Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Consort Zhen’s face was deathly pale as she lay on the bed, crying out in pain without pause.

Blood poured from between her legs, great clots of flesh flowing out as though they were forcing their way through some obstruction.

The child we had awaited for months was gone in an instant.

Consort Zhen wept as she clutched my hand.

“Sister, is my baby gone?” she asked.

I cried with her, yet still tried to comfort her.

“Yushu, you’re still young. You’ll have another child.”

But she wept with such heart-wrenching despair, as though someone had carved out her heart with a knife. The lively innocence she had once possessed was nowhere to be seen.

I went to find a eunuch and ask him to summon the Imperial Physician, but he merely picked at his long fingernails and gave me a sidelong glance.

“Sister Chunye, His Majesty hasn’t even moved yet.”

The emperor, who had always doted on Consort Zhen, was at that very moment in Linhua Palace, making love to another woman.

I sent someone to summon him, but he merely waved impatiently from between the red curtains.

“Follow the usual practice.”

The usual practice meant letting the consort endure it on her own first.

Listening to Consort Zhen’s screams, I felt sweat run down my forehead again and again, while a cold ache spread through my heart.

She rolled off the bed and clung to me, sobbing.

“Sister, Sister, I want to go home.”

I gritted my teeth. Remembering the midwives I had seen back in my village, I turned and seized a pair of scissors.

A shrill scream rang out.

I delivered a stillborn child for Consort Zhen.

It was a fully formed boy.

The next day, she sat by the window and silently shed tears for the entire day.

I walked over and closed the window for her.

“Your Highness, the spring winds are strong, and your body can’t be exposed to the chill. You must take good care of yourself.”

She raised her face, two trails of tears running down her delicate features.

“Sister, the Imperial Physician said I’ll never be able to conceive again. Is that true?”

I clenched my teeth, but I still couldn’t force out a reply.

She let out a low, hollow laugh, then turned her face away and stopped speaking to anyone.

At daybreak, His Majesty finally awoke from his bed of pleasure. He suddenly heard someone report from outside that Consort Zhen had miscarried a baby boy.

“Damn it!” He kicked the eunuch beside him lightly and fastened his buttons.

“I thought it was Consort Xian.”

It turned out that he had misheard that night.

But what good did it do? Consort Zhen’s child was already gone.

When the Imperial Physician took her pulse, he merely furrowed his brows before shaking his head and sighing.

“Your Highness’s body is too weak, and you have not yet fully matured. Conceiving in the first place was already difficult. Now, with this bleeding disorder as well, I’m afraid you will never be able to bear a child again.”

Consort Zhen’s expression was utterly indifferent then.

Yet after the Imperial Physician left, she took my hand and silently wept.

“Sister, Sister…”

I knew she was calling for the elder sister who had already died.

When Consort Zhen was young, her mother died, and it was her elder sister who raised her.

She had always longed to have a child of her own. From the moment she became pregnant, she had been careful every single day, but in the end, she still couldn’t escape what happened.

We found traces of miscarriage-inducing poison in the cup she used every day.

It was the first time Consort Zhen had been so devastated. She sold the personal maidservant she had brought from her family home.

But afterward, she suddenly clutched her chest and gasped.

“There won’t be anyone left to keep me company… No one…”

I gently patted her back and soothed her in a soft voice.

But in this palace, a consort without a child or His Majesty’s favor lived a life worse than wild grass.

His Majesty favored Consort Zhen a few times more, but when he saw how numb and unresponsive she was, he cast her aside.

An emperor’s anger could linger for a very long time.

The soups sent from the Imperial Kitchen grew worse and worse. Sometimes, one could even see spit floating in them.

Consort Zhen refused to eat a single bite.

In the end, I found the kind of leaves I had eaten as a child, steamed them into cakes, and fed them to her.

She ate them, but remained sullen.

“Sister, this is the blandest thing I’ve ever eaten in my life.”

From that moment on, I began to sense that she would not live much longer.

Unfortunately, I never imagined it would happen so soon.

In the second month after her miscarriage, Consort Zhen leaped into the lotus pond in the dead of night.

The lotus blossoms that year were such a vivid red, as though they had grown by feeding on the flesh and bones of the dead.