Chapter 6

Just then, a voice sounded outside the door.

“Your Highness, something terrible has happened! Monk Yu slipped and fell into the lake by the guest quarters!”

My head buzzed at the news.

Forgetting Han Zishu entirely, I leapt up, straightened my clothes, and rushed out the door.

My feelings for Yujingzi had never been false.

Even after realizing he was not the man who would remain at my side for life, even after deliberately burying a love that would never be returned…

I still loved him.

I did not want anything to happen to him.

By the time I hurried there,

the man had already been pulled from the water and was soaked through.

The thin lotus-red gauze clung to his body, outlining a figure that set the blood racing. As he fought for breath, the cold painted his eyelids and throat pink, while pale skin showed faintly through the fabric. The sight held me spellbound.

For a moment, I simply stood there in a daze.

“Cough! Cough, cough…”

His painful coughing jolted me back to my senses.

Only then did I remember that it was the bitterest part of winter. He would surely fall ill like this, so I immediately ordered the servants to help him into the hot spring in my rear courtyard to warm himself.

“This humble monk is of lowly status. How could I be worthy of the princess’s private hot-spring pool?”

“You are worth far more than that spring!”

In the shadows, the corners of his mouth lifted.

Anyone who stopped to think about a man falling into a lake in the dead of winter while dressed in such thin clothing would have found the matter suspicious.

But this was Yujingzi, empty-eyed and indifferent to favor.

And so I believed him when he said he had slipped.

Fortunately, he did not catch a chill.

On the day of my birthday banquet, he dressed in his usual kasaya and tied on my ceremonial crown.

“Princess Changling, on this day of your crowning, may you receive the blessings of the ancestral shrine, shoulder the weight of the realm, hold the ambition to order all beneath heaven, and preserve a heart of benevolence and filial devotion…”

The counsel my imperial mother should have given me was instead spoken by a monk I had once pinned down and forcibly devoured.

I could not begin to describe how I felt.

The crowning ceremony came to an end.

Back at my estate, wine on my breath, I let the day’s exhaustion fall away.

I pressed down the hand holding Yujingzi’s prayer beads and found myself lost in his eyes.

Perhaps I was deeply drunk, for I thought I saw a trace of expectation in those clear eyes, ordinarily devoid of private desire.

I pressed a hand to my spinning head.

Then I ordered, “I’ve arranged a carriage for you. You may leave now. You need never return.”

His eyes were like lamps abruptly extinguished, darkness spreading through them.

Han Zishu supported me inside and leaned close to my ear with a laugh. “Why did the princess drink so much?”

The man behind us remained where he stood, his entire face shrouded in darkness. A hint of bleak possessiveness crept into his eyes, chilling beneath his expressionless face.

At last, he turned and left.

As though sensing it, I looked back, only to see his retreating figure.

Han Zishu pulled me around again and asked sourly, “He’s already gone. Is the princess truly that reluctant to part with him?”

I laughed softly. “Of course not.”

In early spring, I began having a strange dream.

In it,

I stood in the great hall of Daoqing Temple.

The shadow of the towering gilded Buddha engulfed me, threatening to swallow me whole.

I looked up and saw the statue open its eyes.

A pair of bottomless, dark blue eyes with slit pupils stared down at me.

They were Yujingzi’s eyes!

My heart lurched, and I woke with a start.

I thought it had merely been a one-off dream, but the following night I entered it again.

Once more, I stood before the Buddha in a chill, uncanny wind.

I rubbed my arms and stared fixedly at the statue, waiting to see when its eyes would open.

Yet they remained closed.

Instead, the sudden crack of breaking stone sounded beside my ear.

I whipped around. Beneath the gilded statue’s long robe, stone shattered inch by inch, revealing a white serpentine tail thicker than a tree.

“That is… a snake!”

Every hair on my body rose at once, and I turned to flee.

But the tip of the tail seemed alive. It darted to my feet and coiled around my ankle.

A cool, ticklish sensation spread across my skin.