Chapter 4
It took three days to wash all the blood from the white jade terrace.
The consorts and officials His Majesty had killed came from the great clans. At court, people said those clans had grown arrogant for too long and had finally provoked the emperor’s displeasure. The Right Chancellor followed with fierce measures of his own, tempering force with conciliation and using the opportunity to curb the clans’ power.
No one knew who leaked the story, but soon the entire palace had heard that a single sentence from me had made His Majesty cough up blood, turn white-haired overnight, and nearly lose his mind.
Even Empress Xie claimed illness and withdrew from public view until the danger passed.
Everyone wondered what secret from the former dynasty’s court I had revealed to grieve the emperor so profoundly.
In truth, on a spring night, I had merely looked up at him and asked:
“Are you my husband?”
I fell ill after being caught in the rain.
I had not always been so delicate. Whenever the old servants could not tend our poor fields, I had gone down to work them myself.
That was why I often felt ashamed before my husband. The realm was in chaos, and many nobles had fallen into common life, yet their innate refinement could still be recognized at a glance. My husband was one of them.
Without realizing it, I would hide my hands from him so he would not see the calluses on my palms. He would smile, spread my hand open, and gently press his cheek to it with a sigh. “Oh, you.”
The very next day, he traded the priceless pendant around his neck for the secret recipe to skin-softening pills. Sometimes I wondered if he had protected me too well.
Perhaps that was why I could no longer withstand even the smallest storm.
I opened my eyes from a dream. Incense curled from the gilded beast-shaped burner, and a figure hovered indistinctly before me. Still half delirious, I caught a lock of his loose hair. “Husband, why has your hair turned white?”
Only when my vision cleared did I realize that he was not Yunnu, but the emperor, Liu Liang.
His build resembled Yunnu’s somewhat. Embarrassed, I released him.
Fortunately, His Majesty seemed not to notice my insolence. His gaze remained fixed on my bare legs and their hideous scars. I frowned, pulled my legs beneath the covers, and scolded, “Lecher!”
His Majesty caught my leg. “You have just taken medicine to drive out the chill. Your body needs to release heat and sweat. Do not hide your legs under the blankets.”
There was not the slightest lust in his eyes, so I relaxed.
Liu Liang continued staring at my burns. After a long silence, he asked, “Do they hurt?”
There seemed to be guilt in his voice.
I remembered what the empress had said the day before. So these wounds had something to do with His Majesty.
For some reason, however, it no longer hurt as it had yesterday. I had already forgotten, and his guilt meant nothing to me.
I comforted him. “I do not remember what it felt like when I was burned, but while the wounds healed, they hurt and itched so badly that I kept wondering whether maggots had grown inside my legs. How else could it hurt so much? But that was long ago. They are merely a little ugly now.”
I understood him perfectly. “It was not your fault. The empress is the woman you love. Of course you saved her. If my husband had been there, he would certainly have saved me first too.”
If my husband had been there, then whether the other woman was a princess or the daughter of a great clan, he would have saved me.
I believed that with all my heart.
Whatever illness His Majesty had developed the night before, his face suddenly turned deathly white and he lost the power of speech.
He covered his mouth to cough, only to bring up blood again.
His Majesty asked in a low voice, “Zhao Wan, if your husband made you angry, what would he have to do for you to forgive him?”
I gave him a puzzled look. “How angry are we talking?”
Liu Liang lowered his eyes, his long lashes casting two curved shadows across his cheeks.
“Angry enough,” he said, “that you would believe he had betrayed you.”