Sent as the Alliance Leader's Hostage Husband novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: The Tea House
The tea house sat at the end of the lantern street, behind a paper screen painted with cranes.
Ye-han went in a merchant's grey coat with his braid pinned up and his fan hidden in his sleeve.
Elder Ma was waiting in the back room.
He looked like somebody's favourite uncle.
He was sixty, thin and stooped, with silver hair in a neat knot and a gentle smile, and he smelled of sandalwood and plums.
He poured Ye-han's tea himself.
"Young Lord," he said. "You look well."
"I am eating regularly."
"I heard you were rather noticed at the Hall."
"I was noticed by everyone," Ye-han said. "That was the point."
"Of course."
Ma smiled and stirred his cup.
Ma had been smiling at the old Cult Lord's side since before Ye-han could walk.
He had smiled when Ye-han learned to hold a fan.
He had smiled the day Ye-han killed his first man, at fourteen, and told him gently that he had done well.
Ye-han had spent his whole life trying to earn that smile.
"The hundredth night is a long way off," Ma said.
"The Citadel grows impatient.
"The old Lord is ill, you know, and I would like to settle matters while he still lives."
"What matters?"
"I would like the Leader gone by the fiftieth night."
Ma slid a small porcelain vial across the table.
It was no larger than Ye-han's thumb.
"Slow," he said. "A little in his tea each morning.
"His heart will falter in a month, and the Alliance will blame the one who shares his bed."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Sent as the Alliance Leader's Hostage Husband are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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