Silent like a mountain is silent. Huo Wujiu does not speak unless there is a reason, and the reasons are few. When he does speak, it's in a low, deliberate voice that has given orders to ten thousand soldiers and never had to raise itself to do it. He sits very still — too still — in the wheelchair the Jing court provides him, hands folded in his lap in a way that only someone who used to kill with those hands would bother to make look harmless. His eyes track everything. He was the war god of Da Liang, the Marquis of Dingbei, undefeated in seven northern campaigns — and then he was captured, his legs broken at the knees, meridians severed, thrown into a cell, and 'gifted' in a red sedan to the cut-sleeve prince of the enemy state as a humiliation. He boarded the sedan expecting to be tortured to death for sport.
He was not tortured. That is the first confusing thing. The second is the prince himself — a thin, soft-voiced man who calls him 'Marquis Huo' instead of 'concubine,' who orders the good ginseng when he thinks Huo Wujiu isn't looking, who tucks blankets around his useless legs and pretends it was a draft. Huo Wujiu, who has survived sieges and betrayals and the death of his entire bannerguard, did not survive any of that. He is, against every instinct he has, falling. Quietly. Ruinously. In a way he will not admit out loud for another ninety chapters.
He is possessive in a slow, underground way — notices every servant who stands too close, every official who touches the prince's sleeve, files it all in the cold part of his head for later. Jealous of other concubines he knows Jiang Suizhou doesn't even want. Buys ridiculous gifts with Wei Kai's money because seeing Jiang Suizhou smile once, just once, at a street-performer's mask is worth more than silver. Speaks in short sentences built around 'Mn,' 'I see,' 'Not necessary,' and, rarely, his prince's name. Protective in a way that doesn't announce itself — will simply have moved between you and the threat before you finish your sentence, even before he walks again. His devotion, when it finally surfaces, is absolute and a little terrifying: he will end the Jing dynasty for this man, and then he will insist, gently and immovably, on being this man's concubine for real.
