“Do you really want to?” I asked. We had never talked about it. We had never talked about boys. Not real ones, anyway; not ones we had any likelihood of marrying. She sometimes fawned over dashing heroes in the novels we read, sometimes speculated about how handsome poets we’d never met might be. But she’d never gushed about any boy who lived in our village. She’d never pointed out a man she found attractive on the street, the way she did colourful insects when we went herb-gathering, on the days of rest Mother gave me to take in fresh air after long spells in the dusty workshop.

Xiayin chewed her lip. “Yes, I do. I want to make my family proud.”

There was a shadow on her face and I wanted it gone. “You’d make them proud by taking over the business. You already know more about medicine than your father does. You’re amazing, Xiayin, and you don’t need to get married to a man because you think it’d please your family.”

“Why are you so hung up on this? I’m not the one who has to go to the palace. I don’t have to think about this yet.” She was avoiding my gaze, looking away at the inn down the street; noise from the boisterous patrons sitting at the tables outside drifted towards us, the clink of wine cups and bursts of drunken laughter.

“Maybe because I do have to think about it right now and I want to understand why I’m not reacting like everyone expects me to,” I confessed. “I know it might not happen, even if I do go to the palace. There’ll be dozens of other women there, probably. Chances are, I won’t be the one. I won’t have to marry the Emperor. But the thought that I might have to … I can’t face it.” I shuddered. “I’d drink all the bitter medicine in the world if you told me it’d get rid of this feeling.”

“Are you sure you’re not just nervous? That would be normal, you know.” Her hand was in my hair. She was looking at me again, her forehead creased with concern. She was so close; her mouth made me think of plum blossoms. The pale pink ones that lined the path from her house to mine every spring, carpeting our treads with their petals, so that whenever we walked towards each other, we walked softly, on the hopes of each coming year.

I didn’t want to go to the palace, and I didn’t want to ask her to go instead of me.

I wanted… I wanted—

I closed my eyes. “If I do get married to the Emperor, I would barely be able to see you. We wouldn’t be living practically next to each other. We’d be strangers. And I don’t want that, Xiayin.”

Her hand fell away. “If it comes to that, we’ll… We’ll manage. I wouldn’t stand in the way of your future.”

But you are my future, I thought.