Ye Tingyan raised his eyes, his pitch-black pupils looking directly at her.

In the instant just past, something had clearly flickered across his face—perhaps when he spoke the words “a hidden grief that cannot be spoken aloud,” or perhaps after he let slip “you” instead of “Your Majesty.”

Luowei stared fixedly for a long moment but could discern nothing further.

She still held in her hand the calligraphy brush Ye Tingyan had passed to her earlier—this was a loose-center brush used by Xiuqing Temple for copying sutras, the kind without a central core that literary men of the age favored most.

Just now, in her urgency to question him, she had stepped too close. At this moment she stood within arm’s reach of him.

Ye Tingyan did not answer her question. Instead he leaned slightly forward, drawing near to her cheek.

His warm, moist breath was so very close, drifting against her face. It carried a light, numbing sensation—a little itchy too—like the touch of falling petals drifting down and brushing across one’s cheek by chance.

Luowei did not retreat. She stood her ground, unmoving, only her breath quickening by a half measure.

He perceptively noticed the change in her and narrowed his eyes in a slight smile.

Seeing that expression on his face, Luowei lowered her gaze.

She had expected him to act as he had in the past—kissing her without a second thought.

But he did not.

Ye Tingyan disregarded her question entirely. He only slid his hand along her shoulder, and gripped the hand that held the brush.

Luowei instinctively tried to pull her hand away. He would not release it. Just like that, he drew her upright to standing.

She was pushed back two steps, then was yanked back by Ye Tingyan with a force that brooked no resistance.

He stood behind her, encircling her within his arms. One hand clasped hers, the other pressed upon her shoulder, and he did not permit her to rise.

In this posture, Ye Tingyan guided her hand and began to write characters. The very first stroke fell upon the one palace position in her horoscope that still remained empty.

He was writing in the ruling star for her life palace.

Luowei resisted fiercely. That first stroke fell crooked and trembling, bearing no resemblance to itself.

She said in a low, stern voice: “You—!”

Ye Tingyan set his chin upon her shoulder as if by chance, his voice slightly husky: “You ask why I know? Finish writing, and I will tell you.”

This faintly familiar gesture made Luowei freeze momentarily, and even the resistance in her hands diminished. Seizing her moment of distraction, Ye Tingyan guided her hand to write, in her life palace, two neat, precise characters.

——Zi Wei.

Her life palace contained a Ziwei star, yet he had written for her an extra stroke of the grass radical, transforming the “wei” of “Ziwei” into the “wei” of the flowering plant in her given name—it seemed an act of playful teasing.

Having finished writing, he asked softly: “Ziwei seated alone, ruling the life palace—do you sometimes feel lonely?”

Luowei looked down to see, her fingers trembling slightly. The characters “Zi Wei” that he had guided her to write bore the very style of writing she had once been most skilled in—blending the elegant spirit of the Lanting Preface with flying white strokes of dry ink.

Under such circumstances, these characters actually resembled her own hand so closely!

Luowei suppressed the tangled feelings of shock and indignation and suspicion, and forced herself to remain composed: “You have still not answered my question.”

“When we were at Xiuqing Temple before, I already told you… from the year I left the capital, there has not been a single moment when I was not thinking of you—thinking of when we might meet again, wondering in what form we would meet.” Ye Tingyan’s voice was very soft. All deference had vanished from it. Pressed close to her ear, in a posture that nearly became a kiss: “My heart is so sincere, my vows were sworn with such poison. How is it that you have not believed a single word?”

If what he had said before, kneeling beneath that ancient tree, had seemed like words made up off the top of his head, then as these new words fell from his lips and Luowei stilled herself to listen, she caught in them ten parts of genuine feeling.

Ye Tingyan had always spoken in a mixture of truth and falsehood, and when he reached the point that truly grieved him, a deeper emotion escaped from its hiding place.

Luowei had always prided herself on being able to read the hearts of others. When she perceived that his feeling appeared not to be feigned, her own composure instead fell into disorder. In the dark, dim bed canopy, there had also been one moment when she had sensed a yearning that, beneath the desire, did not seem to be pretense.

Before, she had kept everything carefully concealed. She had taken it for an illusion.

Today, to answer her suspicion, he would no longer conceal it.

Ye Tingyan withdrew the loose-center brush from her hand and used her fingers to trace over the two characters they had just written: “When I first knew you in my youth, you had not yet perfected this style of writing. Later I wandered the whole world, and went through great pains to obtain one sheet of calligraphy from you.”

Luowei’s hand trembled.

Besides Lu Heng, there was actually another person who could have seen her handwriting from before?

Lu Heng had obtained her handwriting by stealing the letters from Zhang Buyun’s possession. Members of the imperial family were not like ordinary scholars and literati—they had to guard against schemes and fabricated evidence. What was practiced was mostly measured, regular script without distinctive character.

Yet in her youth she had been unconventional, insisting on devising her own unique style—thinking to be like the famous men of letters of this dynasty, equally accomplished in culture and the arts of ink, and gain a fine reputation. She had even been angry once when her father confiscated her calligraphy sheets and forbade them from circulating among the common people.

