Zili counted the days—nearly twenty had passed since he’d last seen A’Luo. Now that he had time, he went to see her, wondering whether the days of coldness, the long grinding trial, had done anything to soften her temperament.
Zili had never revealed the secret that A’Luo had never actually entered the imperial mausoleum’s ice chamber. He’d wanted to let her choose freely—but her choice, once made clear, was not him. That choice left his heart suddenly hollow. Zili laughed bitterly to himself; he’d said he’d let her choose, yet he himself couldn’t let go. He had no way to suppress the longing for A’Luo inside him. Lost in tangled thought, he found himself walking, almost without realizing it, to Yuhua Palace. He waved a hand, signaling the imperial guards and attendants not to announce him formally and startle her.
A’Luo was restless with boredom. Every day was nothing but eating and sleeping. At first she hadn’t truly panicked, still hoping Zili would release her, find some excuse to break that custom. Now she grew more and more anxious, more afraid she truly would spend her whole life here. Liu Jue didn’t want her dead—he’d given her up to Zili, so he wouldn’t come for her. A’Luo felt her spirits sinking. Would she really have to start over, finding amusement in scheming within the harem? To gain that amusement, she’d need Zili’s favor—could she truly spend a lifetime with a man she didn’t love, in a place she didn’t like? She sighed.
A palace attendant said cautiously: “My lady, the food has gone cold!”
A’Luo’s temper flared instantly: “I told you not to call me that. I haven’t married him yet! If it’s cold, throw it out—I won’t eat it!”
“Do you not understand? Married or not, you will still become my consort,” Zili’s gentle voice sounded from the doorway.
A’Luo startled, turned to look at him with a cold smile: “That’s wishful thinking on your part alone. One of you fears I’ll die and would rather I live like this instead. The other also fears I’ll die, and cheers that our ancestors happened to leave behind such a convenient rule. Wang Yanhui really is helping you even from the grave!”
“She wasn’t helping me—she wanted nothing more than for Yunzhi and me to fight each other bloody, to the death. That woman’s scheming ran deep!” Zili sighed.
“Indeed—and the two of you, one willing to yield, one willing to accept, settled the matter so amicably. What a waste of all her careful plotting, really!” A’Luo said mockingly.
Zili gestured for the attendant to withdraw, and said calmly: “A’Luo, let’s talk properly. Since I met you, I’ve carried one wish. I’ve taken the throne, but you—I can’t let you go. I don’t understand it myself.” Zili walked slowly to the desk and sat down, the warm smile on his face carrying a trace of bitterness: “We met, and you were so happy then. But you avoided Liu Jue like the plague. You had no intention of marrying him at all—you even fled the chancellor’s residence to escape him. So why, A’Luo, after three years, did your heart turn to him?”
This was a question A’Luo had asked herself too. She didn’t know when exactly her heart had begun to soften toward Liu Jue—was it in Linnan City, or was it during their laughing, sparring days in Fengcheng? A’Luo murmured: “He… he told me to look into his eyes. His gaze was so steady, so sincere. He said he would protect me for the rest of his life.”
“And I can’t? Do you not know how I feel about you?”
“He coaxed open an entire begonia tree in the dead of winter, just for me.” A’Luo’s gaze drifted far away—the begonias blooming proudly amid white snow bloomed with all of Liu Jue’s deep devotion.
“I sent someone a thousand miles to fetch cabbage to the border city every single day, just wanting to taste the flavor of what you once cooked. I looked at your face painted onto Tianlin’s, day after day, and I couldn’t even bring myself to return to Fengcheng to see her. Do you think my feelings for you aren’t deep enough?” Zili thought of those three years of longing, the hidden hardship of being alone in exile—the ache in his heart impossible to put into words.
A’Luo raised her head to look at Zili: “I know. Tianlin told me. She knows all of this. For a woman, there’s no greater pain than her husband loving someone else.”
“You care about her? You’ve always cared that I married her? For the throne, for Chancellor Gu’s support—I could have refused that marriage, and instead I willingly married her! But that was then, this is now. I carried too much at the time; I had no choice. I could only let you go! Do you think I never sent people to search for you? Do you think I never wanted to run away with you, far from everything? Just like Liu Jue now—doesn’t he want to take you away? He wants to, but he doesn’t dare! Just as I once wanted to, and could not!” Zili grew agitated, pain flashing in his eyes. Why couldn’t A’Luo understand? Why couldn’t she understand the position he’d been in when he married Gu Tianlin!
