The Ci’an Temple had been built by the Sacred Ancestor Emperor to express his gratitude for the compassionate kindness of the Xuande Empress Dowager. It nestled in seclusion deep in a misty mountain, with ancient trees lining the winding road and the fragrance of incense drifting all around.

Standing before the tall stone steps of this three-hundred-year-old ancient temple, I stopped in a daze, unable for a moment to summon the courage to step through that gate of emptiness.

Although the Emperor and my mother were born of different mothers, they had grown up depending on each other from childhood, and their bond of affection surpassed even that of full siblings. From the upheaval on my wedding day and my departure for Huizhou, then my father’s coercion of the palace and his falling out with the imperial family — my poor mother, born into royalty as a princess, had lived her entire life without worry, sheltered deep within the walls of a marquis’s residence. Now that she had reached the twilight of her years, when she ought to have been enjoying the pleasures of grandchildren, she had been struck by one change after another, and had abruptly fallen from the clouds to the dust.

I understood, more than anyone, how much that fall must have hurt. The husband who had treated her with mutual respect for decades had overnight been locked in a mortal struggle with her own family. The grand house of the Son of Heaven had been reduced to a puppet in the hands of a powerful minister. What could mother possibly feel?

In all of vast and glorious capital, in all of the nine-tiered palace towers, there was no place for her to belong — only this world-apart corner of tranquility could give her that last fragment of peace.

Step by step I climbed the stone stairs and passed through the mountain gate. The winding path through the zen courtyard wound along in curves, and through a stand of gardenia trees, a secluded courtyard came quietly into view.

Just a short distance away, I looked at that half-ajar wooden door, raised my hand to push it — and felt as though it weighed a thousand catties.

With a creak, the door swung open, and through my mist-blurred eyes, a slight blue-robed figure appeared — white-haired, thin as a reed.

I stood frozen in the doorway, not daring to believe what I saw before me. When I had left the capital earlier that year, mother’s hair had still been dark and lustrous, her grace and bearing still radiant, her face that of a woman of barely thirty years. And yet now her head was entirely silver-white, looking every bit like an elderly woman.

“You’ve finally come back.” Mother sat in a bamboo chair beneath the eaves and smiled at me, soft and gentle, her expression calm and composed — though her eyes held a glimmer of tears.

I felt in a slight daze. All of a sudden, I could not say a single word, and could only stare at mother.

She held out her hand to me, her voice soft and gentle. “Come. Come here to me.”

From behind me, Aunt Xu said in a low, pained voice: “The Princess’s legs are no longer steady.”

Across the small courtyard, I walked step by step. It seemed as though a long time passed before I touched the hem of mother’s garment. From her plain gray-hemp robe came the thick, rich fragrance of sandalwood incense, no longer the familiar scent of orchid and iris I had always known. A sudden panic seized me. It was as though an invisible barrier had formed, separating her and me from a great distance. I knelt down and buried my face deep in mother’s lap, tears streaming.

Mother’s hand was soft and ice cold. With some effort she helped me up, and said with a quiet sigh: “Seeing you back safely, I have no more cares left.”

“You do!” I raised my head sharply and looked at her through tear-blurred eyes. “There is still so much left for you to worry over. Elder brother has still not remarried. I have only recently wed. And then there is father — who says you have no more cares? I do not believe you can bear to leave us!” I had planned so many things to say on the way here, had prepared all manner of ways to persuade her and coax her back home. But the moment I truly saw her, I knew all of it was empty words.

“A’Wu…” Mother lowered her eyes, and the corners of her lips quivered faintly. “I was born a Grand Princess, and yet I have been weak and useless my whole life. In the end I have let you down.”

I held her close and shook my head again and again, tears pouring down like rain. “It is A’Wu who is unfilial — I should not have left you!”

Only at this moment did I understand how selfish I had been. In the three years I was away from home, it was precisely the most desolate and difficult time for mother — and yet I had hidden far away in Huizhou, neither asking after the family nor paying it any attention, taking it for granted that my parents would always be waiting in the same place, that whenever I chose to come home, they would open their arms to welcome me.

