chapter 2

Jealous of the emperor’s favor toward me, the empress had tormented me at every opportunity. The month before, she had even incited Lady Liu to send my son into an icy lake. He had nearly died.

Lady Liu was executed.

The empress was confined to her palace, and the Empress Dowager stripped her of the authority to administer the inner court.

Yet only three days later, Chu Lizhi suddenly pardoned the empress and restored all six palaces to her control.

The ridicule and snickering throughout the harem had been endless.

That night, Chu Lizhi and I had quarreled. Blind with rage, I called him a fool who could not see the truth and a man unworthy to be a father. I hated myself even more: I was a mother, yet I could not protect my own child.

Furious, he turned and left.

The next time we met was on the eve of his campaign, when I fainted from my pregnancy.

I refused to speak to him.

He said nothing either.

He merely told me to wait for his return.

I had thought Chu Lizhi truly believed the empress’s tearful claims of innocence. Only now did I learn that General Song had coerced him for the sake of the war at the frontier.

Chu Lizhi’s decision to lead the campaign himself was likely an attempt to reclaim military command and free himself from the general’s pressure forever.

I had judged him wrongly.

“Leave us,” he said.

The deputy bowed and withdrew. Only then did Mingde, Chu Lizhi’s personal eunuch, enter with brushes and an inkstone.

Once Mingde had arranged everything, Chu Lizhi sat at the table. He was clearly preparing to write letters.

I drifted behind him.

First, he wrote to the Empress Dowager and gave instructions about affairs in the palace. Then he took a fresh sheet of paper and began another letter.

“Yaoyao, is all well in the palace?”

His brush stopped.

He listened to the rain pattering outside the tent and sighed before continuing.

“I should not have quarreled with you that day. You are with child, and Little Four nearly drowned and hovered at death’s door. I should have understood your grief. I should not have released the empress so readily, either. But there were reasons I could not explain. When I return, I will tell you everything and punish the empress severely, until your anger is satisfied.”

“Your husband misses his Yaoyao dearly. I ask only that we may reunite beneath the lanterns at the New Year, two months from now.”

Reading it left me feeling as if I had swallowed a whole sour fruit.

Sweet at first.

Then bitter and painfully tart.

I watched the smile curve Chu Lizhi’s lips as he wrote. He sealed the letter with care and was about to hand it to Mingde when his brows pinched together.

“Mingde,” he asked uneasily, “I have been away for scarcely half a month. If I soften so soon and coax her out of her temper, will I not spoil her too much?”

Mingde did not dare answer. He stood there helplessly.

Chu Lizhi considered the matter, then slapped the letter onto the table in irritation.

“Forget it. She has grown arrogant on my favor lately and says whatever wild thing enters her head. If I indulge her again, she will only squeeze this heart of mine in her fist while she runs amok.”

He ended with a cold snort.

He must have remembered the cruel things I had flung at him in the heat of our quarrel.

My heart clenched hard.

So sour.

So painful.

Had I known that was the last time I would ever see him, how could I have borne to spend it quarreling?

I laid a hand lightly on his shoulder, longing to feel his warmth once more.

I imagined he would be burning hot.

In winter, I used to curl into his arms. He would laugh that I lacked every shred of a noble consort’s dignity and looked instead like a lazy cat.

Pretending offense, I would scratch his chest with my fingertips.

The tickling made him seize me and throw me onto the bed.

Then came a whole night of passion.

But now…

my fingertips were cold, and no one would ever warm them again.

I had thought Chu Lizhi would not send the letter after all.

In the end, he did hand it to Mingde. He merely added, “Let the Noble Consort stew for one more day. Send someone to carry it back to the capital tomorrow.”

“When she receives it, who knows how she will laugh at me for talking hard while my heart softens—and for worrying over her again?”

He smiled helplessly.

I watched him, unable to look away.

Pain came like a winter wind. It pierced my marrow and tore savagely at my soul.

Chu Lizhi was waiting with all his heart for our reunion.

The New Year. Lantern light beneath the moon.

Husband and wife hand in hand, our young son beside us.

How beautiful it would have been.

But Chu Lizhi did not know that I was already dead.

Everything he longed for was a dream that could never come true.

At the thought, it felt as though someone had ripped out my heart, leaving a bloody hollow behind.

Blood poured from it.

The agony was unbearable.