I curled up on the cold stone floor of Kunning Palace, my fingertips unconsciously tracing the worn stitching on my cuff. When I was fifteen, Moci had personally taught me how to embroider those twin lotus flowers. The threads had long since faded, yet they remained permanently seared into the moon-white brocade like a festering scar.
Faint footsteps sounded from outside the hall. I did not need to raise my head to know it was Qingluan entering with a bowl of medicine. Ever since the day I entered the palace, this girl had been planted by my side by the Crown Prince—no, His Majesty, as he should be called now. The sound of the copper spoon clinking against the rim of the bowl sent a sharp pain through my eardrums, and I suddenly remembered the first time Moci brewed medicine for me. Clumsily, he had knocked the medicine pot over onto the grey bricks, sweating with anxiety, until he finally dragged me over the wall to eat sweet pastries, declaring that bitter medicine paired with sweets was the only way not to fail such fine spring days.
"Your Ladyship, it is time for your medicine." Qingluan's voice was like silk soaked in ice water, wrapping tightly and chillingly around me. I raised my eyes to look at her, only to catch a fleeting glimpse of pity in the depths of hers. That pity churned my stomach with nausea, and I simply grabbed the medicine bowl and hurled it at the gold-gilt screen. The dark brown medicinal broth trickled down the coiling dragon patterns on the screen, looking uncannily like the fresh blood that had soaked through Moci's undergarments the year he blocked my stepmother's whip for me.
"His Majesty is staying at Yikun Palace tonight." Qingluan bent down to clear away the shards, her voice as light as a feather. "If Your Ladyship wishes to see him, this maid can—"
"Silence!" I snatched the white jade paperweight from the desk and threw it. It grazed her temple and struck a pillar, fracturing with a web of tiny cracks. She hastily withdrew, her skirt brushing past the scattered debris. I stared blankly at the cracks, suddenly recalling what Moci had said when he gave me the paperweight: "A'ning, if anyone bullies you in the future, just throw this at them." Yet now, I lacked even the courage to throw anything at that man.
A few wisps of willow catkins drifted in through the window, and in a daze, I was back by Taiye Pool that spring day. Moci, wearing a moon-white brocade robe, crouched beneath a willow tree, tying my swing ropes into the shape of a butterfly bow. With fresh willow buds staining his fingertips, he smiled, his eyes curving into lovely crescents. "Swing higher, A'ning, and see if you can reach the clouds in the sky." Giggling, I swung higher as the hem of my skirt brushed against his lapel, suddenly feeling as though the entire spring were contained within his eyes.
Later, however, when the Crown Prince and his guards broke into the Marquis Manor, Moci's back as he shielded me had looked so frail. The jade pendant at his waist smashed into two halves against the doorframe—the very one I had bought him with three months of my saved allowance. Pinching my chin, the Crown Prince had smiled with a sinister gloom. "So the person deep in my good brother's heart is none other than this pitiful little thing." When Moci was pressed to the ground, a drop of blood from his temple fell onto my embroidered shoes, blooming like an enchanting red plum blossom.
"Your Ladyship, the Emperor has arrived." Qingluan's announcement shattered my memories. I scrambled up in a panic, but at the sight of that bright yellow dragon robe, my knees went weak and I tumbled back onto the daybed. Holding a piece of osmanthus candy between his fingertips, he strolled closer. "I remember this is your favorite." The candy cracked crisply in his palm, and I suddenly remembered the day Moci was beheaded—it had been just such a sunny day. His severed head was hung from the city gate, the cinnabar mole at the corner of his eye darkened by the sun, looking just like the drop of rouge he had once brushed against my windowpane when he climbed over the wall the day we first met.
"Why?" I heard my own voice sound like a punctured bellows. "You already had everything." Suddenly, he pinched my chin, his thumb brushing over the mole at the corner of my lips—the one Moci always said looked like a little moon. "Because the way he looked at you made me feel like the entire world was mine, except for you." His warm breath brushed against my ear, laced with the heat of alcohol. "Now it's fine. You are my Empress, forever."
The nights in Kunning Palace were always this cold. I curled up inside the brocade quilt, listening to the clepsydra water clock chip away at the night, drop by drop. The candle flame on the desk flickered uncertainly, casting shadows on the wall that looked like a pack of clawing ghosts. I fished out the gold hairpin hidden beneath my pillow, the pearl at its tip trembling with my fingertips. This was the coming-of-age gift Moci had given me. He had promised that when I turned fifteen, he would ask his father to come to our manor to propose marriage, and that he would use a grand procession stretching ten miles to welcome me into his home as his bride.
"A'ning, once I pacify the rebellions in the Northern Frontier, I will take you to see the snow in the northern borderlands." These were the words he spoke the last time he climbed the wall to see me. Frost that had yet to melt still clung to his pauldrons, but his embrace was warm as he cradled the bag of roasted chestnuts he had bought for me. I clutched his sleeve, refusing to let go, never knowing that this grip would become our eternal parting.
When the drumbeats of the fifth watch broke the long night, I was already standing atop the palace wall. The morning mist rolled like thin gauze over the glazed tiles of the Forbidden City, and the watchman's cry of "Weather is dry, be careful of fire" drifted from afar. The gold hairpin in my hand pricked my palm, the pain making my thoughts clearer than ever before. On the day Moci was beheaded, I had seen him smile at me through the crowd, his lips clearly forming the words, "Live on." Yet now, when I saw that intercepted secret letter in the Imperial Study, I finally understood that his plea for me to "live on" was merely a wish that I might bear witness for him to this vast realm stained red by his blood.
"Your Ladyship!" Qingluan's gasp echoed from behind. I turned to look at her as the morning light climbed up her panicked face, looking precisely like the year I knocked over the oil lamp and she rushed in carrying a jar of water. "Tell the Emperor for me," I pressed the blood-stained gold hairpin into her hand, "that I am, after all, unwilling to stay any longer in this golden cage of the Forbidden City."
The moment I leaped from the palace wall, the wind caught the hem of my skirt, and in a daze, I was back in that spring day on the swing. Moci's voice drifted through layers of mist, carrying the clear ring unique to a youth: "A'ning, look, you are about to reach the clouds."
As the blood seeped across the grey bricks, I heard hurried footsteps and stifled gasps. Someone scooped me into their arms, the gold threads of the dragon robe pressing painfully against my collarbone. "Why?" His voice trembled as his fingers pressed in vain against the wound on my neck. "I already killed him. What more could you want?"
I wanted to smile, but instead coughed up a mouthful of frothy blood. Through his tear-blurred eyes, I saw the willow branches outside the city gate shooting out fresh green buds. Moci, so spring has come again after all. I am afraid I won't live to see the snow of the northern borderlands you spoke of, but at least we can finally be buried together beneath this vast empire in the midst of this spring light.
Before my last shred of strength faded away, I heard his heart-rending cries, sounding precisely like the flock of egrets we startled into flight beside Taiye Pool all those years ago.