That very night, A-Yan was brought to me.
She'd been whipped. Her inner robe was spotted with blood, her skin bone-white, yet her eyes still held their stubborn fire.
The two palace guards hauled her in between them, her feet barely touching the floor. The moment she saw me, tears flooded the roots of her lashes. Her voice shook. "My lady."
Every lash mark on her body throbbed as though it were carved into mine.
I applied medicine while there was still time, then pressed her for answers.
* * *
A-Yan replayed every detail. The pork had come from the Imperial Kitchen Bureau. It was nearly lunchtime; the Bureau was swarming with activity. She had grabbed an attendant and explained what she needed. The attendant pointed vaguely at the meat station, then scurried off. A-Yan picked up the pork from a porcelain dish and left.
That was the only ingredient she had brought in from outside my quarters.
The congee had been preserved by Fu Tingyan and tested. Only the pork was poisoned. A-Yan had placed a small mound of minced pork in the center of the bowl; I had scooped exactly that spot.
Little of the pork had been used. The night I collapsed, Fu Tingyan tore my chambers apart. When A-Yan was seized, the rest of the pork was found and confiscated.
The toxicologist's verdict: arsenic.
Every piece of evidence lined up.
As she spoke, confusion and dread twisted A-Yan's face. She asked, in a small voice, whether the Emperor was going to kill her. But for now, there was no chance Fu Tingyan would release her.
I held her steady—promised her I would find the real culprit, promised I would not make her wait long.
My time ran out. The eunuch who oversaw the Court of Punishment stepped in and led A-Yan away. She clawed at my fingers until the last second, until they pried her loose.
There was no room for grief. My first move was to summon the head steward of the Imperial Kitchen Bureau.
The Bureau supplied every morsel of food in the palace. How had a slab of poisoned meat materialized on a prep counter? How did it pass intake inspections?
I sent someone to fetch Steward Li—a thin, jittery middle-aged man whose courage buckled at the first hard look. A few sharp words and he crumbled, spilling everything.
The Bureau had been battling a rat infestation. Cats couldn't be allowed in, so the staff devised a solution: smear pork with arsenic, mince it into bait, and leave it for the rats. When the vermin caught on, the staff switched to injecting the arsenic deep into the meat itself.
How the poisoned bait wound up on a cooking counter—he couldn't say.
Negligence, at a minimum. I handed Steward Li over to the Court of Punishment and turned to the next thread. Something nagged at me—an uneasy itch I couldn't scratch—but desperation to save A-Yan left me no time to examine it.
By the time I reported to Fu Tingyan, my shirt was soaked through with cold sweat.
He sat across from me and listened, tapping his fingertip against the desktop—a small, unconscious tic that surfaced whenever he was thinking. When the tapping stopped, I braced for more questions. But all he did was call in an attendant and order A-Yan's release from the Court of Punishment.
It had taken a single day—yet every second had stretched into an eternity. My body was still wrecked from the arsenic, and I couldn't go to collect her myself. When A-Yan was finally escorted back, she stumbled through the door red-eyed and hollow, as though someone had scooped the marrow out of her.
I had been moved back to my own quarters by then. With just the two of us left, I finally asked what had been eating at me.
"That day, how exactly did you end up with the poisoned bait? Everyone in the Bureau knew where it was kept. If the attendant pointed you to the pork, why didn't she warn you that poisoned rat bait was stored nearby?"
The light in A-Yan's eyes dimmed. Hurt crept across her brows. "So my lady still suspects me."
I could not believe A-Yan would poison Fu Tingyan. But the facts were stacked up too neatly to explain away. Asking this question was the only way to give her a chance to fill the gap.
"I took it exactly where the attendant told me to." A-Yan's voice was firm, her gaze steady. "If you don't believe me, bring her in. We'll settle it face to face."
Fu Tingyan had already warned me to do precisely that.
He didn't trust A-Yan. The only way to clear her was for me to unearth the truth myself—and hand it over as proof.
While A-Yan and I were still talking, the attendant I'd sent to fetch the kitchen maid returned.
"Your Ladyship—the woman from the Imperial Kitchen Bureau is dead. She took her own life."
