Chapter 1

I was born a daughter of a distinguished family.

Then, one day, disaster struck our household. I was sent to the Palace Service Court as punishment and became one of the lowliest maids in the palace.

When I was falsely accused of theft and lay faint with hunger in the snow, it was Pei Wujiu, the chief eunuch, who saved me.

For years, we depended on each other. We promised that one day we would leave the imperial city hand in hand.

But just before our departure, he suddenly began coughing blood and fell too ill to rise.

“I fear this life of mine won't last much longer. Take this silver out of the palace and find a decent family to marry into. Anything would be better than staying here to die with me.”

I refused to accept it.

Perhaps it wasn't yet Pei Wujiu's time to die.

In my desperation, I heard that the emperor had arranged a maze. The first palace maid to reach its heart could ask for a handsome reward.

I rushed in, heedless of my life.

After passing through poisonous mist and volleys of arrows, I prostrated myself before the throne and begged for nothing but an imperial physician.

What awaited me was no reward.

It was a starving tiger.

As I scrambled away, I looked up and saw a face identical to Pei Wujiu's.

He sat at ease on the high platform, a smile still on his lips, watching me struggle.

1

The tiger's roar battered my ears.

The stench of its breath struck my face. I could even hear its sharp teeth snapping together.

Only then did the man above speak indifferently.

“Very well. I shall do a good deed today. Save her.”

The guards risked their lives to block the beast. I collapsed, looking up through the confusion of moving bodies.

Those long, narrow eyes. That almost-smiling expression.

Everything was exactly like Pei Wujiu after he removed his disguise.

He had told me his master forbade him to appear before others with his true face. But he had chosen me as his wife, so he didn't want to hide it from me.

I had never doubted him.

Only when the hem of a bright yellow robe stopped before me did everything suddenly fall into place.

Why he had become ill just before we were to leave. Why he had cruelly urged me to marry someone else. Why he had pressed all his savings into my hands.

So the years we had clung to each other were only a play, staged to amuse a bored sovereign.

Now he had enjoyed himself enough, he wanted me to wake from the dream alone.

A sweet, metallic taste rose in my chest. I couldn't stop myself from coughing blood in front of him.

Several wounded imperial guards still stood before me. Not one dared step back merely because the emperor was approaching.

Suddenly, I wanted to laugh.

He was the supreme ruler of the realm. If he could make a plaything of a disgraced minister's daughter's sincere love, what was there he wouldn't do?

2

I had mistaken many people in my life.

But I had always believed I would know Pei Wujiu even at the point of death.

In the end, he abandoned me too, just as my parents had.

When disaster befell our family, the late emperor granted us mercy. Only one of the two sisters had to enter the palace as a servant. The other could accompany our parents to the outskirts of the capital and tend the late empress's tomb.

My younger sister's eyes reddened. Mother immediately gathered her close.

I shed no tears, so naturally Father chose me.

“You've always been the sensible one. When you're old enough, I'll bring you out.”

“His Majesty hasn't confiscated our shops. I'll give you half. You'll have something to depend on for the rest of your life.”

I nodded, not because I coveted the shops, but because I knew no one would listen if I objected.

Did being abandoned once mean I would never deserve to be chosen?

I refused to believe that.

Not long after I entered the palace, a gold hairpin vanished from the Directorate of Wardrobe.

That very night, someone found it beneath my bedding.

I wouldn't confess. They beat me until I was covered in blood, threw me into a deserted courtyard, and stopped my food.

I refused to rot there silently.

Dragging my injured leg, I crawled toward the door, leaving a long trail of blood.

Just as my hand reached the threshold, a steaming corn cake appeared before me.

Afraid the giver would change his mind, I snatched it and stuffed it into my mouth.

A quiet laugh sounded overhead.

“Eating so quickly. Aren't you afraid I've poisoned it?”

Only after swallowing the last mouthful did I properly see the utterly ordinary face before me.

Before our family's downfall, I had once seen him from a distance. I knew he was Pei Wujiu, chief eunuch in attendance on the emperor.

I reached out and clutched his robe, desperate to hold on to this last hope.

He didn't comfort me. He only offered a cool reminder.

“Gold objects made by the imperial workshops bear identifying marks. You should examine carefully where that hairpin beneath your pillow really came from.”

His words brought me abruptly to my senses.

At the next day's interrogation, I pointed out that the mark on the pin didn't match the Directorate's records. I forced the official in charge to produce the register and compare it before everyone.

The maid who had framed me soon confessed. As she was dragged to the Office of Punishments, she wept and pleaded all the way.

I went especially to thank Pei Wujiu. His expression remained cold.

“I merely gave you something to eat. You were the one who fought to keep yourself alive.”

I asked why he had saved me if he wouldn't accept my gratitude.

