Something about the Empress's vacant stare had carved itself into my memory. I watched her longer than I should have. Shortly after the performance began, she rose from her seat.
No attendant followed.
My gaze trailed her silhouette until it vanished. I told myself the area was crowded—even without a personal attendant, the palace staff would keep an eye on her. But moments later, a scream slashed through the music.
"The Empress has fallen into the water!"
I was on my feet instantly, running toward the voice. Near the water's edge, a cluster of maids had bunched together in a frantic, useless knot.
On the black surface of the lake, only her robes floated.
Shoving through the crowd cost me precious seconds. The formal banquet clothes were impossibly heavy, so I peeled them off until I was down to a thin underskirt and threw myself in.
The water was bone-cold. By the time I reached the Empress, my arms and legs were half frozen. I groped through the dark, finally caught her shoulder, grabbed her arm, and hauled her upward. Her face was inches from mine—eyes closed, skin drained of every shade of color.
Terror cracked open inside my chest. Her body was limp, weightless, like something already dead.
Dragging her ashore emptied every drop of strength I had. I laid her flat, yanked off her shoes and socks, and rubbed her hands and feet, heat against ice. "Someone give me a hand—"
I looked up, gasping. Consorts and noble ladies formed a perfect ring of spectators. Not one stepped forward.
They didn't want to.
Without Dowager Consort Sun, the Empress was nothing but a figurehead propped on a throne. If she died tonight, any one of these women might rise to the phoenix seat. Why save her?
This was the first time I had ever used the weight of Fu Tingyan's favor.
"You two—get over here and rub her hands and feet." I locked eyes with the two nearest consorts, daughters of censorate officials. One of them lifted her chin. "You and I hold equal rank. What gives you the right to order me?"
"The fact that I am the Emperor's most favored consort!" I roared. "One word from me in his bed and your head will be on a pike. Now help!"
Perhaps my face was terrifying enough. They came. I spun, barked at someone to fetch the court physician, and bent over the Empress to breathe air into her lungs.
She had stopped breathing.
"Harder! Rub harder!"
I forced breath after breath between her lips, pounding her chest. By the time I felt the faintest flutter of air returning through her nostrils, the cold sweat on my body had merged with the lake water into a single chill layer.
The physicians arrived fast, but I was spent. I crawled away from the Empress to clear space, limbs shaking.
She's breathing now. That gives her at least half a chance.
She had already lost so much. The least fate could do was let her keep her life.
I slumped against a tree, stars swimming across my vision, thoughts spiraling around the Empress. Then a hand shot out from behind me and hauled me upright.
My vision blurred, then sharpened—onto a face I knew.
Fu Tingyan's grip on my wrist was strong enough to grind bone. In those dark, ink-black pupils burned something I had never seen before: shock, fury, and raw, unhidden panic.
And in that look, I saw myself.
* * *
* * *
Someone on the staff must have run to alert Fu Tingyan—that was why he'd arrived so fast.
I reached out and covered the hand clamped around my wrist. In that instant, something in his pupils contracted sharply.
"Save her." My voice shook. "She has nothing left."
His grip tightened another degree—then, finally, released. He turned without a word, face dark as a storm front, and strode toward the crowd.
I hadn't brought A-Yan—afraid she'd cause chaos—so I flagged down a random attendant and had myself escorted back. A-Yan took one look at me, dripping like a river ghost, and rushed to heat water.
The steam thickened around my skull, dragging my thoughts into fog, but I still remembered to tell A-Yan to keep tabs on the Empress's condition and alert me the moment anything changed.
Fever hit in the night. I drifted in and out of consciousness, throat parched, and pried my eyes open to call for A-Yan—only to find Fu Tingyan sitting at the edge of my bed.
He had just come in; the night's chill still clung to him. His palm pressed against my forehead—dry, warm.
"You're burning up." His thumb brushed across my cracked lips. "A-Yan went to brew your medicine."
"The Empress—how is she?" I clawed my way upright, desperate for news.
She was alive. Still unconscious, but alive. I let out a long breath; the weight in my chest finally eased. While he spoke, Fu Tingyan put a cup of water into my hands. I cupped it and murmured my thanks.
The room had no lamp. In the darkness every sense sharpened. I heard him exhale—so soft it was barely a sound.
He had once killed nearly everyone who stood against him. The Empress had survived only because, in the end, she'd never had a treacherous bone in her body.
I edged closer and leaned toward him, trying to read his face. His brow was faintly creased. Without thinking, I raised one finger and smoothed the lines between his eyebrows—then froze, horrified at my own boldness, and yanked my hand back.
