I saw the palace maid in the lake-blue dress in the Imperial Garden again. She was squatting under the osmanthus tree, picking up fallen blossoms. The silver hairpin in her hair shook gently, looking so much like that jade hairpin of hers that got snagged when she scaled the wall of the General's Mansion all those years ago.
"Your Majesty?" Imperial Consort Chen's voice jerked me out of her trance. Today she wore a crimson cloud-brocade court dress, with Eastern pearls dangling from her earlobes, and even her nail guards were inlaid with crushed diamonds—all evidence of her imitating Shen Yue. I stared at the honey-pickled cherries pinched between her fingertips, suddenly remembering Shen Yue always saying that these things tasted cloyingly sweet and fishy, nowhere near as good as the sugar-roasted chestnuts sold beneath the city wall.
"Step back." I waved a hand, and a trace of panic flashed across Imperial Consort Chen's face, though she dared not say more. Light and shadow mottled the corridor, and in a daze, I saw Shen Yue at sixteen again. Her skirt hem snagged on the gray tiles as she climbed the wall, hanging upside down outside my study window. The tip of her nose was smudged with a ginkgo leaf, and her eyes were as bright as the stars in the river west of the city: "Little Emperor, shall I take you to see the moat freeze over?"
Chapter 25