2

The morning air bit sharper than she remembered. It coiled around the paper windows and slipped beneath the hem of her robe as she stood barefoot in the center of the room, every sense acutely alert. The scent of camellias, sweet and waxy, mingled with the faint tang of ink and dust. The subtle creak of floorboards announced the approach of the maid before she even knocked.

When the girl slid the door open, sunlight spilled in across the wooden floor in a thin, trembling line. The servant was young—sixteen at most—with a round face and uncertain eyes. She carried a tray bearing warm rice porridge, salted vegetables, and a bowl of sweetened ginger tea. All simple, all unadorned. The tray’s plainness confirmed what Feng Yan already suspected.

This was not the palace. This was one of her father’s outer estates, likely the summer residence they had used before being recalled to the capital. She had not stood within these walls since she was seventeen.

“Miss Feng,” the maid murmured, bowing low. “Your mother says you’ve been ill with a fever. She asks that you rest, but she’ll be coming to see you shortly.”

Feng Yan nodded slowly. Her movements were deliberate, careful not to reveal how disoriented she still felt. Every detail of this moment hovered between reality and memory—her own past now returned to her, vivid and raw. She accepted the tray with both hands and sat near the window, allowing the light to strike her face as she took a slow sip of the ginger tea. The heat burned across her tongue, anchoring her to the present. It was not the same as that final night—no incense, no poison—but the bitter edge still made her stomach twist.

“Has anything changed in the household lately?” she asked, her voice soft but commanding.

The maid hesitated. “There was a letter from the capital last week, my lady. Your father seemed troubled, but he hasn’t spoken of it. He’s left early each day and returned late. There was talk… rumors perhaps, that the Emperor may summon you for court selection this season.”

That single sentence landed like thunder in her mind. Of course. That year, the Emperor had summoned noble daughters to the palace for what was publicly called the "Spring Selection"—a polite term for evaluating suitable wives and consorts for the imperial sons. It had been the beginning of everything. That selection had placed her in Ji Rong’s path. The path that led to her death.

She forced a smile and nodded, then dismissed the girl with a wave. When the door slid closed again, she pressed the tips of her fingers to her temples and tried to steady her thoughts.

She had died.

That fact could not be softened or rationalized. She remembered every detail with the clarity of a blade held to her throat: Ji Rong’s cold voice, Lanyue’s smile, the way her lungs had filled with nothing and her sight had dimmed until the world vanished.

She was not dreaming. Not insane.

This was real.

She was alive again, and the world had rolled back ten years.

The question was not “why.” She no longer cared about the heavens’ whims or divine mercy. What mattered now was what she intended to do with it.

A bird called outside the window—a bright, shrill cry—and it startled her more than it should have. She rose and pulled aside the curtain to see the garden beyond. Camellias bloomed in careful rows, red and white interspersed like blood on snow. She remembered planting those with her mother as a child. The sight of them now filled her with something complex: not nostalgia, but fury cloaked in familiarity.

A decade. Ten years. She had spent ten years surviving a palace where survival was a matter of reading silence, where her every breath had to be measured against someone else’s ambition. And she had done it for what? To die as a pawn in someone else’s game.

Never again.

The maid’s mention of the letter from the capital echoed in her mind. Her father must have already been maneuvering to position her for the court selection. He would not yet know that his own political decline had already been seeded, or that his allies would abandon him when scandal came to court.

She had no intention of waiting for his strategy to unfold.

A quiet knock came again—this time softer, more familiar. Before she could respond, the door opened and her mother entered, dressed in a pale lavender robe, her long hair tied back with a simple silver pin. Madame Feng looked younger than Feng Yan remembered—her face less worn, her spine straighter. Her features were delicate, but there was a perpetual line of tension in her brow, the mark of a woman constantly listening for danger.

“Yan’er,” she said gently, closing the door behind her. “The fever broke at last. I was afraid you wouldn’t recognize me.”

“I recognize you,” Feng Yan replied, her voice controlled. “And this place. This… year.”

Madame Feng tilted her head. “Still some confusion, then. You’ve been speaking strangely in your sleep. Saying names I don’t recognize. Places you’ve never been.”

Feng Yan lowered her gaze. So she had spoken. Dangerous, but not unexpected.

“It was a dream,” she murmured. “A very long dream.”

Her mother sighed, moving to sit beside her. She reached out to brush a hand along Feng Yan’s cheek, the gesture familiar and distant all at once. “There will be summons from the palace soon. I expect your father will want you to begin preparing. He’s been speaking with envoys. They say the Third Prince will be looking for a bride.”

Feng Yan’s stomach turned, but she kept her face calm.

“And what do you want, Mother?” she asked, watching the woman’s eyes carefully.

Madame Feng hesitated. “I want what’s best for you. But that doesn’t always come in a golden robe or a high seat. I hope you remember that.”

Feng Yan smiled faintly and took her mother’s hand in her own. It was warm. Real. Still alive.

“I remember.”

But she remembered far more than her mother could ever guess. She remembered how her family would be destroyed within four years. How her father would be accused of falsifying battle records, framed by ministers working with Ji Rong. How her mother would fall into illness and fade away in exile, left with only rumors of her daughter’s disgrace.

Not this time.

As the sun climbed higher and cast long shadows through the lattice, Feng Yan rose and crossed the room to a low chest at the foot of her bed. She opened it, revealing the scrolls and silks of her girlhood, untouched by time. Beneath them, hidden in a wrapped cloth, was a small silver comb carved with phoenix feathers.

She lifted it carefully, and as her fingers brushed the metal, she felt something shift—barely perceptible, like the prick of static against her skin.

There had been whispers, in her former life, about objects tied to fate. Relics of women born under rare stars. She had never believed in them.

But now, holding that comb in her hand, she was no longer certain what she believed.

She only knew one truth.

The past had returned to her not as a gift, but as a weapon. She had been weak once. Now, she would become something else entirely.

And Ji Rong—sweet, treacherous Ji Rong—would never see her coming.

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