<Note: The leads remain faithful to each other, and there is relatively little court politics. Two chapters are duplicated.
Candles flickered in the palace as the new emperor, Chu Mingxuan, gazed at Su Liyue in her phoenix coronet and wedding robes, a bitter sweetness rising in his throat. Seven years ago, outside Qingzhou City, he clutched the protective talisman she had given him and said, “I send you off on your journey.” She smiled as she broke off a willow branch and replied, “I hope you return victorious.” Now, in the Golden Throne Hall, his empress knelt and addressed him as “Your Majesty,” as if he were a stranger she'd just met.
On the night the late empress dowager's coffin was taken out for burial, Su Liyue discovered that she had avenged herself on the wrong person. The one she loved had been by her side all along. Before she could finish speaking, Chu Mingxuan fainted. The poison from the dove-feather toxin he had contracted years ago while putting down a rebellion had already seeped into his lungs.
The truth about how the late emperor, Chu Minglang, had taken his own life for love, the secret edict by which the founding emperor entrusted his heir to another's care on his deathbed, and reports from the northern desert front arrived one after another. On the day Su Liyue shed her phoenix robes and donned a dragon-patterned imperial robe, Chu Mingxuan placed the imperial jade seal in her palm. “History should remember a female emperor who expanded the realm, not a pair of lovers trapped in the inner palace.”
For thirty years, half a charred protective talisman always lay on the female emperor's desk. In winter, the ailing retired emperor touched the phoenix patterns on the dragon throne one last time. “That year, when you caught me as I fell from my horse, apricot blossoms were caught in your hair.” The female emperor stared at him in a daze, then wept. Candlelight filled the hall, illuminating their overlapping posthumous titles. Emperor Mingxuan and Empress Mingxuan were reunited at last in the pages of history. Chu Mingxuan's thoughts: “Do you know how happy I was when Mother asked me to make her my empress? But I pretended I didn't want to and even sent the Shadow Guard to investigate her. It doesn't matter if that girl has forgotten me. I'll wait for you, Yue'er.”
