chapter 5

In the end, officers from the capital magistrate’s office rescued Zheng Yueru.

My steward paid the promised silver while I compared accounts with the officials to determine the damage she had caused.

Thirty thousand taels—no small sum.

The jade carving alone had been worth ten thousand. In my first life, I gave it to the empress dowager for her birthday. In this life, it found its way to the Zheng family again. Evidently the carving and that clan were fated for each other.

I had its shattered remains carried to General Zheng’s residence in a grand procession beneath the eyes of half the capital. The household paid with obvious reluctance.

My steward asked with a half smile, “Miss Song, after making such a scene, do you truly no longer wish to become crown princess?”

“Whether I become crown princess does not matter,” I replied. “But I will make certain Zheng Yueru never does.”

She was unworthy. Unworthy to be mother of the realm, unworthy to hold the authority of the state. Her character was vile and her conduct petty.

I hated only that I had been too gentle in my former life. Madness had claimed me now, and I would not let her survive.

The steward stared. Everyone did. This was a declaration of mutual destruction; what hatred could run so deep?

Through the crowd, I saw Zheng Yueru hiding behind the gate. She stamped and screamed, “Madwoman! She is completely mad!”

Then she crumpled.

Maids screamed and servants scattered as the steward sent for an imperial physician. Satisfied with the result, I went home to face my parents’ questions. They would be frantic with worry.

They were.

They could not understand how their mild, courteous daughter had done something so shocking. Looking at them, however, I could only weep. To them, I had merely spent a morning in the palace. To me, we had been separated for twenty years.

When they learned I had been banished to the Cold Palace in my first life, they knelt outside the palace gates and begged to see Zheng Yueru, by then empress dowager. She had each of them beaten thirty strokes, stripped Father of office, and confiscated Mother’s shops.

Some ministers objected. Zheng Yueru appeared before the court and wept in front of them all.

“The deposed consort was tyrannical. She poisoned my food every day until I was bedridden and nearly died. Without support from her family, where could she have obtained the money and poison?”

The officials sighed, and the matter dissolved into confusion.

Later, the Grand Tutor monopolized power within the cabinet and provoked a factional struggle. His enemies found evidence against him, and his clan was exterminated for corruption. Zheng Yueru simply branded Father one of his allies, confiscated our estate, and exiled my parents as well.

After that, I knew nothing. Were they alive? Had someone murdered them? Uncertainty was an abyss, and fear swallowed me whole.

Years later, in the middle of the night, Little Luzi—Eunuch Fu’s disciple—tearfully gave me two locks of hair. My parents were dead, he said. Those strands were all that remained of them.

I coughed blood. He regretted telling me, but I thanked him through my tears. I had needed to know.

It was like dropping a stone into a chasm. Before, I had listened every day, never knowing whether it had struck bottom. At last I heard the impact. The truth was despair, but my heart no longer had to split three ways. I could devote all my fear to my son.

Those two locks remained with me until death. With failing hands, I twined my own hair around them, as if returning to my parents’ embrace. Only one strand was missing. If I had had my son’s hair too, perhaps the three of us might have found each other in the underworld.

I never reached the underworld. I returned to the living instead, and now my parents stood before me once more.

I wept uncontrollably. They panicked.

“My heart hurts,” I told them.

Mother began to cry. She knew nothing of our former lives, yet she said, “When you cry, it feels as if you are carving out your mother’s heart.”

Father’s eyes reddened. “The Zheng clan’s arrogance is nothing new. I will join the censors in impeaching General Zheng.”

The world outside churned with rumor. I slept for a day and a night.

When I woke, hunger overwhelmed me. I was ravenous, parched; everything tasted wonderful. I devoured food like a starving beast until my family grew frightened.

The suffering of my first life was branded into my stomach and marrow. Rebirth alone could not make the world new.