"I'm drowning — and not mine."
I spat water into the reeds and clawed at the bank until Yu Lan's hand found my sleeve and dragged me up.
"Miss! Stay with me, Miss Qingyun!" Yu Lan's voice trembled as she pushed a strip of linen into my mouth before I could taste the mud.
"Do something," a sister's voice called from the manor steps, sharp and faint. "Stop making trouble."
"Don't you shout at her," I said, my lungs burning. My voice came out thin but steady. "Take the linen. Help me sit."
Yu Lan knelt and arranged my soaked skirts, fingers shaking but sure. "You went into the pond. Who was with you, Miss? Where did you fall?"
"No one." I swallowed and let a cough tear out. The world narrowed to the ache along my ribs and the sting behind my ear. "I slipped."
"Slip my foot." Lin Qianyu's laugh came again, closer now. "You always slip. You drown for attention and the family gossips will have a field day."
"Quieter," Yu Lan hissed. "Someone might have seen."
That stopped me because the phrase settled into the wound beneath my ribs. Someone had seen me fall. Someone had watched the thud in the reeds and the way my sleeve had left a smear on the mud.
"Who saw?" I asked.
"A boy from the granary. He was collecting reeds. He stopped for a long time and stared," Yu Lan said. Her palms found
