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It was a risk for Qin Su to leave her rooms in the middle of the night to sneak into the guest wing of the Laoling Qin sect headquarters and meet up with Jin Guangyao, but she had never been particularly risk-averse, despite her parents’ best efforts to increase the rate at which her self-preservation instinct won out over her curiosity or bravery. She hadn’t hesitated to distract the Wen soldiers ransacking a side street in Laoling when she realized they were about to discover a pair of children hiding behind a stack of crates; she hadn’t hesitated as she sprinted out of the city with them chasing after her, not even when the soft sole of her right shoe tore and she slipped in the cold mud and twisted her ankle as she struggled back up to her feet; she hadn’t hesitated to snatch a few valuables and then sneak out in the middle of the night after they caught her, although she had no proof that the unusually handsome man whom the soldiers addressed as ‘Advisor Meng’ and were visibly afraid of had tacitly encouraged her escape attempt with the intent of letting her succeed at it rather than the intent of catching her in the act.
(When she finally got a good look at Jin Guangyao at the victory banquet, she thought Oh, so it is you, and took a long sip of her wine to hide her smile tactfully behind her sleeve. She found him after the banquet and introduced herself directly, although it was terribly improper. He scanned her face for a long moment, and she had a distinct sense that he had recognized her immediately but was accustomed to setting people at ease by acting as if his memory were worse than it really was—a strange inference to make, but Qin Su was confident in her ability to recognize this particular habit because it was one that she herself shared—and then he smiled politely.
“Qin-guniang,” he said, “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
She didn’t want to frighten him off by calling him out on such a petite and understandable lie, so instead she just raised her eyebrows and said, “Well, I look different without the mud.” He laughed at that, and then pressed his lips together as if his own amusement had caught him off guard.)
There was nothing unusual, then, about the fact that she was willing to risk secretly visiting him, or even that she was willing to go to bed with him before they were married. What surprised her was that he had agreed. He approached most things with an almost unimaginable methodicalness—the kind of person who would order the same type of pigment from two different suppliers in case one shipment was damaged or delayed in transit—and the fact that he was willing to risk so much in the hopes of securing their marriage almost overwhelmed her with how much it said about his fondness for her.
She knocked on the door as quietly as she could manage, just a little tap-tap with one knuckle. He answered immediately and pulled her inside, sealing the door behind them with… oh, she took a second glance at the strip of paper and realized it was not only a very sturdy lock but also a silencing talisman. Good, she thought.
“You’re up awfully late, Qin-guniang,” he said, slipping his hand into hers and leading her a few steps away from the door before wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her in close.
She draped her arms over his shoulders, suddenly realizing that this was the first time she had seen him without his hat since their brief meeting during the war. The upper section of his hair was done up in braids, rather than the simple knot that most men wore, and she lifted one hand and ran her fingertips along a couple of them, tracing the pattern. “I had an appointment to keep.” She spoke slightly faster than she ordinarily would have; she didn’t want her voice to shake.
He gave her a conspiratorial little half-smile. “Who would ask you to meet them at this hour?”
“Someone I would gladly visit at an even more unseemly time of night,” she said. It didn’t escape her notice that a hint of embarrassment flickered across his expression at that—she suspected there were very few people in his life who spoke fondly of him on matters other than war. “Now, will you help me out of my clothes, please?”