Seeing Jia You willing to open her heart at last, Xie Yuzhang felt that all the hardship and struggle of these years had not been wasted. She was filled with a feeling that sweetness had come after long bitterness — both genuinely happy and genuinely moved.

After lavishing praise on Jia You for a good long while, she said, “Bring me that painting your Sister Lin did.”

The painting Xie Yuzhang spoke of was one Lin Fei had painted for Jia You shortly after they had first returned to Yunjing and Jia You had been brought to the estate. Working from memory, Lin Fei had captured Fukang holding Jia You’s hand. In that painting, Fukang was ten years old, and Jia You was six.

Even so, because Lin Fei had painted it with remarkable likeness, Jia You had treasured it and hung it in her bedchamber.

Though Jia You had said she would speak, she had not yet grown accustomed to speaking, and expressed her confusion only through a pair of dark, bright eyes.

Xie Yuzhang simply said, “I need it for something. I’ll return it to you when I’m done.”

So she took the painting and went out to the Lin estate.

Lin Zi, hearing that Xie Yuzhang had come to the door, was quite surprised. Since Lin Fei had married, the last time Xie Yuzhang had come had been the matter of Lin Fei’s abduction.

The holiday gifts had already been exchanged for this year’s New Year season. The Yongning Princess’s estate and the Lin estate had always been close, and throughout the four seasons and all the festivals, gifts were never missed or overlooked. Yan Shi had already returned the courtesy, and the two estates maintained an orderly and warm relationship.

So what had brought her today?

Lin Zi strode quickly to the main hall, and saw that Xie Yuzhang’s brows and eyes were relaxed and at ease — clearly there was nothing urgent or serious. His heart quietly loosened. He went forward, greeted her, and asked, “Your Highness, what has brought you today?”

Xie Yuzhang smiled pleasantly. “I should have first paid my respects to my sister-in-law. Only I forgot that today is already the sixth day of the new year — no more restrictions — and married women are free to call on friends. So she has gone out. I came directly to see Third Elder Brother instead.”

Lin Zi smiled. “She’s gone to visit her friends.”

Yan Shi, though married, still retained a certain girlish openness — one look and it was plain that the husband and wife were in harmony, their hearts well-matched. Among the young women of Yunjing, the one most envied nowadays had already shifted to become Yan Shi.

Xie Yuzhang smiled. “Sister-in-law is very blessed.”

She took out the painting and said, “I’ve come today to ask Third Elder Brother for a favor. Please have a look at this.”

Lin Zi unrolled the scroll, and recognized it at once. “This is Fei’er’s work. Who are the young girls in this painting?”

Xie Yuzhang said, “My two younger sisters — Fukang and Jia You.”

Princess Jia You was now living at Xie Yuzhang’s estate; Princess Fukang had long since withered and passed. Lin Zi gave a sigh of lament, then asked, “What does Your Highness need from me?”

“This painting was done from memory by Fei’er, and she captured them well,” Xie Yuzhang said. “But when we left all those years ago, Fukang was barely ten years old. When she passed, she was only fourteen. I wanted to ask Third Elder Brother — is it possible to use this painting as a basis and paint what she would have looked like at fourteen?”

Lin Zi asked, “Did she resemble Your Highness?”

Xie Yuzhang said, “Her nose is like mine. Her brows and eyes share some resemblance with Jia You’s. You have seen Jia You before.”

Lin Zi said, “I can try. Please come with me, Your Highness.”

Xie Yuzhang followed Lin Zi to his study.

Lin Zi spread out the paper. Xie Yuzhang eagerly said, “I will grind the ink for Third Elder Brother.”

Lin Zi paused, then smiled. “Thank you for the trouble.”

He then said, “Since Your Highness and she share a resemblance, I will need to look directly upon Your Highness’s face.”

Xie Yuzhang said, “Third Elder Brother, look as you need to.”

Lin Zi said, “Forgive me for being forward.”

Lin Zi raised his eyes and studied Xie Yuzhang’s face with focused attention.

Xie Yuzhang’s hair was piled in lush dark clouds, and her skin had a luminous glow. She was of a beauty that was pure and transcendent, her figure graceful and slender. Though she was no longer young, and having never given birth, she still retained a trace of girlish softness. But her long phoenix eyes were drawn out and alluring, her pupils dark as lacquer and shimmering with an air of quiet authority — utterly unlike a girl who had grown up sheltered in the inner chambers with no experience of the world.

Noticing that Lin Zi was watching her with genuine concentration, she smiled at him.

Having come through the night just past, a subtle, natural air of effortless allure flowed from between her brows of its own accord.

