Chapter 1

For three years in the palace, I wanted only to remain unnoticed. No competing for favor, no drawing attention—just a quiet life until old age.

Then, one night in a heavy snowstorm, a child the entire palace had abandoned stood shivering outside my courtyard and asked with painstaking care:

“Lady Shen, could I shelter under your eaves for a little while?”

When I didn’t answer, he lowered his head, murmured, “Never mind,” and turned back into the snow.

I couldn’t bear it. I caught his arm and pulled him inside.

No one imagined that years later, when this boy became emperor, his first act would be neither to honor his birth mother posthumously nor to reward his supporters. Before the assembled court, he would issue an edict naming me Empress Dowager.

…

After three years, I was still a Talented Lady, the lowest rank among the imperial consorts.

Those a little higher enjoyed heated chambers and expensive silver-thread charcoal.

Only my Zhutang Courtyard, its allowance skimmed at every stage, turned into an ice cellar each winter.

The brazier was dying. My maid Chuntao and I huddled under a quilt.

Three knocks sounded at the gate.

Who would come looking for me in such snow?

I put on my thin padded coat and opened the door. Wind and snow swept a small figure inside.

I looked down and froze.

Xiao Heng, the Seventh Prince.

His thin padded coat had been slashed to shreds. Beneath it, only an undershirt clung to his body. His lips were purple with cold.

He looked up, his lips moving.

“Lady Shen, could I shelter under your eaves for a little while?”

Before I could answer, he lowered his head and turned toward the snow.

I caught his wrist.

“Come in.”

Chuntao went pale.

“My lady!” she whispered, nearly crying. “The Second Prince and the Noble Consort are so powerful. If they learn we’re involved with the Seventh Prince…”

“I know.”

Everyone in the inner palace avoided him as though he were a curse.

His birth mother had been a palace maid registered as a criminal servant. He had no consort to protect him, no maternal family to support him. From birth, he had borne the shame of being a criminal slave’s son.

The Noble Consort currently held the phoenix seal. Intent on advancing her own son, she considered the other princes obstacles and suppressed them wherever she could.

But if I let him leave, he would probably not survive the night.

I couldn’t watch a child die before me.

I led him indoors.

Half a bowl of mixed-grain porridge was still warming on the stove. I ladled it into a coarse ceramic bowl and put it in his hands, then found my only thick old padded cloak and wrapped it around him.

He kept trembling. As he took the bowl, his shaking fingers struck the rim, spilling porridge onto the back of his hand.

Almost instinctively, he lowered his head and hurriedly licked it clean. The practiced movement hurt to watch.

In the dim lamplight, I finally saw his hands properly.

All ten fingers were swollen like radishes. Split chilblains seeped tiny drops of blood. Some wounds were ulcerated and full of pus.

An imperial prince, with hands worse than the lowliest palace servant’s.

My heart tightened.

“Wait.”

I searched my chest for a jar of chilblain ointment, issued on my birthday the year before. Life had been so hard that I’d hoarded it, reluctant to use any.

Crouching, I opened the earthenware jar and motioned for his hands.

He instinctively shrank into a corner, his eyes wary, as though I might hurt him at any moment.

I softened my voice.

“I only want to put medicine on them. Nothing else.”

After a long hesitation, he slowly extended his wounded hands.

I didn’t dare touch the open sores. With a little bamboo stick, I carefully laid ointment over the cracked, infected chilblains.

He drew shallow breaths from the pain but said nothing, biting his lower lip white.

With hot porridge and medicine, he finally warmed a little.

Days of hunger, cold, and fear overcame him. His eyelids grew heavy, and he soon fell asleep against the edge of the bed.

Chuntao emerged from behind the screen, her eyes red.

“I found out what happened, my lady.”

“His Majesty examined the princes’ lessons today. The Seventh Prince answered everything properly. For once, His Majesty praised him.”

She paused and lowered her voice further.

“The Second Prince’s face darkened immediately. Afterward, he and a few attendants stopped the Seventh Prince in a palace corridor. In front of everyone passing, he called him a brat with no mother to teach him manners.”

“That wasn’t enough. He ordered them to cut his thin coat to pieces, then shove him into the snow. The Seventh Prince didn’t dare struggle. He just curled up and lay there.”

“When the head eunuch of Jingsi Courtyard heard he’d offended the Second Prince, he made things worse. He locked the gate and refused to let him in.”

I looked at the boy curled on the bed.

Even asleep, his brows didn’t relax. His fingers unconsciously gripped my old cloak.

