Chapter 4

I thrust a pill into her mouth and clamped my hand over it.

She clawed at my fingers, struggling desperately.

I held on with all the strength I had ever possessed, until she had swallowed the pill completely.

“You’re mad! You’re mad! What did you give me?”

She frantically tried to make herself vomit.

I slapped her hard, repaying the blow she had once given me.

“It’s no use, Cousin. We’re both going to die. I’ll be waiting for your Song family to join me in the grave.”

After Song Qianyi gained power, the people she promoted were all from the Song family—the very people she had claimed had driven her to desperation.

She was a liar. She had deceived my entire family into pitying her. She deserved to die!

I swallowed a pill as well.

Under her utterly horrified gaze, I walked slowly outside.

The sunlight was brilliant, but all I wanted to do was cry.

I had once thought life in the ruined garden was as hard as life could be.

Only later did I learn that any days one had to call an ordeal were no good days at all.

Blood trickled from the corner of my mouth. I slowly crumpled to the ground.

Before I lost consciousness, one thought brought me peace: this wretched life would finally be over soon.

When I woke, I was in the emperor’s bedchamber.

Mu Heng had never wanted me to spend the night there.

He craved my body but despised the person he thought I was. He had never wanted me to linger.

Yet now I lay in his bed.

His eyes were bloodshot, with tears lurking in them.

He could actually cry for me?

How funny.

Countless imperial physicians stood around us, gravely discussing my condition.

The chief eunuch came to report that the empress had died suddenly in the Cold Palace.

Mu Heng roared at him to get out.

Reading his expression, everyone guessed that the empress had hated me so much she had chosen to take me with her even at the cost of her own life.

I wanted to laugh a little, but lacked even the strength to move my lips.

Mu Heng stroked my face and commanded fiercely,

“Shen Junning, I won’t have you die. I want you to live.”

I could no longer swallow medicine. He fed it to me himself, one small spoonful at a time.

It was said that an emperor’s heart-blood was a miraculous cure.

Ignoring everyone’s pleas, he insisted on drawing blood from his own heart to treat me.

I drank it, then vomited it back up.

Perhaps Mu Heng sensed my resistance.

He held me and wept piteously, his tears falling one by one onto my face.

“Ah Ning, if you’ll only live, I’ll give you anything.”

“I’ll make you empress.”

“Your parents, your brother and sister-in-law, your nephew—you want to see them. I’ll bring them back right now.”

“Ah Ning, don’t die. Please live.”

I wanted to cry a little, and laugh a little too.

Who would choose death if she could live?

But it was too late.

I had been nothing but a rabbit. Had he granted my wish, I would have meekly remained his favored consort, bearing all the world’s scorn.

Now I had become a man-eating tiger. Only after I had devoured someone and was dying myself did he finally consent to grant it.

Why couldn’t he have granted it sooner?

Why had he waited until I hated him to the bone, until I wanted to tear him apart with my teeth, to say the words I longed to hear?

He could have kept me from hating him.

If he had freed me from the ruined garden and let me return to my parents…

If he had let me remain a Taoist, instead of forcing me to become his consort…

If he had granted my birthday wish…

If he had cleared my parents’ names when I found the evidence…

I had been so easy to satisfy. One small kindness, and I could have put all my resentment aside.

Why hadn’t he?

He had never heard my wishes.

Now I could not hear his.

My only regret was that I would never see my family again.

At sixteen, I had married into the Eastern Palace, believing that from then on I would only rise—like a wild goose, like clouds in a blue sky, like a wind sweeping ten thousand miles beneath a boundless river of stars.

Only later did I realize that had been the highest point of my life.

Afterward I fell and fell, like raindrops, like mud, down into the underworld—only to discover that hell had eighteen levels.

Every level an ordeal. Every ordeal endured.

Now I could endure no more. My part was done. I wished only that there might still be a new life, that someone might gain a new life through this.

I hurt so much I could not even cry aloud. Still, I gathered the last of my strength, clutched Mu Heng’s sleeve tightly, and whispered,

“Husband…”

“Hus…band…”

“If there’s another life…don’t…hate me…”

“My parents…my brother and sister-in-law…my nephew…I’m leaving them…in your care…”