After a long silence, he answered, “I simply can't bear to see the innocent punished for someone else's wrongdoing.”

Years later, I understood that he had been speaking of himself.

The emperor shot and wounded a minister's son. The empress dowager couldn't bear to punish her own child, so she made Pei Wujiu take the blame.

When I found him, he had been kneeling in a palace passage through wind and snow all day. Blood seeped through at his knees. His face was white as paper.

I draped my padded coat over his shoulders. He coldly ordered me away.

“You're only a maid from the Palace Service Court. Affairs of the imperial presence are none of your concern.”

I crouched beside him and refused to leave.

“You're almost frozen to death, and still so stubborn.”

He gave a faint laugh.

I secretly fetched a brazier and kept watch beneath the covered walkway until dawn.

That was the first time I saw the old crescent-shaped scar on his right knee.

Whenever the weather turned wet and overcast, the pain made it almost impossible for him to stand.

While changing his dressings, I asked whether he had any family left.

“A younger brother...”

After a long silence, he added with a mocking smile, “Though perhaps he's the only child our parents ever saw.”

My hand paused. Those familiar words hurt.

“What a coincidence. My younger sister is afraid of the cold, so she couldn't enter the palace.”

“She's timid too. Naturally she couldn't endure hardship. So I was the one sent here to suffer.”

I deliberately kept my tone light.

He reached out and covered my eyes.

“It's over. Don't cry for people who aren't worth it.”

Only when hot tears soaked between his fingers did I realize my face was already wet.

That night, he removed his disguise for the first time and showed me his beautiful true face.

But he never dared look up.

“Qinghe, I'm a eunuch.”

“I can't give you children. I can't be an ordinary man. I'm... incomplete.”

I held his icy hand tightly.

“Then could you give me a whole, true heart?”

Pei Wujiu wept like a child.

From then on, we saved for our departure, coin by coin.

We would buy a small courtyard house, open a wonton stall, and fill the yard with the pomegranate trees I loved.

We even planned to keep a little yellow dog by the gate, to stop mischievous children from stealing the fruit.

However high the palace walls, one day we would walk beyond them.

If we could endure the long nights together, we might steal a little ordinary life for ourselves.

3

Cold seeped into my bones. A bitter taste filled my mouth.

Burning with fever, I curled into myself. Through my delirium, I felt someone holding me, tears falling onto my face.

He kept repeating my name beside my ear, now like a sigh, now like a sob.

Always “Qinghe.”

“Qinghe. Qinghe.”

“Why must you refuse to listen?”

I wanted to open my eyes, but instead I saw the day Pei Wujiu fell ill.

Before the Longevity Banquet, the empress released surplus palace maids. My departure papers had already been approved.

With banknotes, new clothes, and the little gold ingots he had received as rewards in my bundle, I ran all the way to find him. I thought our good days had finally arrived.

He had told me the emperor pitied his injured leg and had allowed him to leave early, even granting him a small house.

But when we met, he pushed the banknotes back into my arms. His face was so cold I scarcely knew it.

I waited a long time before he spoke.

“I won't live much longer anyway. Take this money out of the palace. A good man will be willing to marry you. At least you'll have somewhere to belong.”

I flung all the notes back.

“If we leave, we leave together!”

He coughed blood into his hand and still cruelly drove me away.

“I'm a eunuch without a future. I can't give you children or the life you want.”

“I was selfish before. I don't want to burden you anymore.”

I ignored him and crouched to gather the scattered notes.

Suddenly, he smashed his medicine bowl and turned his anger on me.

“How plainly must I say it? I want power. I want to become the Lord of Nine Thousand Years, beneath one man and above all others. I stopped caring about you long ago!”

The words pinned me where I stood.

He kept striking at the places that hurt most.

“Once I hold that position, there will be young, beautiful, untouched women aplenty. Why keep a woman like you... old and faded?”

“Qinghe, I don't want you anymore.”

I turned, but my feet wouldn't move.

Then he spat blood and collapsed at my feet.

I hated his cruelty. Hated that he had turned our years of dependence into a joke.

But even unconscious, he still clutched the scented pouch I had embroidered.

Every step we had taken together over the years had been sincere. How could a few vicious words erase all of it?

In the end, I couldn't leave him.

The Imperial Medical Bureau wouldn't even open its doors because the man I wanted to save was a eunuch.

I knelt outside until late into the night, only to hear excuses.

“Eunuch Wujiu serves in the imperial presence. Without His Majesty's verbal order, no one dares attend him.”

I pressed all our savings into their hands. A physician kicked the money bag away.

“He's only a eunuch. If he dies, he dies. You'd do better to look after yourself.”

Silver rolled across the ground. I picked it up piece by piece, not even daring to sob.

Just then, news of the emperor's maze spread throughout the palace.

The first person to reach its heart could ask him for a reward.