Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Three years after Xie Wuyang’s death, I became the Empress Dowager.

Hanzhang Palace was filled with people kneeling across the floor. The entire Si Clan was to be beheaded today. Shen Xingjian had also coughed up blood outside the Meridian Gate, still trying to submit a petition to plead his innocence before he died. The young Emperor sat upon the dragon throne, his back held rigidly straight. His voice, still carrying a hint of childishness, had already learned the coldness of the imperial court: “I await Mother’s instructions.”

I looked down at the officials whose foreheads were pressed against the floor below the vermilion steps, and I suddenly felt that this scene was too quiet.

It was as quiet as that snowy night three years ago.

It had been just as silent then. At Yanhui Ridge, the wind and snow weighed heavy on the forest. Xie Wuyang stood before his horse in black armor, his fingertips pinching the secret order I had sent. When he looked up, the sun had not yet risen. The mountain wind disheveled the hair over his forehead. He gave a small smile and said to the guard who had delivered the message, “Tell her I understand.”

Later, he died in a hail of arrows.

And I stepped over the blood he shed, walking forward step by step until I reached where I am today.

“Empress Dowager?” an attendant whispered a reminder. “Si Yuesheng is still waiting for your sentence.”

I snapped back to reality and reached out to take the confession. As my brush dipped in cinnabar ink descended to write the verdict, the tip paused. Outside the hall, a night crow suddenly took flight with a flutter of wings, causing my heart to constrict in alarm.

I feared night crows most of all.

Because Xie Wuyang used to laugh at me, saying I was even afraid of crows, yet I dared to fix my gaze on the filthiest imperial city in all of Great Sheng and crawl my way inside, inch by inch.

Back then, I wasn’t the Empress Dowager. I was merely the nameless daughter of a disgraced official in the Cold Palace.

My surname is Cui, and my given name is Mingyi. I was sixteen the year the Cui Family was executed. Before my father died, he pressed a blood-stained silver buckle into my palm and said, “Remember Pei Chengli. Remember the Si Family. Remember Shen Xingjian. If you survive, watch how they die on behalf of the Cui Family.”

I remembered.

I remembered it so well that I even sacrificed myself in the process.

As the people in the hall were being dragged out, Si Yuesheng suddenly broke free from the guards. With her hair disheveled, she lunged toward me. “Cui Mingyi, so what if you’ve won? Do you even dare to sleep at night?”

I looked at her and slowly smiled. “I don’t.”

She froze.

I tossed the confession at her feet and said softly, “That is why you must die a little sooner than I do.”

Si Yuesheng was still laughing as she was dragged away, her laughter shrill and piercing. “Don’t act like you’re the most pitiful person in the world. If Xie Wuyang hadn’t believed you, why would he have gone to Yanhui Ridge?”

The entire hall fell into a sudden, heavy silence.

My fingertips turned white, but my expression remained unchanged. I simply said flatly, “Gag her.”

After she was dragged far away, the young Emperor called out to me timidly, “Mother.”

I gave a soft grunt of acknowledgment.

He asked, “The Marquis of Northern Pacification… did he really not know?”

I looked up at the child on the dragon throne. Three years ago, I had swapped him out of an empty carriage, wrapped him in the coarsest cloak, and handed him to Xie Wuyang’s most trusted lieutenant. Xie Wuyang drew away three groups of assassins for that empty carriage, saving this child and securing my path forward.

But did he know, in the end, that the carriage was empty from the very beginning?

To this day, I have no answer.

“Your Majesty,” I said slowly. “As an Emperor, the most useless thing you can do is question what the dead were thinking.”

He couldn’t find words to respond and could only nod.

I turned and returned to Cining Palace. Once the palace doors were shut and no one was around, I leaned against the door as if the bones had been sucked out of my body.

In the bronze mirror, that face was as cold as jade. The phoenix hairpin was pinned perfectly straight, yet there were dark circles under my eyes. I stared for a long while, suddenly remembering the first time Xie Wuyang met me. I had been just like this-like a piece of ice barely holding itself together.

That night, I had gone to the Archives Bureau to steal records and was caught red-handed by him.

If I had known then that I would eventually orchestrate his death with my own hands, I would have preferred to die by his blade that night.