After that lesson, she at last understood her own limits and had constrained herself, learning to conceal her edge as men like Yu Qiushi did.

They allowed calligraphy sheets to circulate, but frequently changed their styles, so they could not become evidence against them.

Ye Tingyan had studied her earlier style of writing—in her youth at the放鹤 Academy in Xu Prefecture, and when she was leaving Biandu, she must certainly have left behind traces of her brushwork. Anyone with a keen enough eye need only take notice and the sheets would not be impossible to collect.

Fortunately he had not been in Biandu and had had no time to imitate her handwriting for any sinister purpose.

And Ye Tingyan was still continuing: “From the moment I obtained it, I traced those characters day after day, and thought them through night after night, imagining the posture with which you set down each stroke. Now you understand why I know—see for yourself: have I learned it well?”

Having spoken these words, he let go of her hand.

Luowei rubbed her wrist and straightened up, her mind a tangle, her composure not yet restored.

To think that he had picked up her calligraphy to study it—combined with everything he had just said, she felt a deep, bone-cold chill.

Seeing her trembling, Ye Tingyan even laughed a little: “What is this—now that you know my feelings, you are afraid?”

Luowei made great efforts to calm herself and still could not help pressing her hand to her forehead as she stepped back.

She ought to have been pleased—if this man harbored, within such a delicate relationship, even one part of a feeling that he should not have had, then by seizing hold of this vital point, she could make him do things that far exceeded what she could have obtained through simple patronage.

Yet for reasons she could not name, she felt only wave upon wave of a racing, pounding heart.

How could such a man have “genuine feeling”?

How could such a man be allowed to have “genuine feeling”?

If such a man had “genuine feeling”—what would it look like?

If this “genuine feeling” were still a disguise—could she hold her own against it in the future?

As though he could hear the words in her heart, Ye Tingyan came toward her and began to speak with composure. He had not intended to say so much, but these words would not be suppressed by his will and came rushing out: “Do you wonder why, in all this time, I have been different from before? When I first saw you again, I could not help myself and made all those clinging, pestering displays. But in recent days, lying awake and restless in the night, I kept thinking to myself—if I acted in such a way, what would make me any different from the others you use? I want to respect you, to value you, to love you—I want you to know that even if you must make use of people, I am the most fitting one!”

Luowei had already been backed into a corner of the meditation chamber. Feeling a chill at her back, she swallowed and forced herself to steady: “Is that so?”

Ye Tingyan said through gritted teeth: “Of course!”

To cover for the familiarity that had slipped out at first, he had constructed this string of words. Now it seemed they had deceived not only her, but himself as well—or perhaps it was no deception at all. He had a thousand words and ten thousand sentences dammed up at his heart that could not find a way out, and seizing upon this opportunity, he had simply let them all come pouring, recklessly, without restraint.

Only that by the time he had spoken to the end, the pain in his heart had grown all the more heavy.

During countless nights alone in his residence, he had stared at the bright moon and at the flowering trees and refused to acknowledge it—yet it turned out he had hated her so deeply, hated her betrayal of him long ago, and at the same time yearned for her so deeply. Even having passed through oil and fire himself, having picked his own white bones from the depths of the Avici hell—to find her already become a seductress with ten thousand admirers at her feet—he still loved her.

Ye Tingyan shot out one arm to brace against the wall beside her. For a moment, he nearly could not contain the violent, murderous anger lurking within him: “In those days I had no chance to declare my feelings—and then you became this Empress. What more could I have done? What else could I have done?”

His mind rang out with a buzzing sound, yet suddenly within his consciousness arose the memory of the moon he had seen when he fell into the water on that night of the Lantern Festival three years ago.

He had looked up in desperate unwillingness, watching himself drift farther and farther from that disk of moon on the surface of the water—reaching for it, unable to touch it—while the waves shuddered and scattered in the wind, crumbling even the rippling reflection to pieces.

More than hating her, he hated himself—he hated himself to the core—all the memories of the past lay clear before him, yet here he was, seizing this opportunity to tear out his heart and lungs and liver and will, bloody, and lay them bare.

Today when she went to worship the Buddha, he had followed along and bowed perfunctorily before each image in turn, staring at the gilded face and only managing a scornful laugh.

In years past he, too, had been a devout believer. But when he had truly fallen into the space between life and death, the multitude of divine forms could not be found—no one came to deliver him.

Ye Tingyan lowered his head and laughed with self-contempt. For a moment he felt only a splitting headache, and before his eyes a wash of crimson—those demons and monsters that so often appeared in the nights came materializing in broad daylight, brandishing their blades and halberds toward him.

Luowei, filled with alarm, looked up—and saw that his eyes had gone blood-red. The man could barely stand, teetering, tilting toward her. Sensing something was wrong, she first suppressed all those tangled, impossible thoughts and called out: “Master Ye?”

“Ye Tingyan!”

She did not know what Ye Tingyan was seeing. He suddenly shut his eyes, panting roughly several times, grasping wildly at empty air. She reached out to catch him, but they both tumbled to the ground together.

