No. Absolutely not. Falling for him was a death sentence, in this kind of story the ones who fell in love always died first.
Yu Wanyin shook her head. Xiahou Dan, a little drunk, seemed to sense her thoughts anyway, and his dark eyes swept toward her.
She looked away at once.
Xiahou Dan blinked, his old habit of playing to an audience kicking back in, and propped his cheek on one hand. "My beloved consort, were you staring at me just now?"
Yu Wanyin pursed her lips and stood to leave. "I'm going to wash up and go to bed."
Xiahou Dan kept his cheek propped on his hand. "Together? I'd like to watch a bit more."
Yu Wanyin froze, then turned her head slowly, trembling.
Xiahou Dan burst out laughing and waved her off. "Go on, go on."
By the time she had gone, Xiahou Dan sat alone in the hall. He was still lifting his cup as if toasting someone, but the smile at the corners of his mouth had begun to fade. With no one left to drink with, the great hall suddenly felt hollow, and a cold draft crept up through the cracks in the stone floor.
A figure walked toward him without a sound and knelt behind his chair.
Xiahou Dan didn't turn around. He set his cup down gently. "Guard Bai has a letter?"
The man presented an envelope with both hands. "Your Majesty, please have a look." Had Yu Wanyin been there, she would have noticed something was wrong: this hidden guard was not on the roster they had drawn up together. He was a face neither of them had ever seen before.
Xiahou Dan opened the envelope. A few wax sealed pills fell out first. He paused, then pulled out the letter and read it, his expression turning impatient. "Has he still not given up?"
The guard said nothing.
Xiahou Dan laid the letter over a candle flame and let it burn. He poured himself a cup of tea and swallowed one of the pills. Then he gave his order. "Tell him everything in the palace is as it should be. He's to keep doing what he's doing."
Yu Wanyin finished her bath, dried her hair, and went to bed alone. The bedding had been quietly upgraded to modern standards. The pillows were no longer stiff, the blanket no longer cold, and her quality of life had improved considerably.
While Xiahou Dan was still bathing, she lay in bed feeling oddly nervous. She hadn't expected him to say something so suggestive earlier, but in the end he still slept on his own side of the line, same as always.
Since the security around her had been tightened, Yu Wanyin had been sleeping well. But tonight, worried about Beizhou, she tossed and turned and couldn't settle.
Once her eyes adjusted to the dark, she noticed Xiahou Dan hadn't closed his either. He was staring at the bed curtain as though he weren't really looking at anything.
She hesitated, then asked quietly, "Can't you sleep either?"
Xiahou Dan shut his eyes. His breathing had gone a little heavy, and he murmured something under his breath, something that sounded like I knew it wouldn't work.
Work? What did that mean? Thinking she'd misheard, Yu Wanyin asked, "What's wrong with you?"
He let out a low breath. "Headache."
That serious? She hesitated again, then leaned closer. "Do you want me to rub it for you?"
It's only natural to look after your ally, she told herself.
Xiahou Dan didn't refuse. But the moment her fingertips touched his temple, every muscle in his body went rigid. Even in the dark, she could feel his jaw clench.
"What is it? Should I go lighter?"
"...Mm."
She'd never actually learned how to give a massage, so she just traced slow circles with her fingers. "I don't know if this counts as comforting, but your migraines were only ever a plot device. They never actually got worse in the story. At least, not until you got assassinated."
The tension slowly drained out of him. His voice came back mocking. "That's very reassuring."
"Hey, don't be like that." Yu Wanyin had no patience for whining patients, she was plenty short tempered herself when she had cramps. "Go ask Beizhou to look you over when he's back, see if it's a tumor or poison. He's spent his life in the martial world, he might know poisons the royal physicians have never even heard of."
"Mm."
She asked quietly, "Are you actually still afraid of dying?"
Her fingers were soft against his skin, still warm from the blanket.
Xiahou Dan's mouth curved. "Hard to say."
Yu Wanyin admitted it herself before she could stop to feel embarrassed. "It's fine, I'm scared too. But you're supposed to be the CEO type, you should show a little more fighting spirit. Even if Beizhou doesn't get the book back this time, we can always try again..."
