Chapter 9

I walked up to him and looked down. “Your Majesty still doesn’t understand?”

I reminded him coldly, “The young man who once accompanied me to the Lantern Festival, walking with me and guessing riddles, died long ago.”

I recounted each thing to him. “When you favored Gu Yunshu, I did not stop you. When you made me kneel in the rain, I stopped pleading, too.”

I crouched before his colorless face. “If Your Majesty thinks power matters more than my heart, then I will take your power away from you, inch by inch.”

I spoke softly. “That is what I call fair.”

Pei Yan lay sprawled on the ground, tears dropping one by one onto the golden bricks.

Only now did he understand that all my obedience, attentiveness, and companionship had been a deception. Every step had been leading him toward this ending.

He choked out an apology. “Wanning, I was wrong…”

He reached for the hem of my robe, weeping so hard that not a trace of an emperor’s dignity remained. “I truly know I was wrong. Don’t abandon me. Please, don’t cast me aside.”

I stood and pulled my robe free of his fingers.

The last words I said to him were, “Pei Yan, neither of us owes the other anything anymore.”

22

In the Cold Palace, Gu Yunshu huddled in a corner, her hair disheveled.

The once-famous beauty of the harem had withered until she was hardly recognizable.

After Pei Shuo ascended the throne, the father of the Lady Changzai who had died unjustly personally presided over the case against her.

The palace maid she had forced to her death, the low-ranking consorts she had tormented—every blood debt was brought to light again.

To punish her for her deception, the imperial physicians were ordered to force potent medicine into her. Her body would never recover.

She had to endure constant pain and perform the heaviest manual labor in the Cold Palace day after day.

Before leaving the palace, I went to see her one last time.

She was crawling beside a vat of spoiled rice water. The moment she saw me, she went mad and charged at the prison bars. “You came to laugh at me! Gu Wanning, do you really think you’ve won?”

I looked at her through the bars. “I never thought I wanted to defeat you, Elder Sister.”

I calmly told her, “I simply threw away everything you took from me.”

She stared at me.

“The bracelet, my husband, the empress’s throne—you stole each one, and thought you could remain above everyone forever.”

I curved my lips. “Now that none of it is yours anymore, what do you have left?”

She stood there dumbfounded, then burst into sobs.

Her crying struck the damp walls of the Cold Palace. No emperor, servant, or guest would linger another step for her now.

I turned and left without looking back.

She had spent her whole life depending on other people’s eyes. Once no one looked at her anymore, she was nothing at all.

23

Pei Shuo ascended the throne and changed the era name to Cheng’an.

Pei Yan was deposed and reduced to a commoner, confined for life in his old palace at Xishan.

Later, people said he had gone mad.

He would not let anyone touch a single thing left in the side courtyard. Every day, he held the old, chipped Buddha statue and talked to it, clutching a divorce letter and an unmarked spirit tablet.

He had carved that tablet himself for the child of ours who had never been born.

Whenever it rained, he knelt beneath the downpour, calling my name again and again.

But I would never hear him again.

I took the small dowry my mother had saved for me and left the capital.

Pei Shuo once tried to keep me, even promising to honor me with the title of Empress Dowager.

When I refused, he helped stage my death and sent me to Jiangnan.

I bought a small courtyard in a waterside town. A plum tree grew in its yard, and its blossoms were beautiful in winter.

On the Lantern Festival, the streets of Jiangnan were also hung with lanterns.

I carried a little rabbit lantern made of bamboo strips and passed alone through the lively crowd, guessing riddles and buying candied treats.

When I reached a bridge, I stopped to watch the lanterns reflected in the water.

So the Lantern Festival was beautiful everywhere.

——— THE END ———

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