The confrontation with General Meng Kai left a toxic residue in the Imperial Study.
Emperor Wenzong sat alone for hours, his mind cataloging the threat the general posed.
He sought an escape from the suffocating politics of his own court, and dismissed his massive entourage of eunuchs and lanterns under the guise of taking a solitary walk to contemplate state texts.
Instead, his steps lead him straight to the Palace of Solitary Radiance (Guhui Gong) on the evening of Katya’s very first day in the capital.
Inside the pavilion, the air is heavy with the scent of the smoothing wax used by the palace maids.
Eunuch Pang and the servants have long been dismissed, confused by their mistress’s unwillingness to allow them to serve her.
Through the translucent silk screen dividing the room, Wenzong hears a sharp, ragged gasp—not of sorrow, but of pure, exhausting frustration.
He slides the screen back with a silent, practiced hand, stepping into the outer chamber unannounced.
Katya is standing before a bronze mirror.
She is still trapped in the suffocating, multi-layered silk robes of a high-ranking consort, but she has reached her absolute limit with the physical constraints of Chinese court life.
With trembling, furious fingers, she begins tearing at her head.
She rips the heavy, ornate gold buyao and silver pins from her scalp, throwing them violently against the stone floor.
They clatter and ring out like tiny bells.
As she yanks out the last few hidden pins, she mutters fiercely in Russian:
“Curse this place!
Curse these godforsaken needles!
They are trying to pierce my brain.
They want to turn me into a doll.”
With a final pull, the rigid, heavily lacquered structure of her court hairstyle completely collapses.
Her long, thick blonde hair falls wildly around her shoulders and down her back—unbound, unpainted, and completely free.
She leans over the washbasin, breathing heavily, her face flushed with heat and defiance.
Wenzong stands frozen in the doorway.
In his entire sixty years of life, he had only ever seen women who moved like clockwork, faces painted white, hair lacquered into flawless crowns.
He had never seen a woman’s hair flow naturally like water.
He has never seen raw, unedited human passion in his private quarters.
It was alarming, chaotic, and utterly mesmerizing!
Katya caught his reflection in the polished bronze mirror.
She gasped, spinning around instantly.
Her posture defensive, her blue eyes blazing with a mixture of fear and pure resentment.
She didn’t bow.
She didn’t offer the mandatory imperial greeting.
Instead, she glared at him through the curtain of her wild hair.
Believing her words are nothing but meaningless noise to the cold tyrant before her, she lets loose the full weight of her fury in fluent Russian, “Look at you, sitting on your high throne while your soldiers tear families apart.
You think you own the world because people bow to you?
You think you own me?
You can lock me in this prison, you can drown me in your silk, but you will never break me.
I am not one of your silent puppets.
I hate your laws, I hate your palace, and I hate you.”
She spat the words with a raw, vibrating passion, her chest heaved as she waited for his inevitable, unfeeling reaction.
She expected him to snap his fingers, summon the guards, and have her dragged to a dungeon.
Wenzong does not blink.
His posture remains perfectly rigid, his hands still clasped firmly behind his back.
Internally, her words strike him like a physical blow.
No one has ever spoken to him with such unfiltered honesty.
But as he looks at her—wild-haired, flushed, and breathing heavily—the dark cloud left by General Meng Kai completely evaporates.
The sheer absurdity of the situation hits him.
The most powerful man in the world is being thoroughly scolded in a language she thinks he doesn’t know, all because of some hairpins.
A microscopic, entirely unfamiliar tug pulls at the corner of Wenzong’s mouth.
He suppresses it instantly, keeping his face an unreadable mask of ice, though his eyes remain locked on her.
Slow, deliberate steps bring him terrifyingly close to her, until he is standing just inches away.
He looks down at her defiant face, his dark eyes boring into her icy blue ones.
He raises a single, elegant hand.
Katya tenses, bracing for a strike.
Instead, Wenzong’s fingers gently brush past her cheek—not to touch her skin, but to lift a single, stray lock of her wild blonde hair that had fallen across her face.
He handles the strand with a strange, reverent curiosity, feeling the texture so vastly different from the lacquered styles of his court.
He lets the strand fall, returns his hand to his side, and speaks to her in a low, calm, and perfectly measured Chinese tone, “You have much to learn about the order of this palace.
But your spirit is…
efficient.”
He turns on his heel and sweeps out of the pavilion without another word, leaving the silk screen swaying in his wake.
Katya stands alone in the dim room, her heart racing, entirely unaware that her furious Russian rant was fully understood—and that she has just cracked the icy foundation of an empire.