“Mother, won’t you come home with me?” I quickly wiped away my tears and tried hard to smile at her. “The mountain is cold and so far away. I do not want you to stay here. Come back with me — father and elder brother are both at home waiting for you!”

Mother’s smile was unfocused. “Home… I no longer have a home.”

I was stunned. I had never in the world expected her to say something so hopeless.

“You have already married. A’Su has his own concubines as well.” Mother lowered her eyes, smiling with quiet desolation. “The Chancellor’s residence belongs to the Wang family. As an imperial daughter, I should by right return to the palace. But the palace — how could I possibly face my imperial brother there? How could I face the Empress Dowager, the late Emperor, and the ancestors of all past generations in the next life?”

Mother’s words left me speechless, as though an enormous stone had been pressed without warning onto my chest. I murmured, “Father has also been working to assist the Crown Prince in ascending the throne. Once His Highness ascends, all the strife will come to an end…” I could not go on. The words I was saying, I did not even believe myself — so how could I bear to deceive mother with them? She likely did not yet know of the conflict between Xiao Qi and my father, did not yet know that my father had already broken with the Crown Prince.

“The Crown Prince is nothing more than a pretense.” Mother lifted her gaze slowly and looked toward the distance, a deep and profound sorrow rising in her eyes. “You still do not truly know your father. He has been waiting for this day for a very long time.”

If father truly had the ambition to usurp the throne, it would not have surprised me — yet that mother had long since seen through everything was beyond anything I had expected.

Her smile was full of grief and haziness as she said quietly: “His lifelong wish was to stand above the imperial family, never again to suffer even a moment of indignity.”

“Does father truly want… that position?” I bit my lip. Those two characters of great treachery would not pass my lips.

But mother shook her head. “That position may not even be what he wants most. He only wants to stand above the imperial family.”

To stand above the imperial family, yet without ambition for the dragon throne itself — I stared at mother in bewildered confusion, unable to understand what she was trying to tell me.

“He has been proud and ambitious all his life, yet there is one thing that has weighed on his mind without cease — and that is having married me.” Mother closed her eyes, and her voice seemed to drift far away. Falling on my ears, it was like a clap of thunder.

Mother asked whether I had ever heard of the Han family. I knew of it — a woman who had been my father’s only concubine and who had died of illness before I was born.

“She did not die of illness.” Mother said softly. “She was given a white silk cord by the Empress Dowager and strangled to death before your father’s eyes.”

I was shaken with violent shock.

“The woman your father truly loved was Han, the girl he had grown up alongside since childhood. In those days, everyone envied him for his brilliant talents and dashing manner, for being chosen to wed a princess — yet none knew that his heart was unwilling. After our wedding, we did treat each other with mutual respect for a time. But two years later, when A’Su had already passed his first birthday, he told me that Han had conceived a child and that he wished to take her in as a concubine. He had been keeping her hidden outside all along throughout those two years. In a fit of anger, I went back to the palace and wept to my mother about it. That very evening, mother set a family banquet at the palace and commanded him to bring Han with him to the palace to apologize to me. I thought mother intended to mediate and reconcile matters — but when the banquet was at its height, mother suddenly lashed out, furiously reprimanding the two of them, and right there before him and me, and before my imperial brother and the Crown Prince’s consort… she ordered that Han be strangled to death in the hall.” Mother’s voice trembled uncontrollably as she spoke, and I took hold of her hand — only to find that I was trembling even more violently than she.

What a harrowing scene from the past — I could not believe it, could not imagine it. The grandmother I remembered as dignified and kind-hearted harbored hands this ruthlessly severe. The parents I had thought so deeply devoted to each other were in truth a pair of bitter enemies!

“He was kneeling in the hall, knocking his head on the ground again and again to beg mother for mercy, to beg mercy from me. Your aunt also knelt down. But it was already too late. The white silk cord was around Han’s neck. She was so frightened she went limp, and two palace attendants held her on either side. She barely struggled at all, and just like that… I was too frightened even to understand what was happening, and I only caught the look in your father’s eyes — like a knife — before I fainted.”