She could not spare further thought. The door was still some distance away. Luowei pried loose the fingers that Ye Tingyan had locked rigidly around her shoulder and prepared to call Yan Luo to send someone to summon Pei Xi, who had previously passed her a message, so he could be brought to find a physician.

She had only just freed herself and had not yet risen when Ye Tingyan grabbed at her sleeve, his voice drifting, carrying one or two measures of desperate, anguished pleading: “…Don’t go.”

Luowei looked at him in his state, and felt a sharp pain in her heart.

A moment later, she came back to herself. She tore her sleeve away as if fleeing, and hurried without hesitation toward the door.

His hands fell empty. Ye Tingyan collapsed awkwardly to the floor, feeling pain that reached the uttermost extreme, a burning ache behind his eyes too difficult to bear.

Now he did not know whether these tears were the eye ailment—or pain of the heart.

The sheet of paper bearing the horoscope of her fate drifted lightly down to the floor. He reached out and grabbed it, first seeing the “Sun,” then seeing the “Zi Wei.” He remembered the first time he had led her past the Qionghua Hall, plucking wisteria to pin in her hair.

When I see wisteria, I think of you.

The words still rang in his ears—yet there was no returning, never, never, to any of it.

Not long after Yan Luo opened the door and caught sight of Luowei’s expression, she knew something was amiss. Glancing inside the room, she felt even greater shock. She listened to what Luowei said, then supported her as she walked toward the old hall along the path by which they had come. She then employed a ruse to find a child in Xiuqing Temple—one who knew nothing of anything—and sent him to deliver a message to Pei Xi.

She did not know what had happened, only that Luowei was trembling without stopping. Unable to help herself, she spoke up to remind her: “Your Majesty, your hands are so cold.”

Luowei heard her voice and gripped her tightly, her voice shaking: “I—I…”

Yan Luo asked with urgency: “Did that Ye San do something transgressive?”

Luowei shook her head wildly, stumbling a step on the path: “He did not. I was only just now…”

She had not yet finished speaking when she fell silent again.

Only thinking of a person long gone.

When he had grabbed at her sleeve, the desperate, drowning-like yearning she felt in that gesture had made her wonder—had he once had such a yearning himself, on that day?

After discovering that “her” letters had deceived him into eating poisoned cakes—or when Lu Heng, the man at his side, had driven a sword through his chest and thrown him into the water?

Ye Tingyan had spoken such a heart-baring confession to her, and yet, seeing his feeling, she had shamefully fallen back into the illusions she only had beneath that pitch-black bed canopy—kisses that would never come again, pleas that might once have existed. She knew she had perhaps not so far to go before madness, that in such a moment she could mistake the scheming, venomous serpent before her for the lover now separated from her by life and death.

But since he had offered up a feeling—whether true or false—why should she not return to him, in kind, the emotion that was not meant for him? He was too clever, and ordinary disguise could not fool him. But what of an instant that even she herself could not distinguish as real or feigned?

“I have only just realized that I now have a new… weapon.” Luowei reached out and wiped away the tear that had gathered but not yet fallen at the corner of her eye, and murmured to herself: “A pity—today I had meant to consult with him about the matters for the lotus flower banquet. But no matter—no matter. There will be future opportunities. If this is how things stand, then perhaps what he can do for me is even more than I had imagined. Yes, that must be it—must be even more…”

The two of them reached the old hall and found a meditation cushion to sit on. Luowei was still speaking to herself in a distracted, faraway manner, turning the same words over and over. Yan Luo used a handkerchief to dab away the cold perspiration on her brow, then with some reluctance interrupted her murmuring: “Luowei!”

Luowei was startled back to her senses by that shout. She looked up and saw Yan Luo in front of her, then drew one long, slow breath. Yan Luo took her hand and saw that the palm had already been cut into with pale, bloodstained marks by her own deeply pressed nails.

She reached out and embraced Luowei, listening to her pour out in a slow, murmuring stream the words she had kept to herself just now, and only then did she seem a little better.

In the old hall, the Buddha image had passed through fire and was half-melted—its form was something between divine and monstrous.

When Pei Xi arrived in haste, Yan Luo quietly led him over and asked one more question: “What is his condition?”

Pei Xi answered simply: “A heart ailment brought on by longstanding headaches. Please convey my thanks to Her Majesty on my behalf.”

When Yan Luo returned and they boarded the carriage back to the palace, Luowei had already completely composed her earlier expression. She lifted the curtain and looked out with a blank face.

“Young Master Pei says that Third Young Master Ye has a heart ailment and his delusions may be rooted in this—a youthful infatuation at first sight, devotion over many years, followed by the destruction of his family, which caused his obsession to grow ever more extreme.” Yan Luo said softly. “If all proceeds as Your Majesty envisions, what shall we do with this Third Young Master Ye afterward? If he has such a terrifying attachment to Your Majesty, I fear he will not accept things quietly.”

Luowei let the curtain fall and answered with three simple words: “Kill him.”