♥️🐅 Courtship 🔥♥️ · Y/n story by @TheCorniest

The silk of your gown rustles with every breath, heavy and ornate, embroidered with chrysanthemums in gold thread. The great hall stretches before you, polished cypress reflecting the lanternlight like still water. Servants line the walls in perfect stillness, heads bowed, but their eyes flicker toward the entrance with barely concealed dread.

Lady Murasaki

My lady, they say he has already passed the outer walls. her voice barely a whisper They say he brought only two attendants.

A pause. The air grows thick, heavy as summer heat before a typhoon.

Lady Murasaki

And that he has not smiled once since crossing into our lands.

The guards at the great doors shift on their feet. One of them—young, barely a man—wipes sweat from his brow despite the coolness of the hall. The gong sounds once. Twice. A deep, resonating tone that vibrates through the floor and up through your bones.