The surroundings were utterly still.

A gentle breeze drifted past, and fallen blossoms floated down like purple butterflies. One petal landed softly in her hair.

Amid the shower of flowers, she looked at him. The faintly mocking smile that had graced her face moments before gradually faded, and she fell silent.

That silence stretched on for a long while.

Li Xuandu grew restless waiting. He hesitated, then finally could not help but reach out, wanting to draw into his arms this woman who had grown so thin in the few months they had been apart—to hold her tenderly. But suddenly he heard her speak.

She said: “I am deeply grateful to Your Highness for traveling a thousand li to seek me out, doing so because you missed me and hold affection for me. I believe what Your Highness says in this moment. But I cannot believe in all the years that lie ahead. How could I ever keep Your Highness feeling as warmly toward me as you do today…”

She raised her hand and caught a falling petal drifting toward her, cradling it in her palm.

“Affection is like this blossom—it blooms in fullness, but in the end it will always wither and fall…”

She blew the petal from her palm, lifted her eyes, and looked at him.

“Your Highness has made this declaration to me, and I am moved beyond words—that is my sincere feeling. But it cannot put my heart at ease.”

The flame that had been smoldering quietly in Li Xuandu’s eyes went still; his gaze steadied.

“What would you have me do, so that you could be at ease?” he asked, then paused. “If I were to make an oath…”

She shook her head.

“It has nothing to do with oaths. Your Highness has a sharp blade hanging over your head, and until that blade is gone, I will not be able to be at ease for even a single day.”

Pu Zhu looked at him and spoke with perfect clarity.

Li Xuandu’s hands, which had been reaching toward her, stopped in mid-air. A moment later, they dropped. The passion and joy that had welled up in his eyes at the sight of her slowly faded away.

“I understand.”

“So it comes back to what you said before—you want to become Empress, is that right?”

He asked, his voice thick and constrained.

Pu Zhu held his gaze steadily.

“Yes! I know what Your Highness expects of me. But I am not your cousin from the Que Kingdom—I am exactly this kind of person, and this has always been my deepest wish. I no longer wish to deceive Your Highness as I did before. I have not forgotten how my grandfather was condemned and died, how I was sent to the frontier at the age of eight. Nor have I forgotten the oath I swore in He Xi. I do not want to live a life where others hold power over my very existence! Can Your Highness say you are truly content with such a life? Your Highness must not forget—the blood of the late Emperor flows in your veins. You were once so nobly distinguished. That seat on the throne is not beyond your reach!”

Li Xuandu also held her gaze.

“Zhuzhu, you only want me to take the throne and place you upon it as Empress—and all else means nothing to you? Including my…”

“Feelings?”

At last, with some difficulty, he spoke those final two words.

Pu Zhu lowered her eyes and was silent for a moment.

“One must not be too greedy, wanting everything at once. I know I am not so fortunate as to have all of it.” She finally said softly.

Li Xuandu’s hand slowly clenched.

“And what if in the end, I cannot make your wish come true?”

He asked through gritted teeth.

“If Your Highness agrees and yet in the end it does not succeed, then I shall accept my fate!”

He said no more.

The world around them fell utterly silent, save for the ceaseless shower of blossoms overhead, rustling and whispering as they fell. From a distance, the two figures formed a perfect picture—one seated on the swing, one standing before her, gazing into each other’s eyes as though lost in deep feeling.

“When Your Highness has made up your mind, you may come find me at any time—I will wait for you. From that point forward, I will stand with Your Highness in unity, and I will do whatever Your Highness asks of me. But if Your Highness still cannot accept this, I will not press the matter. I thank Your Highness for coming all this way to bring me back. After this, I will never raise the subject again.”

She finished speaking, smiled at him, stepped down from the swing, and walked away.

She was gone, leaving only the swing turning slowly in the breeze, petals drifting onto its seat, and the desolation of silence all around.

This was not what Li Xuandu had hoped for.

He had traveled far, his longing welling like a tide, and his heart had overflowed with words he had wanted to say to her. Yet what awaited him was this version of her.

What in the world had come over him? Li Xuandu asked himself.

Had he truly debased himself to such a degree before her, all for the sake of winning her heart?

