The study was suffocatingly quiet, save for the dry, scraping sound of Wenzong’s brush moving over a tax ledger from the southern borders.
The afternoon sun cast a warm, lazy gold across his dark ironwood desk.
He was trying to white-knuckle his way through his absolute imperial focus, but his concentration was completely compromised.
Across the desk, Katya sat with her chin rested in her linen-bandaged hands.
She wasn’t reading her Russian history books anymore.
She was simply staring at him.
She didn’t say a single word.
She just watched him with an impish, defiant glint in her icy blue eyes, her lips twitching with a hidden smile.
Every time he shifted his weight, she tilted her head.
Every time he dipped his brush, her eyes tracked the movement.
For ten agonizing minutes, Wenzong pretended to ignore her.
Finally, the supreme ruler of the Jing Dynasty cracked under the sheer psychological pressure of her gaze.
He set his brush down on its porcelain rest with a sharp click, leaned back in his high chair, and met her eyes, his voice a low, gravelly Russian growl: “What?
What are you staring at, Katya?”
Katya’s smile spread, “I am staring at you.
I am wondering why the great Tsar of this kingdom looks like a grumpy Russian bear, and what exactly is in those dry papers to make your forehead crease like an old piece of leather.”
Wenzong’s eyes narrowed, a sudden, dangerous brightness flaring in his dark obsidian pupils.
He slowly pushed the state scrolls aside, folding his large, elegant hands over his chest.
“A grumpy bear?
Katya…
tell me, in your wild northern village, has anyone ever warned you about the dangers of a bear?
Have you ever seen what happens to someone who mocks one before they are mauled?”
Katya let out a bright, musical giggle.
Sensing the sudden shift in his posture, she instantly uncrossed her legs and began to cautiously slide backward on her floor cushion, her hands raised in mock surrender.
But she was far too slow for a reawakened lion.
Wenzong didn’t just lean forward; he lunged across the corner of the ironwood desk with a speed that threw her completely off guard.
His large, powerful hand shot out, wrapping firmly around her wrist.
With a single, effortless pull of his physical strength, he yanked her entirely off her feet and directly over the desk, dragging her down until she landed squarely in his lap.
Katya’s breath left her in a sharp gasp.
She was trapped against his chest, wrapped in his heavy silk robes and the intense, suffocating scent of his cedarwood incense.
Laughing and flushed with heat, she pushed against his broad shoulders, pretending to fight his iron grip.
“No!
Let me go, you old monster!
Let me go back to my corner!” She cried.
Wenzong’s powerful arms locked tightly around her waist, anchoring her hips flush against his.
He leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of her ear as he spoke in a low, thrilling whisper that made her entire spine vibrate, “You call me a monster, Katya?
The tragedy is that you haven’t actually met the monster yet.”
Before she could process the warning, Wenzong reached down.
He took her linen-bandaged hand in his large palm, guided it beneath the heavy, layered silk folds of his imperial sash, and placed it flat…
in a very specific, fiercely intimate, and unmistakably hot-blooded location.
Katya was in shock.
Her jaw parted, her words dying instantly in her throat.
Her intensely blue eyes grew wide with a wave of pure, electrifying excitement as her hand registered the terrifyingly virile reality of his desire.
The “old, elderly” myth was permanently, thoroughly shattered in the span of a single heartbeat.
Before she could pull her hand away or utter a single syllable of Russian, the heavy lacquer doors of the study rattled violently, sliding open with a cheerful, uncoordinated click.Eunuch Pang stepped across the threshold, a fresh scroll of agricultural reports held proudly in his hands.
“Bixia!
The provincial counts have arrived for your supreme review—”
Pang froze mid-sentence.
His eyes drank in the scandalous, history-altering scene behind the ironwood desk.
The absolute ruler of the Jing Dynasty was sitting in his high throne.
The foreign barbarian woman was sitting directly in his lap, her body pressed flush against his, and her hand was currently tucked deep into the front of the Emperor’s sacred imperial robes.Pang’s heart didn’t just skip a beat; it violently tried to escape his throat.
The agricultural report slipped from his paralyzed fingers, bouncing uselessly against the carpet.In broad daylight?
In the Yushufang?
On his lap?
Pang felt a cold sweat drench him.
He didn’t just perform a kowtow; he practically threw himself face-first into the floorboards, his voice cracking into a high-pitched, hysterical squeak that sounded like a dying bird: “Mercy, Wansui Ye!
This slave is blind!
This slave is a corpse!
I saw nothing!
My eyeballs are rotten fruit!
Please do not skin me!
Mercy!”
Without waiting for a command, Pang scrambled backward out of the room on his hands and knees, dragging the doors shut behind him with a frantic, desperate bang, running down the corridor as if the palace were actively collapsing into hell.
The silence that returned to the study was thick, but the tension had completely broken.Katya stared at the closed doors for a stunned, breathless second before she completely lost her composure.
She threw her head back against Wenzong’s shoulder and burst into a fit of overwhelming, helpless giggles, her chest heaving against his chest.
Wenzong let out a low, weary huff of a laugh, his arms tightening around her waist, burying his face in her loose blonde hair as he held her close.
His voice carried a dry, affectionate defeat, “What?
What do you find so amusing about my imperial staff running for their lives?”
Katya wiped a tear of laughter from her eye as she chuckled and rested against his chest.
“I just…
I feel so terribly sorry for poor Eunuch Pang.
The man has the most catastrophic, terrible timing in the entire world.”
Wenzong smiled, his fingers trailing down her simple braid.
The ledger was ruined, the ink was dry, and the empire outside was full of snakes—but as he held her laughing body in his lap, the sixty-year-old sovereign realized his study had finally become a home.