“No, no, dear. You go on.”
Ji Yue flashed a grateful smile then dashed over to the candy. With her one stolen taste of food, her stomach was cramping in hunger. It was all she could do to not finish Hua Si’s entire hoard.
“Careful. There will be nothing left for tomorrow,” theDowager admonished.
Ji Yue reluctantly put what she had in her hand back, then the whole cache went back into its hiding place. “You are right, of course.”
The Dowager pushed to her feet. “Good night, Ji Yue.”
Ji Yue had her mouth full and could only scramble to her feet. She didn’t dare speak. With a distracted air, the Dowager Consort waved casually and glided out. Ji Yue barely had time to scramble back to her bed before Hua Si came bursting in.
“What happened? What did she say?”
Ji Yue shrugged, too tired to play games anymore this day. All the deception, all the court politics were giving her a bad headache. So she twisted her hair into her sleeping braid and climbed into bed. Behind her, Hua Si huffed in disgust and began to undress. Ji Yue closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but her thoughts would not stop twisting in her mind.
Was this what her life would be like from now on? Would she spend her days pandering to the Dowager Consort and her nights praying that a child took root in her belly? She winced at the idea of letting the Emperor touch her as Bo Tao had. But what would happen to her if she could not bear it? Would she end up like the concubines in the window? Of course not, she realized. She didn’t lust after another woman’s touch or even the Emperor’s caress. She wanted Bo Tao. No one else would do for her.
How could she have been so stupid? How could she have fallen in love now? And with the Emperor’s best friend? She curled onto her side and cried for real.
#
She was woken hours later by a soft finger poking insistently into her side.
“Virgin!” hissed a man’s high voice. “Virgin Chen Ji Yue, you must wake.”
She blinked then groaned as she rolled over. How could an afternoon of such pleasure create so many aches now?
“Virgin Chen Ji Yue is called.”
She blinked in the darkness and finally made out the moon face of a eunuch she’d never met before. “Called where? By whom?”
The man lowered his voice to a dark whisper. “The Master of the Festival calls you.” Then when she didn’t answer, he frowned at her. “Sun Bo Tao.”
“I know who the Master is,” she snapped, irritated not by the interruption but by the sudden tightening in her throat, the leap of her heart, and the rapid moistening in her womb. How would she ever be the Emperor’s wife if the mere mention of another man’s name set her entire body tingling?
“You must come now!” he ordered as he began to push away.
It took everything in her to resist the eunuch’s command. She didn’t know if Bo Tao had truly sent the summons. It seemed an extremely risky way to call her, though he had used eunuchs before. If this was a fake summons, then she was being led into a trap. No virgin could be caught sneaking out at night to meet a man, even if he was the Master of the Festival.Especiallyif he was the Master of the Festival since he was the one whole man in all of the Forbidden City, other than the Emperor.
But what if the summons were real? What if Bo Tao needed her? It didn’t seem likely, but the fear in her heart burned like truth.
“No,” she rasped, though the word hurt like a knife. “No, I cannot be beaten again.” She rolled back onto her side and clutched her knees tight to her chest. It was the only way shecould keep herself from changing her mind.
“He will be very angry!”
“Then he will beat me again tomorrow. Not tonight.”
She waited in tense silence, wondering if the eunuch would bodily drag her from her bed. She half prayed that he did. But after a hundred heartbeats, she heard him sigh and shuffle away. That left Ji Yue to spend the rest of the night in anxious fear. Who had sent the eunuch? Could it truly have been Bo Tao? What would he think? And if it wasn’t Bo Tao, then who was testing her?
The questions didn’t ease until dawn began to lighten the sky. By then, her mind was so exhausted that it sputtered into silent fantasies. As she watched the dawn lightening the sky, she pretended Bo Tao lay beside her, watching it as he tucked her safely in his arms. She imagined the heat of his body, the brush of his breath in her hair, and his organ thick and hard inside her. What would she give up to have that for real? she wondered. What would she do to make her fantasies come true?
Nothing, she decided. Nothing could make them come true no matter how much she prayed.
