Wei appoints Ciyi as her new scribe. Meanwhile, she receives an invitation from the empress, wanting all the concubines to attend the Mid-Autumn Parade where the women of the palace hand out gifts to the common people of the capital. Wei has Ciyi send a message to Hesin, Terren’s eunuch and the only person whom Terren seems to trust. She decides if she must write a love poem for the prince, the best way to get to know him would be through starting with his closest advisor.

Wei meets with Hesin, who informs her that he’s not loyal to Terren but to the throne of Tensha, which means serving the current emperor, and soon, his heir Terren. Wei states that she wishes to understand why Terren is the way he is and asks for any stories Hesin might have. Hesin admits that Terren was once a kind, gentle, and sensitive child with a talent for poetry. Though Terren and Maro hate each other now, they once had a brotherly bond that Hesin greatly admired.

To understand the whole truth, Hesin claims Wei must start from the beginning. Hesin served Terren’s grandfather, Jinzha, as the Azalea Dynasty’s decline began. When Hesin was brought to the palace as a newly castrated eunuch at age six, young Jinzha—who was not heir to the throne—spent his time playing games with Hesin and the other eunuchs rather than focus on his studies or court affairs. Jinzha had a magical affinity for music so the merriment followed him everywhere.

When they came of age, Hesin became Jinzha’s advisor. When both the emperor and his elder brother died on the battlefield, Jinzha became the sole heir. Though Jinzha wanted to run away rather than do his duty, Hesin advised him otherwise. Jinzha begrudgingly took the throne and bedded concubines until he produced seven seal-bearing sons.

However, Jinzha never forgave Hesin for forcing him to stay. He demoted Hesin to a low-ranked palace manager. Under his reign, the Azalea Dynasty began to wither. He threw parties, spent money on lavish gifts, and pulled men from military duty from their stations. When his sons began to conspire to kill their father and take the throne, Hesin warned Jinzha, but the emperor did not listen.

Jinzha told Hesin that “‘so long as I hold the Crown, nobody will kill me’” because he made a deal and borrowed from the future (93). He did not have a chance to elaborate further, as the coup happened that night. Hesin and Jinzha fled to the old capital and hid there as the Azalea Civil War broke out. Jinzha’s son Muzha killed all his brothers in the war, hunted down his father, and forced him to die by suicide rather than commit patricide. Muzha became emperor afterward, and the famine began.

Wei continues meeting with Hesin to learn more stories. Hesin tells her about serving Muzha, then of Terren and Maro’s shared boyhood. Meanwhile, Wren informs Wei that Pima has awoken and returned to his family in the capital. While it is a miracle he’s survived, it is a source of shame to return home with no wages or honor.

Jin Veris, the concubine who attempted to poison Wei after Selection Day, visits to warn Wei of a plot to kill her. She states that Sun Jia, the empress’s niece, has claimed that Wei has not done the “child-making act” with the prince. The empress will be sending doctors to examine Wei the next day, but if they discover she’s not had sex with Terren, she will be killed and the prince may be removed from his position.

Veris admits that she poisoned Wei’s wine back then because Jia told her to and she thought that would be the best alliance to make. She no longer thinks that and, thus, is attempting to help Wei.

Desperate to convince Terren to have sex with her so that she is not executed, Wei has Ciyi send Terren a message begging to see him. When she informs him of the doctor’s visit scheduled for the next day, he is so unnerved he drinks himself into a stupor at dinner. Since he is too drunk to do so, Wei attempts to remove his robes so they may consummate, but he threatens her with a knife point to stop and flees the room.

Wei finds him in an alley between two pavilions with his head in his arms. She attempts to convince him one more time, but he doesn’t even respond. With no other chance at survival, Wei departs and inserts a bamboo stick into herself until it draws blood, hoping that it will be enough to fool the doctors.

Hesin continues telling Wei stories of serving Muzha. In order to stabilize the nation, Hesin told Muzha they’d need more magic. Muzha, whose seal grants him salt magic, used all his blessings to provide the nation with salt to trade and, when he ran out, he began riding the dragon every day to amplify his power. When the famine came, he made even more salt to compensate. The oversupply of salt decreased prices and the overuse of his magic rapidly depleted his health.

One day, Muzha fell off his dragon. His injuries inspired panic, as he had yet not sired any seal-bearing sons to inherit the throne. Muzha survived but in a frail state. He agreed to recruit concubines and sire sons to inherit the throne so that he would not be known as the fool who killed a dynasty. Among his sons were Maro and Terren, born two years apart by Lady Sky and Lady Autumn.

Wei is brought to the main hall for her trial the following day. She is inspected by a doctor, who notes her internal wounds but attributes them to Terren’s propensity for cruelty with blades. He believes they’ve consummated their relationship and Wei walks free.

