“Lady Hai, you may have forgotten, given your unique circumstances, but only men are allowed to display their work in the Imperial Art Pavilion.”
“And why is that the case?” I asked. Against the black-and-white paintings, her youthful complexion appeared even brighter, as if all the light in the room favored her.
“The palace is a place of rules, and those rules are dictated by the throne…”
My pulse quickening, I said: “I want to change the rules.”
The air around us seemed to thicken as Caihong’s eyes darted around frantically. But this section of the gallery was deserted. Lotus had made it so.
“Come with me,” I said, guiding her to the edge of the rushing stream, which the open-air gallery overlooked. I had learned this trick from Winter: using ambient sound to mask private conversations, rather than seeking silence.
By the water, I said, “Only Prince Keyan stands in my way to the throne. If you help me take him down, I will help you in return.”
“I—what?”
“I know he’s sleeping with you,” I said, “and I know you don’t want it.”
It had been a wild guess, but her expression confirmed it. For what woman would risk her very life for an illicit affair that offeredno loyalty, protection, or hope for future happiness? At best, she might wish to become another consort, no higher than she stood now, should Prince Keyan ascend the throne. At worst, it would cost her everything.
Perhaps at one time she had been infatuated with the crown prince, loved him even, but after being chosen as consort for the Imperial Commander, I was certain she would have prioritized her survival over any notions of romance. For Prince Keyan, however, the calculus would have looked very different. His life had never been at risk. Longing to return to simpler times, especially with a wife as shrewd as Yifeng, he could have wheedled, pressured, or even coerced his childhood love into maintaining their illicit relationship, no matter the danger it posed to her.
It was not fair, but when had life ever been fair?
“Lady Hai,” she said, taking a strained breath. “I don’t know what you speak of, but—”
“I can offer you a way out,” I said, “if that’s what you want. I can help you”—I could see the growing interest in her eyes—“if only you confess that Prince Keyan has been coercing you.”
She recoiled, all her prior interest vanishing like a snuffed match. “He’d kill me,” she said adamantly. “You don’t understand him, Lady Hai. The Imperial Commander is…unforgiving. He’s executed other consorts for far less.” As she spoke, she fidgeted with the collar of her robes. Beneath, I caught the edge of a trailing green bruise.
Bile rose in my throat. “Let me protect you,” I said. “I swear it—upon my life.”
“No one can protect me now,” she whispered, close to tears. “And I am resigned to my fate. My mother used to tell me that beauty is the wisdom of women, but she was wrong. It is ourcurse.”
I thought of her sketchbook, that drawing of a forlorn figure atthe edge of a cliff. In its raw desperation, its helpless melancholy, I felt as though I understood her.
“The woman at the cliff’s edge,” I said, “that was you, wasn’t it?”
Her face bone-white, she nodded. “I am resigned to my fate,” she said again, as if to convince herself.
It would be so easy to use lixia in this moment. If I only compelled her, in a moment it would be over. I could sense her will, and it was fragile as glass. I need only speak her name, hold her gaze, and she could become mine. She would agree to act as my pawn, and I could use her to take down Keyan. But Lei’s warning echoed in my mind:You know who will be punished worse.
A knot formed in my chest. Caihong had suffered enough. And I would not become another bully in her long line of tormentors, threatening and forcing her against her will.
“Besides,” Caihong added, in an attempt at lightness, “Keyan hasn’t come to me in weeks. I think he’s being cautious, biding his time until his father names him as heir.”
It was not loyalty holding her back. It was fear.
Palace politics were all about signaling, I’d learned. If you could find a way to signal that you were destined to win, then you would actually win. Everyone wanted to back the winning side, but no one knew where to place their bets.
“You believe in the stories of old, don’t you?” I asked.
Her face had not regained its former color. “What do you mean?”
“What if I told you they weren’t merely stories?” I said. “What if I told you I could harness the power of the old spirits?”
“I…I don’t understand.”
I reached out a hand and the stream seemed to pause in its course, before droplets of water rose in the air, reshaping themselves into a slender vase in the Sun Dynasty fashion. Caihonggasped, and I could see in her eyes her rapt admiration for beauty. I transformed the vase into flowers, meaning to make them blossom, but I was stymied by the frailty of my qi, which was so weak it no longer felt like my own. If before my power had been balanced, like yin and yang, now it felt more and more like the waning moon, gradually consumed by the sun.
