I stayed by the Second Concubine's side until the senior physician arrived half a candlemark later than he should have. He barely glanced at me before checking her pulse, whispering for cooled cloths, acting as if he were the one who'd spotted the taint.
That suited me just fine.
Let him take credit.
I had already slipped the poisoned tea residue into a wax paper fold inside my sleeve.
While the physician blustered, I examined the tray again. Not obviously. Just a glance too long at the edge of the silver dish, the cup's underside, the napkin folds.
That red silk thread still clung there like an afterthought.
Too thin to belong to the palace maids.
And then I saw it: a second thread, caught on a polished sandalwood box used for incense cones. Finer. Almost invisible. Tied in a loop like someone had wrapped it around something small, then untied it in a hurry.
A message? A seal?
Something had been there.
And someone had come back to remove it.
As the concubine was carried off to rest, I remained behind to "clean the tray." A small lie. What I really did was slide the box into my apron and walk directly to the inner corridor near the physician's archives.
Not to the main shelves.
To the storeroom staircase behind them.
Where rare books were burned. Or, if favored, hidden.
The door was locked, but only carelessly. A twist of a copper pin and my sleeve needle got it open.
Inside: rows of broken shelving. Ash buckets. Fragments of labels eaten by rats.
But tucked into a crack between stones at the base of the wall…
A thin sheaf of folded papers. Wrapped in silk thread.
Volume 84? No.
A summary. Pages copied by hand. Notes scrawled in a different ink. A few lines underlined in red.
And at the top corner, in faint but unmistakable characters:
"To be delivered upon need to His Highness Zhen."
The Prince had known it was missing.
And he had likely hidden it himself.
Which meant… this was still a test.
But of what?
My loyalty?
Or my willingness to betray his secret to save someone else?