Afterward, Ciyi tells Wei she should have punished Jin Veris because now the other concubines believe they can hurt her without consequences. Wei doesn’t tell him that the only reason she knew to prepare for the trial was because Veris warned her—likely because she wasn’t punished by Wei.

Terren summons Wei that night to ask how she passed the test. She claims she did it to herself. Hesin has told Terren that the rumors were spread by Sun Jia. When he asks if Wei would like to punish her, Wei says yes.

Terren and Wei visit the Inner Court, where he instructs Wei to cut out Jia’s tongue. Wei is conflicted, remembering her vow not to become cruel like the others within the palace, but then remembers Ciyi’s warning that “if you refuse to be cruel, someone will be cruel to you first” (119). She cuts out Jia’s tongue.

Hesin tells Wei of Terren’s childhood. He was quiet and easily frightened and took three toys with him everywhere—Tiger, Niu Niu, and Little Sparrow. Everyone loved the bright and fierce Maro but few liked Terren, whom they believed was too cowardly for Heaven’s pure magic to be wasted on. The one person who genuinely loved him was Maro.

Against generations of tradition that dictated princes be raised separately because brothers killed each other for the Crown often, Hesin advised Muzha to let them play together. Muzha begrudgingly allowed the boys to play in the peach garden at The Palace of Everlasting Spring. The boys played there and their joy drew in visitors from the Inner and Outer Courts. When Prince Isan was born, he too was brought to the garden to play.

Terren began to leave his toys in the care of Hesin during the days he and Maro would play until, eventually, he didn’t come to retrieve them at all. Maro began teaching Terren to fight with wooden swords and climb peach trees. The closer they became, the more joy Hesin felt, for he believed that, with them, the cycle of brother killing brother for the throne might finally end.

The day Terren wrote his first spell, he found a carp floating on its side, badly wounded. To save it, he wrote a complex healing poem that gained the admiration of the court. However, Maro’s mother Lady Sky was displeased because, despite being two years older, Maro still hadn’t written a spell of his own. For the next few months, Lady Sky kept Maro away from the peach garden to practice his literomancy, leaving Terren to play alone. Eventually, Maro wrote his first spell but something in him had changed and he never came to the peach garden again.

Terren still came to the peach garden every day and waited for Maro to show. He cried often. Eventually, he came to retrieve Tiger, Niu Niu, and Little Sparrow from Hesin. Not long after, Terren stopped coming to the peach garden at all. Without the princes to entertain them, guests stopped coming and the garden became abandoned. The only one who still returned was Isan, who would climb the Century Peach tree and watch the world below.

Maro came into his power at the age of 10 and was sent away to use it. He built roads, carved rivers, connected cities to ports with canals, and created trails through dense forests. His magic revitalized trade and brought the empire out of its long recession. Emperor Muzha gave Maro the task of creating the Salt Road by carving a tunnel through the mountains to re-establish trade with the West.

Hesin, hoping to reunite Terren and Maro, convinced Muzha to send him along too. While in the mountains, Terren’s own power emerged and pleased Muzha even more than Maro’s, creating a bigger divide between Maro and Terren. After the Salt Road campaign, Maro returned to the capital while Terren was sent northward to fight a war in Tieza. They haven’t spoken kindly to each other since.

When Terren came back from Tieza, he was a cruel and vicious boy who had begun to hurt living things. Hesin recalls that Terren poisoned all the carp in the peach garden at 16 years old, only days before he finished the Aricine Ward that made him unkillable. Hesin’s friend, a eunuch named Taifong, told him of the dead fish and called Terren a monster. The next day, Taifong’s body was cut into pieces and left outside Hesin’s office. Hesin assumes Terren had heard of Taifong’s treasonous words and sought to punish him for it.

Muzha dismissed Hesin’s warnings about Terren’s cruelty and so Hesin sought out Maro to beg for help. Maro could not defeat Terren, so he planned to wait; he believed he would remain heir to the throne and could make a move against him after subduing the dragon and magnifying his own power. As a last resort, Hesin went to Terren’s mother, Lady Autumn, and begged her to guide him back to the right path. When she attempted to do so, Terren slit her throat and she died.

Afterwards, Muzha assigned Hesin as Terren’s guardian and advisor. After completing his story, Hesin warns Wei that power is wicked and will corrupt anyone who’s had a taste.

Wei asks the old maid Hu, who is missing a tongue, if she’d like to learn to read in secret. A few days later, Hu attends her first lesson with Ciyi and Wei. Soon, Wren joins and eventually more servants begin turning up to learn.

