The last time I saw His Majesty was on the night he took my cousin as Noble Consort Shu.
The red candles made Jiaofang Palace exceptionally warm, yet I felt a chill run through my entire body. On the table still sat a bowl of unfinished ginseng soup, brewed by my own hands, with his favorite honey-marinated kumquats. Now a thin frost rimmed the bowl, looking just like our steadily cooling affection.
"A-Heng," he said, his voice laced with intoxication, his dragon robe still carrying the scent of rouge bought outside the palace, "tomorrow, won't you go pin the hair ornaments on Noble Consort Shu for me? She looks just like..."
She looked like the late, beloved Empress, his white moonlight. He did not finish the sentence, but I had long grown tired of hearing it. At fifteen, when I stood in the Imperial Garden wearing an alizarin-red skirt, he had emerged from the winding path with the boundless apricot blossoms reflected in his eyes, telling me I looked precisely like the woman he had cherished in his youth.
Only later did I discover that woman was Shennian Qiu, the prime minister's daughter, with whom he had an arranged marriage since childhood. Regrettably, when the Shen family fell into disgrace, she had voluntarily shouldered the charge of illicit communication with enemy states to protect his reputation. I stepped into her shadow to become Empress, yet I could never truly become her.
The copper water clock in Jiaofang Palace dripped on. As I counted the three hundred and sixty-fifth drop, I finally spoke: "Does His Majesty still remember who it was that used her own blood to brew medicine for you outside the Cold Palace back then?"
He started slightly, the alcohol seeming to wear off a little: "Of course I remember... A-Heng, you have always been sensible..."
"Sensible?" I laughed, my fingernails digging deep into my palms. "So in Your Majesty's eyes, the ten deep years of affection from your concubine can simply be dismissed with the word 'sensible'?"
That year he was still the Crown Prince under house arrest, and I had sneaked into the palace to keep him company. The winter in the Cold Palace had no charcoal fire, so I wrapped my own fox-fur cloak around him, hugging ice bricks at night to warm towels so I could bring down his fever. Later, when he contracted a chill and coughed up blood, I cut my wrist day after day to draw blood, mixing it with ginseng slices to brew medicine. Those droplets of blood falling onto the bluestone slabs looked precisely like the pomegranate flowers on Noble Consort Shu's skirt.
"Nianqiu would never throw such unreasonable tantrums." He frowned, his dragon boots crushing the Golden Dangle Hairpin I had dropped on the floor. "She is gentle and virtuous, and never picks fights with me..."
"So Your Majesty intends to hand the authority over the six palaces to my cousin?" I gazed at the Empress's seal on the table, the very one he had personally given me on my birthday last year. "Just as you gave the position of Empress to me back then—you are merely looking for a replacement."
He finally flared up in anger, his dragon robe sweeping over and overturning the vanity case: "How can you compare yourself to Nianqiu! She died for me..."
"By rushing to her death for Your Majesty, is that it?" I interrupted him, pulling a yellowed imperial edict from my sleeve. "Then does Your Majesty know that before Miss Shen drew her last breath, she entrusted a palace servant to deliver a letter to me?"
The candlelight suddenly flickered violently, his complexion turning alternately pale and ashen in the light and shadow. I unfolded the letter, my voice as light as a feather: "She said that if the Crown Prince ascends the throne, he must entrust the old guards of the Shen family to generals he can trust, and must not blindly trust—"
"Enough!" He rose abruptly, a teacup smashing near my feet and shattering into fine powder. "You actually dare to hide the belongings of a criminal official!"
I looked at the murderous intent in his eyes and suddenly laughed until tears fell. In the face of imperial power, ten years of affection were not even worth a scrap of previous-dynasty secret history. That year, I risked the annihilation of my entire clan to conceal the cause of Shennian Qiu's death, yet now it had become a threat in his eyes.
"Does Your Majesty know why I have never borne children?" I unbuttoned my collar, revealing the gruesome scar across my heart. "Back then, to beg for medicine for you, I knelt in the snow for three days and three nights, permanently ruining my constitution."
His pupils constricted violently, his Adam's apple bobbing, but he said nothing. Outside the hall, the night watch drums suddenly sounded, marking the third watch. I remembered the night of our wedding, when he lifted the red veil and told me he would share the fireworks of the mortal world with me and see every blossom in Chang'an.
"Tomorrow, I will send this Empress's seal to my cousin's palace." I gently placed the imperial seal back on the table, the gold-inlaid jade pattern biting painfully into my palm. "It's just that this position of Empress—I no longer wish to hold it."
He reached out to pull me back, the gold threads of his dragon robe scratching the back of my hand: "You are my Empress; in life you are my person, and in death you are my ghost—"
"Has Your Majesty ever regarded me as a person?" I shook off his hand, a droplet of blood falling onto his bright yellow cuff, looking just like the branch of red plum he had pinned in my hair that year. "At morning court tomorrow, I will petition for the abolishment of the Empress. From this day on, I shall keep company with the green lamps and ancient Buddha, and never set foot in this Forbidden City for even half a step."
As I walked out of Jiaofang Palace, heavy snow suddenly began to fall. I thought of the apricot blossom rain from when I was fifteen, when he said he would take me as his wife and promise me a lifetime of safety and peace. It turns out that vows really can be blown away by wind and snow, just like the blood on his cuff, which was covered by the white snow in the blink of an eye.
The old plum trees beneath the palace walls were blooming. I snapped off a branch and tucked it into my hair. In the distance came the clapper of the night watchman, and the new year was about to arrive. And my ten years of youth had finally shattered in this snow into a remnant dream that could never be pieced back together.
"May Your Majesty and I, across all lives and incarnations, never meet again."
Snow fell upon my eyelashes, blurring the red walls and glazed tiles before my eyes. This time, I did not look back.