Hiroko breathed a relieved sigh as Chang-li and Min moved off deeper into the garden, leaving her and Joshi alone.

She sat in a meditative posture, her lux cycling in her, the warmth from the spiritual fruit she had consumed filling her body and suffusing her core. She was ready. The Peak of Mental Refinement awaited, the final veil still to be pierced.

The first two veils had been simple for her. Illusions were her friends, her weapons, and seeing the difference between truth and illusion wasn't a matter of forcing her vision on the world, but of accepting everything she saw and then choosing what to make real. When one was as attuned to blue lux as she was, the difference between truth and illusion became a slippery thing.

Joshi paced, looking more nervous than ever. "Hiroko, feel certain of your soul before pushing past this veil," he said. "Everything Chang-li and I have discussed together says that the more you are honest with yourself now, the easier time you will have of integrating yourself later. If your revelation at the Peak of Spiritual Refinement matches closely with how you pass the Veil of Heart, then you are likely to gain insights into your Intent."

She smiled gently as she continued to cycle her own lux. It wasn't quite time. Not yet, but she was close. "Is that why you're having trouble with your Intent?" she asked quietly.

Joshi's eyes widened. He turned on her, Magen bobbing up and down on his shoulder, pulsing different colors of lux. "I'm not."

"Then it doesn't bother you that Chang-li has achieved Lux Endowment before you?"

"Of course not. We walk the same path. We are not competing."

Which Hiroko knew was both truth and a lie. Though Joshi and Chang-li had become close as brothers over the last year, she read Joshi's heart, knew he could not stand for anyone to outpace him. He would accept help from Chang-li when he must, but it was grudging. That was holding him back, just as the Emperor designed.

She closed her eyes, feeling her lux responding to the cycling, her core pulsing like another heartbeat, and considered the hard truths she had been avoiding for so long. Illusions pressed in tight around her, like cobwebs in an empty room, clinging to her and finding their shape in her own thoughts. It was time to tear down the illusions, and face truth.

Her path to this place had begun accidentally, each step dragged out of her, sometimes against her own will, as she fought not to accept the truth that was staring her in the face.

Everything she had been raised to believe was a lie. The Emperor's divine plan might be for the good of the Empire. But it was also tearing the Empire apart. He took concubines to bind cultivators and sects to him. His children and grandchildren were merely pawns designed to keep cultivators on strings and prevent them from doing just what Chang-li and Joshi were trying to do now: creating a sect where knowledge was shared freely, without worry that you were giving your rival the tool he needed to overcome you.

Hiroko remembered the lessons that had been taught to her since childhood, not as direct lectures, but implications that had snuck in around the edges. Indigo princes and princesses had to be careful of their station. Violet royals were such an exalted rank, no one would dare to oppose them. But indigo was only a step above the blue and green ranked nobles, and their competition would be swift.

More sect leaders were married to green ranks than to indigo. That fact had been drilled into her head over and over again, and only lately had she reflected that there were far more green lords and ladies in this world than indigo princes and princesses.

She had been raised to believe she must latch on to a cultivator who was as strong and driven as she possibly could, in order to ride alongside him toward advancement and greatness. But at the same time, they had whispered: cultivators with too much ambition risked bringing down Imperial wrath. They must be constrained, kept under control. And if need be, her duty would be to report her spouse's dangerous ambitions to the government.

It had taken such a long time for her to shed that belief. First, by seeing firsthand what an ambitious and driven cultivator who cared only for his own advancement looked like. She had even believed her duty was to control Young Master Feng and make him part of the Emperor's grand design. Thankfully, Chang-li and Joshi had put an end to his ambitions before she could throw her life away on that account.

She cracked an eye to watch as Joshi prowled like a panther in front of her, his eyes gleaming as he watched her, his bald head reflecting the sunlight of this garden, and she allowed herself a faint smile.

Here was a strong cultivator, but one who did not wish to be bound, and so had rebuffed her. That was all right. It had forced her to ask herself what she was truly doing and to realize she didn't want to be the leg iron around his ankle, holding him back from what he could do. She had more purpose in her life than that.

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It was her father, really, who had provided her the last piece of the puzzle. Seeing him and recognizing once and for all the place that ambition brought you, eventually. He was close to defying the Emperor, if he hadn't already, with his own goals more important to him than whatever duty the Emperor had given him. That was what a lifetime of bowing to the system brought to a powerful, talented, and ambitious cultivator. At some point, his cultivation blocked by the Emperor's strictures, and forced to choose between obedience and ambition—her father had chosen ambition, whatever the cost might be. She knew that, deep in her heart, knew that he would use her and anyone else as a tool to get what he wanted.

"Are you all right?" Joshi asked. His voice was more gentle than she had expected, with a note of worry in it.