When I first entered the palace three years earlier, I had been bullied, cheated, and shunned, too.

The eunuchs took their cuts until my allowance was almost gone. Too little charcoal, too little food. No one cared when I fell ill. I could only endure.

I knew that life too well.

“Chuntao.”

“Tomorrow morning, go to the head eunuch at Jingsi Courtyard.”

“Tell him the Seventh Prince caught a chill last night and is staying here for treatment.”

Her mouth fell open. For a long moment, she couldn’t speak.

“What is there to fear?” I looked at the snow beyond the window, my voice quiet.

“A lowly consort whose name even the emperor has forgotten, and an unwanted child. At worst, we’ll freeze to death together in this courtyard.”

### Part 2

Early the next morning, I sent Chuntao to Jingsi Courtyard.

She left looking anxious, afraid the head eunuch would make trouble.

But before half an incense stick could burn, she returned.

She pushed open the door, furious.

“My lady! I’m so angry!”

“I told him His Highness caught a chill and would rest here for a few days. He agreed without a moment’s thought!”

I looked up at her.

She imitated his false solicitude.

“He said you were kind, then said if His Highness was unwell, he would trouble you to care for him a few more days.”

“Not a word about bringing him back. He only wanted to dump this burden on us!”

I said nothing.

To them, Heng was no precious imperial prince. Only an unwanted burden they could never quite get rid of.

Without another word, I took the porridge I’d kept warm and went to the side chamber.

He had woken early.

He sat upright on the bed’s edge. The bedding was already neatly arranged.

At my footsteps, he looked up and immediately stood.

“Lady Shen.”

His voice was still hoarse and weak from the night’s chill, but perfectly polite.

“Sit down and eat.”

I handed him the bowl.

He glanced at me, his hands hanging awkwardly by his sides. Cautious uncertainty lay in his eyes, as though he couldn’t believe it was meant for him.

I understood.

“Eat. It won’t be pleasant once it’s cold.”

Only with that reassurance did he carefully take the bowl and sip the porridge.

Afterward, I drew his hands toward me to examine them.

Last night’s ointment had dried into a thin layer, but the serious sores still looked terrible.

Little by little, I applied the rest.

My own hands had been like that when I first arrived.

Cracked chilblains, wounds splitting and seeping blood. The slightest cold water hurt to the bone.

I blew gently on his wounds.

“If it hurts, say so. You don’t have to endure it.”

He shook his head through clenched teeth.

“It doesn’t hurt.”

Over the next few days, I invited him to help dry herbs, tend our little vegetable patch, and clean the courtyard.

At first, he was afraid. He did only what he was told, scarcely daring to move freely.

Gradually, he grew less constrained.

He dried herbs with me, loosened soil, watered plants, and helped Chuntao carry water and sweep. He was quick and conscientious.

When the wind tore the window paper, he found more and patched it himself. He stuffed scraps of cloth into the drafts around the doors.

One afternoon, I heard a sound while mending clothes indoors.

Through the window, I saw him crouching beside the vegetable patch, helping Chuntao pull out seedlings killed by frost and loosen the soil again.

She sat beside him sorting vegetables and grumbling about something. He nodded occasionally. His expression barely changed, but his whole body looked more relaxed.

I thought he was slowly getting better.

Then one sleepless night, I put on my padded coat and went for a walk.

Passing the side chamber, I stopped without thinking.

The door stood slightly ajar.

I looked through the gap.

The quilt lay neatly arranged on the bed. He wasn’t using it.

He was curled in a corner, his back to the wall, his arms around his knees, making himself as small as possible.

I stood there a long time, something blocking my chest.

Finally, I went in and pulled the quilt over him.

He stiffened and jerked his head up, his eyes full of panic.

I stroked his head.

“Sleep. No one will hurt you here.”

His eyes reddened. He had to close them to hold back his tears.

### Part 3

That was how Heng stayed at Zhutang Courtyard.

But none of us expected the head eunuch, so generous about letting him go, to steal all the grain and charcoal the Imperial Household Department allotted him.

Life here was already difficult. My rank was the lowest, and everyone took a cut. Little reached my hands.

With another mouth to feed through winter, we suddenly had to ration every bite and piece of charcoal.

Chuntao clenched her fists and started out.

“I’ll go argue with him!”

“Don’t.”

“But my lady, we already have too little charcoal and grain. Now he’s taken His Highness’s allowance. How will we get through winter?”

Her eyes reddened with distress.