Jian had told no one about the wound. It had happened during the retreat from the valley, a rebel soldier's blade catching him across the ribs in the chaos of the final push, shallow enough that he'd dismissed it at the time as nothing worth the delay of proper treatment. He'd bound it himself, hastily, and pushed the pace of the march home hard enough that by the time the column finally reached the capital's outer gates, the wound had done considerably more damage than a simple cut should have, the skin around it gone an angry, feverish red that no ordinary infection quite explained.
Yuan felt something wrong the moment Jian dismounted at the palace gates, not from any visible sign, since Jian's composure held admirably despite everything, but from some new, unfamiliar awareness humming at the edges of his own senses, the ember behind his ribs responding to something in the air around Jian that Yuan couldn't yet name.
