Chapter 22: The Hundred Flowers Gathering

 

"Who did I expect to see? The Third Miss Ye — the one Brother Jingli broke off his engagement with."

There was always one voice that cut through a pleasant afternoon like a badly played note. The gathered young ladies turned to find a nobly dressed girl approaching in the middle of her entourage, her expression set well in advance.

Ye Li took a moment to place her. His Majesty's cousin — Princess Ronghua, daughter of Princess Imperial Zhaoren and niece of Princess Imperial Zhaoyang. Ye Li didn't know the capital's social landscape well by instinct, but her uncle had been thorough: before she arrived, her aunt had sent her detailed notes on every prominent family worth knowing, with particular attention to a handful that required careful handling. Princess Ronghua had been on that list.

"Princess Ronghua has a temper," a quiet voice said at Ye Li's side. "Be careful, Miss Ye."

She looked up. Inspector Qin's daughter — Qin Zheng — was offering her a small, genuine smile of warning. Ye Li nodded her thanks, and Qin Zheng nodded back.

The other young ladies were already moving to pay their respects. "Greetings to the Princess—"

Princess Ronghua barely acknowledged the room. She walked directly to Ye Li and studied her for an unhurried moment, with the thoroughness of someone performing an inspection. "So you're Ye Li."

"Yes, Princess."

The hostility was immediate and unmistakable. Ye Li had never met this girl before, which made the source of it genuinely puzzling.

"I heard you always knew you were too plain to show your face anywhere. Now that Brother Jingli has thrown you over, suddenly you appear?" Princess Ronghua's voice carried easily, and the young ladies nearby began murmuring at the edges. "Don't you have any shame?"

A faint chill passed through Ye Li's eyes — there and gone. She looked at the girl in front of her: elaborately dressed, clearly accustomed to every room rearranging itself around her temper, and, Ye Li had to concede to herself, genuinely disagreeable.

"Thank you for your concern, Princess." Her tone was mild, neither yielding nor sharp. "I've been out quite a while today and no one has run screaming yet, so perhaps I was too hard on myself before." She let a brief pause sit. "As for Prince Li — I truly wasn't a suitable match for him. His Majesty's decision to find someone better was entirely sound."

Princess Ronghua blinked. She had clearly expected something else. "Good that you know your place," she said, recovering her disdain.

Ye Ying stepped forward quickly, her smile polished and apologetic. "Ronghua, my sister has never attended gatherings in the capital before — if she's said anything that displeased you, please don't hold it against her."

She was going for gracious elder-sisterly intercession. Princess Ronghua did not cooperate. She brushed Ye Ying's outstretched hand aside and looked at her with something that had moved considerably past displeasure. "She's useless, and so are you. Who gave you permission to decide what this Princess takes offense at?"

Ye Ying's practiced smile held for a moment, then locked in place. Her hand stayed in the air, suspended and forgotten.

"Ronghua, you—"

"How dare you use this Princess's name."

Ye Li read the room quietly. The hostility toward herself had been dismissive, the kind reserved for someone simply in the way. What Princess Ronghua directed at Ye Ying was different — sharper, more personal, edged with something that looked very much like jealousy. That, combined with the angle of it, explained a great deal. Prince Li was almost certainly at the center of this, one way or another. Ye Li had no particular feelings for her sister, but she had equally little patience for whatever this was.

She stepped forward before Ye Ying could say anything else, took her hand, and turned to face Princess Ronghua with a composed expression.

"I've heard the Princess and my younger sister were always quite close. If my sister has given any offence, the fault is mine — I should have guided her better. I hope the Princess will be generous enough to overlook it." She kept her voice even and warm, the implied conclusion clear: can we end this now?

Princess Ronghua studied her. "And if I decide to punish you instead? Or would you like to humiliate yourself the way Ye Ying does?"

"The Princess has always had a reputation for grace and good sense. I'm sure such a small matter won't trouble her long." Ye Li smiled pleasantly. "When I return home I'll inform my parents, and we will arrange a visit to your mansion to apologize properly."

A beat of silence. Princess Ronghua looked at her with something she hadn't expected to encounter — a person who was simply not rattled.

"You're more presentable than Ye Ying," she said finally, with the air of an observation she hadn't quite meant to voice. "Brother Jingli's judgment isn't as good as I thought."

Ye Li felt Ye Ying's wrist go rigid in her hand.

Princess Ronghua, she thought, with exhausted patience, would it kill you to stop talking for thirty consecutive seconds?

"The Princess flatters me. Prince Li's judgment has always been spoken of very well."

Princess Ronghua gave a heavy snort and swept out of the conversation with her entourage trailing behind her, leaving a wake of sympathetic and worried glances. Offending the princess was never a minor inconvenience.

