Chapter 6. Failed search and incognito
AT THE SAME TIME
EMPEROR LIANWEI FIRST PERSON POV:
It had been a week. Seven days without a trace of her. Seven days of empty leads, false sightings, and increasingly irritated reports from my best trackers. They bowed before me with lowered heads, muttering apologies and offering guesses instead of answers.
"She might have boarded a grain caravan heading west." "There was a merchant in North market who claims a woman with her description asked for healing her." "A peasant boy says he saw a noblewoman bathing in the river, but she vanished when he blinked."
I slammed the last scroll onto my desk, the ink bleeding from my grip.
"Guesses." I growled. "Nothing but shadows."
"She’s clever." General Cao offered tentatively. "She must’ve had help. There’s no way she slipped out alone-"He started.
"I didn’t ask for excuses."I said.
He shut his mouth quickly. The room emptied soon after. Only silence remained. Silence, and a growing ache under my ribs I hated naming. I leaned back in my chair, eyes scanning the candle’s flicker against the window. In my mind, I saw her again, how quiet she’d been in the mornings, how she always watched the sky first before speaking. Her voice had been soft but never weak. Every night I spent with her had left me strangely... steadier. The others? They were silk and perfume and performance. But she, she had been real. And she left.
Voluntarily. That thought alone still tasted bitter. A knock came at the door.
"Enter." I snapped.
A junior informant crept in, sweating through his robes.