By the time Princess Shengyang's interrogators arrived to drag Imperial Concubine Cao out to be flayed, they found only a corpse. She had preempted their vengeance with a length of white silk.
She left exactly one thing behind: a heavily brushed sumi-e will. It contained no confessions, no justifications. Just a single, desperate plea for the Emperor to care for the Second Princess, her daughter, with whatever fraction of affection he could spare.
Princess Shengyang, enraged and denied her primary target, unleashed her private guard on Consort Cao's staff. Every maid, every eunuch, every kitchen boy was dragged to the darkest cells of the Court of Judicial Review for interrogation. Fingers broke. Nails were pulled. But they extracted nothing because there was nothing to extract. Consort Cao had tended every boiling pot of safflower broth entirely alone. The trail ended in a puddle of blood on a stone floor.
It was then that Gong Pingru stepped out of the shadows and delivered the killing blow to a ghost. She publicly produced irrefutable evidence that the same Imperial Concubine Cao had ordered the icy water poured near her courtyard steps—the calculated "accident" that had almost cost Gong Pingru her life and her child.
In the ensuing chaos, Imperial Concubine Xiang—Ling Huai—was abruptly, violently entangled in the investigation. I didn't understand the maneuver until the dust settled: Gong Pingru had intentionally, surgically dragged Ling Huai's name into the killing field of Consort Cao's treason. Within exactly two weeks, the Emperor stopped visiting Ling Huai's pavilion. The pregnancy that had so recently commanded his tender, moonlit strolls was instantaneously eclipsed by political contamination and suspicion.
When I finally regained consciousness in Jinghe Palace, it sounded like my own breathing was echoing in a tomb. Consort Ji was slumped over the edge of my bed, deeply asleep, her hand gripping my blanket so tightly her knuckles were white, waiting for me to move.
She had handled the midwife. When Princess Shengyang's bloodhounds had finally tracked the midwife's name through the panic of Qi's delivery room, they found an empty house. The woman had simply ceased to exist. She had been gone for three days before anyone even realized she was missing.
Consort Ji woke when I shifted. She didn't ask how I felt. She just pulled me against her shoulder, her voice utterly devoid of emotion. "You have nothing to fear, Bao Niang. No matter how deep this water gets, Pingru and I will always hold you up."
* * *
Princess Shengyang's investigators tore the capital apart searching for the vanished midwife. They found nothing. A trail that should have led straight to an executioner's block dissolved into thin air.
But the guilt didn't dissolve. I began shrinking inside my own skin. I couldn't stomach hot food. I couldn't sleep without calming incense burning so thick I choked on it. There was less and less of me every day.
Two weeks later, the silence broke. Decai appeared at the gates of Ganquan Palace with an imperial summons. The Emperor required my presence in Yangxin Hall.
As I stepped over the high wooden threshold of the vestibule, Decai stepped directly into my path, dropping all protocol. "His Majesty is in a terrifying mood," he whispered rapidly, his eyes wide with genuine panic. "You are smarter than this, Your Grace. Do not provoke him further. Please."
Wei Zhang knew. He didn't have proof, but he knew exactly what had happened to the midwife.
When I entered the main hall, I gave no greeting and waited for no summons. I walked to the center of the cold polished floor and dropped to my knees, eyes fixed on the wood grain, refusing to speak.
I had never seen him angry like this. This wasn't the calculated, theatrical displeasure he showed the court, and it wasn't the offended silence from the night of the rice bowl. This was a contained, vibrating violence.
He crossed the room and slammed his hand onto his writing desk so hard the heavy Duan inkstone flipped into the air. It shattered against the floorboards inches from my knees. A thick spray of black ink erupted outward, slashing across the lower half of my pale green embroidered skirt. The ink soaked into the silk instantly, spreading like black rot across the fabric.
"Bao Niang," he grated out, the syllables dragged through his teeth. "Why have you become like this?"
Why have I become like this?
The sheer, breathtaking hypocrisy of the question snapped whatever frayed restraint I had left. I jerked my head up and looked him dead in the eye, my voice echoing in the cavernous hall for the first time in an eternity.
"Why don't you look at the throne and ask yourself why I became like this?" I screamed. "I did it for you."
