The snow was falling harder. By the time Li Xianzhu returned to the Palace Bureau of Attendants, it was nearly evening. Her fellow palace maids were leaning by the flower stand, gossiping.
"Have you heard? His Majesty brought a new man back to the palace."
"It's the top scorer from the imperial examinations announced the other day, the new scholar laureate, Chao Song."
Later, time and again, Li Xianzhu would hear that man's voice outside the empress's bedchamber.
Suppressed, sorrowful, shattered, yet clinging to the last unbent sliver of his pride as he struggled to stay alive.
He was almost dead, Li Xianzhu thought.
In the sixth year of Wending, the empress's disowned daughter, Li Xianzhu, killed the emperor and seized the throne, changing the era name to Dingzhen.
Her enthronement ceremony lasted nearly a full day.
That night, it snowed again. Chao Song sat on the imperial bed in Zhongluan Hall, dressed in wedding robes, as Li Xianzhu gently lifted his veil.
The woman before him was no longer the palace maid who had once helped him find a way to survive in the depths of the palace. She was the new empress of the Great Qian dynasty.
"You promised me back then that if I ever killed the emperor for you and avenged the pain you suffered, you'd lie down on this bed and become my kept man. Do you remember?"
Her cinnabar-painted fingernails brushed his cheek as Li Xianzhu called to him from beneath the bed curtains.
"Little Father..."
[Reader's note]
1. "Gao Zhu Yu": a respectful expression used to ask someone for their poetry or prose.
2. Blurb last updated on 2024.12.02.
Theme: To emerge from a desperate situation reborn.