“Do you care so much about the position of principal wife? Can’t you sacrifice a little for me? The position they want, I gave them, because I am king, I must balance the harem’s factions—but I can go my whole life without touching a single one of them! A’Luo, what more do you want from me?” Zili growled low. He’d already given everything he had to love her—retreated even to the point of standing against his entire harem and their supporters—what more could she possibly want from him?
She wasn’t unmoved, wasn’t without a pang in her heart. The man before her was the King of Ning, king of what she now knew was the strongest nation on this continent—he was the first man in this world who had cared for her, protected her, even doted on her. He had a handsome face, outstanding talent—how many women dreamed of such a husband, longed for such a man? In time, this harem would fill with beautiful women, each hoping to win a fragment of his heart. And yet Zili gave not the smallest gap to any of them, pouring every ounce of tenderness onto her alone.
A’Luo truly found it difficult—she couldn’t even bring herself to say a single word of refusal. She wasn’t without feeling for him; he’d opened Suxin Studio for her—was it really because he had money to spare? Zili only wanted to satisfy her. He’d taken her riding across the grasslands, indulged her every whimsical idea, ridden through the night to the chancellor’s residence to fetch her for camping, worried during the crown prince’s night banquet that she’d misunderstand and rushed to explain himself. Even on his wedding day, he’d left his newly married queen to come confess his feelings to her. How could she not have known, not have understood?
A’Luo lowered her head, tears falling: “We… met the right person at the wrong time. When I met you, you already had a betrothal. I couldn’t possibly marry you—I only wanted to leave the chancellor’s residence. Brother, I’ve wronged you!”
“Don’t call me brother!” Zili roared, leaping up and grabbing A’Luo’s shoulders, shaking her. “You call me brother—you’re truly greedy. Knowing you can’t be with me, yet unwilling to give up the place you hold in my heart—is that why you call me brother? Wanting me to hold the title of brother while my heart still loves you?”
A’Luo’s heart twisted like a blade. She wrenched his hands off: “Fine, I won’t call you brother—Your Majesty! I’ll call you Your Majesty! Do you want me to kneel and perform the full ceremony to you? Do you want me on my knees begging you? In my mind, I cannot accept a man who has a wife, and will have even more concubines in the future! My mind back then was entirely on how to get my mother out of that residence! I had no room left in my heart to love a married man, Your Majesty!” Having said this, A’Luo dropped straight to her knees: “This is the proper courtesy owed to you! How dare I call the King of Ning ‘brother’—I’m not worthy!”
Zili stumbled back two steps, drawing a deep breath. What was she saying? She wanted to kneel and speak to him? She wanted to distance herself from him entirely? Zili stared at A’Luo kneeling before him, disbelieving, unable to suppress the waves of bitterness rising in his chest: “What did you call me? A’Luo? Even you want to draw a line of rank between us? Push me into that lonely, solitary position? You actually called me ‘Your Majesty’? You… you truly know how to wound my heart!”
A’Luo pressed her lips tightly shut, tears glimmering in her eyes, her gaze unfocused, as if looking at him yet also looking through him toward somewhere else. Zili suddenly panicked, closing the distance in a single step and pulling A’Luo up into a tight embrace: “Alright, alright, A’Luo, don’t be like this, it’s my fault, I’m the one who’s wrong. Don’t call me Your Majesty, don’t kneel to me, don’t keep this distance from me. Distant enough that I… I’ll dissolve the harem, marry only you, I don’t care what the ministers impeach me for—would you be willing to marry me then?” His voice carried desolation, low and pleading. If her refusal were only about not wanting to share him with other women, Zili thought, his heart might find some comfort—he could tell himself it was circumstance forcing her hand, not that she didn’t care for him at all.
But the moment the words left his mouth, A’Luo blurted out, unable to help herself: “No!”
That single word—more painful than any lash, colder and more piercing than any blow to the heart, was her one word: “No!”