Before entering these red walls, I was a girl who lacked absolutely nothing. I had parents who worshipped me, a grandfather who commanded the empire's scholars, and the protection of the Northwest army. I had a life written in sunlight. All of this—the poison, the paranoia, the blood on my hands—none of it would exist if I hadn't loved Wei Zhang. I had seen the cage, and I had walked into it with my eyes wide open, smiling, because he was inside it.
"If my surname wasn't Zhen," I demanded, gasping for air. "If my grandfather wasn't the Grand Tutor. If my father didn't control a hundred thousand cavalrymen—if I was just an ordinary girl on the street—would you have ever loved me?"
He looked down at me and did not answer.
The silence stretched, heavy and absolute. His refusal to answer provided the exact, devastating answer I had terrified myself with for years.
I looked up at the Son of Heaven and I laughed. It was a horrible, jagged sound, dry as dead leaves. "Wei Zhang. You shouldn't have provoked me today. You still need my family's military leverage to pry the Imperial Guard out of Shengyang's hands. Until that is done, you cannot afford to have a tantrum with me."
He didn't order my execution. He didn't even yell. He simply walked slowly around the ruined inkstone, stopped directly in front of where I knelt, and extended his right hand—palm up, an almost tender gesture, offering to help me stand.
I stared at that familiar, callused hand. My own hand twitched, instinctive, deeply embedded obedience urging me to take it.
And then his voice dropped into the freezing air above me: "Bao Niang. Look at yourself."
My hand froze.
"Wouldn't it have been so much easier to just stay blind?" he murmured, his tone smooth, conversational, and utterly monstrous. "You could have kept playing the role of the hopelessly besotted Zhen daughter, and I would have spent the rest of my life playing the devoted Emperor who adored you. I would have kept you entirely in the dark, and it would have been a beautiful fiction. You chose to tear down the scenery."
He tilted his head slightly. "That midwife—I have already dealt with the loose ends. If you're going to involve yourself in assassinations again, at least learn to execute them cleanly. The basic rule of this palace is: always sever the root."
He slowly retracted his empty hand. He clasped it casually behind his back, turned, and walked out of the hall without looking back.
I knelt there in the vast, echoing silence.
At least I didn't cry, I thought, a numb, hysterical undercurrent running through my brain. I didn't cry in front of him. That's a victory.
I pushed myself up. My knees were locked stiff. Hong Yu rushed in from the corridor, grabbed my arm, and scanned me for cuts. I told her I needed to change. My skirt was ruined. I pulled the fabric taut to show her: only ink, a jagged black stain across pale sage silk. She stared at it and said nothing.
When I got back to Ganquan Palace, I knelt over a silver basin and tried to scrub the ink out myself with freezing water. But it had set too long. The black dye had bonded with the silk fibers. It wasn't coming out.
Auntie Jin Se knelt quietly beside me, handing me a small bar of lye soap, watching my frantic, useless scrubbing without an ounce of judgment.
I wrung the heavy, wet silk between my raw hands. The tears started falling then, completely divorced from any conscious decision to cry. "It won't come out," I choked out, staring at the ruined gown. "Jin Se, it's never going to come out. It's ruined forever."
* * *
I don't remember being carried to bed, but the next morning I woke under the heavy brocade quilts. Before I had even fully opened my eyes, Decai was kneeling in my inner chamber, his face a mask of practiced, professional joy.
He had come to deliver congratulations.
I was being officially redesignated as Noble Consort Shun.
Shun? I pushed myself up on my elbows, staring at the eunuch. "My title was Bao. Since when—"
Decai dropped his gaze to the floor, his voice barely above a whisper, confirming that he understood exactly what the Emperor was doing. "Bao was a childhood name, Your Grace. It was a term of endearment, never a formal imperial designation. 'Shun' is His Majesty's chosen character for your official rank."
Shun.
Compliant. Docile. Obedient to authority.
Wei Zhang was a far more terrifying architect than I ever could have imagined. In a single stroke, he kept me at the highest rank a consort could hold and still humiliated me. He could crush you into the dirt with one hand, raise you with the other, and wear the same gentle smile while doing both.
I ordered the palace gates locked. I turned away every single concubine, minister's wife, and eunuch who came bearing gifts and congratulations. I found Gong Pingru in the side pavilion and wrapped my arms around her waist, burying my face in her shoulder without making a sound.
We stood there for a long time.
Finally, my voice muffled against the silk of her robe, I asked her: "Pingru. It's supposed to be early autumn. So why am I freezing to death?"