In Yinyue City, when his aunt had asked him what kind of person she was, he had told her: she was beautiful, clever, lively, and brimming with inexhaustible energy…

All of that was true. And beyond that, he had not told his aunt the rest—that over these years he had known himself to still be quite young, yet had felt so terribly old and worn, until that day she had burst unexpectedly into his world. He had found endless fault with her, but his deadened sense of smell had grown sharp as a hunting hound’s again, awakened by the fragrance rising from her long hair. His dulled sense of touch had been reborn through the warmth and softness of her body. The burning torment that had plagued him for years had been soothed at last by her embrace. His heart, too, had begun to beat anew because of her.

Her every expression, her every smile, had begun—without his noticing when—to pull at his emotions, to bring him joy and anger alike, until he could no longer put her down.

It was for nothing more than that gnawing longing, and all those feelings he had desperately wanted her to know, that he had traveled ten thousand li—from beyond the frontier back to the capital, and then in one breath out of the capital again, following her all the way here.

Throughout that long journey, he had felt not the slightest fatigue, but had instead blazed with the same hot-blooded excitement he had felt as a youth when he had slipped out of the palace to gallop freely on the polo grounds. He had been drunk on the feeling, lost in it entirely.

He had dimly sensed that the self he had been before the age of sixteen was coming back to life.

But now—the deeper his affection for this woman had been before, the greater the disappointment he received from her today.

He had long understood what kind of person she was—that she coveted power above all else.

He had also believed he had long since convinced himself to accept all of her: everything good about her, and everything not.

Yet even so, on the road back here, his heart had still quietly harbored a small hope—that during the time they had been apart, she might have missed him the way he had missed her.

But now, in this moment, hearing those words fall from her lips so carelessly, so without feeling—even though he had always known this was her way, even though he had told himself again and again not to expect her to change even a little for him—Li Xuandu found that he could not, in the end, do it.

He, Li Xuandu, could not be so magnanimous.

Luo Bao had not dared to steal glances at the Prince and his wife’s long-awaited reunion. He still vividly remembered the sounds he had been forced to overhear on several previous occasions. This time, for the sake of propriety, he had deliberately gone far away. He did not know what had happened afterward, why the Princess Consort had returned alone to her quarters, nor why the Prince had been gone so long and was nowhere to be found.

On instinct, he knew the two of them must have quarreled again.

The sky grew dark; a strong wind rose in the valley, and the night deepened. He paced anxiously back and forth near the Princess Consort’s quarters, just about to go out and search again, when suddenly he spotted the Prince emerging from the heavy darkness in the distance.

Luo Bao let out a breath of relief and hurried over: “Your Highness, where did you go?”

Li Xuandu said nothing, his gaze fixed ahead, and strode in long steps toward her quarters.

The wind scattered the drifting clouds; moonlight flooded the valley, streaming through a small window into the wooden cabin and pooling on the floor.

No lamp had been lit inside. Pu Zhu sat hugging her knees, leaning against the headboard, listening with quiet attention to the howling wind outside—so fierce it sounded as though it would tear the mountains from the earth.

The door was suddenly pushed open, and Li Xuandu stepped in, stopping beside her bed.

The moonlight at his back cast his shadow forward, falling over her.

He came to find her!

She steadied herself and offered him a gentle smile. “Has Your Highness made up your mind?”

He did not answer right away. With the moonlight behind him, his face was veiled in shadow, half hidden, his expression impossible to make out.

Pu Zhu waited a moment, then decided to get up from the bed and stand while she spoke with him.

She felt oppressed sitting there like that, and the feeling was deeply uncomfortable.

“Surely I must have owed you a debt in a past life, Li Xuandu, to fall into your hands in this one—to be toyed with by you like this.”

Just as she shifted slightly, she heard his voice come coldly in her ear.

Pu Zhu startled, and then quickly understood.

He had agreed!

This was his way of agreeing—he was going to fight for her, to contend for the throne!

She had finally succeeded!

Her heart pounded furiously.

His voice continued to reach her.

“I admit that I am enchanted by you, that I am bewitched by you, that I have demeaned myself before you in pursuit of your affection. But you must understand one thing: if there is something I, Li Xuandu, truly do not wish to do, no amount of your seduction could ever make me consent. My return this time—beyond wishing to see you—was also to tell you something: I know there is a blade above my head, and I have resolved to contend for what is mine. Not only so that in the future I may protect those who need my protection, but also because of the unfinished ambition I held when I was young.”

“I do it for my aunt, who clearly loved Jiang Yi, yet as a princess, accepted her duty and resolutely went beyond the frontier.”

“I do it for your father, whose spirit was fierce as autumn frost and pure as white sun, yet who to this day lies buried in an enemy land, unable to return home.”

