Sitting on the rooftop at midnight was one of Yuehwa's favourite past-times. Sitting on a rooftop with wine that she pilfered from the innkeeper's secret stash in the cellar was even better.

As she slowly savoured the delectable plum afternotes of the wine and looked up at the full moon hanging in the night sky, she pondered upon a million and one nonsensical things ranging from what it would be like if pigs could fly like Ember ("would I have preferred an intelligent flying piglet?") and what would happen if people could breathe underwater instead ("then we wouldn't have a need for ships anymore would we?"). Ember was used to her illogical questions and ramblings, so he had mastered the skill of ignoring her and minding his own business being perched on a nearby tree.

"It's a full moon tonight," Yuehwa remarked. "What do you think my block of wood of a brother is up to right this moment?"

Ember glanced sideways at her and shrugged his feathers.

"He probably has his head buried in the books. It's a marvel he even has a son, considering how much more time he spends with his books than with his wife. I wonder what the little cottonball looks like now, do you reckon he still remembers he has an aunt?"

If I were him, I'd rather not remember, the bird replied.

Yuehwa threw her head back and laughed, taking another swig of her wine. "You're absolutely right! Neither would I!" she said. "How long have I been away from home now?"

Three years and twenty-two days.

"Has it only been three years?" Yuehwa exclaimed, turning to Ember in shock. "It feels like it's been so much longer! In that case, I should continue wandering for a couple more years. When I finally get bored of exploring then maybe I'll pop home for a visit."

"And where might home be?"

Yuehwa scowled when she saw an unwelcome face spring up from the edge of the roof—she was already regretting having agreed to escort Naying all the way to Gi.

"Go away, Baixun, don't ruin my mood."

"Oh, are we on first name terms now? Whatever happened to 'Your Highness'?" he teased. Ignoring her blatant displeasure, he made his way over and sat himself down beside her. "No matter, you can call me whatever you want."

Yuehwa rolled her eyes and continues chugging her wine, wishing she actually had the ability to get drunk like any other person. Maybe then she could pretend that Baixun was a hallucination.

"So did Maroo tell you who I was?" she asked. "And to think I had him as a scaredy-cat. Looks like he's less afraid of death than I thought."

Shaking his head, Baixun replied, "He hasn't told me anything. Thinking about it now, I should probably punish him for it, but looking at how frightened he was earlier I think that's punishment enough. It's not too difficult to put two and two together if you know what to look out for."

"So when did you find out?"

"From the moment I realised the princess was someone else, I had my suspicions. But it was probably when I saw you with the White Scorpion that I put the puzzle pieces together. Maroo did tell me about his run-in with the assassins on the way to Dahai and the rescue by two rather unlikely characters. Quite extraordinary really."

Yuehwa sighed and took a big gulp of wine. She did a mental count of how many people now knew what the Phoenix looked like and concluded that it was far too many. She would need to find herself a new identity soon.

"To be honest, I'm surprised that I didn't think of it sooner. No princess would have half your sass and attitude," Baixun laughed. "Although I am still curious about your relationship with Princess Naying. Why are you helping her?"

Yuehwa snorted and replied, "No particular reason. When I help people there can only be two possibilities: one, they're paying their weight in gold, or two, I happen to be in a good mood."

"And might it be one or two for Naying's case?"

"Go figure." Yuehwa was getting tired of this conversation. It sounded like Baixun was trying to fish something out of her (which likely involved his cunning father-in-law), but she wasn't in the mood to entertain him. "Since you know who I am, why haven't you tried to arrest me? For all you know I might have been sent to kill you."

"You could try, I'm sitting right beside you now," Baixun replied with a wink. When she didn't respond beyond drinking more wine, he continued, "If I managed to come that close to defeating the White Scorpion, I'm pretty confident I can look after myself. Besides, if you wanted to kill me, you would have already tried. Since you haven't, I'll take it that I'm not on your hitlist at the moment."

"I don't rule out the possibility that I won't want to kill you if you keep badgering me like this." Also, the only reason why you were on par with Shoya was because he was injured—on a good day, you'd be six feet under.

Leaning back and looking up at the sky, Baixun sighed. He reached over and took the wine out of Yuehwa's hand, taking a swig of it himself, much to her consternation.

"I wish this journey back could take a longer time. The minute we reach the capital, there won't be any more opportunities like this to just sit back and enjoy the view."

There was a tinge of melancholy in his eyes that made Yuehwa feel a teensy bit sorry for him. She could imagine what it would be like to be locked up behind palace walls with a never-ending stream of decisions that needed to be made for the greater good of the kingdom; it was a burden she wouldn't want to bear.

She decided not to wring his neck for stealing her wine.

"What is it with men and this hunger for power?" she suddenly asked, recalling what Ember had told her the other day about what he overheard. "What is so attractive about it that you would you choose to travel all this way to marry a princess that you never met, just for the sake of an alliance that could dissolve as easily as it was formed? Why can't people be content with what they already have?"