* * *
According to the attendant, the maid had vanished the night I collapsed. By the time my people went looking, she was found hanging from an old tree in the Cold Palace. No signs of a struggle.
With the witness dead, I had no way to confirm or deny whether her death was guilt-driven.
No evidence pointed to A-Yan. The case closed itself.
A-Yan and I, both survivors of a brush with death, at last exhaled.
I never again dared to bring Fu Tingyan food I'd made. I kept my head down, stayed by his side during the Decree duties, and routed every request through Eunuch Chen.
* * *
Fu Tingyan had been receiving senior ministers nonstop for days. Then came the announcement.
He would march to Shazhou in person—an imperial campaign.
General Du's latest dispatch brought good news: Gaochang had been retaken, every inch of lost ground reclaimed. But years of lush grassland had fattened the Xiongnu into a formidable force. They had been pushed back, not broken; it was only a matter of time before they returned.
Worse, beyond Gaochang lay the trade roads to the Western Regions. As long as the Xiongnu harassed that passage, our envoys could never reach the kingdoms out west to negotiate an alliance.
The victory at Gaochang had lifted the army's spirits to a roar. The Emperor's presence at the front would raise them higher still.
The departure was set for two months out—deep winter by then.
He told me while I was trimming paper for him. I warned him that winter in Shazhou was nothing like the Capital—savage north winds that cut like blades across your face.
He'd been overworking himself into illness lately; I could smell the faint bitterness of herbal medicine on his clothes. Two months was enough time to sew him a heavy cloak.
"I'm planning to take you with me."
My heart leapt. Shazhou didn't feel like a far-off dream anymore—then reason swallowed the joy in one gulp.
Bringing a consort on a military campaign. Hardly appropriate.
"You're from Shazhou. Your father commands its garrison. You speak the Xiongnu language and know western customs inside out." Fu Tingyan set his brush down and glanced at me. "Taking you along makes perfect sense. Or don't you want to go?"
"I do."
I blurted it out before he could change his mind.
The corner of his mouth curved, silent and slow. "Yin Yao came to your door looking for a fight and you didn't answer half that fast."
"Your Majesty jests." I forced out a thin laugh.
Yin Yao's ambition was written so boldly across her face she might as well have hung a banner. I had no doubt she would fail. Fu Tingyan had no intention of handing her the phoenix seat.
Still, I had to ask. "There is no shortage of capable men at court. Why bring me?"
"How long do you think you'd survive here without me?"
His tone was even—the words were not. "You have no power. No allies. I am the only person standing behind you. Have you ever stopped to think what happens the moment I'm not?"
Cold sweat slid down my spine, soaking through my robe.
I swallowed. He reached over and patted the top of my head.
"If that frightens you, then stay where I can see you. The second you leave my sight, your life is no longer guaranteed."
His words razed every defense I had built.
Inside the inner palace, even peace required power. Fu Tingyan was a double-edged blade—poison and shield in one hand. I could no longer afford to keep him at arm's length. He had treated me well; he had given me as much freedom as his position allowed.
And safety.
My passage to Shazhou was settled. When I told A-Yan, her whole face blazed with a joy so fierce it could have lit the room on fire. She started making lists at once—what to pack, what to eat, what to do the instant we arrived.
We agreed, without hesitation, on the thing we missed most: frozen grapes. The memory of their taste dissolved on our tongues like a phantom—cold, tart, sweet.
Days slipped by. Autumn deepened. Sometimes I climbed the watchtower and looked out over the entire palace city—pavilion after pavilion dotted with scarlet and gold, a sea of falling leaves.
* * *
The heavy cloak I'd asked Eunuch Chen to commission was finally ready. He told me he would bring it to Fenglin Palace tonight so Fu Tingyan could try it on; if the fit was off, there was still time to alter it.
Without quite noticing it, I had spent a great many nights at Fu Tingyan's side. No entangled whispers, no stolen caresses—just two people under the same lamplight, each absorbed in their own work, waiting for the first sliver of dawn to climb over the eaves.
I never expected to keep it up this long. And everything that bound us together lived in the pages and ink of Fenglin Palace.
The night air was sharp. I grabbed two cloaks on my way out—one for him, one for me. At the entrance I found a crowd of attendants kneeling in neat rows, none of them faces I recognized.
