Chapter 3
The guard moved quickly. He reached out and tore a tuft of feathers from the red pheasant’s head.
The bird shrieked without pause.
Pei Jie’s fingertips shook with anguish.
He had barely begun to step forward when I planted my sword on the flagstones with a clang. He froze, speechless.
He knew I never went back on my word.
Even the crown prince would get a couple of cuts if he crossed me in my own residence.
Pei Jie could not save a mongrel bird pretending to be a phoenix.
Silently, he crouched.
“Kneel!”
He looked up sharply. I stood over him, pinning him with a cold stare.
“Ruler and subject first. Husband and wife second. Since you don’t understand the rules, we shall observe them from now on.”
In three years of marriage, I had never used protocol to subdue him.
Never had I humiliated him before a crowd, over and over like this.
But three years of wealth and protection had made him forget that he was something filthy hauled out of a den of condemned slaves.
Since he had forgotten where he came from, I had a duty to remind him.
Under my cold stare and the threat of a guard’s raised sword, Pei Jie slowly sank to his knees in humiliation.
Then, with everyone looking down on him, he gathered the tuft of feathers into his trembling palm. Carefully, he separated and counted them one by one.
Every plucking brought a scream from the mongrel bird.
Every feather thrown to the ground was stained with blood.
With every count, Pei Jie’s face grew a shade paler.
At last, he was swaying on the verge of collapse.
I lost interest and signaled to the steward.
He clapped his hands twice, and dancers and musicians filed in.
Amid the music and dancing, I raised my cup.
“Today, in my house, drink to your hearts’ content.”
An hour later, my maid reported,
“She’s bare. There is barely half a tuft for each guest.”
I set down my cup and looked at Pei Jie, who had been left to one side, bloodless.
Lowering eyes full of hatred, he bowed his head to ask,
“May I take her away now?”
I glanced at the naked Feng Jinwu.
A plucked phoenix truly was worse than a chicken.
Without the feathers she prized so highly, this pheasant with a century of cultivation amounted to very little.
I waved a hand.
Pei Jie pressed his lips tight. As though suffering the deepest humiliation, he removed his outer robe, wrapped the naked bird securely, and carried her out.
Watching that unfamiliar figure retreat, I sighed.
“In the end, he isn’t him.”
Pei Jie and I had neither a match made in heaven nor hearts pledged to each other.
I was born into the imperial house, the first empress’s only daughter.
My imperial grandfather had entrusted me with a hundred thousand troops. After five years at war, I was the acknowledged choice for heir throughout court and country.
He came from a declining branch of a marquis’s family. Even his food and clothing were inferior to those of a nobleman’s concubine-born son.
More importantly, his heart belonged to an idealized first love, while mine bore the indelible mark of another.
Sadly, neither had lasted.
His first love coveted imperial wealth. With the marquis’s household behind her, she set her sights on Father, offended the Noble Consort, and lit the way to the underworld for her entire extended family.
Mine had died taking an arrow for me as we fought side by side. His blood had, in the end, stained my eyes and brow.
Afterward,
my face was damaged, an affront to imperial dignity.
An arrow to my abdomen left me unable to bear children.
The entire court opposed naming me heir. Father, too, began to have doubts.
Before anyone even knew whether I would live, he hurried to strip me of military command.
The position that should have been mine went to Wei Huaiyu instead.
Father tried to soothe me.
“Public opinion is a terrible thing. I have my difficulties. Anything but the throne—ask, and I will give it to you.”
At that time, the Noble Consort and her son had cast Pei Jie into the courtyard to serve as a living lampstand, holding burning candles. His face was so very like that of the man I had lost.
His spine was straight, his jaw as taut as a fully drawn bow.
Hot wax dripped over the backs of his hands, raising a mass of blisters.
He seemed not to feel it. Not even the corners of his eyes stirred.
I had heard of his devotion.
His beloved had used a forbidden drug and climbed into the imperial bed to better her station. It ended with poisoned wine in her belly and exile for her entire clan, and he knew it.
Implicated in her crime, he could barely save himself.
Yet he had risked his life and braved the Noble Consort’s hatred to gather her body for burial.
This wretched punishment, being made a human lampstand, was his reward.
It reminded me of the man I had lost.
Of the way he would risk everything.
Of his stubborn determination.
Of our flowers and moonlight.
Of a lovesick fool who had followed me to the frontier, yet dreamed of becoming a hero who would give his life for what was right.
And finally,
with my nose stinging, I realized something.
After five years of war, after fighting for Great Yong without fear of death to win it a century of peace,
my hands were empty. I had nothing left.
So Father’s talk of putting me through trials had been a lie.
From first to last, I had only been the blade he used to clear a path for his beloved son.
What belonged to me, I would seize.
What he offered me, I would take as well.
And so I raised a hand and pointed at Pei Jie.
“Him. Give him to me.”