Katya could not sleep.
Her thoughts raced.
The Tsar’s favorite woman had tried to kill her with poison soup!
Maybe her house arrest wasn’t actually punishment?
Maybe it was protection.
Maybe the Tsar was doing it because he knew the jealousy of his wife?
But why?
She knew in Russia that marriages were monogamous while in the Jing Dynasty, at least where the Imperial Family was concerned, the Emperor was allowed to take many consorts.
If that were the case, why was she so angry at Katya’s presence?
Surely that woman was used to the presence of other women for many decades.
Was she truly so angry that Katya had refused to be publicly humiliated by her?
The Emperor himself was another puzzle in her mind.
She understood she had been given to him, to add to his collection of women.
But so far he had not done anything to her.
Was he too elderly for that sort of thing now?
At first she had been very afraid but of course she refused to show her fear.
However, she had come to realize she had no need to fear him.
While his temper was fierce with others, he had tolerated her tantrums with the utmost patience.
And he touched her…so tenderly.
So gently.
She closed her eyes, remembering his embrace earlier that night.
His large arms wrapped completely around her, shielding her from the horrors of the room.
Katya, entirely overwhelmed by the violence she just witnessed, didn’t fight him.
She buried her face into the heavy, stiff silk of his imperial robes, and breathed in the scent of his cedarwood and ink.
She believed he was a monster but she now knew how wrong she’d been.
For Katya, she now realized that his chest was the only safe harbor in a palace full of monsters.
It was late at night.
The palace was still opulent, lit by expensive wax candles and smelling of premium jasmine incense.
Lady Xian had been waiting all day for news of the barbarian woman’s death.
Xian felt no guilt.
It was simply the cold mathematics of the inner court; an anomaly had disrupted the Emperor’s logic, and she had corrected it.
She knew there might be a price to pay for taking away the Emperor’s new toy, but she was fully prepared to handle the political fallout of a dead hostage.
She believed her position as the Crown Prince’s mother made her an untouchable pillar of the state.
she never could’ve imagined the terror that was about to rain down on her and those loyal to her.
Qin was the first sign that something was amiss.
The elderly eunuch ran as he had not ran in decades to her mansion, the silk screen slid open with a frantic, uncoordinated crash,
and fell before her.
He was shaking, drenched in cold sweat, and hyperventilating.
Xian did not flinch.
She kept her eyes focused on her calligraphy brush, her voice a chilly, smooth purr.
“You move like a common stable boy, Qin.
Has the news from the foreign pavilion rattled your nerves?”
“Mistress…
the kitchen maid.
She was caught.
She has already been dragged to the public square and executed by the Imperial Guard.”
When he told her the kitchen maid had been publicly executed, Xian was barely phased.
She waved her hand dismissively.
She expected middlemen to die; it was the price of doing business in the shadow of the throne, after all.
He knew this after his many decades by her side!
She asked why he is so rattled over a dead peasant, “A peasant girl is easily replaced, Qin.
Why do you snivel?
If she held her tongue until the blade fell, our names are clear.”
Qin drops to his knees, his voice a frantic, breathless whisper, “Mistress…
you don’t understand.
The maid didn’t just get caught.
And did not hold her tongue, Highness!
But that is not the horror!
Bixia…
the Emperor was sitting at the table with the barbarian woman.
He was lifting the spoon.
He was about to taste the swallow’s nest soup himself.
He almost ate the arsenic, Mistress!”
The universe seemed to tilt on its axis.
The color drained completely from Xian’s face, leaving her pale skin looking like painted porcelain.
Her fingers lost all their strength.
The priceless jade-handled calligraphy brush slipped from her hand, tumbling across the white paper and leaving a violent, ugly smear of black ink before rolling off the edge.
The porcelain tea cup she held slipped from her fingers, and shattered on the floor.
She couldn’t breathe.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a suffocating, terrifying rhythm.
She was a master of imperial law.
She knew that poisoning a concubine was a harem dispute; poisoning the Emperor was high treason and regicide.
Wenzong’s hyper-logical, unyielding nature means he would not forgive threats to the throne.
For the first time in forty years, the unshakeable Consort Xian felt the freezing hand of death gripping her throat.
She realized she hadn’t just eliminated a rival; she had accidentally put a target on her own head, her son’s future, and her entire noble family.
Just as the panic peaked in her chest, the heavy, rhythmic clatter of iron-scaled armor echoed from her outer courtyard.
There was no polite announcement.
The doors were kicked open.
Wenzong’s personal Imperial Guards marched in, with their swords drawn.
Before she could even speak or assert her royal status, the guards began ruthlessly executing the decree.
They tore down her silk tapestries, and gathered her jade ornaments.
Maids wept as the guards pulled down the fine drapes, and extinguished the expensive jasmine incense.
Her palace was reduced to bare wood and gray stone.
The imperial scribe stepped forward and read the decree of indefinite house arrest and the forced copying of scriptures.
The heavy lacquer doors were barred from the outside.
The courtyard fell into a dead, suffocating silence.
Xian stood in the center of her ruined chamber.
When the imperial scribe finished reading the decree—announcing her indefinite house arrest and the copying of the scriptures—the shock struck her like a physical blow.
She did not maintain her composure.
Her knees buckled.
She sank to the stone floor, her heavy purple robes pooling around her like a shroud.
Her long, decorative silver fingernail guards scraped violently against the bare floorboards as her hands shook.
For the first time in her sixty years of life, Consort Xian experienced the terrifying, freezing weight of her husband’s wrath.
He had never interfered with her harem rules before.
He hadn’t cared when she ruined other concubines or enforced draconian punishments, because those women didn’t matter to his logic.
But now, he has destroyed her social existence for the sake of a foreign captive.
She didn’t scream or rage.
She let out a low, ragged, breathless sound of pure despair.
The absolute realization hit her that her forty years of perfect duty, perfect birthright, and producing the Crown Prince meant absolutely nothing to him.