The next morning Katya opened her eyes and stretched her arms above her head.
One positive thing about this mansion was the bed.
Although the pillow was like a rock.Why did anyone think porcelain made for a good pillow she’d never know!
She’d pushed it aside the night before, and shoved a blanket under her head instead.
As she turned her head towards her room she nearly jumped backwards in fright.
There, standing at attention, with heads bowed, but obviously watching her, was Eunuch Pang and her maids.
She stumbled out of bed and glared at them.
Who did they think they were to watch her sleep?
She sat down at the vanity with resignation.
The maids approached her to begin styling her hair with the ornate pins they’d gathered from the floor earlier that morning but she pushed their hands away.
She quickly and deftly braided her hair in a Russian plait.
The maids looked on in wide eyed terror, but proceeded to apply her makeup, Jewelry, and help her dress in the many layers of imperial silk.
They tried explaining to her that the emperor’s Chief Consort, the Mother of the Crown Prince, had orchestrated a welcoming ceremony for her, but they knew she wouldn’t understand.
And Eunuch Pang knew it would be anything but welcoming.
He’d spent forty years in this palace and he knew the progression of things.
This would be an attempt to bring Katya down several pegs and put her in her place.
But Katya was no ordinary concubine or consort.
She was a foreign woman.
She was the daughter of a Russian tribal leader.
She spoke a different language, had a different culture, and seemed to have no fear or sense of self preservation.
How do you reason with someone like that?
These were his thoughts as Eunuch Pang led her to the inner courtyard’s Imperial Gardens where Consort Xian and several of the lower ranking concubines waited.
Consort Xian sat at the center of the pavilion, draped in exquisite robes of imperial purple and gold.
Her posture was flawless.
When Katya enters, Xian does not look angry; she looks pityingly amused.
She ordered a maid to bring a rare, ancient musical instrument—a guzheng —and places it before Katya.
Pang groans inwardly.
Consort Xian intended to humiliate Katya by highlighting her lack of culture, etiquette, and refinement.
“We hear the northern lands are vast but barren of true art.
Since you are now a part of the Jing court, let us hear you play a melody of your homeland to greet us.” Consort Xian said to Katya in front of the other women and their servants and eunuchs.
Xian expected Katya to freeze, fumble with the strings, or break down in tears of embarrassment in front of the snickering concubines.
In Chinese court culture, losing face publicly is a fate worse than death.
But the trap fails completely because Katya does not care about their rules.
She doesn’t seek their approval, and she doesn’t value their definition of “face.”
Katya looks at the delicate, multi-stringed instrument.
Then she looks directly into Consort Xian’s eyes—completely ignoring the rule that she must keep her gaze lowered.
She speaks in flat, blunt Russian, “I don’t know what this toy is, and I don’t care.
In my village, we sing when we are happy, and we work when we are hungry.
I am neither happy nor working right now.”
She pushes the priceless instrument away, sliding it across the stone table.
The pavilion goes deathly silent.
The lower concubines gasp, covering their mouths with their silk sleeves.
Eunuch Pang drops to his knees, trembling.
To them, Katya has just committed a monstrous act of disrespect.
They expect her to be terrified of the consequences.
Instead, Katya just stands there, completely unbothered, her arms crossed.
Consort Xian remains perfectly still, her painted smile frozen on her face.
Her hands grip her silk handkerchief so tightly the fabric strains.
She realizes with a sinking, sickening feeling that she cannot humiliate this woman.
Humiliation requires the victim to care about the social hierarchy.
Katya exists completely outside of it.
But what truly enrages Xian is looking at Katya’s face.
She sees the raw, unpolished beauty—the striking blue eyes, the sun-kissed skin of a woman who has run free under the sky.
Xian remembers the rumors the eunuchs brought her morning report: The Emperor entered the Palace of Solitary Radiance alone.
He stayed.
He left with his mask slipped.
Xian looks at Katya and realizes Wenzong wasn’t drawn to her because she was a perfect consort.
He was drawn to her because she was the exact opposite of everything the palace forced them to be.
For sixty years, Wenzong lived in a cage of absolute logic, and this wild foreign woman is the first thing that has ever made him want to break it.
Xian rises slowly, her voice a forced, chilly whisper that hides the storm inside her, “The foreign guest is tired from her journey.
Teach her our language quickly, Eunuch Pang.
It is a tragedy when a woman has a voice but nothing intelligent to say.”
She sweeps out of the pavilion, her entourage trailing behind her.
She has maintained her dignity on the outside, but internally, the war has just begun.