One night after everyone has already left after lessons, Wei tells Wren that she’s written three pages of the heart-poem already but is stuck on where to go next. Wren suggests that perhaps she can’t finish the poem because Hesin does not know the entire story. Wei decides she must find a way to speak with Maro.

The day of the Mid-Autumn Parade arrives, in which all the concubines ride carriages to the capital to spread gifts to the people of Tensha. Each of the concubines present gifts from their family businesses. Meanwhile, Wei distributes rice and soybeans to represent where she comes from. She and her servants ate less than their usual share and scrounged up quantities from the storerooms to save for the parade.

The empress calls her gifts disappointing and wonders why she did not ask Terren to give her some Dao magic to present. Wei explains that, given the current famine, they wouldn’t appreciate it as much as something to eat. The empress explains that there is no famine in the capital, but Wei spots Wren and her other servants handing bags out to thin children in the streets and knows different. It might be easier to hide the famine in the capital, but there are still people who suffer.

Empress Sun explains all the ways the fellow concubines could help the nation with their family resources if only they were given the time from Terren to bear seal-bearing sons. She then claims that power is wasted on Wei. She implies that Wei will die soon because girls like her don’t survive long in the palace.

After the parade is over and the gifts are gone, the concubines wander the riverside markets for the evening. Wei tells Wren that she thinks Empress Sun was behind the rumors Jia spread and that perhaps she wishes Wei and Terren both dead so that her son—the fifth-born son, Ruyi—can have the throne. Wei also knows that the empress was friends with Terren’s mother, Lady Autumn, and might wish to avenge her by killing him.

Wei spots Prince Maro’s wife, Lady Silian, kneeling by the river to place a lotus flower in the water. Wei approaches her, wagering that Silian might be her way of gaining an audience with Maro. Wei takes a risk and admits to Lady Silian that she knows how to read. She wagers that if Silian outed her for treason, Wei would be executed and Terren would keep the throne only to find a new Empress-in-Waiting. However, if she worked with Wei and they succeeded, then Maro would have a clear path to the throne with Silian as his empress. Certain Silian will choose the latter option, Wei tells her everything.

Two weeks after the Mid-Autumn Festival, Wei meets Silian in the West Palace. Silian has not told Maro of their plan because she knows he would not work with Wei despite his goals aligning with theirs. However, Silian is willing to work with her.

She offers Wei another way of speaking with Maro: Through reading his private journals from his study. She tells her that he’s removed all the entries mentioning Terren and put them out of his sight. He’s never checked on them, so will not notice they are missing. Silian lends them to Wei for a few months. As Wei reads, she learns that Hesin did not know the whole truth.

From his journals, Wei learns that Maro felt burdened by the expectations of everyone. His mother and Master Ganji forced him to study to become a prodigious literomancer; Master Len trained him in sword and strategy to someday lead armies and conquer nations; officials and clan leaders bribed him for future favors; and his father expected him to save Tensha. In contrast, his brother Terren expected nothing from him, which is why Maro loved him so deeply. Often, they would play a game called dueling couplets in which one brother began a poem and the other finished it.

One day, Terren showed up to playtime with bruises over his neck and arms. Terren admitted he fell off a tree. Maro asked Terren to show him the tree and Terren brought him to the Century Peach within the garden. Maro punched it repeatedly and ripped off its lowest branch. He then told Terren he was teaching the tree a lesson: “I wanted it to know what happens when someone messes with my little brother. […] We’re family. Family is for keeping each other safe” (155).

During a fighting lesson with Master Len, Maro was told that someday, Terren would learn to covet his throne. Maro claimed that even when they grew older, nothing would change; they wouldn’t care about thrones and would continue to play together. Master Len stated that adults don’t play games. Similarly, during study, Master Ganji warned Maro to watch out, for Terren and his advisors surely would eventually seek to steal the throne from him, even if they had to kill him for it. Master Ganji told Maro that blood in the palace “does not mean family but country. Your veins are Tesha’s flowing rivers, your beating heart its capital, your flesh its mountains and fertile valleys” (157).

Eventually, Maro’s mother, Lady Sky, came home crying. She informed young Maro that Terren had written his first Blessing and worried that the emperor would name him heir instead. She encouraged him to spend all his time practicing his literomancy until he could perform a Blessing too. Afterward, Maro felt worthless. The emperor imposed a three-month deadline for him to showcase his magic and Maro tried and tried to write a spell, but the more he failed, the worse this feeling became.

Two days before the deadline, Terren visited Maro’s bedroom window, bringing a Blessing he wrote. Maro was appreciative of the gesture but refused to take it out of a sense of integrity and pride. Terren encouraged him to follow that feeling when he wrote his Blessing. Maro took his advice and wrote a Blessing that he performed in front of the entire court two days later.