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That morning Gaoshun found a chrysanthemum tucked against the base of his teacup. He paused mid-step.
It was not the flower itself that unsettled him—the gardens of the Inner Court were rife with blossoms, their petals trampled underfoot by careless servants, or plucked for offerings and cast aside. What unsettled him was the precision of the placement. The golden bloom sat almost unseen, bound at the stem with a crimson thread, a slip of parchment folded neatly beneath.
Avoid the rice balls in Lady Lihua’s quarters. Powdered stone beneath the nails of her new maid.
Gaoshun frowned, gaze flicking to the quiet corridor. The servants had already dispersed for morning duties; only a gauzy curtain stirred in the breeze, whispering against the lattice window. Whoever left this had known how to vanish without trace.
It was the third such message.
The first had been folded into his coat pocket, discovered only when he emptied it that evening.
The second had arrived tied to honeysuckle, resting on his tea-tray like an afterthought.
Now chrysanthemums—longevity, endurance, patience.
Jinshi, with his usual irreverence, had dubbed the unseen messenger “Gaoshun’s Gardener.” He had lounged across his luohanchuang, chin propped in his palm, eyes glinting.
“They trust you more than me, it seems,” Jinshi had said, not without wounded pride. “Or perhaps you are simply more boring. Gardeners leave flowers for ghosts, not peacocks.”
Gaoshun had not disagreed.
Boring was a useful shield. But these messages were anything but trivial. They had already saved lives.
Lady Gyokuyou had been spared the poisoned compact whose crushed lead powder would have eaten her. A favored maid had been quietly reassigned after a warning about nightshade. Now Lihua’s rice.
Gaoshun had begun to keep a notebook, small enough to tuck into his sleeve. One column for the flower. One for the message. In time, a pattern had emerged. Each bloom was medicinal: detoxifying, soothing, healing. Only someone with training in apothecary work—or poisoning—could wield knowledge so precisely.
He could have asked Jinshi to track the source, but a quieter instinct had stayed his tongue. Whoever moved like a ghost among silks had chosen him deliberately. And if he was to be their confessor, he would not betray the honor.
Maomao had grown up breathing secrecy, steeped in it like tea leaves. Her childhood in back-alley apothecaries had taught her to sniff out poisons before she could spell her own name. She had once faked a skin disease simply to escape the gilded trap of the Rear Palace.
But this? Slipping messages to a man? That was new.
Even if he was a eunuch.
It had not been planned, but at this point, Maomao did not know how to stop. The first time, panic had seized her. She had spotted powdered stone lodged under the maid’s nails, remembered the symptoms—spasms, vomiting, death—and her pulse had leapt. She could not shout it in open court; panic would kill more quickly than the toxin.
Sir Jinshi’s beauty drew eyes wherever he walked. The court ladies would scream and faint.
The steward of the heavenly nymph was different.
Stoic. Steady. Reliable.
He carried trays without flair, moved like stone in a stream—never noticed, but never absent. She had slipped the warning beneath his teacup, heart thundering, and walked away without looking back.
When the danger had been quietly neutralized, she had dared a second message. And then a third.
Now her warnings read like bouquets. A sprig of dandelion in a brush tray, to flag spoiled wine. A violet stem tied to sweets, to warn of mold. Yarrow in the laundry chute—blood.
The flowers were not decoration; they were language. Silent words in roots and petals, meant for someone patient enough to read.
Sometimes she imagined signing them. Just a character, nothing more. But the idea always felt absurd. Better to remain what Sir Jinshi had named her—his gardener. Nameless, unseen. Safe.
And yet—when she tied a red spider lily with black string and left the note You look tired. Sleep earlier, her own fingers trembled.
Because this was a deviation from their routine.
A flower of partings, of warnings, but also of care.
She had watched him look at that note. Watched as it took him the longest to parse it. And watched him keep it.
Gaoshun found himself staring at the flower longer than was proper. No poison. No scheme. Just… concern.
He kept the red petals in an ink jar on his desk. They never fully wilted.