“I do it so I will not shame the imperial blood that runs through my veins and the responsibility I was born with, will not disappoint my aunt, your father, and all those who, like them, once sacrificed themselves for this empire.”

“If in the end Heaven grants me the fortune to succeed, if I can become Emperor of this realm, then you—you shall be Empress.”

“Is this answer satisfactory to you?”

Li Xuandu spoke his final words and, without waiting for her reply—seemingly without needing her reply—turned and walked out of the room.

The oppressive weight that had come in with him vanished with his departure.

But Pu Zhu was stunned.

She sat motionless, and gradually, even her fingers seemed to lose all strength, going numb and unable to move at all.

She had long known that Luo Bao had secretly dispatched guards to send word of her whereabouts back to the capital—and at the time, she had not tried to stop him.

She had also been waiting for Li Xuandu to come.

She knew that her notions of settling here for good, of never returning, were ultimately nothing but fantasies—fleeting and illusory. She could not go on living like this forever; the blade still hung above her head. And this turn of events was the perfect opportunity. She had to seize it.

Li Xuandu had indeed come as she had wished. But she had never, not in her wildest imaginings, expected him to say what he had said.

It turned out that before she had even opened her mouth, he had already made his decision.

She sat in a daze. After a long while, she suddenly remembered his cold, detached tone, and couldn’t help but shiver, snapping back to herself. She hurriedly got out of bed, threw on a robe, and opened the door.

Luo Bao was still pacing outside. When he saw her come out, he ran over.

“Where is His Highness?”

Pu Zhu suppressed the turmoil in her heart, glanced around, and asked.

“The stable supervisor Jiang has just finished his rounds and returned—His Highness seems to have gone to him…”

Pu Zhu hurried after him.

Jiang Yi’s quarters stood on a nearby hillside—a solitary house built of stone, standing year-round against the valley winds, immovable as ever.

Lamplight glowed a dull amber through the window of that room. Pu Zhu had walked halfway there when she thought again and turned back to the kitchen, where she fetched a jug of wine before making her way over.

A guard stood outside. When she asked whether Prince Qin was within, he nodded.

She reached the door, about to knock—then lost her nerve and stopped.

Having returned from his rounds, Jiang Yi heard that Li Xuandu had arrived and was overjoyed. He welcomed him into the room, had someone warm a jug of wine, and after the pleasantries, the two men sat across from each other in the lamplight, speaking freely of their lives.

“This humble room and its rough wine are hardly fitting for Your Highness.”

Jiang Yi said with a smile as he poured.

Li Xuandu looked at Jiang Yi—plainly dressed, hair now touched with white at the temples, yet his bearing still bold and unrestrained, not a trace of bitterness in his words—and could not help saying: “Uncle Jiang, do you not resent the late Emperor? You were wrongfully afflicted, and to this day you remain confined to this frontier, your great ambitions unfulfilled.”

The smile on Jiang Yi’s face slowly faded. He was quiet for a moment, then smiled once more. “In the late Emperor’s time, he was wise in knowing men and using them, and brought peace to the realm within and without. His border achievements were great, and the beginnings of a prosperous age were taking shape. Even with his shortcomings, in my eyes he was still a capable ruler. Gold is never pure; how much more so a ruler of a nation.”

Li Xuandu said: “If some day in the future the realm again needs a great general, would you still be willing to ride out to battle?”

Jiang Yi had just raised his cup to drink. At these words, his hand paused slightly. He looked up, saw the Prince’s unblinking gaze fixed upon him, and slowly set down his cup. He pondered for a moment, then spoke in a measured tone: “Jiang Yi is a military man, born to fight—war is my calling. As long as I have done no wrong by Heaven above nor failed the common people below, as long as I can still ride a horse and hold a spear, if there is a summons, Jiang Yi will answer!”

Li Xuandu rose from his seat and bowed to him with great respect. Jiang Yi hurried to help him up. “What does Your Highness mean by this? How could I accept such a bow from you?”

Li Xuandu said: “You deserve it. This is my apology on behalf of the Li family to the former great general. General, you have lived your whole life without failing your country. It is the Li family that has wronged you—publicly and privately, we owe you far too much. Please, Uncle, take care of yourself. Until we meet again!”

Jiang Yi paused, then burst into great laughter—laughter filled with boundless satisfaction.

