I was merely the most inconspicuous concubine-born daughter of the Prime Minister's Residence, yet I stubbornly stood on tiptoe to reach the moon upon the Jinluan Hall.
On the day of the imperial selection, dressed in a plain white ruqun among a hall full of dazzling reds and purples, I looked up and smiled at the Emperor: "Has Your Majesty ever seen snow falling upon the Xuanji Palace?"
A subtle ripple stirred in his eyes, and I knew right then that this move in the game was right.
When the imperial decree conferring the title of Empress was promulgated, the Heir blocked my path beneath the palace walls. The grip with which he clutched my sleeve was trembling: "Awan, come with me."
I brushed his hand away, the gold and jade fingernail guard scraping across his palm—he was always so naive, thinking that I had been trapped in a profound courtyard for over a decade just to become an uncontentious Heir's consort?
The cosmetic powders of the inner palace concealed knives. When I was pregnant for the first time, the miscarriage-prevention medicine brought by the head maid exuded a sweet, fishy stench. Twirling my handkerchief, I smiled and asked: "How much saffron is mixed into this medicine?"
That maid kowtowed with a pale face, her blood seeping into the cracks of the bluish-stone slabs, resembling precisely the candle tears I glimpsed beneath the red bridal veil on the night I married into the palace.
An emperor's favor is the thinnest sheet of ice. He was dining with me while holding the newly favored Noble Consort Rou, that woman's fingertips wrapped around the jade thumb ring I had given him, her smiling eyes curved into crescents: "Empress, your hands are truly skillful."
My hand serving him food was as steady as Mount Tai, yet deep within my heart, I suddenly recalled the words the Heir had once spoken: "Awan's hands should hold writing brushes, not grasp these man-eating things."
On the day the child was lost, I knelt in the pouring rain, begging the Emperor to thoroughly investigate the matter.
He held an umbrella and looked down at me, his gaze like that of someone looking at a Liuli lamp with a chipped edge: "The Empress is virtuous and should be more accommodating to others."
Rainwater mixed with tears beat against my face, and I suddenly remembered when I was fifteen years old, the Heir climbed the wall through the rain to bring me lychees, the water dripping from his robe hem pooling into a small puddle in the corridor, yet he laughed brightly: "Hurry and taste them, newly tribute-offered from Lingnan."
Before my death, the imperial physician said I had been poisoned by a chronic toxin. Touching the pale green stretch marks on my lower belly, I suddenly burst into a laugh. Noble Consort Rou came to visit me, weeping and wailing, wearing the ruby bracelet I had bestowed upon her wrapped around her wrist. I grabbed her sleeve, my fingernails digging deeply into her flesh: "Tell me... back then, was it His Majesty who pushed me into the lake?"
She retreated in panic, hairpins and ornaments shaking wildly, resembling precisely myself on the night of my first night of attendance, coated in heavy rouge in the mirror.
Blood bubbled up in my throat, and I suddenly wanted to see clearly the Phoebe zhennan pillars of this hall—as it turned out, the carved beams and painted rafters of this Xuanji Palace were far colder than the Tingyu Pavilion of the Prime Minister's Residence. Amidst the hurried footsteps of palace attendants, I heard someone shout that "the Heir has broken into the palace," and in a daze, I saw a flash of cyan robes crashing open the palace doors, holding in his arms the sachet with the wrong embroidery stitches I had made back then.
When he hugged me with red-rimmed eyes, I finally dared to reach out and touch his face. My fingertips brushed against the tears at the corners of his eyes, and I suddenly recalled the spring banquet that year, when he took me riding through the streets, whipping his pointer toward the paper kite at the edge of the sky: "Awan, look, no matter how high that kite flies, the string is still in your hands."
As it turned out, the string in my hand had snapped long ago, yet I stubbornly insisted on imitating others to act as a puppet on strings. The sweet, bloody taste in my throat grew heavier, and I wanted to say "I'm sorry" to him, but instead I coughed up a mouthful of blood, staining the twin-lotuses-on-a-single-stalk pattern on his lapel—that was the thirtieth pattern I had embroidered wrongly, yet he insisted it looked even better than the cloud brocade bestowed by the emperor.
As my consciousness gradually scattered, the snow outside the hall finally began to fall. I suddenly saw it clearly: the snow of the Forbidden City was not white; it was formed from the melted blood of countless women. And in the end, I was wrong, mistakenly taking the dragon throne for the Magpie Bridge, mistakenly taking imperial power for true affection, and even more, failing the person who was willing to pluck the moon down from the sky for me.
The Heir's weeping grew distant, and I cast one last glance at the carved caisson ceiling, thinking: If there is an afterlife, I shall surely, in the spring days, grasp tightly that stringless paper kite and walk away with him without once looking back.