Chapter 23
That first night on the road, Yun-yao learned that reading about horseback journeys and enduring them were entirely different matters. Her thighs screamed. Her back ached in places she hadn't known could ache. Even her teeth hurt from clenching against the bone-jarring pace Feng Kai set.
Feng Kai had rallied thirty of the Household Guards to ride north to search for the General with her.
They hadn't refused. But neither had they hidden their doubts.
Now, as her mare picked its way along the frozen mountain path, Yun-yao understood those doubts intimately.
Her fingers, even wrapped in fur-lined gloves, had gone numb hours ago.
The wind cut through her practical riding clothes ruthlessly, searing her cold with vicious efficiency.
“Lady Wei,” one of the younger guards ventured as they made camp that first night, “perhaps we should turn back. Send word to the capital for reinforcements instead.”
Yun-yao looked up from where she knelt beside the fire, hands shaking as she tried to warm them. Every muscle protested the movement. “No.”
“But—”
“I said no.” She forced steel into her voice despite her chattering teeth. “We continue at first light.”
The men exchanged glances. She could read their thoughts clearly: The General’s pampered wife, playing at heroics.
Let them think it. She would prove them wrong.
By the third day, the doubts had solidified into outright muttering.
Yun-yao sat apart from the guards during their brief rest stops, her fingers working over the casting stones.
Nine smooth river stones, each inscribed with archaic symbols that seemed to shift in firelight.
She'd carried them north in a little pouch tucked into her innermost pocket, where it rested against her heart.
Each night, she cast them.
Each night, they'd scattered across her bedroll in a pattern she couldn't interpret—chaos, perhaps, or urgency.
She didn't know how to read the stones—why didn't this thing come with an instruction manual, so much knowledge, lost—but she was grateful that she could still feel the thread, pulling, north-east.
“What is the lady doing?” she heard one guard whisper.
“Witch stones,” another replied, voice tight with unease. “My grandmother spoke of such things. Wu blood practices.”
“The General’s wife has Wu blood?” Disbelief colored the question.
Feng Kai’s voice cut through the whispers like a blade. “The General’s wife does what she must to find her husband. As do we. First watch, take your positions.”
Yun-yao didn't acknowledge the exchange, though gratitude warmed her more than the meager fire. Her mind’s eye remained fixed on the stones, watching the thread quiver and firmed up, winding its way to Zhen-ting’s heart.
Northeast. Toward Fire Tiger Gorge.
She closed her hand around her jade rabbit pendant. In the dreamspace behind her eyes, she saw it clearly: a white rabbit, spectral and luminous, bounding through snow-covered forests. Seeking. Always seeking.
I'm coming, she thought fiercely. Hold on.
The days dissolved into the relentless rhythm of hooves on frozen earth.
Snow-laden winds scoured the northern passes, biting through layers of wool and fox fur until Yun-yao felt the cold gnaw at her bones.
The world had narrowed to white plains, charcoal cliffs, and the taut thread humming in her chest—Zhen-ting’s heartbeat, faint but persistent, guiding her north like a lodestone.
On the fifth night, the casting stones trembled against the frozen earth as if the earth was shaking. Danger. She felt it rather than thought it. That night, her dreams were white, suffocating, and the white rabbit wailed in the background.
The next morning, the sky hung heavy and gray, pregnant with unshed snow. Yun-yao’s horse had been fractious all morning, ears pinned back, nostrils flaring at scents only it could detect. They'd been climbing a narrow pass, sheer cliff face on one side, dizzying drop on the other.
Then the stones in her pocket began to burn.
Not metaphorically—they burned with actual heat, searing through fabric to press against her ribs like brands.
Yun-yao gasped, nearly losing her seat. The world tilted sickeningly.
Her vision fractured into overlapping images: the path ahead, the same path buried in tons of crushing white, the ghostly rabbit racing back toward her with panicked urgency.
“Stop!” The word tore from her throat.
Feng Kai raised a fist. The column halted.
“Lady Wei?” His tone was careful, neutral. Thirty pairs of eyes fixed on her.
Yun-yao pressed a hand to her burning ribs, breath coming in short gasps. The visions overlaid reality like translucent silks she could see through them, but they colored everything. Death. The path ahead meant death.
“We can't continue this way.” She forced the words out through numb lips. “We have to turn back. Find another route.”
