Chapter 3

Word that I had made Zheng Xinyu kneel spread beyond the palace. I heard that many people blamed me for offending the holy maiden.

On the final day of relief work, the emperor and empress were meant to appear together. But Qi Ke was angry with me over Noble Consort Zheng, and wished to appease the people. He decided to take her in my place.

Xiao Huaixin was the first to object. Several elderly ministers accompanying us also said it was improper.

Qi Ke merely turned to me. “Empress, are they speaking at your instigation?”

Interference in politics by the inner palace had always been a grave taboo.

I had to swallow the injustice. Worse, I was forced to speak on his behalf and support his decision to take Noble Consort Zheng.

And so, after all my work organizing the relief, Zheng Xinyu alone received the people’s affection.

Xu Susu mocked me about it for years afterward. She said I had spent my whole life bold and ambitious, only to become afraid of my own shadow.

I was afraid only because I could not yet bear to be ruthless.

After returning to the palace, I still could not let go of my anger. I asked my brother to visit me after court. Talking to family made me feel considerably better.

My brother and I had the same mother. He was five years older than I was, and of all his siblings, he loved me best.

He knew what troubled me. Though I warned him not to seek a moment’s satisfaction on my behalf, he still gathered several ministers and submitted memorials criticizing Zheng Xinyu.

A few days later, Qi Ke stormed into my palace carrying those memorials.

He had not seen me for days. Now he had come only to avenge another woman.

“Was bullying Xin at the traveling palace not enough? Now you have incited your family to persecute her too? Can you truly not tolerate her, Empress?”

My head was aching, and I had no appetite. I hurried to rise and pay my respects.

Before I could explain, Qi Ke swept past me. His shoulder struck mine hard enough to send me to the floor.

The memorials came flying at my head. One even knocked a phoenix hairpin out of my hair.

The late empress dowager had given it to me. Qi Ke had placed it in my hair himself.

He had said then, “The phoenixes fly together, their voices ringing in harmony. With Qingyan as my empress, I shall never have cause to worry about my household.”

I thought he must have forgotten. Yet the sight of that hairpin made him pause.

“Do you remember what I said that day, Empress?” he demanded. “‘Never have cause to worry.’ You accepted that duty. Why have you broken your word and caused one disturbance after another?”

I stared at that suddenly unfamiliar face and felt as though I had fallen into an ice cellar.

Broken my word to you.

When had I? How could I have?

I remained kneeling for a long time. I had barely begun, “My brother only wanted to protect his sister,” when Qi Ke cut me off sharply. “Do you know that Xin has not a single family member to care for her?”

There was nothing left for me to say. Cold to the bone, I knelt in silence.

Only when Jiayi returned from fetching the imperial physician and told him I had been unwell for days did Qi Ke order someone to help me up.

Once again, a beaded curtain hung between us. Once again, candlelight flickered.

But this time Qi Ke sat beside the table, leaving me only his frowning profile. He did not turn to look at me until the physician announced that I was pregnant.

That one glance held little joy, only a trace of surprise. He needed to say nothing more. I was so hurt I wanted to cry.

When I had been diagnosed with my first pregnancy, with our eldest princess Xuhua, he had lifted me and spun me around several times. He was so delighted that he proclaimed a general amnesty. Even if the baby was a girl, he said, she would receive honors equal to a prince’s.

When Xuhua was a month old, he had already granted her a princess’s residence on the imperial avenue, next to my family’s ducal estate. Such a thing had never been done before.

Later, when I carried Ju, he scarcely left my side.

Three princes had already been born in the inner palace. Yet through his words and actions as emperor, he had made it clear to everyone that only a son of mine would be worthy of the crown.

I did not understand how everything could change so quickly. I had done nothing wrong. I was still the Xue Qingyan he had first met. Why had he suddenly grown so cold?

People were always drawn to novelties. But what was there to love in a sparrow sitting in a phoenix’s nest?

Unable to understand, I clutched my brocade quilt and held back a sob. “Your Majesty, would you give our unborn child a name?”

He came to the beaded curtain and lifted only a small part of it.

Suddenly, I thought his eyes were no longer so beautiful.

His tenderness was no longer mine. All that remained in those eyes was distance.

He was about to say something when a young eunuch hurried in. The seventh prince would not stop crying, and Noble Consort Zheng begged him to come at once.

“We do not yet know whether it is a princess or a prince. Let us wait until the birth.” He dropped his hand and turned away. The beads fell together with a sharp clatter.

“Jiayi, tell me. All those years—was it only respect and regard? Was there never the slightest love?” Winter snow drifted down, softly striking the window lattice.

Jiayi rarely sighed so deeply.

She helped me lie down. Her voice was very soft. “They say the hundreds of emperors the Five Kingdoms have known were all fickle. Only our Qi line keeps producing men devoted to one love. It seems that devotion has fallen to someone else after all.”

I turned sharply toward the wall. I did not want anyone to see my tears.

Even years later, whenever I remembered that snowfall, I felt its bitter cold.

Susu told me I felt cold because my heart was cold.

I thought she must be right. Otherwise, when that icy decree arrived—‘During the empress’s pregnancy, Noble Consort Zheng shall temporarily assist in governing the Six Palaces’—it would have hurt more than it did.

I had spent days hoping Qi Ke would come to see me.

But by then I must already have understood. The emperor’s heart was no longer here. It was time I drew back my own burning heart as well.