Eunuch Chen stood by the door, brow knotted in distress. I caught his eye through the crowd and mouthed, What's going on?
He mouthed back: Noble Consort Yin. Inside.
That explained the army of servants. Definitely Yin Yao's people.
I decided to wait. After roughly the length of a cup of tea, the doors swung open and Yin Yao emerged. Her attendants rose as one and parted to form an aisle.
She spotted me from a distance. Her chin lifted—an almost involuntary gesture of triumph—and she walked toward me as though fresh from a conquest. If she looked that pleased, she'd gotten what she wanted from Fu Tingyan.
I offered a mild smile, expecting her to pass with a nod, but she stopped in front of me.
She narrowed her eyes. Beneath them lurked the hungry thrill of a predator about to swallow its prey. "No favor lasts forever."
Then she swept away with her procession. I watched the tail end vanish down the corridor before stepping inside.
Fu Tingyan looked like Yin Yao had wrung him dry. His brow was furrowed into three deep lines. I set the cloak down, draped the other over his shoulders, and pressed my fingertip between his eyebrows.
"Yin Yao is a handful. I understand."
That surprised a laugh out of him. He cocked an eyebrow. "You shouldn't understand that."
Then he told me why she'd come. She had learned I was joining the march to Shazhou and demanded to go as well.
I thought of the look on her face as she left. I'd already guessed the answer.
"Aren't you going to ask why I agreed?" Fu Tingyan said.
"You said yes because there was a reason you couldn't refuse." I picked up the second cloak, wrapped it around myself, and reached for the book I'd left open the night before. "Besides, what's done is done. There's no point in questioning it."
"Don't you feel any sense of threat at all?"
"Should I? Afraid of losing your favor?" I turned a page. "Favor comes fast and goes faster. I have no attachment to it and no interest in it. I just want to do what's in front of me—"
The book was snatched from my hands. Fu Tingyan's face had gone flat with displeasure.
The volume clattered onto the desk. My palm was empty—and then his fingers locked around my wrist. One sharp pull, and my upper body lurched across the gap.
Scrolls toppled in a cascade of rustling paper, scattering across the floor.
My scalp tingled. We were eye to eye, a fingertip apart. His warm breath grazed my face, and every pore on my skin trembled.
Something dangerous simmered in the depths of his pupils.
"You think this is favor?"
Cold sweat slicked my back. What answer would satisfy him?
My mind scrambled for purchase under the pressure, and I finally squeezed out: "Not favor. Imperial grace."
I watched his jaw flex—once, twice—teeth clenched behind his lips.
What else was I supposed to say? It was a perfectly safe answer!
I was lost. The only option left was to play dumb—but while my mind was busy cycling through every catastrophic outcome, Fu Tingyan closed the distance.
He kissed me.
I was pinned—overwhelmed—and had no idea when he'd pulled me off the chair and pressed me into the carpet. He had never been this unguarded. He moved like something starved, tracing the line of my lips and the corner of my mouth. I couldn't budge under his hold; the edges of my vision darkened. By the time he finally let me breathe, I was nearly unconscious.
He asked again: "Have you figured it out yet? Is what I feel for you 'favor'?"
My skull was ringing, oxygen-starved, every coherent thought scattered like startled birds. The reflex answered for me. "Yes."
He bit me.
I yelped—"Ow!"—gasping, and the shock slammed my wits back into my head.
Tears burned in my eyes. I shouted, "It's whatever Your Majesty says it is!"
That earned me another bite.
I snapped. "You are being completely unreasonable!"
"I've laid out every reason." Fu Tingyan looked at me, composed to a fault. "You're the one who refuses to take the hint."
I opened my mouth to argue, but Eunuch Chen's voice rose from outside. "Your Majesty, is everything all right?"
Fu Tingyan hadn't even answered before the old man barged in—he must have thought something had happened.
Eunuch Chen had spent decades in the palace. One glance at the scene on the floor and the tray slipped from his hands. He dropped face-first to the tiles.
"This servant deserves death!"
His forehead pressed to the stone, the tray clattering beside him. The brand-new cloak tumbled to the ground.