“Lady Wei,” one of the older guards—Zhang, she thought his name was—spoke up, “this is the only pass through the mountains for a hundred li in either direction. Backtracking would cost us two days.”
“Then we lose two days.” Her hand tightened on the reins. The mare danced beneath her, sensing her agitation. “We cannot go forward.”
“With respect,” Zhang’s voice hardened, “we're soldiers, not fortune tellers. The General could be dying while we chase a woman’s fancy—”
The world went white.
Not with snow, though that came after. White with absolute certainty, with knowing beyond logic or proof. Yun-yao’s voice emerged cold and clear, carrying an authority that came from somewhere deeper than her training in propriety.
“If we proceed, we die. All of us. Buried under snow and stone, our bodies unfound until spring thaw.” She met Zhang’s eyes across the narrow path. “Is that plain enough for you, or shall I describe how the ice will fill your lungs as you drown in frozen darkness?”
Silence. Even the wind seemed to pause.
Feng Kai studied her face for a long moment. Whatever he saw there made him nod sharply. “We turn back. Zhang, lead the rear guard. Keep sharp—if the lady’s right, the pass behind us might be unstable too.”
“Captain, you can't seriously—”
“I can and I will.” Feng Kai’s scarred face was implacable. “The General trusts his wife’s judgment. So do I. Move out.”
They'd barely rounded the bend, the pass now hidden behind a jutting outcrop of rock, when the world exploded into thunder.
The sound hit first—a deep, primal roar that vibrated through stone and bone. Then came the wind, a blast of displaced air that sent the horses rearing and the men shouting. Yun-yao clung to her mare’s neck as the animal screamed and spun, hooves scrabbling for purchase on the icy path.
When the noise finally subsided into eerie silence, Feng Kai dismounted and walked back to the outcrop. Yun-yao watched his shoulders go rigid.
He returned slowly, snow dusting his hair and shoulders. “The pass is gone. Completely buried. Anyone on it would be...” He didn't finish.
Thirty guards stared at Yun-yao with new eyes. Not the General’s pampered wife. Not the Chancellor’s perfect daughter. Something else entirely.
Zhang dismounted and dropped to one knee in the snow, face pale with fear. “Forgive me, Lady Wei. I spoke in ignorance.”
“You spoke in haste,” Yun-yao corrected, her voice steadier than her hands. The stones against her ribs had cooled to merely warm. “We all want the same thing, to find the General alive. Now get up. We're losing daylight, and we have two days to make up.”
As they rode on, taking the longer route that would loop around the destroyed pass, Yun-yao heard the whispers.
“Wu blood.”
“She saved us.”
“The General’s witch wife.”
She didn't correct them. Let them call her witch if it meant they'd follow her into the heart of winter to find the man she loved.
The dreams intensified as they drew closer to Fire Tiger Gorge.
Each night, the white rabbit appeared more clearly.
No longer a vague phantom at the edge of consciousness, it had become solid, real, urgent.
It ran through forests Yun-yao had never seen, its paws leaving glowing prints in snow.
Sometimes she saw through its eyes—the world rendered in shades of gray and silver, scents painting pictures more vivid than sight.
It was searching. Always searching.
And it was afraid.
On the nineth night, Yun-yao woke with tears frozen on her cheeks and the taste of blood in her mouth. She'd bitten her lip without realizing it. The rabbit had been trapped in her dream, caught in a tangle of thorns and darkness, crying out with a voice that sounded heartbreakingly human.
She stumbled from her tent, boots unlaced, hair loose. Feng Kai materialized from the shadows.
“Lady Wei?”
“How far to Fire Tiger Gorge?”
“At our current pace? Two days. Maybe less if we push hard.” He paused. “You dreamed again.”
Not a question. She nodded, wrapping her arms around herself against the cold. “He’s running out of time.”
“Then we push hard.” Feng Kai’s voice held no doubt now, no skepticism. Ten days of travel had transformed their dynamic. He treated her pronouncements with the same seriousness he'd give military intelligence. “I'll have the men ready to ride before dawn.”
“Thank you.”
“Don't thank me yet, Lady Wei.” His gaze turned northeast, toward the jagged peaks that housed Fire Tiger Gorge. “That’s harsh country ahead. Even for men trained to winter warfare.”
“I didn't ride this far to turn back at the threshold.” Yun-yao touched the jade rabbit at her throat. It was warm, almost fevered. “We're close. I can feel it.”
Fire Tiger Gorge earned its name honestly.