Since her return, Lin Zi had been well acquainted with her, and had never seen this kind of spring-like, wind-blown charm from her before.

Lin Zi was taken aback.

Confusion — then realization — then astonishment.

She and the Emperor, they had finally…?

Xie Yuzhang had long since sharpened her own perceptive eyes, and naturally caught the shift in Lin Zi’s gaze. She had barely had a chance to think it through when Lin Zi had already drawn back his gaze and was reaching for the brush, dipping it in ink.

A little over an incense stick’s worth of time passed, and Lin Zi set down his brush. “Your Highness, please take a look.”

Xie Yuzhang went over and looked, and when she had examined it carefully, gave a soft sound. “Mmm…”

Without her saying a word, Lin Zi already knew. “Too much allure.”

“Indeed,” Xie Yuzhang said. “Fukang was only fourteen when she passed — she was still a young girl.”

Lin Zi spread out another sheet of paper, pressed it flat with his jade paperweight, and lightly smoothed the surface, then said quietly, “The first one was painted with Your Highness as the model.”

Xie Yuzhang was startled. Her fair neck flushed pink. “What is Third Elder Brother saying?”

Lin Zi dipped his brush in ink. The tip of the brush touched the paper without the slightest tremor, and he said slowly as he drew the lines out steadily, “The deep of winter has not yet passed, yet Your Highness has already claimed the first breath of spring. But Your Highness — have you considered what lies ahead?”

Xie Yuzhang remembered the way his gaze had shifted just now, and could never have anticipated he would have such sharp eyes. Irritated, she said, “Third Elder Brother should save those keen eyes for selecting talent for the court, not for scrutinizing things that are neither here nor there.”

Lin Zi’s expression did not change. Focused on his painting, he said, “I do not speak lightly of Your Highness. Only the Lin family and Your Highness have long since become entangled in ways that cannot be unraveled. Your Highness calls me Third Elder Brother, so I will shamelessly presume to act as one.”

He paused the brush, raised his head, and his gaze was piercing. “I ask you plainly — will you enter the palace? When will you enter? And by what ceremony?”

Xie Yuzhang could never have foreseen it — Li Gu himself had not dared to press her, yet she was being pressed by Lin Zi.

She was speechless for a long moment, then said, “Whether I enter the palace or not makes no difference to me either way.”

Lin Zi glanced at her, lowered his head, and continued painting. “If you enter the palace, then it must be as Empress. If he will not give you the title of Empress, then no matter how sweet his words, how solemn his oaths, Your Highness should continue to live free and unrestrained out here.”

Lin Zi had always carried himself as a loyal and upright official, yet here he was calculating against Li Gu without a hint of courtesy. Xie Yuzhang gave a helpless laugh and said, “Whether I become Empress or not also makes no difference to me.”

Lin Zi said, “The Empress is the most honored woman in all under Heaven. How could it make no difference?”

Xie Yuzhang said, “I am a solitary person with no father’s family to rely on. Whether I enter the palace or not, whether I enter as a consort or as Empress, I must depend on the Emperor’s affection in any case. It makes no difference.”

That she had such a clear-headed understanding was for the best.

Lin Zi smiled faintly and said, “Your Highness, do not sell yourself short.”

Xie Yuzhang was startled.

Lin Zi said, “The position of Empress cannot remain vacant forever — someone will inevitably sit upon it. What everyone cares about is who that someone will be.”

He said, “At present, Chief Minister Mo is First Minister. Does Your Highness believe he would prefer to see the Hexi faction claim the Empress’s position, or to see the old faction claim it?”

Xie Yuzhang said, “He stands with neither side, so naturally he would wish neither to have it.”

Lin Zi continued, “At present, the leader of the old faction is Deputy Director Yang. His household has had no young women of suitable age in recent years. Does Your Highness believe he would be content to see the position fall to someone else, or would he prefer it go to his own niece?”

Xie Yuzhang sighed. “He has had his eye on it for some time already.”

Lin Zi said, “There is no need to speak further of Your Highness’s cousin, the Earl of Guangping. This man straddles both factions. When the Xun Guogong estate sent him to Hexi to be tempered, Deputy Director Yang showed remarkable foresight — I have nothing but admiration for it. As for the Hexi faction — there are the Five Marquises of Hexi. Your Highness happens to have ties with both the Marquis of Beirong and the Marquis of Anyi. These two are the most unquestionably core members of the Hexi faction — closest to the Emperor’s heart and deepest in his favor. But precisely because they are so solidly core, when forced to choose between the Hexi faction and His Majesty’s true intentions, both men will certainly follow the Emperor’s heart. Your Highness’s ability to read people — had you been born a man, I would have hung up my seal of office and yielded it to you.”

