I once held her hands and swore an oath to her.
I promised that once we had a prince, he would inherit this vast realm. But in the end, I placed the imperial seal in someone else’s hands with my own. And to secure the empire, just two years after her death, I raised another consort to the throne.
As I watched the officials below cry, “Long live the emperor!” I suddenly remembered how tightly she had clutched my sleeve in her final moments. She could no longer speak then. She only traced my face again and again with her eyes, as if she wanted to carve it into the cycle of reincarnation.
In the dead of night, she stands among the plum blossoms, gazing at me in silence, watching as I turn the oath I once made into a few scant lines in the history books: “To secure the foundations of the state, he acted as circumstances required.”