Baixun gave her a wry smile. "Everyone wants power for different reasons. I can't speak for everyone else, but for me, it's about being in a position where I can do more. Not just for the people of Gi, but for all the people of the five kingdoms."

Yuehwa was a little taken aback by the honesty in his answer. It was as good as an admission to his ambitions, and a dangerous admission to be making to anyone.

"You're making the assumption that you can do a better job than all the other kings," she said.

"No I'm not. I'm making the assumption that five kingdoms united as one is better than five separate entities, like we used to be during the time of the Wudi empire. Each kingdom is limited by its natural resources, and restricted by the cumbersome rules that our forefathers have put in place to maintain the sovereignty of their own kingdoms. Without free movement of people and trade, none of the five kingdoms can ever be as strong as it could be. If someone else can make it happen, then by all means that person doesn't have to be me."

Yuehwa pondered thoughtfully over his words for a while, letting them form loops in her mind. It was a lofty ambition, perhaps with justifications more noble than most, and theoretically it seemed sound, but...

"But in order to even reach that end point, how many lives need to be sacrificed in the interim? No one is going to open their borders and welcome you in. Even if you hope to bring greater prosperity to the lands, how can you ensure that every official, every general under your charge believes the same? What makes you think that at the end of it all, you wouldn't have changed?"

Baixun smiled, and as he did his eyes seemed to twinkle even more under the moonlight.

"Well then you'll just have to stick around to make sure that I don't."

Before Yuehwa could open her mouth to protest, a loud crash came from inside the inn, followed by the shrill voice of someone screaming. Both Yuehwa and Baixun immediately abandoned the roof and leapt back down.

Inside the inn, backed up against a corner and screaming their lungs out were the princess and one of her servant girls. Their eyes widened with fear as they watched Baixun's guards fend off masked men dressed in black garb, all of whom were menacingly brandishing swords and sabres. The guards were vastly outnumbered, and with every assailant struck down it seemed as if three more would appear through the doorway.

"Yuehwa! Save me!" Naying shouted when she caught sight of her friend at the doorway.

Yuehwa scanned the scene and did a quick count of the number of people they were up against. One of Baixun's guards had already been taken down, and the rest were finding it hard to keep pace with the onslaught of attacks. There was no time to question the identity of these assailants or their motive for being here; all that would have to wait. Narrowing her eyes, Yuehwa glanced at the four men who were slowly closing in on her and Baixun—and then she simply laughed.

The men froze for a split second, seemingly taken aback by her sudden laughter. Baixun, on the other hand, only smiled.

"So, who's in the mood for a trip down to hell tonight?" she said, the smile on her face a jarring contradiction to the words coming out of her mouth.

The men gripped their weapons tightly, silver blades gleaming under the moonlight.

The next few minutes were a blur; a frenzy of activity was taking place all around, leaving the onlooker not much choice but to gape in shock. At the corner of the room, Princess Naying cowered in fear as she watched the others engage in battle. Yuehwa's silks were flying in every direction, and wherever they went it would surely be followed by the anguished cries of one of the assassins, right before his neck was snapped in two. Likewise, Baixun had drawn his sword and was methodically cutting down each and every foolish soul that threw themselves in his path.

With Yuehwa and Baixun joining the fray, the tables turned and it wasn't long before the number of attackers dwindled to just one man standing (or not quite standing).

"Who sent you?" Yuehwa asked as she stepped across the numerous dead bodies and walked up to the kneeling man. She yanked down his mask, revealing the bearded face of a thirty-something with a long scar running down the left side of his face. The man had but a single breath in him left, which would no doubt be snuffed out the minute Yuehwa decided to tighten the silk noose she had tied around his neck.

He stared up at her defiantly, not saying a single word.

"I don't like asking the same question twice, so stop trying to be a hero and just tell me what I want to know. Who sent you?"

A trail of blood suddenly appeared from the right corner of the man's lips, and before anyone could stop what was about to happen, it was already too late. The man collapsed sideways onto the floor—dead.

Sighing, Yuehwa gave his cold, dead body a kick. "I wish they would stop doing that, planting poison in their mouths. If you're going to die, at least die fighting! Where's the fun in poisoning yourself?"

Naying stood up shakily and made her way over to Yuehwa's side, clinging onto her sleeve fearfully. "Is he dead?" she whispered, eyeing the man's body suspiciously.

Baixun nodded his head. "Usually these poisons that assassins use are quite deadly. They're meant to ensure that you don't survive to let the cat out of the bag."

"But who would send these people to kill us?" the princess asked.

Bending over, Baixun quickly searched the body of the assassin. Near the man's waist, he fished out a green pendant that had been carefully hidden behind his waistband. Studying the pendant front and back, Baixun frowned.

"This belongs to the Jin army," he declared. "To be more specific, it belongs to General Im's troops."

