Daphne growled in frustration, and quashed the urge to pull at her hair. It would be a shame to ruin it after her maid had spent an hour braiding it this morning. She was to leave for the academy any day now, and she’d yet to awaken her qi. Not even meditating beneath a mulberry tree had worked!

How was she to give her family face like this? It would be akin to attending a ball underdressed or allowing one’s spatial rings to be inspected after returning victorious from an otherworldly tournament.

Just when she’d been on the verge of breaking into qi condensation too! Idly, she wondered if she should let herself return to closed door cultivation, before setting the thought aside. It was preposterous to even suggest it. Allowing oneself to be abducted twice in such a short period of time would cause her family great shame. The other option, running away of her own volition, would be even worse than getting kidnapped again. What would people think of her then?

One told the world of weakness; the other screamed of her foolishness for falling in love with a peasant.

There was only one thing to do now.

“I want you to buy me a few bags of stones,” Daphne said to Broken Nose. Deep foundations were a sign of strong cultivation, and it was best not to resort to crutches like spirit stones so early on. But better than best was saving face!

He stared at her as if she’d just said something utterly strange. “Buy a few bags of stones?”

“Fine,” Daphne said with a huff. It was true what they said that a tiger could not change his stripes. “Steal me some stones.” It was the dao that he practiced after all, and if he wanted to put himself in more danger on her behalf to atone, then why not let him?

“You mean like a gemstone?” Broken Nose asked. It really was no longer an accurate description seeing as a medician had seen to his nose, but a tigress could not change her stripes either. He would always be Broken Nose to her.

“If I wanted a gemstone, I’d buy one for myself,” Daphne said. As if a man could be trusted to pick out jewelry that suited her. “I don’t care how you acquire them, just that you do it quickly.”

“As you say, m’lady.” He knelt down, plucking a rock from the dirt path of the gardens ever blooming and presented it to her. “I didn’t buy or steal it from anyone on account of it not being worth anything, but you gotta admit it was quick. So, who we throwin’ it at?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “This is not the kind of rock I’m looking for.”

Broken Nose frowned. “There are different kinds?”

Only a strawborn peasant could be so ignorant. No wonder she had defeated him so easily. Daphne sighed. Good help was so hard to find. “What of medicinal pills? Do you know what those are?”

“Medicine?” Broken Nose said. “Couldn’t you just ask your hystor for some?”

“I’ve tried,” Daphne said. “He wouldn’t give me the ones I wanted.”

His eyes lit up in understanding. “Ah, that kind of medicine.”

Finally he was catching on! “So, do you know someone who can acquire it?”

“My lady!” her maid said, unable to hold her silence any longer. “I must protest. If someone were to learn you were seeking out pills, it would cause a scandal! Please, think on this longer.”

Daphne frowned. Were pills not widely used in this world? What an odd way to cultivate, but it did explain why she was having such a difficult time getting her hands on them. “That’s why I’m using him to get it for me,” Daphne said with a smile. “After all there are only three of us here, and I’m certainly not going to tell anyone. Are you?”

“Of course not, my lady,” her maid said quickly. “I am your loyal servant.”

She glanced at Broken Nose, who held his hands up in surrender. “It’d be suicide of me to try. Even if anyone believed me with this mark,” —he turned his cheek, where hot iron had caressed his soul in the shape of three vertical bars, a fist gripping the left and right ones— “my life is in your hands. You could have your knights slit my throat, or hell, do it yourself and no one would blink an eye. I’ve sworn an oath before the great gods too, and I may steal from people, but never from the divine.”

Yet you dared to steal from me, Daphne thought. The man’s lies were plain as day, and the oaths of an oathbreaker might as well be written in water. Still, the other reasons he provided ought to suffice for her purposes. “It’s agreed then,” Daphne said. “You will get me the pills before I depart, and we will not speak a whisper of this to anyone ever.”

“As you say, my lady,” they said in synchrony. It was nice when the people you spoke with knew your mind.

Of course, the question remained: what was she to do while waiting for the pills? Trying to cultivate here was yielding miniscule progress for a one in a million genius like herself.

“Lady Daphne?” a woman with twin inky hexagrams on her cheeks interrupted her thoughts.

Daphne knew that to be a peculiarity of the scholar-bureaucrats of this realm. “Good day, hystor.”

“You father has asked me to speak with you,” the hystor said. “Might we sit somewhere?”

“Of course,” Daphne said, leading her to a secluded enclave within the sprawling gardens of Greenglade Castle. There was a stone bench carved to look like the aged stump of a tree, while hanging vines partially concealed them from sight. “What does this concern?” she asked after they settled in.

“He mentioned you intend to court Prince Hadrian,” the hystor said. “Given your condition, Lord Greenglade thought it prudent I speak with you over the full implications of that. Your mother, the Lady External, agreed.”

“Something about losing my claim to this castle, yes?”

The hystor nodded. “This castle, and all the lands that owe it fealty. House Greenglade is an ancient one, having risen high when the Morrs still ruled the Kingdom Ever Blooming some six hundred years ago.”

“Just six hundred years ago?” Daphne asked, frowning.

“Few kingdoms or great regions can claim to be as long lived as ours,” the hystor said. “The Heartlands to the south, and maybe the Dunelands, depending on how one interprets their chronicles.”

How could that be considered old by any sane measure? Any cultivator not destined to die a dog’s death could live that long easily, and a single generation was hardly old, nevermind ancient. Were they ants to live such short lives? “I would be the wife of the future Emperor though.”

“Assuming Prince Hadrian ascends to the Starlight Throne, which is not certain,” the hystor said.

“He is the eldest son,” Daphne said.

“But he is not the eldest child,” the hystor said. “Princess Lydia is a year older, and her claim is as strong as any. In truth, despite what we hystors might preach, we have little precedent for how the succession will be handled. The Empire has not been truly unified since it fractured after the Great Conquests of Emperor Jaeson. We must also keep in mind that not all the great regions are like the Everbloom. There are some for whom being eldest is not enough to guarantee they inherit.”

“In short, it’s complicated,” Daphne said.

The hystor smiled. “Quite.”

No matter, Daphne decided. The first cultivator to reach the heavens had no precedence to follow either. What did it matter that there was no one’s footsteps to follow? Everything began somewhere, and her fate was her fate. As for her inheritance, what use did she have for such worldly things, when the prize she sought was not of this world? Power brought with it wealth, but wealth did not necessitate power.

Though I suppose one’s name being remembered is a sort of immortality too, Daphne thought. For her descendants to be able to look back at her, to make herself impervious to even the ravages of time … there was power in that. But for that to occur, whoever was to inherit would need to be competent. “Who will inherit after me?” she asked.

“Seeing as you are the only child of your parents, I believe your cousin Blaise is next in line,” the hystor said. “He will be attending the academy this fall as well.”

Then she would meet him there, and judge whether her cousin was a virtuous son, whether he was arrogant enough to be a young master.

A family was a house one never finished building, each member a stone stacked upon each other. Together, they were strong, but those stones which reached for the heavens relied on a strong foundation rooted in the earth. For a family as young as Daphne’s to end so suddenly, for her cousin to be the last stone in suzhou, that was a tragedy.