Chapter 2
I looked at her in silence as the wind howled around us.
Once, someone had cherished me too. He had cared for me and loved me.
In the depths of winter, he had crossed mountain after mountain to cut me a branch of red plum blossoms. He tucked one flower into my hair and another behind his own ear.
Yet Song Wan was not entirely wrong.
Life in the inner palace was difficult for a woman without anyone’s favor.
Years ago, when I knelt before my aunt, the Noble Consort, and begged her to help me marry Shen Chizhou, she had warned me, “There is no more shameful place in the world.”
“I heard from your brother that you already have someone in your heart. If so, why must you enter the Eastern Palace?”
I closed my eyes and told the most absurd lie of my life.
“The man I have always loved is Crown Prince Shen Chizhou.”
“Please grant me my wish, Aunt.”
She frowned as if she still wished to dissuade me, but in the end she only sighed.
The beaded curtain behind the screen stirred.
I looked up and met the gaze of Shen Chizhou, who had come to pay his respects.
…
All these years, I had been learning how to become a meek and submissive empress.
By now, I had mastered the role.
Shen Chizhou made me raise another woman’s child while separating me from my own, and I endured it.
Song Wan could not bear to leave her son, so Shen Chizhou used the Empress Dowager’s name to keep her in the palace for months on end, and I endured it.
My mother went to Huguo Temple and bowed at every step to obtain a protection talisman for me. Song Wan took it, and I endured that too.
Then, two months later, Shen Chizhou decided to let the children play together.
My daughter accidentally kicked the baby boy between the legs.
Song Wan’s face changed. She strode over and pinched the little girl’s cheeks viciously.
“You filthy brat! How dare you kick the prince—”
My daughter’s screams tore through the room.
For the first time, my expression changed.
I yanked the golden hairpin from my hair, slammed Song Wan against the wall, and pressed its sharp end to her throat.
“Touch her again. I dare you.”
I braced myself for Shen Chizhou’s fury—for confinement, deposition, or banishment to the Cold Palace.
The instant I saw my daughter being hurt, none of it seemed important anymore.
To my surprise, Shen Chizhou did not blame me.
He came alone to my bedside that night and said quietly, “She has never been a mother before. It is understandable that she might be too harsh when disciplining a child.”
He looked at my pale, hollow cheeks and fell silent for a moment.
“Anrou is my only daughter. How could I not cherish her?”
“I will assign two nursemaids to Song Wan. She will no longer care for our daughter alone.”
After a long silence, I climbed barefoot from the bed and knelt before him.
“Thank you for caring for Anrou, Your Majesty.”
“Why are you thanking me? Anrou is my daughter too.”
Shen Chizhou frowned slightly, as though he wanted to say more. In the end, he merely helped me to my feet with his own hands.
He searched my eyes and released an almost inaudible sigh.
“I have neglected you all these years. Do you resent me?”
After a moment, I answered, “When we first married, Your Majesty did treat me tenderly.”
Perhaps I had accepted my fate once everything was settled. Whatever my regrets, I was the woman destined to spend my life with him.
We had been young newlyweds once.
He pitied my youth. Beneath gauze bed curtains, he had coaxed me gently and discovered the pleasures of our marriage.
Shen Chizhou lowered his eyes, his expression shifting.
“Mother disliked you then. She was always summoning you to the palace to drill you in etiquette and make you kneel on the cold bricks. Every time you returned, you hid from me and cried for a long while.”
“All I wanted then was the power to make my own decisions, so you would never suffer such indignities again.”
I watched him quietly.
In my mind, I saw the crown prince kneeling to apply salve to my wounds, blowing on them with his eyes full of pain. In that moment, I too had imagined growing old with him, surrounded by children and grandchildren.
But the autumn rain came too suddenly that night.
Servants from the Marquis of Zhenbei’s household knocked on the rear gate of the Eastern Palace, and Song Wan appeared with tears streaming down her face.
She said that although she had been married for three months, she had kept her body untouched for Shen Chizhou.
She said the Marquis of Zhenbei was cold by nature, spent years guarding the frontier, and treated her as though she did not exist.
In the drifting autumn rain, she flung herself into Shen Chizhou’s arms and sobbed, “Chizhou, do you still love me as you did before?”
I stood silently beneath the eaves, behind a curtain of rain, and watched my husband lower his head to kiss her.
They vowed eternal love and unending devotion.
…
Returning to the present, I shook my head.
“I would not dare resent Your Majesty.”
Shen Chizhou was quiet for a moment before releasing me. A disappointment he could not conceal rested in his dark eyes.
For the first time in years, he spent the night at Fengyi Palace.
After a night of passion, dawn had already broken by the time we were sated.
In a hoarse voice, I told Luzhu to bring my medicine.
Shen Chizhou watched with interest as I drained it. Though he knew perfectly well what it was, he asked, “What are you drinking?”
“A fertility tonic prescribed by the Imperial Medical Bureau.”
He curved his lips. “As it should be. You must bear me more princes and princesses.”
I swallowed the bitterness in my mouth and smiled at him.
It was a contraceptive draught.