He was once a down-and-out prince who stayed in the General's Mansion. She taught him how to ride and shoot, and he combed her hair. He said he would only marry her when he ascended the throne, and she believed him.
He really became the emperor, and she became the queen. The first three years were his best days. She was afraid of thunder, so he would rush back to Fengyi Palace every rainy night.
In the fourth year, he suspected that his father-in-law was proud of his military strength and was demoted to the old department of the General's Mansion. She knelt outside the royal study to beg for mercy. She knelt for three days and three nights, but he never opened the door. She fainted on the fourth day. When he came out, he only said: "The queen should return to the palace to rest."
She was grounded for a year. A year later he came, holding a glass of wine: "Your father collaborated with the enemy and executed him, so I can't keep you."
She picked up the wine glass and smiled: "When you were a child, you were afraid of the dark. I held your hand and helped you get through it."
His hands trembled.
Before the poison struck her, she pulled out a plain white jade hairpin from her hair: "I picked off a rib and ground it into this hairpin. I wanted to wait until the child was born to give it to him. It is no longer needed now. The child is three months old."
The wine glass shattered on the ground, and when he rushed over to her, she had already closed her eyes.
In the following decades, Fengyi Palace was no longer occupied. The palace people would often see him sitting alone in the empty palace, clutching the bone hairpin and muttering to himself. No one could hear clearly, only a few words occasionally caught——
"I'm afraid of the dark."
