Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The morning after our wedding, Liu Cong’s eyes blazed whenever he saw me. Perhaps the Empress Dowager had lectured him, or perhaps the beating still hurt; either way, he refrained from insulting me.

If he behaved, I had no reason to provoke him.

By day he studied calligraphy and the classics in the imperial study while I familiarized myself with Kunning Palace.

The moment night fell, Matron Ruan shoved both of us into the palace bedchamber, hoping we would do something that might create a life.

Liu Cong pressed himself against the far wall, his expression funereal and his gaze fixed firmly on me, ready to bolt at the slightest movement.

He looked very much like a delicate flower abducted by a tyrant.

Sitting on the bed, I patted the edge. “Don’t be afraid. I am not going to do anything to you.”

He plainly did not believe me.

I spread my hands. “Fine. Suit yourself.”

I rose to extinguish a few candles. Liu Cong seemed to reach some decision. He tugged his sleeves straight and strode over.

“I am a man. What is there to fear?” He climbed onto the bed, rolled himself in its only quilt, and retreated into the farthest corner.

My mouth twitched. To force Liu Cong and me into close contact, Matron Ruan had left us only one quilt.

I raised a brow at the human roll, blew out the candles, and climbed in after him.

“Give me some of the quilt.”

He faced away and did not move.

What a petty creature. I reached over, caught a corner, and yanked.

The force rolled Liu Cong toward me. A furious, fluffy head emerged. “Xiao Lingyue, you are insolent!”

“Whether Your Majesty permits it or not, I have been insolent plenty of times.” My patience thinned. “Are you sharing? If not, I’ll hit you.”

He ground his teeth. “Shrew. Rogue.”

But he angrily surrendered half the quilt.

I slid beneath the warm silk and sighed with pleasure.

Honestly, our first night sharing a bed was quite peaceful.

The next morning, however, Matron Ruan inspected the bedding and her face darkened.

By then Liu Cong had already gone to his lessons, so she could only lecture me. “Your Majesty, did you not serve His Majesty last night either?”

“No.”

“Did you read the illustrated book this servant gave you? Did you show it to His Majesty?”

“We both read it, but Liu Cong is still too young to get it up. Ask me again in two years.”

She had not expected such bluntness. Her aged face flashed red and white, and she was too mortified to question me further about our marital bed.

When I invented that excuse, I never imagined it would reach the person concerned.

That evening, Liu Cong arrived with a face blacker than the bottom of a cooking pot. He rolled his eyes throughout the entire visit and refused to look directly at me.

I did not yet realize that loose-lipped Matron Ruan had betrayed me. I even asked with genuine concern, “Liu Cong, is something wrong with your eyes?”

He rolled them until almost nothing but white showed and muttered, “Shameless.”

My hearing was excellent. “What did you say?”

The sudden rise in my voice startled him. Then his face darkened again. He snorted and turned away.

I seized his collar and bared my teeth like the delinquent I had been in my previous life. “Snort at me again. Are you itching for another beating?”

He shook with fury. After a long struggle, he forced the words through clenched teeth. “We… have offended our empress.”

“Why did you insult me in the first place?”

“You said… you said We could not…” He could not bring himself to finish.

At last, I realized Matron Ruan had repeated the nonsense I used to fob her off.

The boy had been raised on the Four Books and Five Classics. Seeing him pushed to such mortification softened me. I released his collar. “What else was I supposed to say?”

“Did you truly want something to happen?”

His face changed. “No.”

I pursed my lips. As a puppet emperor, Liu Cong knew that guarding his chastity meant guarding his life. If he lost himself to pleasure and accidentally produced a smaller puppet, he would probably be laid in the imperial tomb before the child was born.

On this point, our interests aligned perfectly. He feared a child would cost him his life; I feared childbirth would cost me mine.

Perhaps I could trust him with that much. “You don’t want it, and neither do I. We can cooperate. Don’t be angry about what I told Matron Ruan. That excuse should buy you four quiet years, at least.”

He calmed down and looked at me thoughtfully.

And so, like roommates sharing one bed, we lived together without incident for four years.

By eighteen, Liu Cong was approaching manhood. As he grew older, the tension between him and my father over state affairs sharpened by the day.

Liu Cong and I still disliked each other as much as we had four years earlier. The difference was that he had shot upward, his shoulders broadening with his frame, and our fights had become much less frequent. We mostly traded insults instead.

To the palace servants, even that looked like a gradual thaw between emperor and empress.