Fu Tingyan caught it.
"The Empress is where she is because she had no choice." His face was close—so close I could trace every feature in the dark. His voice was low, as though it traveled through the blackness and into the past. "And I am no longer the prince who had no way out. With me, you will always have a choice. Jiang Mu—you are not the Empress, and you never will be. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
In the darkness, his eyes held a faint light. They seized mine and would not let go. My mind went blank for a long beat. I pressed my lips together, wordless.
Fu Tingyan broke into a cough, and his hand fell away from mine.
I scrambled upright on my knees and patted his back. He hadn't rested properly in days. If this went on, something would break.
I tried to summon someone to escort him back to his own chambers, but he stopped me.
"Your Majesty, please go and rest. Your body can't sustain this."
I thought he was refusing to rest at all. What he said instead was: I'll rest here.
The Empress was still lying unconscious, and he had not so much as glanced in the direction of her quarters.
Outside, the door creaked. A-Yan appeared with a bowl of medicine, and the Emperor sitting on my bed nearly sent her out of her skin.
"Your Majesty." She dipped a quick bow.
"Give me the medicine." He held out a hand. "You can go."
A-Yan ducked her head, eyes flying wide. I saw the barely contained glee blazing in them. She handed the bowl over, spun on her heel, slipped out—and pulled the door shut behind her.
Fu Tingyan stirred the medicine a few times, then held it out to me.
"Drink up. Then sleep."
* * *
They saved the Empress's life—but she was dying anyway.
A woman that frail, already in poor health, had been pulled from freezing water and then collapsed into a fever that settled deep. Add the grief knotted inside her chest, and she did not last a month.
She knew it was I who had pulled her from the lake. In her final hours, she sent for me.
Her chambers were quiet and cavernous. She was dying, and not a single visitor had come. The attendant led me to the bedchamber. It was stark—only the barest furniture, no flowers, no color.
How barren must a heart become before a person stops trying to make a life feel alive?
I stepped past the curtain. The Empress's lady-in-waiting knelt at the bedside, clasping her mistress's hand. She turned at the sound of my footsteps.
Her eyelids were swollen from weeping. When she saw me, she swiped her eyes twice, laid the Empress's hand gently down, and stepped aside with her head bowed.
The Empress was propped against the pillows, dark hair spilling loose, framing a face drained to the color of paper.
Her eyes moved—just barely—and settled on me. "In the end… it was you." Her voice was the sound of wind moaning through a cracked window, thin and raw. She lifted a skeletal hand, trembling, and gestured me closer.
I sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand.
There was no flesh left to feel. The Empress had wasted away almost beyond recognition. Her eyes looked enormous—black and white, brimming—and tears spilled over in a silent flood.
"He still refuses to see me. Only because I bear the Sun family name…" She bit down on her lip so hard it bled—a bright bead rolling to her chin. "Only because my aunt killed his mother."
I caught her face with my free hand. "It's not your fault. Stop hurting yourself—ease up, please—"
I scrubbed the blood from her chin with my sleeve and reached for the attendants—but the lady-in-waiting had already slipped out. The room was empty now. Just the two of us.
She would not stop talking, as though she meant to leave here every word of longing and every ounce of anguish she had never been permitted to speak to Fu Tingyan.
She had loved him for years—all of it buried alive because of Dowager Consort Sun.
The more she said, the faster her strength drained. Her breathing grew labored, ragged—and then, strangely, her unfocused gaze sharpened. Light crept back into her eyes, the last flicker of vitality.
"Do you know how much I envy you?"
It was the first time I had ever seen the Empress smile. It was clean, unburdened—beautiful.
"Not your favor. What I envy is that… every drop of tenderness Fu Tingyan has in this life, he gives to you."
All his gentleness, poured into one person—and you cannot catch even a drop. Your suffering, your survival—what is it to him?
That isn't cruelty. It's a terrifying kind of devotion.
The weight in my chest pressed against my throat until I could barely speak. I kept talking anyway—You'll be all right. When you're stronger, I'll find a way to ask His Majesty to release you from the palace. You can go anywhere you want. Have you ever been to Shazhou? It's my hometown—they play music you've never heard, with dancers whose brows arch high, whose eyes run deep. And the desert—you can't see a desert anywhere in the Central Plains—
Even as the words tumbled out, the Empress had stopped listening.
Her fingers loosened. She let go of my hand and did not wake again.
I sat motionless, staring at her face, until the silence cracked and a sob ripped out of me.