Chapter 6

Chapter 6

When I was escorted back to the side hall, Yan Zhichuan was coughing up blood.

The blood fell into a white porcelain cup, but it wasn’t red; it had a silvery sheen to it, like crushed ice. The imperial physicians were all kneeling on the floor, their heads bowed, not even daring to breathe. Mo Yaoshuang sat to the side, draped in a fox-fur cloak, looking as if she were oblivious to everything. When she saw me being brought in, she even curled her lips into a faint smile at me.

“Your Highness’s people aren’t watching closely enough,” she said softly. “This child is quick on her feet and has sharp eyes.”

Yan Zhichuan looked up. His gaze swept over the snow on my shoulders and the mud on my hands, finally landing on my pale face.

“Everyone out.”

The physicians and palace attendants retreated quickly. As Mo Yaoshuang rose, the hem of her robe brushed past my feet like a cold, fragrant breeze.

After the doors closed, the hall fell so silent that the only sound was the faint crackling of the charcoal fire.

I stared at Yan Zhichuan and asked directly, “The children in the Greenhouse-was it with your tacit permission?”

“Yes.”

“Ming Yinxing is dead.”

“I know.”

His bluntness made my whole body tremble. My anger was so intense that it forced tears from my eyes. I rushed forward and violently swept the wooden box of matches off the table. The box shattered upon hitting the floor, and dozens of matchboxes rolled everywhere like a pile of scattered bones.

“You know?” My voice cracked. “You know she was only thirteen! Just yesterday she was telling me that she wanted to go see the river outside the city once the snow stopped! What right do you have?”

Yan Zhichuan didn’t dodge, nor did he get angry.

He just sat there, looking as if he had long been weighed down by the names scattered across the floor, unable to move.

“Baili City stopped the fires once, thirty years ago,” he began slowly. “That night, a cold wave entered the city, freezing thirty-one thousand seven hundred people to death. The Late Emperor piled the corpses in the square; the next day, the city gates couldn’t even be pushed open.”

“So?”

“So the royal family made a pact with the Snow Queen.” He looked up at me, his eyes a void of dead black. “Trading dreams for fire, using the last bit of warmth from the poor to keep the entire city from being swallowed by winter.”

“Who is the Snow Queen?”

“The first Queen. She is also the one who kept winter trapped here.”

I understood. This wasn’t a natural disaster; it was man-made. It wasn’t that the weather was too cold; it was that the Royal Palace was using our lives to nurture a winter that would never end, then pretending to be the savior.

“And you?” I asked in a low voice. “What are you?”

Yan Zhichuan remained silent for a long time.

“A vessel.”

He pulled open his collar, revealing a hideous old scar below his collarbone. The wound meandered from his chest into his robes, looking as if something had once grown out of his body and been brutally gouged back out.

“The Snow Queen’s curse is in the Royal Blood. Each generation of heirs grows colder and colder, until they drag the entire city into a state of extreme frost. To suppress it, we can only burn Dream Fire.”

“So you just sit here and let batch after batch of children die?”

He looked at me, and for the first time, a crack appeared in the depths of his eyes.

“Yi Jiangxue, when I was seven years old, I first learned what was being burned in the Warmhouse Yard. That night, I smashed all three fire rooms. The next day, eight hundred people froze to death in the south of the city. On the third day, another two thousand died. On the fourth day, my father dragged me to the square to make me watch how those corpses were dug out of the snow.” His voice was very low, like gravel grinding together. “Since then, I learned one truth.”

He paused.

“I can hate this fire, but I cannot let it stop.”

I stared at him, suddenly finding it laughable.

“Your Highness is truly good at finding excuses for himself.” I wiped my eyes. “You burn a child to death, then tell yourselves it’s to save more people. By the time you’re done burning, even your guilt has become a form of mercy.”

Yan Zhichuan didn’t argue. He simply leaned over to pick up a matchbox by his feet, his thumb slowly tracing the name on the lid.

“Your mother said the same thing you did back then.”

My heart skipped a beat. “And then?”

“And then she almost stopped the fire,” he said. “That’s why she died.”

The wind outside picked up suddenly, making the lamp flames flicker violently. I looked at the matchbox in his hand and realized his fingertips were covered in layers of burns-old, scarred brands left behind by the years.

So it wasn’t that it didn’t hurt.

It was just that it had hurt for far too long.