She hid her treasured sword beneath her pillow, running her fingertips over the blade again and again. In its icy touch lay the dream of becoming a general that she had never voiced.
When he caught her, he flew into a rage and pointed at her as he scolded, “As a concubine, you should know your place. How dare you covet the belongings of an official? Have you no shame?”
As she lay gravely ill, her breath as faint as a candle in the wind, the imperial physician knelt and begged to save her with a life-preserving pill. He coldly waved him away. “She's only a consort from a political marriage with improper thoughts. The pill would be wasted on her.”
Only when the truth came to light did he finally see that everything he had despised as “out of place” was the result of his own hands. He had ground down her sharp edges, then forcibly painted over her with the colors of a “palace consort,” creating a false image that even he found offensive.