---

Once she was far enough away, Ye Shan and Ye Lin descended on Ye Ying immediately, and several of her closer acquaintances clustered in to offer comfort. Whatever the state of things between Ye Ying and Princess Ronghua, the fact remained: she was the future Princess Li. Prince Li was the Emperor and Empress Dowager's particular favorite, and the rank of Princess Li sat well above Princess Ronghua's. The math was clear to everyone in the garden.

"Princess Ronghua is just like that," said a gentle voice near Ye Li. "Don't let it weigh on you."

It was Qin Zheng, with a quiet, composed expression. Ye Li smiled back, genuinely. "I'm fine. Thank you for the warning — it helped."

"No need." Qin Zheng's smile warmed slightly. "My mother and Madam Xu are old friends, and Madam Xu talks about you often. I've wanted to meet you for a while. You just never came to these things."

Ye Li turned this over. Qin Zheng's father was a disciple of her grandfather, Master Qingyun. And if she recalled correctly, Qin Zheng and her second cousin Xu Qingze had a betrothal arrangement from childhood — which would explain why her cousin had mentioned Xu Qingze was staying in the capital longer than usual. At nineteen, it was time. Ye Li's smile shifted, becoming a little more candid. "Just use my name. I'm glad I came today — I was afraid I'd missed the chance to meet someone worth knowing. Though I suppose we'll be seeing quite a lot of each other from now on, won't we?"

Qin Zheng understood her meaning perfectly. She went slightly pink and gave Ye Li a look of mild reproach. "I'm half a year older than you. Call me sister. Come, let me introduce you to some people."

And so the gathering sorted itself out: Ye Ying in one direction, Ye Li in another, with Qin Zheng steering her toward a small circle of young ladies who had, Ye Li noticed, been the ones to greet her warmly when she arrived.

These women were nothing like the picture that rumors had painted of her — and, Ye Li discovered, she was nothing like what they had been told to expect either. The conversation picked up naturally. These were not the sighing, decorative figures of romantic stories — they were young women from powerful families who were being prepared, carefully and seriously, to run those families. They were perceptive, well-informed, and interesting company.

"Miss Ye, you might want to keep some distance from that sister of yours," said Murong Ting, daughter of Distinguished General Yang Wei, who had inherited her father's directness along with his name. She tilted her head toward Ye Ying, who was currently demonstrating her zither playing to an appreciative small audience. "Just some friendly advice."

"How do you mean?"

"Ye Ying's reputation isn't in a good place. I heard Princess Imperial Zhaoyang didn't want to invite her at all — she apparently had to get Noble Consort Xianzhao to intervene personally before an invitation was sent. Princess Imperial Zhaoyang is very particular about conduct. If you're too closely associated with Ye Ying, some of that might land on you too."

Ye Li had known Ye Ying's standing was complicated, but this was more serious than she'd realized. She hadn't expected the standards here to be this rigid.

"If it were simply an arranged match, that would be one thing," said the young lady from Marquis Hua's family, frowning slightly. "Jealousy, maybe, but nothing that could really be said aloud. But to have private meetings with your future brother-in-law before the engagement is even formalized — what sister in the world could be expected to overlook that? Princess Ronghua was Ye Ying's closest friend before all of this. The moment the engagement was announced, that ended."

Murong Ting shook her head. "The way I heard it, most of those meetings were arranged through Princess Ronghua in the first place. She probably feels she was used."

"That's enough," Qin Zheng said, glancing at Ye Li. "We shouldn't be talking about this in front of Li'er."

The other two caught themselves — she was the most directly affected person in this entire situation, the one who had gone from future Princess Li to future Princess of First Rank in a single imperial decree. They looked at Ye Li with uncertain apologies forming on their faces.

Ye Li covered her mouth and smiled. "It's all right. It's just conversation. You don't need to watch what you say."

Qin Zheng studied her. "Li'er..."

"Imperial decisions aren't to be argued with. Things are as they are, and they have to be lived with — there's no use in feeling sorry for myself." She kept her voice light and honest, neither performing cheerfulness nor manufacturing grief. "Besides, I haven't heard anything to suggest the Prince of First Rank has a difficult temperament. Before his accident, by all accounts, he was quite remarkable. It should be — manageable."

The heavier note dissolved. The four of them talked and laughed until servants from the Princess's mansion came to announce the banquet, and they rose and went in together.

---

The garden emptied out gradually — laughter and voices fading toward the inner hall, until only the distant echo of them remained in the air.

Behind the large decorative rock formation, set into the quietest corner of the garden, a figure in muted cyan sat very still.

The wheelchair faced the direction the young ladies had gone. The man seated in it had the kind of face that might have been called gentle, had the eyes beneath it been any warmer — but they were not. They were clear and cool and entirely present, turning something over in his thoughts that he did not trouble himself to name aloud.

The laughter faded further. He went on watching the empty space where the young ladies had been.