Chapter 1

Chapter 1

When I was escorted onto the Fengtian Terrace, fine snow was falling from the sky.

The three hundred steps of white jade were slick with blood and snow. I had been kneeling for so long that my kneecaps felt as if they were being pierced by fine needles. Below the terrace, the civil and military officials stood in a dense, dark mass; none dared to lift their heads. Only the man at the end of the high platform, draped in a black dragon cloak, stood perfectly straight.

Pei Yuheng.

The new Emperor of Dayong.

He was also the man I had loved for ten years, saved three times, and who now hated me most in the world.

The Ritual Official finished reading the list of my crimes. His voice was shrill and long, like a wire scraping back and forth against one’s eardrums.

“Ye Wentang, Fate-Scribe Official of the Fengtian Department, has willfully altered celestial omens and brought chaos to the inner palace, resulting in three months of continuous drought in the northwest and widespread public resentment. According to ancestral law, she shall be sacrificed to the heavens with the Fate-Scribe Heart Lamp in three days’ time to appease the wrath of heaven.”

As he finished speaking, the entire platform fell so silent that only the sound of the wind remained.

I raised my head and saw Pei Yuheng looking down at me. There wasn’t a trace of past affection in his eyes, only a cold, hard restraint.

He descended the steps, walking toward me one pace at a time.

Snow fell on his shoulders, quickly melting into faint, damp watermarks. Many years ago, when he was still the unfavored Seventh Prince, I feared most seeing him stand in the snow like this. Back then, his body was weak, and his hands and feet were perpetually cold. I would always shove a hand-warmer into his arms and force him to hold it. Now that he had become the Emperor, he lacked for nothing, yet he still carried that same aura of chilling frost.

He reached out and pinched my chin.

His grip was not light.

“Ye Wentang,” he said, his voice very low. “Do you have anything else to say?”

I looked at him, suddenly feeling a slight urge to laugh.

Over the years, I actually had many things I wanted to say to him. I wanted to tell him that the rabbit lantern from the Shangyuan Festival wasn’t a figment of his dreams; I wanted to tell him that the arrow at the Northern Border in the seventeenth year of Chengping, which should have pinned him dead to the city tower, was diverted because I used my own life to change his fate; I also wanted to tell him that on the night his mother died, I wasn’t standing outside the hall watching coldly-I was in the middle of an array, enduring the backlash that was meant to take his life.

But I had said these things time and time again.

Every single time, he didn’t believe me.

Or rather, he simply couldn’t remember.

I swallowed the metallic taste of blood in my throat and asked him softly, “Your Majesty, if I truly die on this terrace in three days, will you feel even a hint of regret?”

The surroundings grew even quieter.

The Ritual Officials lowered their heads further, not even daring to breathe heavily.

Pei Yuheng looked at me, his eyes as deep as a lightless lake at night. He released his grip. My blood stained his fingertips; as if finding it revolting, he slowly wiped it off on the prisoner’s garb over my shoulder.

“I only regret that I didn’t see through you sooner.”

These words were like a knife, though the sensation wasn’t exactly new.

I smiled and said nothing more.

In truth, I should have gotten used to it long ago.

The first time he forgot me was when he was sixteen. The second time was at nineteen. The third was at twenty-two.

Each time, I watched with my own eyes as the light in his gaze regarding me flickered out, bit by bit.

Until finally, only hate remained.

As the Imperial Guard escorting me prepared to lead me down, Pei Yuheng suddenly called out to me again.

“Ye Wentang.”

I turned back.

He stared at the thin red mark on my wrist, his brow furrowing ever so slightly. That was an old scar left by a Fate-Scribe Official lighting the Heart Lamp; it had been there for many years. He seemed to recall something, his gaze turning dazed for a fleeting moment, but it returned to cold hardness in the next.

“Lock her back in the Star-Gazing Pavilion. Without my decree, no one is permitted to visit her.”

“Yes.”

I was dragged downward.

Halfway down, the wind and snow suddenly intensified. I lost my footing, my feet slipped, and I tumbled forward.

Someone instinctively took a half-step forward.

That step was quick, yet it was forced to a dead stop.

I didn’t look up, but I knew who it was.

Pei Yuheng likely hadn’t realized it himself, but whenever I was about to fall, he would always instinctively want to catch me. Just as no matter how late he reviewed petitions at night, he would always unconsciously soften his footsteps when passing the Star-Gazing Pavilion; just as every Winter Solstice, he forbade the eunuchs from providing less charcoal to my palace, even though the phrase he spoke most often was, “Her life and death have nothing to do with me.”

A person can forget.

But things etched into the bone sometimes cannot be forgotten.

By the time I returned to the Star-Gazing Pavilion, snow had already covered the window frames. An old palace maid applied medicine to my wounds, her hands trembling so much she could barely hold the bottle steady.

“My lady, why do you suffer in silence?” she asked, her eyes red. “If His Majesty doesn’t know, you must tell him!”

I lowered my eyes, looking at the bowl of pitch-black medicine.

There were ingredients for calming the nerves and for stopping the bleeding.

But there was nothing that could cure an old dream.

“There’s no use in saying anything,” I said softly. “He forgot.”

The old maid wept and asked, “But they can’t let you go to the Heaven Worship Ceremony!”

I didn’t answer, only turning my head to look at the old wooden box on the desk.

Inside the box lay a tattered rabbit lantern. The frame had long since rotted and the paper had yellowed, but four words were still written crookedly at the end.

*May you live a long life.*

Pei Yuheng had written that for me with his own hand when he was sixteen.

He didn’t remember it.

But I had kept it all this time.

Late in the night, a very faint sound suddenly came from outside the Star-Gazing Pavilion.

It sounded like someone had stepped on a withered branch hidden under the snow.

I thought it was the Imperial Guard on night watch and didn’t pay it any mind. It wasn’t until a familiar silhouette appeared on the window paper that I abruptly looked up.

The person stood outside the window and did not enter, only asking a single question in a low voice.

“Miss Ye, do you truly intend to just die like this?”

It was Zhuo Yu’an.

The newly appointed Imperial Guard Commander after Pei Yuheng’s enthronement, and one of the few people over these years who was still willing to believe even half a word I said.

I looked at the blurred shadow on the window and, after a long silence, gave a soft smile.

“It’s not that I intend to die.”

“It’s just that this time, if Pei Yuheng wants to live, I must die.”

The person outside the window caught his breath.