The Unmasking
The crimson gates groaned open, and my heartbeat pounded like war drums in my ribs. I had donned the stiffest of official robes, binding every feminine curve beneath layers of brocade, my voice sanded down to a bureaucrat's monotone.
Chen Qing'er had summoned me not to the ministerial halls—but to her private chambers.
This was no negotiation.
It was a trap.
She wanted to peel my disguise off with her own hands. Or worse: make me the banner for her war.
"Does the General summon me to take a hostage?" My voice cut the air the moment I entered, cold and sharp as an unsheathed dagger.
She didn't answer immediately. Dressed in crimson-scale armor, her ink-black hair tied carelessly back, she studied me with the piercing gaze of a raptor. Step by step, she closed the distance until mere inches separated us.
"Hostages bore me." Her voice was velvet over steel. "What fascinates me is... who you really are."
I held her stare, though sweat slicked my palms. She suspected. Perhaps she knew.
"The Crown Prince trusts you. I never did. You claim to be a minor official, yet three years ago, you didn't exist." Her words were scalpels, flaying me layer by layer. "You're no bureaucrat. You're a phantom. A lie."
A beat of silence. Then I arched a brow. "All this investigation, just to prove yourself shrewder than His Highness? If you had real evidence, why not expose me before the entire court?"
Chen Qing'er's laugh was winter wind. She turned away, her stride a blade's edge. "Expose you? No. I want you to unravel yourself."
When she looked back, her eyes were lightning in a storm. "The entire palace is waiting for you to slip. And I'll be there—to rip that false official's cap from your head myself."
Alone in her chambers, the truth crashed over me:
I hadn't infiltrated the depths of power.
I'd been swallowed whole.
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