The wind passed along the corridor. Mother and I were both silent for a long while, listening only to the rustling of the wind through the treetops, rushing and fading.

“And afterward?” I said at last, my voice dry.

Mother was lost in a trance for some time before she slowly answered: “Afterward I felt guilt-ridden, and gave way and yielded in everything, never again putting on the airs of a princess. Your father never again mentioned Han, and from that time on he poured all his energy into his career. His rank and office grew ever higher. Several years later, you came along, and when I was giving birth I nearly died. After that, he treated me much more kindly, and came to cherish you above all else, showering you with endless affection and pampering. I thought that with so many years passed, perhaps he had forgotten. Until the year A’Su married…”

Mother’s expression fell into anguish, and for a long time she could not speak.

I was already twelve years old when elder brother married — I vaguely remembered that it had been a sensational event celebrated all through the capital.

“I was determined to select a girl from among the noble families of the imperial clan, one whose rank and talent and appearance were all worthy of A’Su. Your father refused outright. When I asked why, he only said that in choosing a wife one should seek virtue, not rank. Your father — I knew what kind of man he was; how could such an explanation satisfy me? As we argued without reaching any agreement, A’Su himself set his heart on a particular young woman — and that was the one called Huan Bi.”

I was taken aback for a moment. I had never imagined that my sister-in-law had been someone elder brother had chosen himself. In my childhood memories, my sister-in-law had been a woman of exceptional skill at both the zither and calligraphy — not especially beautiful, yet delicate and graceful in form, quiet and cool of manner, rarely seen to smile. I had a vague memory that mother had not been fond of her, and that elder brother had not shown her much tenderness either. Soon after the wedding, elder brother had traveled south to Jiangnan on his own. My sister-in-law had spent her days confined within her rooms, and from time to time one could hear the mournful sound of her zither. Less than half a year later, my sister-in-law caught a chill and fell ill, growing worse until she passed away before elder brother returned from his travels. While my sister-in-law was alive, elder brother had treated her with great distance. And yet after her death, elder brother had been visibly subdued for a long while and had refused to remarry for many years. I had always assumed that elder brother’s marriage had been arranged against his will by father, and that he himself had never been willing — and that afterward, it was nothing more than guilt that held him.

Yet I heard mother say slowly: “At first, A’Su did not know — that Huan Bi had already been chosen and was about to be officially installed as the principal consort of the Second Prince Zidan.”

“Zidan!” The shock of it made my back break out in wave after wave of cold. One after another, these long-buried events came from mother’s lips — and it seemed as though every person carried behind them a web of grievances impossible to sever. I had been too unknowing for more than ten years, entirely ignorant of all of it.

“I was unwilling to have A’Su marry Huan Bi. Your father agreed without hesitation. The very next day he went into the palace to see your aunt, and asked her to change the candidate for the Second Prince’s consort to someone else and give Huan Bi to A’Su. After what happened all those years before, I had argued with him only twice — once for your marriage, once for A’Su’s.” Mother lowered her head in a bitter smile. “That day was the first time I had ever seen him domineering and overbearing — and also the first time I heard him speak a truth out loud.”

“What did father say?” I stared at mother, fixed and intent.

Mother smiled. “He said: I have spent half my life yielding to the power of the imperial family. I absolutely cannot allow A’Su to tread the same path again. The woman A’Su has set his heart on — even if she is a prince’s consort, so what? I will take her and give her to him! To marry the eldest son of our Wang family is not a step down from being the descendant of a dragon or a phoenix!”

Leaving the Ci’an Temple, I had walked all the way out through the mountain gate and descended the stone steps before I finally stopped and looked back. The temple bell rang out, its sound drifting in long, lingering waves across the mountain.

Clouds and mist cut across the mountain path. One gate of emptiness — separating decades of grievance, love, and hatred. In the end I had not been able to persuade mother to come back. She had already decided that after my nineteenth birthday, she would shave her head and take religious vows.

She said my birthday was near, and that she wished to celebrate it with me one more time. Had she not mentioned it, I would nearly have forgotten. In just a few more days I would be nineteen. Nineteen — why did I already feel such a desolate weariness of heart?