General Im was the well-known commanding general of Jin, a scheming man better known for the never-ending political feud between himself and the prime minister than for his prowess on the battlefield. Nonetheless, as the man that controlled a sizeable army, he was not someone to be trifled with. The royal court of Jin had always been a complex chessboard, divided into numerous factions that continuously wrestled with one another for the ultimate checkmate; ironically, that also meant that things were often locked in a stalemate with neither faction emerging victorious. Given that the court was often too busy with their infighting to bother about things beyond their borders, it seemed out of the ordinary that they would have sent so many men after some foreign royalty.

"Why would the general want to kill us?" Naying asked.

"Everyone wants to kill the prince!" Maroo's voice suddenly interrupted. No one knew when he had appeared (Yuehwa reckoned he had been cowering under his own bed), but he was now standing behind Baixun, acting as if he had been there all along. "Everyone is jealous of our prince's abilities and they're afraid that when the prince inherits the throne he'll become a threat to them. There's at least one assassination attempt every month!"

Yuehwa rolled her eyes, thinking that Maroo was overexaggerating as usual. However, since encountering this bunch, this had indeed been the third assassination attempt that she had come across—the first was on the ship to Dahai, the second in the Dahai palace itself, and this would be the third. Perhaps there truly was a golden target at the back of Baixun's head, for whatever reason that she couldn't comprehend.

Baixun shook his head and smiled wryly, saying, "If it were the general who was looking to kill me, then I would be less concerned." He toyed with the green pendant in his hand, looking thoughtful. "Never mind, we can sort this out when we get back to Gi."

"We should get out of here as soon as we—" Before Maroo could finish his sentence, he was stunned into silence by a flying dart that flew past his right ear and impaled itself into the bedpost at the far end of the room. An inch closer and the dart would have impaled his head instead.

Seconds later, another dart came whizzing in through the open window. This time, it was not off target—it was aiming directly for Yuehwa.

The one who noticed it first was Baixun, and the second he realised where the dart was headed he immediately drew his sword and threw himself in harm's way. Before Yuehwa could even do anything to stop him from being unnecessarily foolish, he made a quick flick of his wrist and positioned the blade of his sword directly in the path of the dart.

The silver dart hit the blade with dull clang and fell onto the floor.

Except it hadn't been just one dart that had come flying in at that exact moment. It had been two. And while Baixun had been busy shielding Yuehwa from one of them, the other one had silently hit its target without anyone even realising.

"Baixun..." a quiet voice suddenly called out from the side.

Her face pale as a sheet, Naying was looking down at the silver dart that had struck her in the chest, below her right shoulder blade. A tiny patch of blood had appeared where the dart had embedded itself, slowly spreading across the white material of her nightgown.

The surviving guards quickly dashed out of the room in search of the perpetrators while Yuehwa and Baixun immediately rushed to the princess's side, the latter catching her in his arms just before she collapsed onto the ground.

"Naying, are you alright? How do you feel?" Yuehwa asked anxiously. She took a careful look at the silver dart and where it had landed, heaving a sigh of relief when she ascertained that it hadn't struck anywhere fatal. Taking hold of Naying's hand, she said, "Don't worry, you're going to be fine. I'm going to help you take this out, alright? Once it's out, we can get your wound cleaned up and it'll heal in no time."

Naying nodded her head slowly, biting her lower lip as she braced herself for the pain that would likely strike the minute the dart was removed from her skin. She turned her head and buried it against Baixun's chest, not wanting to watch as Yuehwa did what she needed to do.

"Don't think about anything, just concentrate on my voice," Baixun said.

Yuehwa yanked the dart out in one swift motion, and the princess let out a scream of anguish.

"Shh, it's alright, it's over now," Baixun said, wiping the tears away from her eyes.

Yuehwa was studying the dart in her hand carefully, the frown on her forehead deepening with every passing second. Looking across at Baixun, she said, "Could you help to bring her over to the bed and lie her down? I need to check her wound and clean it up."

Nodding his head, Baixun carried the princess over to the bed and put her down gently. When he turned to leave the room, Naying suddenly grabbed onto his hand, not wanting to let him go.

"I'll let Yuehwa look after you for a while. When she's done, I'll come back in, alright? I'm just going to be waiting outside," Baixun said, patting her hand gently.

When the men had left the room, Yuehwa took a deep breath and began her work. "Close your eyes and it'll be over in a second. The wound shouldn't be too deep, so it won't take very long to get it sorted," she said. "I've had many injuries before and some were much worse than these, but look at me! I'm still fighting fit! So you've got absolutely nothing to worry about."

Naying nodded, closing her eyes.

Undoing the princess's nightgown and sliding it off her left shoulder, Yuehwa stared at the tiny hole where the dart had once been, from which blood was now oozing. Around the wound, she could just about see the faint purplish threads radiating outwards like a spider's web, and in the blink of an eye, they all vanished without a trace.

"Is it bad?" Naying asked timidly.

"No, no, it isn't," she lied.