“So,” Jinshi drawled one afternoon, sprawled artlessly across the nearest couch, lashes half-lowered, “what does today’s bouquet say? Avoid the radishes? They’re spicy today. Or perhaps, fire the preening peacock, lest he give Gaoshun indigestion?”
Gaoshun ignored him.
Jinshi smirked. “You know, this is almost romantic. Flowers. Secret notes. You, pacing about with a thoughtful frown. Are you certain this is not courtship?”
Gaoshun did not answer. But the word lodged itself in his chest like a splinter.
Romantic.
The next time a message arrived—a sprig of chamomile warning of tainted oil—he tucked a slip of parchment where he knew the trays would be cleaned.
Thank you.
He did not know if she would find it. He hoped she would.
Maomao found his message two days later, smudged but deliberate. Her pulse quickened nonsensically. Her mind filed the reaction as pleasant.
The next time she delivered a message, she tucked lemon balm beside a sugared plum and slipped her own note into place.
And so it began.
Short lines, exchanged like contraband. Hidden beneath trays, between ledger pages, behind alcove curtains. A private correspondence in stolen breaths.
The Emperor complimented the plum wine. I suspect your intervention.
I adjusted the ratio. The kitchen’s been overboiling the syrup.
I didn’t know honeysuckle counteracted that fungus.
It’s regional. You wouldn’t.
Your handwriting’s improved.
Yours hasn’t.
Rude.
Accurate.
There was laughter in the ink, a warmth layered beneath etiquette. Each word both shield and confession.
Gaoshun could not help but notice that he smiled more often at nothing. Unfortunately, Jinshi noticed too.
“You’re glowing,” Jinshi remarked, narrowing his eyes. “I feel threatened.”
Gaoshun returned to his reports.
He was not the only one to notice things.
Maomao, on her end, watched him. Saw things she had never cared to observe in another person before. How his steps slowed near the west wall peonies, though he never plucked a bloom. How he favored his left hand when he wrote private notes. How his expression softened—fractionally, imperceptibly—when he listened.
She told herself it was curiosity. Observation.
It—really, really, really—wasn’t.
She saw the first signs early: the flush creeping up his neck, the slight tremor in his hands, the stumble masked as a bow.
Fever.
She tied the stems in white ribbon and left them with a single word.
By dusk, whispers danced through the court—an advisor had collapsed during inspection, carried away in silence. No name spoken.
Maomao sighed and wondered if, perhaps, she should have written Stubbornness instead of her diagnosis. But she was already moving, slipping into side corridors, mapping the servants’ rotations by memory.
She entered his chambers like smoke, and way too easily.
And there he was. The steward Xiaolan had once told her went by the name Gaoshun. Lying in bed, sweat beading on his brow, breath shallow.
His eyes opened at her intrusion. Maomao set down the water carafe and pinned up her sleeves. His brow furrowed, gaze cataloging her, catching on the white chamomile tucked into her ao. She saw the moment he recognized her.
“Gardener,” he murmured, voice rough.
She did not pretend otherwise. Bending over his face, she began to take in his warmth.
“It is far too easy to steal into your chambers,” she chided, fingers pressing to his wrist, cool against fever-hot skin. His pulse fluttered like a trapped bird.
“I warned you,” she muttered, voice trembling despite herself, even as she reached for the bowl and the cloth.
“You always do.” A faint smile ghosted his lips.
Maomao pretended not to see it as she wet the cloth and set it against his forehead.
“I’ll have to be more convincing next time,” she threatened.
But she did not leave.
She prepared a tincture, bitter and effective, quick enough that he was still awake when she held it to his lips.
“Promise not to poison you,” she swore.
“Wouldn’t feel it if you tried,” he coughed, before drinking.
She wiped his face, smoothed the creases from his sheets, and sat in silence as his breathing steadied.
His fingers hooked into her sleeve, tugging weakly as sleep tugged harder.
“Don’t leave,” he murmured, congested and feverish but insistent.
Maomao was charmed in spite of herself.
“Don’t die,” she said, patting the back of his hand.
He drifted under, still holding her sleeve. She stayed until the candle burned low, changing the cloth each time it warmed.
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