This life still stretched so long before me. There were still ten years, twenty years, thirty years ahead. I could not imagine growing old, with white hair filling my head as mother’s did — what would that be like?

Beneath my feet lay all the splendor and brilliance of the mortal world. Looking back was the dim lamplight and ancient Buddhas. I stood there in a daze, letting the mountain wind whip my robes and fly them about me, my heart a sheet of ice.

Aunt Xu saw me to the foot of the mountain. As the luan carriage was about to depart, she suddenly rushed to the curtain with tears in her eyes. “My Lady, even you could not persuade the Princess to return — is she… truly going to shave her head and enter the religious life?”

“I do not know.” I shook my head in confusion. After a moment’s pause, I said hoarsely, “Perhaps there is only one person who can bring her back.”

Aunt Xu let her hands fall in dejection, with nothing more to say.

I looked at her and managed a strained smile. “I will try to persuade father. Perhaps there may yet be a way through.”

“The Chancellor has come several times. The Princess refused to see him.” Aunt Xu shook her head in sorrow.

“He will be seen.” I smiled faintly, and felt a thousand kinds of bitterness within. In years past, whenever this time of year arrived, I had always resented the elaborate rituals as tedious and tiresome, and had been unwilling in every possible way to go through with them. Yet I had never imagined that this might perhaps be the last birthday mother and father would spend with me together.

All the way home, I was in a daze and did not know how much time had passed before I returned to the residence. The maids helped me change my outer robe and brought tea and attended to my hair. I was like a wooden puppet — unwilling to speak, unwilling to move.

“Princess Consort, Yuxiu has woken.”

I heard it, but felt nothing, still drifting in a trance.

The maid repeated it several more times before I finally came back to myself. Yuxiu — Yuxiu had woken.

They said that Yuxiu’s first words upon waking were to ask whether the Princess Consort had been hurt.

When Yuxiu saw me, she immediately tried to struggle upright and berate herself for being useless.

Without a word, I held her tightly in my arms. The grief and bitterness I had been pressing down to the very bottom of my heart came flooding in from all sides and overwhelmed me.

Yuxiu was stunned for a moment, then softly raised her hand to encircle my shoulders. As she had that night in Huizhou, we leaned quietly against each other.

Day after day of busyness followed, navigating the palace, the Prince’s residence, and all manner of matters. Xiao Qi too was out early and back late. The struggle between him and my father had grown ever more intense.

The Crown Prince had long wished to free himself from my father’s iron grip, and with Xiao Qi as an ally, he felt greatly elated. Taking advantage of my aunt’s illness, he followed Xiao Qi’s arrangements — on one hand replacing the palace guards with large numbers of Xiao Qi’s people, and on the other using the pretext of rooting out rebel conspirators to crowd out many of the older palace servants. My father, enraged by the Crown Prince’s ingratitude, pressed down all the harder on him and Xiao Qi in court, opposing them at every turn.

Almost every day I could encounter my father somewhere in the palace, yet whenever I thought of mother’s words — thought of all that he had done — I could not bring myself to believe it, could not bring myself to face this father before me.

I longed to see him, yet whenever I spotted him from a distance I would avoid him. He was always surrounded by attendants and subordinate officials. On the rare occasions when I found myself alone with him, there was clearly so much I wanted to ask — but not a single word could leave my mouth.

My aunt’s illness had been held at bay through sheer force of will for a long time, and after the ordeal she had been through, it grew far worse. Though her mind was now clear, she still drifted in and out of confusion at times, and her spirits were very poor.

With so many troubles on hand, one upheaval following another, the court in the grips of turmoil, and the Emperor in the Qianyuan Palace clinging to his last breath, my aunt’s collapse had left the inner palace without a mistress. The various concubines were all faint-hearted and timid, and so the weight of all affairs, large and small, fell upon the heavily pregnant Crown Princess, Xie Wanru. My aunt immediately summoned me to the palace and commanded me to assist the Crown Princess in overseeing the management of palace affairs. In an instant, within that vast deep palace, there were only the three of us left to depend on one another.