"Don't worry." He cut off her reassurance before it could land. "I won't give up, not while you haven't either."
Yu Wanyin's hand froze in midair, touching nothing.
Was she being too sensitive, or did that actually sound a little suggestive?
Before she could decide how to feel about it, Xiahou Dan added, "After all, I still need Sister Yu's help if we're going to build a moderately prosperous society."
Yu Wanyin relaxed. "That's fair."
As she kept rubbing his temples, his breathing slowly evened out. When she realized he'd fallen asleep, she found herself unexpectedly drowsy too. Her fingers slowed, circling more and more gently, until they finally stopped.
Once she was fully asleep, Xiahou Dan opened his eyes again and looked at her for a long while.
Yu Wanyin woke some time later without knowing how long she'd been out. There was a little light in the room, though dawn hadn't broken yet.
Someone whispered from beyond the bed curtain. "Wake up. The book's here."
Beizhou was back!
Yu Wanyin shot upright, then felt something was off and turned to look beside her.
Xiahou Dan had crossed clean over the line onto her side, his upper body sprawled across half her pillow.
Yu Wanyin: "..."
This can't have been on purpose. He must have just slept badly, and he'll be embarrassed when he wakes up and realizes it himself.
From beyond the curtain, Beizhou called again. "Dan'er?"
Xiahou Dan opened his eyes, propped himself up on one hand, and got out of bed without a trace of self consciousness, still fully dressed. "He's here."
On purpose! Yu Wanyin felt a little lightheaded.
Xiahou Dan had always played the part of a strategic ally who happened to depend on her when they were alone together. They'd grown close, certainly, but they had never once actually crossed a line.
So what exactly was this? Did ordinary strategic allies share a pillow?
Yu Wanyin pushed the whole matter down, threw on her clothes, and hopped off the bed after him. "Uncle Bei, you're not hurt, are you?"
Beizhou laughed. "It'd take more than that to hurt me. It's just that besides the palace guard, someone else had posted hidden watchers nearby. Took me a while to slip past them."
Xiahou Dan had already settled at the table as if nothing had happened. "Seems my dear imperial brother still hasn't let his guard down. Lucky you were the one who went."
Beizhou pulled a dust covered book from inside his robes. "What exactly is this thing? A treasure map?"
Xiahou Dan said, "Not quite, but not far off."
The three of them lit a lamp and opened the book Xu Yao had left behind.
The cover read A Record of the Land and Customs of Great Xia, but every page inside was filled with handwriting, dense and hurried.
Clearly, when Xu Yao wrote this, he'd meant it only for himself, either as a private record or as leverage against Prince Duan in case things went wrong. It was never meant for other eyes. The sentences were loose and shorthand, full of abbreviations.
Yu Wanyin studied one line for a long while before she made it out. "Turn... Deputy Zhao? Who's Deputy Zhao?"
Xiahou Dan thought about it. "I believe there's a deputy commander of the palace guard named Zhao. I'll confirm it."
It clicked into place for Yu Wanyin. In the original story, Prince Duan really had turned that deputy commander, then used him to overthrow the commander himself, seizing control of the palace guard. That was why, later on, his march from raising an army to claiming the throne had gone off without a hitch.
She narrowed her eyes and read a few more pages. Mostly action plans, roughly matching the plot she remembered. But compared to her hazy memory, the notes here were far more precise, some even down to exact dates and times.
One page opened with, Use the Yan spy to remove Jia, and that "Jia" was the very dissenter Prince Duan would use a borrowed blade to eliminate in the original story.
Too bad that particular Yan spy had already died in a brothel the day before.
Another page read, February, recruit those who fail the examinations. There would be an imperial exam next February, but as things stood, the exam halls were riddled with favoritism and cheating, a swamp where scholars from poor families never stood a chance.
Prince Duan understood the art of winning people over. He would quietly approach a few of the rejected candidates, smooth their way, and secure them minor posts through back channels, turning them into his own men.
Below that was a list of official positions where such men could be slotted in.
Yu Wanyin's pulse quickened.
With Beizhou in the room, she couldn't say any of this out loud to Xiahou Dan, so she just met his eyes and gave a small nod. This is gold.
