The Eagle Pact of Chang'an

When the silver eagle pendant against her chest grew hot, Su Yihan finally understood the look in her mother’s eyes as she lay dying: some pain is a hint fate planted long ago. The scar on Jiang Zhu’s brow wasn’t a brand, but a mark that would let her sister recognize her. The bronze talisman at Wei Qinglian’s fingertips concealed an engraved “Su” and the lingering trace of their mother’s tears. A Shi Nujiang’s blade always came free at her most wretched moments. The Shadow-Locking Sand remembered the tenderness Jiang Zhu hid beneath her ferocity, and Su Yihan’s resolve to defy fate at the cost of her life. When the three tokens touched at Broken Eagle Cliff, what they revealed wasn’t a military seal or a secret order, but a likeness pieced together from a cinnabar mole, an old scar, and an embroidery needle. The so-called “Eagle Pact” was the moment they recognized, amid all their confusion, “We belong to each other.” The words left unsaid and the pain never confessed would, in time, use the light of a silver fox mask to knock at their hearts.