They walked to the emperor’s pace in silence. It loomed in the dark — though lit with countless nterns, there was an almost abandoned air embedded into building’s dark windows. There weren’t any servants; perhaps they had gone to celebrate the Winter Solstice Festival.

  ‘…Your Highness,’ she asked, ‘do you want me to come in with you?’

  ‘Fine,’ said the princess. ‘Come along.’

  Each of their steps echoed on the stone stairs. There was chilling silence pulled taut between them, unlike the calmer, warmer quiet they’d once had.

  It was a good thing it ended now, before Three grew too used to the princess’s care and ended up falling deeper.

  …She just couldn’t accept it.

  She couldn’t do it.

  She couldn’t learn how to share, not like that.

  The pace’s corridors were darker than ink. The red cquered pilrs glinted as they walked past, their shadows flickering with the ntern light. The heels of their clicked on the floor — the urge to flinch and cower steeped into her bones.

  Someone called out to them.

  ‘Your Highness, the emperor will meet you shortly in the drawing room.’ A waiting maid opened the door for them, nimbly sliding out of the way. ‘Refreshments are inside.’

  The Third Princess shot the maid a silent, cold look and stepped inside. She followed, the maid shutting the door behind her.

  There were thumps; the maid had nailed the door shut.

  She asked, ‘Should I —?’

  ‘Leave it.’

  ‘…Alright.’ She only sighed.

  The room was painted entirely in bck; even the furniture was carved from a wood darker than ash. The room was a cramped one too — the study only held a square table surrounded by four equally bckened chairs. A smaller door sat behind it — likely one that led to the emperor’s bedroom or private quarters.

  Then her eyes fell on the tabletop.

  There was the military tiger tally, in its fully assembled glory. Sleek, bck and eerie, the glinting ruby eyes of the statue seemed to glow in the dark. The thing that allowed the wielder to command the biggest army in the whole empire.

  The princess’s breathing grew boured.

  ‘You can sit,’ Three said. ‘The emperor won’t try to kill you.’

  ‘The empress might.’

  ‘Then stand.’ She prowled around the room, unease growing. She muttered, ‘The emperor’s not the kind to leave us hanging. It isn’t advisable to just stay here —’

  ‘Then what? Leave and be punished for refusing an imperial summon?’

  She pointed at the tally and snapped, ‘So we’re just going to stay here and have that stare at us the whole time?!’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Ridiculous,’ she hissed.

  ‘Shut up!’

  She scoffed, pulling out a chair for herself and sitting down.

  Quiet, again.

  ‘…Ah-Liu,’ Xi Qian’e whispered, ‘is it such a hard thing to accept? Marriage is just a title on paper, and children… many couples adopt or have surrogates. Sometimes they come from past lovers, too.’

  ‘Xi Yu,’ she said, ‘my mother was never a fool. My father promised her the same things — he would marry for business connections, he would have children to preserve her health, he…’

  ‘You think I would hit you?!’ Xi Qian’e’s voice gave a sudden crack. ‘Ah-Liu, I can distinguish between right and wrong. I’m not like that damned young miss of yours —’

  ‘Your Highness,’ she said, ‘you always told me that my taste in women was terrible. That my young miss was a terrible choice.’

  ‘She should never have been a choice!’ The princess snapped, ‘Don’t tell me that you still hang onto her; violence is never found in love. Don’t waste your emotion, your care for such a piece of trash —’

  ‘You’re right, Your Highness.’ Her voice turned cold. ‘We didn’t love each other. But we trusted each other. We obsessed with each other to insanity, to the point we couldn’t separate for anything. And we pced that trust in the box of madness — that we would never be abandoned, ever again.

  ‘Your Highness, trust isn’t something that’s merely given,’ she said, ‘it’s a steel bde and shield forged from suffering!’ She stood up, the chair legs screeching against the floor. ‘Your Highness, do you really know what it means to live as a concubine?’

  The princess flinched. ‘It just means that your children will inherit your partner’s surname. It means that your partner is the head of the household, it’s a method of recording whose children are in which family register —’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ She stepped closer, her eyes wide and gring. ‘You don’t understand at all, Your Highness.’

  She was almost raving as she said, ‘Say I marry into your family as a noble consort. I’m going to watch you marry an empress, an imperial consort and other concubines. I’m going to spend every single day listening to rumours of your affairs with others, plotting to steal your attention away as others attempt to undermine me. Unable to work and earn money, unable to participate in politics, my life and death held in the hands of a woman who holds an empire —’

  She cut herself off.

  ‘Your Highness,’ she whispered, ‘I might hate myself, but I’m not going to spend my life talking to a mirror and saying, “She loves me, she loves me. She doesn’t love him, doesn’t love her; everything is just an act, it’s just for the connections.”’

  And in her mind, she was the small little girl watching her mother chant to the mercury gss, desperation and hurt and disbelief tangled in those wretched eyes.

  Or maybe, she was back to the Fifth Prince’s pace, holding that wilted jasmine vine, watching as the emperor finally realised that the hurt she’d given the empress wasn’t something she could fix. Wasn’t something she could heal with cowries and pearls and new buildings of gold.

  ‘…I understand,’ the princess whispered. ‘Thank you for opening my eyes.’

  Before Three could say anything more, the inner door in the study echoed with a knock. Shutting up, she went over to open the dark wooden door, a candle blowing out from the draft.

  She stepped into something wet. And a mass of still, frozen gold y on the imperial bed.

  ‘Is Her Majesty here?’ Xi Qian’e stepped over, coming closer, only to be stopped by her arm.

  ‘She is,’ Three said. ‘And you don’t need to greet her.’

  Because the emperor was lying dead on her bed.