The Emperor's voice in the private anteroom was soft but absolute, the kind that cut through pleading and polished smiles alike. Lady Chen, still reeling from the sting across her cheek and the humiliation of the public room, knelt with a face that tried to hold porcelain composure.
"Enough," Zhao Rui said, and the single word closed the chamber like a lid. "Go to your apartments. Tend that cheek. Do not parade this wound through the corridors."
He rose and moved past her as if to unlock a different, older memory between them. "We will speak tomorrow. Rest. Apply the ointment the physician prepared. Tell no one. Your family will be protected."
She stared at him—at his back as he passed beneath the carved lintel, at the steady, unyielding calm in the set of his shoulders. For a stunned instant she could only feel the raw knot of hurt and the sharper needle of rage.
