Chapter 2
The crown prince forbade me to approach the mourning hall.
I could only stay at Fengyi Palace and recite sutras.
Stroke after stroke, the wooden prayer drum beat against thoughts I should never have entertained.
At Fengyi Palace, the person I saw more often than Yuan Xiujin
was actually Yuan Zhaoyu.
Back then, all I thought about was how to be a good crown princess.
But the more Yuan Xiujin humiliated me, the harder it became not to compare father and son.
Yuan Xiujin was barely past twenty, yet his head was full of nothing but romance.
When my aunt’s illness was at its worst,
he was still arguing with her over making Yao Mingzhu his principal wife.
Yuan Zhaoyu was different.
When he learned my aunt was ill, he rushed to Fengyi Palace without even changing out of his court robes.
He was plainly exhausted.
Still, he patiently asked, over and over,
“How much medicine has the empress taken today?”
“Is she still coughing blood at night?”
He was already over forty, yet merely by standing there,
he seemed to steady all of Fengyi Palace. No one dared neglect anything.
I even found myself wondering,
what if the man my aunt had chosen for me had been His Majesty, rather than the crown prince?
What would that have been like?
The first time the thought came, even I was frightened.
But afterward, it grew harder and harder to suppress.
Once you have seen a true mountain,
how can you admire the heap of earth at its foot?
Especially when Yuan Xiujin was so cruel to me.
At a spring banquet, Yao Mingzhu and I wore the same Wei Zi-purple Shu brocade.
My aunt had given me the fabric. I had no idea Yao Mingzhu owned a dress of it too.
But when Yuan Xiujin saw us, he sneered before all the noble ladies,
“Dong Shi trying to imitate a beauty.”
Laughter rippled around us.
The wind was strong that day. I hid in a side hall and cried a great deal, alone.
When my aunt heard, she said nothing.
She simply sent me, as usual, to serve His Majesty tea in Taiji Hall.
Inside, Yuan Zhaoyu was reviewing memorials.
I set down the teacup gently and was about to withdraw.
He suddenly looked up at me. “Have you been crying?”
I turned my face away and stubbornly said, “No.”
But the redness at the corners of my eyes gave me away.
He sighed. “Xiu has been spoiled. Be patient with him.”
At that moment, I could no longer hold back my hurt.
“How can father and son be so different? Your Majesty is so wise.”
“Yet a few sweet words always make the crown prince lose all sense?”
The moment I said it, I realized I had overstepped.
I hurriedly knelt. “I didn’t mean to criticize the crown prince…”
My voice grew fainter. Yet those eyes of mine,
so like my aunt’s, still shone wetly.
They could conceal neither my hurt nor my admiration.
Yuan Zhaoyu set down his vermilion brush and watched me for a long time.
Perhaps he had never been looking at me.
Perhaps he saw my aunt as she had been years ago, before time had worn her into an empress.
Young, alive, her eyes full of love.
After that, Yuan Zhaoyu came to Fengyi Palace more and more often.
He always said he was visiting my aunt.
But whenever she could not see, his gaze drifted toward me.
Once, while keeping watch over her, I fell asleep in the outer hall.
I woke with a start in the middle of the night to find a black cloak over me.
The ambergris scent surrounding me made my heart pound all night.
Another time, as I was withdrawing after serving tea, he suddenly asked,
“Why aren’t you wearing that peony hairpin today?”
That was when I realized someone could actually notice me.
And that attention was precisely what Yuan Xiujin had always refused to give.
From then on, I could no longer be content with becoming crown princess.
The Eastern Palace stood high indeed.
But the most exalted person of all was still the man on the dragon throne.