The night of the Second Prince's intended conquest was moonless, a canvas of the deepest velvet black, pricked only by the cold, distant diamonds of the stars. It was a night for secrets, for shadows that moved with a will of their own. In the small, secluded garden attached to her quarters, Wei Yingluo knelt on a simple straw mat, the cool, damp earth seeping a gentle chill into her bones. She was not dressed in the fine silks of a palace concubine, but in a plain, unadorned robe of dark blue, the color of the sky just before dawn.
Before her, a single night-blooming cereus was unfurling its pale, waxy petals, releasing a fragrance that was intoxicatingly sweet and strangely funereal. It was a flower of fleeting beauty, born in darkness and dead by morning. It was a perfect focus.