I had been close to my aunt since childhood, and I could understand her wishes without need for many words. But Wanru was often hesitant and indecisive, and her thoughts frequently differed from my aunt’s. On a day when Wanru was not present, my aunt lay listlessly against the cushioned divan, looked at me, and sighed: “Why were you not born my daughter?”

“Aunt must be speaking in confusion from her illness.” I laughed gently. “I am, of course, a daughter of the Wang family.”

“Is that so?” She lifted her eyes to look at me, and a flash of keenness passed through her otherwise dull gaze.

My heart gave a start. I met her gaze, unsure what to make of it. But she closed her eyes in dejection and sighed without a sound.

The Crown Prince now did everything Xiao Qi said. My aunt knew this. She also knew that Xiao Qi’s influence had seeped into the inner palace. She had already let go of the reins and allowed the Crown Prince to manage affairs of state, no longer restraining the Eastern Palace, and had retreated step after step before Xiao Qi — seemingly truly afraid of the troops he commanded, truly afraid of Zi Tan’s existence. And yet, as well as I knew my aunt, she was not a woman who bowed her head easily. She had called me into the palace and handed over palace affairs to me and Wanru, but never let us act independently — there was always someone watching our every move. She had never trusted Wanru, and in her eyes, Wanru had always been the Xie family’s woman. As for me — naturally, I was Xiao Qi’s woman.

She had placed the two of us at her side, and how much of that was reliance and how much was vigilance, I never dared to examine too closely. At times I also asked myself: of my own feelings toward my aunt, how much was genuine, and how much was guarded caution?

I had never been able to see through those deep, fathomless eyes of hers, to know what thoughts lay concealed within. And she, too, would often sit in contemplation, looking at me, looking at Wanru, looking at the Crown Prince — looking at every single person around her.

Before others she remained as unyielding and composed as ever. Only in her sleeping hours would she reach out and grasp my hand, unaware.

The imperial physicians said the root of my aunt’s illness was a knot in her heart — no medicine could cure it.

I knew that she was forcing herself to stay upright through sheer willpower, compelling herself to recover. She was different from mother — she still had far too many things she cared for, and could not permit herself to simply lie down and give in.

Watching her strain to maintain her spirit, I felt all the more sorrowful and distressed. My aunt had given three-tenths of her life to her family, three-tenths to the Crown Prince, and another three-tenths to who knew what — likely only one-tenth was lived for herself.

The Emperor’s days, too, were numbered. My aunt asked daily about the Emperor’s condition. When she heard he was doing adequately, she would sit in indifferent silence. When she heard his illness had worsened, she too would fall into a gloomy sulk.

She made no effort to conceal herself in my presence, and often let her resentment of the Emperor show openly. Yet if the day truly came when the Emperor passed away, it was feared that her will to live would lose yet another fraction of itself.

Love or hatred — that man had become woven into every thread of her entire life.

After that day, while she was asleep, I quietly slipped the silk handkerchief back beneath her pillow without disturbing her. I had chosen not to say anything — if this was the only dream left to her, then let her sleep in that dream, never to wake.

In this deep palace, the three women of highest rank and closest kin each harbored thoughts of their own, and none of them was willing to place full trust in the others.

Wanru and I had been distant from each other for many years. Once such close sisters, we now each had our own circumstances, and could never return to that first seamless intimacy.

The long years of the deep palace age a person quickly. She had already borne one daughter, and though her face was still lovely, her figure had grown rounded, and the eyes that had once shimmered with feeling had dimmed. That young woman who had once been as elegant as a lotus flower was now a calm and reserved matron. She did not much care how my aunt treated her, nor did she pay great attention to what the Crown Prince did in court. Only when mention was made of her two-year-old daughter, or of the child soon to be born, did a radiance come to her pale face.

That one name — I did not bring it up, and neither did she.

There had been a time when she asked through her tears, “Can you truly forget Zi Tan?” The Wanru of that day had still been beautiful and melancholy, still naively longing for that childhood bond to find a happy ending.

