coffee/tea), would you?"

❀˖°

Pearson set the cups down without a word and made himself scarce. Smart man.

Dutch settled into his chair with the ease of someone who had never once lost an argument he cared about winning. He let the silence sit for a moment , comfortable in it, the way only men who controlled rooms ever were. His eyes moved between the two of you, unhurried, taking inventory. Then he smiled. not unkindly.

"First things first." He looked at you directly, inclining his head with something that almost resembled grace. "I am glad you are safe, my dear. Truly. Whatever… friction may have occurred, that much was never in question."

Then his gaze shifted to Arthur, and the smile warmed further , genuinely, or so it seemed.

"And you." He exhaled, leaning forward, elbows to knees. "You had me worried, son. I won't pretend otherwise. But you're here. That's what matters."

He reached for his cup. Took his time with it.

"Now." His tone didn't harden so much as settle , like a man easing into the real conversation after the pleasantries had served their purpose. "I imagine you've got a good deal to say to me. And I'll hear every word of it, I promise you that. But I'd ask , I'd ask, Arthur, not demand , that you hear me out first. As you always have. Can you do that?"

He didn't wait long for an answer.

"Micah is…" He paused, as if carefully selecting the word, as if he hadn't already chosen it long before he sat down. "…Micah is what he is. I won't insult your intelligence by telling you he's a gentle soul. We both know better." A quiet, almost conspiratorial chuckle , just the two of us, Arthur, we understand things the others don't. "But what I will tell you is that he is useful. And right now, in the position this gang finds itself in, useful is not something we can afford to throw away lightly."

His eyes drifted to you then...briefly. "I understand he caused… upset. And I am sorry for that." The apology landed smooth as river stone, worn of all rough edges. "That was not my intention. None of this was my intention. You have to believe that."

He set his cup down.

"But Arthur." His voice dropped, just slightly , intimate now, drawing a circle around the two of them that quietly excluded you without ever acknowledging it. "This life we lead, it asks things of us. Hard things. Things that don't always sit right. You know this. Better than anyone here, you know this. And what I need , what this family needs , is for you to be present. To be here. With us. The way you've always been."

"She's important to you." He didn't look at you when he said it. "I can see that plainly. And I would never ask you to give up something that matters to you." He spread his hands open, the portrait of reason. "All I'm asking is that you don't let one bad moment drive a wedge between you and the people who have been with you since the beginning. That's all, son. That is all I'm asking."

He leaned back, calm, unhurried , a man who had just laid out something perfectly fair and was now simply waiting for the other person to agree.

His eyes finally settled on you, steady and warm and utterly unreadable beneath it.

"And you, my dear , I hope you know there is place is yours too and you have value here. We take care of our own."

"Course you do." You retorted. "Arthur, that disgusting man is not coming back here , whatever the case. Over my dead body!."

And with that you were gone, leaving Dutch to stare at the space where you'd been sitting.

"Arthur-"

"She's right." Arthur's voice was flat. Unmovable. "He doesn't come within an inch of this camp. We go to him if we need his help so badly. That's the end of it."

Dutch held his gaze for a moment, then exhaled through his nose. "Fine." He reached for his cup again. "Fine."

For now.

"There is… one more thing." His tone shifted , lighter now, almost careful, the way a man handles something fragile he doesn't want to drop. "Consider it good news. Lord knows we could use some."

Arthur didn't move, just watched him.

"This is something I kept between myself and Hosea for a time. I won't go into every detail, but , when we left Blackwater, the two of us became involved in a business arrangement with some gentlemen. And as a reward for our part in it…" Dutch set his cup down with quiet precision. "We were given a plot of land. In Cinderpoint. An acre and a half. Good location. Good soil."

The tent was very still.

"I had construction started , quietly .. with some of the money we earned helping out your girl's father. I'm telling you now because I want you involved, Arthur. I want you to take responsibility for it. Go out there, look after the building, oversee the boys. It's time we…" He paused, and for just a moment something almost genuine crossed his face , tired, and old, and wanting. "It's time we put down something solid. A farm. A proper business. A foundation." Arthur stared at him.

The word foundation sat in the air between them like smoke.

He'd heard Dutch talk about plans before. I have a plan, Arthur. Trust me, son. He'd heard it in the cold, heard it hungry, heard it with blood still drying on his hands and Dutch's voice steady as a river current, always pulling him forward, always just over the next hill, the next job, the next horizon. One last time had been said so many times it had stopped meaning anything.

And yet.

Land. Legal. Documented. Theirs. Arthur picked up his cup. Turned it slowly in his hands without drinking from it.

"You're tellin' me," he said at last, his voice low and measured, "that we've got land. Sitting there. Right now. With papers."

"Every document in order. Hosea saw to it himself." Dutch leaned forward slightly. "This is real, son. This is not a dream I'm selling you. This is something you could stand on."

Arthur was quiet for a long moment. Long enough that the sounds of the camp outside filtered back in , someone's boots on gravel, the distant whinny of a horse, the ordinary noise of people just living.

He thought about you. The two weeks spent outside...under a proper roof for once. About what it had felt like to wake up somewhere quiet, with you beside him, and nothing pressing in from every direction for once.

He thought about how that had felt like something worth keeping.

"Cinderpoint," he repeated slowly, like he was testing the weight of the word.

"Good land," Dutch said again, quieter now. Arthur set the cup down and rubbed a hand across his jaw, eyes distant. "I'll go look at it." His voice gave nothing away. "Can't promise a damn thing til I see it with my own eyes."

"That's all I ask, son." He reached over and gripped Arthur's shoulder, firm and brief. "That's all I ever ask." Arthur nodded once. Then stood, setting his hat back on his head, and stepped out of the tent without another word.

Outside, the camp carried on around him. But his mind was already somewhere else, flat land, open sky, and the quiet, dangerous shape of something that almost looked like a future. You , him and perhaps more...all now very near..

He couldn't believe it. His dream of having a normal life was finally coming true...

AN: It was hard to come back to writing after being so busy, which ultimately made me suffer from writer's block too, but y'all guys' love for this story made me vomit all the words out. Kinda short than rest of parts but...yep. To be added or removed from the tag list, u can always lemme know!