"Jing, let's stop fighting. Let's do this life right. I'll make you the most revered woman in the world. Name anything—it's yours."
Wu Qi cradled her face, his voice dropping to a wheedling murmur.
"Do it right?" Su Jing's laugh held no warmth. "In the last life, you chained me to the bed like livestock. You forbade anyone from speaking to me. You left me unable to live and unable to die. And you call that love?"
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Jing. I didn't mean to. I couldn't control myself—" His eyes darted, panicked, a child caught in a lie.
"Jing, let me tell you a story."
* * *
Once there was a little boy. His father was a brilliant general, and the boy grew up in silk and splendor, admired by all. Yet he had never known a single happy day.
Because his mother lived inside her bedchamber. She had never once stepped outside. She had never spoken a word to him.
When he was older, he tottered to her room and discovered the truth. It wasn't that she wouldn't leave. She couldn't. A thin chain circled her wrist, tethering her to an entire stolen life.
The little boy ran to his father, crying, demanding to know who had locked his mother away.
The general smiled and ruffled his hair.
"The world outside is dangerous. Your mother is too gentle. If I let her go, bad people would destroy her."
The boy believed him. He thought his mother must be terribly bored, so every day he went to pay his respects, saving his favorite treats to bring her.
She never gave him a kind look. She never touched the food. She would stare at his face, blank and hollow, and then sneer or scream that he was a little demon and should get out.
It hurt every time, but the boy never stopped coming. Rain or shine, every single day.
"Mother, the tutor says I'm a prodigy. I memorized the entire Analerta in one day. Won't you tell me I did well?"
"Mother, the kitchen made pumpkin cakes today. I kept one warm in my pocket the whole way. Won't you try a bite?"
"Mother, Father took me to the palace. I made lots of new friends. My favorite is Princess Cheng'an—she's so pretty, but she seems scared of me. I always make her cry. Am I doing something wrong?"
He never once received an answer. Not once.
* * *
One night, he refused to leave her room. His father arrived without warning—and his father never allowed him near his mother. The boy panicked and hid inside the wardrobe.
Through the crack in the doors, he watched his mother tremble. Tears streaked her beautiful face. She was on her knees, begging.
His father hauled her up like a sack and threw her onto the bed.
The sound of tearing fabric. His mother's cries of pain. They circled the boy's skull like ghosts.
He clamped both hands over his mouth and wept without a sound. An eternity passed before the room went silent. He crept out of the wardrobe and saw his mother, half-dressed, her body mapped in bruises.
She smiled. It was the first time she had ever smiled at him. And it did not make him happy.
"Come here, Qi'er." She beckoned, her voice gentle at last.
The boy inched toward her. She pulled him into her arms.
It was the first time she had ever held him. He would remember it for the rest of his life.
She was soft and warm and fragrant, and all the terror and confusion dissolved in her embrace.
"Good boy. Will you do something for Mama? Steal the key to this chain from your father?"
* * *
"Will Mother come back?" Tears brimmed in the little boy's eyes.
Something in the woman's gaze faltered. She touched his head. "Yes. Mother will come back."
The boy was clever. He waited until his father drank himself unconscious, crept into the bedchamber, and slipped the key from the belt around the sleeping man's waist.
That night was cold, but the moon was bright.
He unlocked the chain around his mother's wrist with his own small hands. Freedom twisted her face into something unrecognizable—a smile so wide it frightened him.
"Mother, you won't leave me, will you? You'll come back?"
This time there was no answer. She did not look back. She pushed through the door and ran, leaving him nothing but the sight of her retreating silhouette.
She did return the next day.
As a corpse.
She had been an opera singer—the leading lady of a traveling troupe. She and the martial actor who shared her stage had loved each other in secret, had pledged themselves to each other long before the general ever laid eyes on her. But one glimpse from a powerful man, and she was carried off in a bridal sedan before she could say goodbye.
She knew that even free, she would never outrun the general. Only death could sever the chain for good.
She and her lover drank poison together, lay down side by side, and chose to be husband and wife in the world below.
The general locked the boy in a pitch-dark storeroom for five full days. When the boy staggered out, half-dead from hunger, his father was waiting.
* * *
"Was Father right? The moment she left that room, she died." The general smiled, though nothing in his eyes smiled with it. He looked at his son the way one looks at a defective product.
"Remember this, Qi'er. You killed your mother."
Those words became the nightmare that devoured every night of his childhood.
"Jing, do you know? On our wedding night, I walked into the bridal chamber, my heart full, and found you asleep. You'd slumped to one side. I bent to carry you, and you spoke in your dream. Do you remember what you said?"
Wu Qi's mouth twisted into something that could have been a smile.
"You murmured, 'Brother Shen, why don't you love me?' On my wedding night, my wife lay in my arms and called another man's name. No—not even a man. And I thought, You're just like her. Just like my wretched mother."
His hand closed around Su Jing's throat, his eyes burning red.
"You're the same. Sooner or later you'll leave me. Abandon me. Tell me—shouldn't I chain you up, too?"
"But in the last life, watching you die in front of me, I finally understood. I was wrong. Chains can't protect the person you love. Only power can. Only sitting on the highest throne in the world can set you free."
"Jing, forgive me. I loved you too much. I couldn't control it, and I did terrible things. I swear—if you forget Shen Yuan, if you stay with me, I will never hurt you again. Be my empress. We'll be together forever…"
* * *
Wu Qi knelt beside her, babbling, words spilling over one another.
"Your empress?" Su Jing smiled.
"I drank the sterilization elixir. How can I be your empress?"
"You—what?"
"That's right. Do you really think the old emperor would have handed over the Shadow Guard Token otherwise?"
Wu Qi stared for several heartbeats, then broke into a grin. "It doesn't matter, Jing. I don't care. Children can come from anyone, but the empress can only be you. If it bothers you, I'll kill the mother and keep the child. Sound fair?"
"Wu Qi."
For the first time, Su Jing looked into his eyes and spoke his name calmly, without venom.
"Hmm?"
"You should find a woman who truly loves you. Then you'll find happiness. It isn't too late. Stop this. Please?"
"Stop?" A bark of laughter. "Jing, I've wired every street in this city with explosives. The moment those troops outside breach the gates, the charges detonate. I passed the point of no return long ago. If you refuse me, then we die together. In the underworld, you will still be my wife."
Su Jing's fingers curled into the armrest until the wood bit into her palms. Her breath came thin and shallow, and her lips moved without sound.
* * *
At last she spoke.
"If I agree, will you release Shen Yuan and Jia Xiche's forces?"
"Yes. Pull back their armies and I'll pretend none of this happened." Wu Qi's face lit up.
"Will you govern the realm wisely and treat the people with care?"
"Yes."
"Will you respect me until I come to love you? No force, no chains, no cages?"
"Yes."
"Then… I agree."
Su Jing lifted her gaze. The look she gave him was almost tender, and that single glance steadied his hammering heart.
"Jing, I love you."
Wu Qi swept her up, pressed her into the bed, and closed his eyes to kiss her with the reverence of a man in prayer.
Her body was soft, her warmth intoxicating. He sank into it, lost, falling, drowning in her.
A sharp sting at his throat. A gold-and-jade butterfly hairpin pierced his carotid artery, and blood poured in a thick, dark stream.
* * *
His breath collapsed. Blood seeped from his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He slumped sideways onto the bed.
The hairpin was poisoned.
He died in the happiest moment of two combined lifetimes.