Xie Yuzhang had been cheating by using the foreknowledge from her past life, so she counted it as no real skill on her part. She only smiled quietly and said nothing.

Lin Zi went on, “I am currently thirty-three, and hold the post of Vice Minister of Personnel. I estimate I will be appointed Chief Minister by forty-five at the latest. If Your Highness were to bear an imperial son this year, by that time the boy would be only eleven or twelve — just at the age when golden scales first begin to appear. In the matter of the succession, I will also have a voice by then.”

Xie Yuzhang said, “Third Elder Brother, doesn’t it exhaust you, planning so far ahead?”

Lin Zi said, “Had Your Highness’s eight years in Mobei not existed — or even if they had, and His Majesty’s great army had simply swept away Mobei and Your Highness had returned — you would have been nothing more than a trophy a man used to show off his conquest. By now, you would likely be residing in some palace within the imperial city, holding some consort title, composing verses about white hair in the palace, spending your days hoping the Emperor would deign to visit.”

Xie Yuzhang fell quiet, and gave a soft sigh.

Lin Zi’s brushstroke finally wavered for just a moment.

He steadied his focus and his concentration, drew the final line down with firm evenness, set down the brush, looked up, and said, “Zhuzhu, don’t be willful. Listen to Third Elder Brother — be Empress.”

“His Majesty treats you differently from anyone else,” he said, holding her gaze. “When the day comes that someone else becomes Empress, the free and unrestrained life you want may not be so free and unrestrained after all. What a consort cannot do, the Empress can. If you and the four highest consorts hold the same rank, you will in the end still be a notch below the Empress.”

“Zhuzhu, you were born noble. You should not be placed beneath anyone.”

“You have no father’s family, yet you have connections. His Majesty’s origins everyone knows. If you give His Majesty a legitimate son, carrying the bloodlines of two dynasties’ imperial families, who could be more noble than he?”

“Zhuzhu — Fei’er can live free and unrestrained because she has you, and she has me. You do not. Power borrowed from another is never reliable. Power held in your own hands — that is true freedom.”

Xie Yuzhang raised her head, and her eyes met Lin Zi’s.

Xie Yuzhang returned to the Yongning Princess’s estate and first brought the painting to Jia You. “Take a look — does it resemble Fukang?”

Tears fell from Jia You’s eyes. “It does!”

“Don’t cry,” Xie Yuzhang said. “Be patient. I’ll have someone mount it first, and then we’ll hang it in your room.”

She returned to her own main room, where a handmaid brought in a herbal decoction that had been simmering for more than an hour.

Xie Yuzhang drank it down in one go.

The closest personal handmaid looked as though she wanted to say something but held back.

Xie Yuzhang only waved her hand in dismissal.

In the palace, it grows dark early in winter. In the Zichen Palace, tallow candles as thick as a child’s arm were burning, and Li Gu was working through the memorials that had piled up during the twelfth month on account of the affairs with Qingque and the consorts.

Liang Chen came in to inquire, “Will Your Majesty be going today?” There was no need to say where.

Li Gu said, “Not today. Let her also have a proper night’s sleep.”

He then said, “Prepare a bath for me.”

Liang Chen acknowledged the order, turned, and went to make the preparations.

Da Zhao had prospered for four hundred years, and through generations of emperors constantly renovating and expanding the Zichen Palace, it had been built into a place of imposing grandeur in the front halls and comfortable ease in the rear. In Li Gu’s sleeping quarters, there was even a decorative screen wall, and behind the door it concealed lay not an ordinary bathing room, but a bathing hall.

The bathing pool was built of white jade, with a structure similar to underground heating beneath it. The water in the pool was kept warm every hour of every day and night, available for the Emperor to bathe whenever he wished.

Li Gu grew tired from reading memorials, rubbed his neck, and went to the bathing hall.

Liang Chen attended him as he undressed.

When Li Gu had removed his inner robe, Liang Chen paused.

Across that muscular, powerful back were several scratch marks. Though a day and a night had passed and they had already dried and begun to scab over, Liang Chen was certain — when he had helped His Majesty bathe before departing for the Princess’s estate the day before, those marks had definitely not been there.

Liang Chen blinked, and the corners of his mouth curved upward.

Li Gu was still unaware, and stepped down into the water. The wounds on his back had already scabbed over, and he felt nothing at all.

He dismissed Liang Chen and soaked alone in the hot water. The moment he closed his eyes, the memories of last night’s dazzling, intoxicating dream came flooding back.

Bone-deep, soul-consuming.