“I will not deceive Your Highness: meeting you today, this may well be the most satisfying drink of my entire life! My wine here is rough, but there is plenty of it, and if Your Highness does not mind, tonight I will drink with Your Highness until we are—”

He stopped mid-sentence, turned his head, glanced toward the door, smiled, and amended: “Zhuzhu has been separated from you for so long; now that you are here, she must be overjoyed. If I keep you any longer, I fear Zhuzhu will be cross and refuse to acknowledge me as her adoptive father tomorrow! Your Highness should go and be with Zhuzhu. As for the wine, tomorrow is not too late.”

Li Xuandu had long since sensed the slender silhouette shifting half-visible beyond the door. He glanced over and smiled. “Zhuzhu is very understanding—when I came, she told me to spend my time with her adoptive father and not to worry about her.”

Pu Zhu knew that even if she retreated now, it was already too late. Fortunately, she had thought to stop by the kitchen for the wine, so at least her hands were not empty. She steadied herself, pushed the door open, and walked in with a composure she did not feel, presenting the wine with a smile: “I brought wine. Uncle, please do not mind me—stay and have a good drink with His Highness. I will not intrude; I shall take my leave.”

She poured a cup for Jiang Yi and one for Li Xuandu.

Jiang Yi, noticing nothing unusual in their manner, beamed with admiration. “Zhuzhu is so thoughtful!”

Li Xuandu raised an eyebrow slightly, gave her a cool, sidelong glance, raised his cup, took a sip, and said nothing.

Pu Zhu set down the jug, excused herself, and stepped out. The moment she was outside, the smile she had forced onto her face could no longer be sustained. She walked back to her own quarters, stepped inside—and the tears fell.

It had been so long. At last she had waited for this day, for him to say he would fight for it.

Was this not exactly what she had schemed and hoped for all along—this very declaration from him?

As for what he actually thought of her, what did it matter? She should feel nothing of the sort. As long as she had achieved her goal, she had succeeded.

But now that the moment had truly arrived, there was not a trace of joy in her heart—only pain, unbearable pain, as though someone had dealt her a heavy blow across the face.

The bed was just a few steps away, yet she felt she lacked even the strength to walk that far. She leaned against the wall beside the door and slowly sank down, until at last she was sitting on the floor, silently letting her tears fall.

It doesn’t matter, she told herself—let me cry. After all, he will not be coming back tonight. She had seen how natural and at ease his smile was when he was with Uncle Jiang.

Somehow, thinking that made the tears come even harder. Afraid her sobs would disturb others, she buried her face and cried in silence. She did not know how much time passed. Just as she felt she might suffocate from holding it all in, she sensed a presence nearby.

She lifted her tear-streaked face and, through blurred and swollen eyes, by the moonlight filtering into the wooden cabin, she saw that Li Xuandu had come back after all.

He was sitting right before her, brow furrowed, watching her cry—she had no idea how long he had been there—his expression one of pure and evident distaste.

She could hold back no longer. With a sob, she threw herself at him like a child who had been wronged beyond bearing, wrapped her arms around his neck.

Li Xuandu stiffened for a moment. When he heard her broken, gasping breaths, he could no longer hold himself in check. Gritting his teeth, he gathered her up and placed her on the bed.

He didn’t understand why she was crying. Shouldn’t she be overjoyed?

Faced with this heartless, cold-blooded woman, all he felt was a surge of love and then a surge of hate—a love so fierce he wanted to hold her in the palm of his hand and could not bear to hear a single sob from her, and a hate so sharp he wanted to go far away and never lay eyes on her face again. Pulled between love and hate, with no other recourse, the only way he could assert any control was to conquer her utterly—to make her yield beneath him, to beg for mercy—and then, only then, did he feel a fleeting satisfaction, like the sweetness of revenge.

Outside the cabin, the wild wind howled, and it blew through the entire night.

The next day, Pu Zhu woke and opened her eyes to find the wind had stopped and a thread of sunlight was streaming through the window.

It seemed to be nearly midday.

She lay in bed, her thoughts adrift, and then suddenly jolted back to herself. She turned her head—the space beside her was empty. He had already been gone for some time.

A hollow, disoriented feeling washed over her. If not for the lingering aches and soreness that her body carried, everything that had happened last night might have seemed like a dream.

At that moment, Luo Bao’s voice came from outside, asking if she was awake. He said that word had just arrived from Ye Xiao: Empress Dowager Chen of Jijshan Palace had passed away, and by custom, Prince Qin and his consort would need to return to the capital as soon as possible to observe mourning.

“If the Princess Consort is awake, whenever you have finished getting ready, we may set out.”