We had both been born into families of great name, both once the recipients of endless and exceptional favor, both in the same way pushed into the marriages that fate had allotted us. Only — I had encountered Xiao Qi, while she was left to guard the deep palace alone, watching the Crown Prince surround himself with concubines, dallying all day in a sea of flowers, yet having no choice but to uphold the manner of a principal consort. The first struggles and reluctance had been worn smooth by time, and all the talent she possessed in the world was no match for the solitude of day after day in the deep palace.

In the corridor of the Eastern Palace’s jeweled courtyard, we sat together in quiet conversation, smiling as we recalled the days of old when we had warmed wine and talked of poetry. She held her daughter on her lap and told me that in this long, endless life, one needed something to hold onto.

She said that status changes, and affection changes — only a child, a child connected to you by blood, is something that belongs entirely and completely to you. All the glamour in the world does not last — only the name of mother, the most honored title under Heaven, is something no power can supersede.

Wanru smiled her faint smile. “A’Wu, you will understand when you become a mother yourself.”

I smiled vaguely back at her, thinking of mother, thinking of my aunt, and also of Wanru — this embroidered palace, to me, was only a brilliant memory of youth; to them, it was the sorrow of an entire lifetime.

The day before my birthday, Song Huai’an returned to the capital from the imperial mausoleum to report.

Zi Tan had been confined by Xiao Qi under house arrest in the Xin Yi Lodge, not far from the imperial mausoleum, under layers of heavy guard.

Song Huai’an did not come to see me, but quietly went to visit Yuxiu.

The moment I stepped into Yuxiu’s room, I heard her laughing and chattering, calling out in a bright voice to the maids: “Move it a little more — a little more to that side.”

“Why are you in such good spirits?” I stood at the doorway with a smile and saw her propped up against her pillow, waving her arm to direct the maids. She seemed to have recovered considerably.

Yuxiu looked up and saw me, and her face instantly flushed red. Her eyes sparkled. “Princess Consort! Rong general Song just came by a little while ago!”

She pointed out to me a pile of nourishing items and tonics — all sent by Song Huai’an. I quietly laughed to myself. This man had no sense of romance at all — who presents a beauty with such common, practical things? Yet looking at how Yuxiu’s cheeks glowed with happy color, I decided to tease her a little. “These things… the Prince’s residence has plenty of them. Nothing especially precious about them.”

Yuxiu bit her lip with a reproving look. I smiled with amusement. “Though the thought behind them is what is truly precious!”

Her delicate little face flushed scarlet in an instant. Her soft hair fell gently at the sides of her face, lending her a rare look of coquettish shyness. I reached over and casually smoothed her hair back a little. “Why haven’t you tidied yourself? Receiving visitors looking like this?”

Yuxiu lowered her eyes slightly and said quietly, “He did not enter the room. He only sent someone to bring the things.”

I was a little surprised. Yuxiu’s injury was not serious — she could already rise and go to the outer hall to receive visitors. Since he had made the effort to come, why would he stop at the door without entering? I was still turning this over in my mind when Yuxiu lifted her eyes, and with a shy and gentle smile said, “He also had someone send that flower. He specifically instructed that it be placed in a sunny spot.”

“A flower?” I looked back and saw that what she had been directing people to move back and forth was none other than… an orchid.

I rose and walked slowly to the table. In an ordinary blue ceramic pot sat a small sprig of orchid — emerald sepals and slender leaves, the branches and foliage glossy and intact.

“He also said it was brought specially from the Xin Yi Lodge,” said Yuxiu, her voice shy and sweet as honey.

I gazed at the orchid for a long time. Feelings welled and swelled in me, and only after a while could I open my mouth in calm. “This flower is truly beautiful.”

“I once planted a sprig of orchid along the roadside at the imperial mausoleum when I was young. If it is convenient on your journey there, General, please water it for me and care for it — do not let it wither.”

That was the message I had asked Yuxiu to pass to him, and he had truly tended to this orchid and brought it back safe and whole.

Song Huai’an — how was I to thank him? How was I to repay even a measure of this kindness he had shown?