Xiahou Dan nodded back. Damn right.
Beizhou looked between them, curious. "These are Prince Duan's schemes? He's planning a rebellion?"
Xiahou Dan smiled. "He is. But now that we have the book, we can pick his plans apart one by one and stop him cold."
Beizhou's face creased with concern. "Dan'er, won't that wear you thin? Wouldn't it be simpler if I just went and took his head?"
Xiahou Dan: "..."
"Thank you, Uncle. But Prince Duan's faction runs deep, its roots everywhere. No matter how skilled you are, you can't fight off ten thousand men on your own."
Beizhou fell silent, as if genuinely weighing his odds against ten thousand men.
"And even if you could tear it all out by the roots," Xiahou Dan went on, "the Empress Dowager's family would be left unchallenged, and I'd be next on their list. Killing our way through this only treats the symptom, not the disease."
"Then how do we treat the disease?"
Xiahou Dan didn't answer.
Yu Wanyin, still flipping through the book, suddenly asked, "Why would Yan even bother sending assassins? They must know killing one or two of our nobles won't fix their real problem."
Beizhou said, "They say Yan's land is dry and barren, hit by famine year after year, people can barely survive. The worse it gets for them, the more they hate us for it, half of them are half mad with it by now. There's also a power struggle inside Yan itself. Sending a few assassins is probably just a way to buy prestige."
Something clicked for Yu Wanyin. "Uncle Bei, if their land is that dry, what crops do they even grow?"
Xiahou Dan: "...?"
Xiahou Dan: "...!"
Both of them turned to stare at Beizhou with sudden intensity.
Beizhou scratched his head. "Something called... Yan millet, I think? Not much to it, coarse, doesn't taste good. We barely grow it here in Xia, and when we do it's mostly pig feed."
Forcing down her excitement, Yu Wanyin said, "I see. Uncle Bei, you've had a long night, go get some rest."
The moment he left the room, she jumped to her feet. "We found the drought resistant crop! It might taste terrible, but if every household plants even a little, a bad year wouldn't be the end of the world. No famine means no reason to rebel, and no reason to rebel means Prince Duan loses his opening. Everyone wins!"
Xiahou Dan considered it. "The logic holds. But ordinary families only have so much land to work with. How do you convince them to plant pig feed on it?"
"What if the court buys it up at a good price? That alone would push people to plant it. The treasury gets a stockpile, the farmers get paid, and when a drought year hits, we just open the granaries."
Xiahou Dan shook his head. "I already checked. The treasury's genuinely empty. This country's buried in taxes, but there are parasites bleeding it dry from the capital down to the smallest county, the neighboring states are circling like wolves, and military spending can't be cut. Bottom line, there's no money."
"Print more, then?"
"Wouldn't that just cause inflation?"
Yu Wanyin asked, "Is that bad?"
Xiahou Dan said, "Isn't it?"
She stared at him, baffled. "What's with that tone? Aren't you supposed to be some hotshot CEO?"
Xiahou Dan: "..."
He looked even more baffled than she did. "Being a CEO doesn't mean I studied monetary history. And this isn't even a market economy, printing money or cutting taxes here would send shockwaves through everything..."
Yu Wanyin's head was starting to throb. "Fine, fine. Neither of us knows the first thing about this. We'll just have to find someone who does."
The next morning, the Empress Dowager toyed with her crimson painted nails and listened to the palace maid's daily report.
"His Majesty stayed the night at Consort Yu's quarters again."
The Empress Dowager arched a brow. In all her years in the palace, the emperor had never favored a consort this much. If anything, she'd always understood him to be indifferent to such matters, if not outright averse to them.
Something about it didn't sit right. "Did anything happen between them?"
"The guard around the Consort's hall is too tight to get close, Your Highness. And His Majesty has taken to dismissing the maids so he can be alone with her."
The Empress Dowager's unease deepened. "It seems that fertility soup needs to make another appearance."
The maid bowed low. "This servant will see to it."
"Yu Wanyin clearly doesn't think much of me," the Empress Dowager said. "It's time she learned better. Her father, wasn't it Ren Shaoqing?"