"I'm fine," she promised, as she felt the lux rising to a crescendo inside herself. She was very, very near, but Joshi was right. This step had to be taken carefully. She needed to push past all of the illusions that still cloaked her. Her eyes could never deceive her, not anymore, not with blue lux like water in her veins. Her other senses too served her. Only her heart still bore the traces of illusion, and it was time to rip them free.

She imagined a sequence of veils hanging in front of her, like she was in a chamber indoors somewhere. Light gleamed all around, but she couldn't see any details because of the veils blocking it off.

In her mind, she reached up and ripped down the first veil. "The Emperor's grand plan is flawed," she told herself, carefully choosing each word.

The light all around increased, but she faced another veil. "The Emperor's design means that ambition and pride keep cultivators from working together, and therefore only the most ruthless, who take what they want from others, can ever reach the top," she said, and pulled down the second veil.

"My father is just as ruthless as any prism or sect master out there." She ripped away the third.

The light was almost blinding now, but still the veils prevented her from seeing.

"My duty—"

No, she corrected herself. What she had been raised to do. Her supposed duty assigned to her by her place in the Emperor's grand design. No longer would she accept blindly a duty someone else had given her.

"My purpose. My goal."

No.

"My desire," she said, and wondered at herself, "is to climb as high as I can beside my friends. To learn what I can be if I allow myself to cultivate for myself and not for anyone else."

She ripped down the veil.

Only one remained now, thin gauze. She paused with her hand on the veil. This was critical. Being honest here as she ripped down the veil would, she knew, make the next steps of her cultivation easier, set the foundation for all that was to come. And yet, she was mistress of illusions. If anyone could take a lie and make it the truth, it was her.

Did she wish to accept the truth in her heart, or to make a new one?

Her eyes were closed, and she still imagined herself in that room filled with crumpled veils, but she could feel Joshi's presence nearby, Magen's soft hum as it watched over them both. And Hiroko changed her mind just a little bit.

"I want to cultivate because I want to be myself. Not the spouse of a cultivator, the daughter of a general, the granddaughter of an emperor—but just myself."

She pulled down the last veil, and the light washed over her, through her, suffusing her. The lux in her core boiled and spilled out through her channels, rushing along, sweeping them clean, strengthening them.

She could hear the notes of the lux as it sang inside her. Hiroko thrust all of it out, away from her. It clung to her body, suffusing it, then broke apart and vanished like mist in the morning. She took a great breath, inhaling air and lux both, filling her core again and setting it cycling just as surely as her heart sent blood pounding through her veins.

She opened her eyes.

Joshi was peering at her. He looked a bit worried. "Are you all right?" he asked. "That seemed... the Veil of Heart can be tricky."

She felt as though weights had been taken from her shoulders, as though she was wearing only a light shift instead of the practical climbing gear that still garbed her. Hiroko shrugged out her shoulders and felt her hair streaming out behind her.

She turned on the spot, twirling her hands through the air, feeling the little patterns of lux as she vented just a bit through her channels, the blue lux answering her desires without even needing a pattern. She wove lux around herself, briefly clothing herself in the traditional bridal garments of an indigo princess.

Joshi's eyes went wide. "What are you—?"

Hiroko stepped forward, leaving the image of the clothing behind. She stood beside it, looking from that shape to herself. It was like a cicada pushing out of a too-small skin and leaving the shell behind. This had been her. But it wasn't anymore. It wasn't enough.

She gave a nod, then turned to Joshi, who was staring at her wide-eyed.

"It's all right," she said quietly. "I've passed the veil. I know who I am now."

He looked puzzled. "Who you are? You're Hiroko."

"Exactly," she said, as she stepped forward and kissed him.

Joshi was clearly taken by surprise, and it took him a moment to respond. Then he wrapped his arms around her, pulled her to him as they embraced fiercely, passionately.

There was nothing between them now. She realized while she had been correct before to tell Joshi his refusal to be connected to others was what came between them, her own insistence on remaining in a shell that had grown too small for her had been just as wrong.

Now, that was gone. She disentangled herself after a moment and stepped away. His eyes looking at her hungrily, but warily.

"I'm done with that," she said, gesturing to the illusion and dispelling it. The motes of lux vanished into the air to be reclaimed later. "I am no longer Princess Hiroko. Nor do I wish to be your spouse."

Joshi's eyes went wide, then he nodded. There was a look of resignation in his face. "Yes. I suppose you—"

She reached forward and took his hand. "Not the imperial bride who would entangle you in politics and hold your cultivation back, but as a friend to climb at your side, and perhaps more than—"

Her words broke off as Joshi seized her tightly and kissed her.

It seemed they understood each other at long last.

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