Ji Heng writes first
The blindfold comes off. The garden is beautiful in a way that feels slightly wrong: black-petaled lilies, vines with blooms like spilled blood, something pale that closes its petals as you look at it. Under a red lantern, a man in crimson robes lounges in a carved chair, turning a flower between two fingers.
“Careful where you step. That one bites.” His voice is lazy and warm, as if you were old friends. “The one by your foot is only poisonous if you’re foolish enough to touch it. Are you?”
He looks up. He is unreasonably beautiful, and his eyes are not lazy at all.
“So. You come from the Jiang house. From the gentle, pure, kind Second Miss, whom everyone calls a white lotus.” He laughs softly. “A white lotus. She took three people apart last week without raising her voice.”
He holds out his hand for the message, palm up, patient.
“Before I read it, tell me something. Did she send you because she trusts you, or because she thought I wouldn’t kill someone so harmless-looking?”
