The crest took Lei four days to properly identify, and once he finally traced it, he brought the answer to Yuan and Jian with an expression grave enough that Yuan felt his stomach drop before a single word had been spoken.
"A mountain peak, with a phoenix rising above it," Lei said, spreading an old heraldry ledger across the study table, the illustrated crest matching Wu Bin's fearful description with unsettling precision. "It's not a common design. In fact, it belongs to a specific branch of the extended imperial family, granted generations ago as a mark of royal blood diluted through a secondary line."
Jian's face had gone carefully, deliberately blank, the particular stillness Yuan had learned meant something considerable was working beneath the surface. "How many people currently hold the right to wear that crest?"