The world before his eyes lost all color in an instant. Zili released the arms holding her, his hands falling and clenching into fists, his reddening eyes glaring at her, teeth grinding: “Because he’s unmarried? Because his father only ever married one woman? Because you happened to meet him in Linnan City while I was away? You saw his devotion to you and were moved! Why did you never once think of me? Think of my feelings for you! You even let it be known—claiming loudly that the one you loved was me!”
Zili pressed the questions one after another, and A’Luo slowly backed away: “Do you know that even though I clearly understood it was all an act, I treated it as real? Do you know I never needed to perform for anyone else’s benefit, because my heart already belonged to you? Three years—when I saw you again at Prince Anqing’s residence, I could no longer tell myself it was all pretense!”
A’Luo, unable to bear it any longer, cried out: “Yes! I couldn’t help it—at first I didn’t like him, at first I even avoided him like the plague, but that was before. Later things changed. He moved me little by little, made me fall for him without my even realizing it—I don’t even know when I started loving him, and yet I did!”
“Fine, you love him—then where does that leave me!” Zili shook with fury, losing the composure he always maintained, pulling her into his arms roughly. “Loving him does you no good—he won’t have you, he can’t afford to have you! Because just like me, he can’t bear to let you die!”
Zili held her tightly. Trapped in his embrace, A’Luo looked up at him with sorrow—was this the only path left? She heard Zili say coldly: “I won’t let you die. You must become mine.”
The scene that followed was one of raw grief and desperation on both sides—A’Luo fighting him with everything she had, refusing, pleading; Zili, undone by three years of suppressed longing and the unbearable finality of her rejection, no longer able to master himself. What happened between them that night was not something either of them chose freely, and neither emerged from it unchanged. When it was over, Zili finally stopped, staring down at her, and asked, hoarsely: “Do you truly hate this much?”
A’Luo lay with her face pressed into the bed, shaking. She had never known that closeness with someone you didn’t love could feel like this. She couldn’t fight free of him any longer; hoarsely, she said: “You’re cruel. If you’re cruel enough to do this, then do it. It’s not as if a woman’s first time means anything.” She closed her eyes and let herself go numb, as if she had already died inside.
Zili gathered her up and turned her to face him. A’Luo glared at him with raw hatred, and in her clear, glistening eyes he read only resolve and resentment. He let go of her hands and gently wiped her tears: “It’s no use. If I want something, nothing you say will change it.”
A’Luo slapped him hard across the face. Zili didn’t flinch or dodge—how cruel she was. One slap, and it was as if his heart had been struck loose, flung far from him, never to return—all the better, perhaps, to become a man without a heart from now on, free of pain.
Zili stared at her unblinking: “A’Luo, when did things between us become like this? When did you come to hate me so much? Don’t you know neither of us wanted to watch you die—that’s why Liu Jue sent you into the palace, that’s why I need you to become my consort. What did I do wrong? Was it only that I never refused the betrothal to Father back then, that I chose Gu Tianlin, chose the Gu family’s power?”
A’Luo’s eyes filled with tears; she turned her head away, unable to look at him: “I’m sorry. You did nothing wrong. I’m the one who wronged you.”
Zili sighed long: “Think about it again, won’t you? A’Luo, think about it again.”
A’Luo lay quietly on the bed. Outside the window, moonlight was somehow still visible. Just to save my own life? What if I simply stop living? I’ll give you back the life you’re both so intent on saving. Then I won’t have to spend the rest of my life caged in this palace.
After Zili left, an attendant came in: “My lady, allow this servant to help you change.”
“Get out,” A’Luo said, the single word slipping quietly from her lips.
The attendant startled, retreating three paces to stand in silence.
The watch drums sounded, beat after beat, as if striking against her heart. A’Luo thought—if this had happened when she’d first arrived in this strange time, she would have surrendered long ago; survival mattered too much then. But a person, once pushed far enough, truly stops fearing death. Staying alive mattered greatly. But if this was the price of staying alive, she would rather die.
Whatever mysterious force had brought her here so inexplicably—please, let me die and cross over once more. Let me wake up back home, in my own bed, in the present day, and find this was all just a dream. A very, very long dream, nothing more. A’Luo lay motionless. Slowly, she drifted into sleep.