In the dark of the evening, the room is lit only by thick tallow candles.
The air smells heavily of old paper, ground ink, and bitter sandalwood.
Emperor Wenzong sits behind his desk.
His face is a shadow.
Eunuch Pang is prostrated on the floor.
His forehead is pressed so hard against the cold stone that it is turning purple.
His voice shakes as he delivers the final lines of his report about the disaster in the garden.
“…and then, Bixia…
the foreign consort…
she used her foot.
She pushed the sacred imperial zither across the table like a common trough.
She spoke her barbarian tongue with great violence.
Consort Xian was…
deeply distressed by the lack of filial respect.”
“…and then, Bixia…
the foreign consort…
she used her foot.
She pushed the sacred imperial zither across the table like a common trough.
She spoke her barbarian tongue with great violence.
Consort Xian was…
deeply distressed by the lack of filial respect.”
The study falls into an agonizing, dead silence.
Pang holds his breath, waiting for the Emperor to order the foreign woman’s execution—or his own.
Wenzong does not move.
He slowly places his writing brush into its porcelain holder.
His dark eyes fix on the back of Pang’s neck.
When the Emperor speaks, his voice is a low, chilling rasp that cuts through the silence like ice.
“A dog cannot be blamed for barking when it does not know the hunter’s commands.
The foreign consort is an unpolished stone.
To force her before the court without instruction was an act of profound impatience.” He proclaims.
Pang’s eyes widen against the floorboards.
The Emperor is blaming the harem, not the captive.
“Hear Zhen’s decrees.
First, regarding the mother of the Crown Prince.
Consort Xian’s spirit seems restless and lacking in the serenity required of her high station.
She will be confined to her quarters for the next three moons.
She is to copy one thousand lines of the Buddhist scriptures on Humility and Grace every day until her temperament cools.” The Emperor commanded.
Pang chokes back a gasp.
A public reprimand of this scale will ruin Consort Xian’s pride.
“Second, regarding the Palace of Solitary Radiance.
The foreign consort’s ignorance disrupts the harmony of Our state.
From this night forward, her compound is sealed.
No consorts, no ministers, and no outside servants may cross her threshold without Zhen’s explicit seal.”
Wenzong stands up, his heavy silk robes rustling in the dark room.
He steps around the desk, stopping right above the trembling eunuch.
“Since her language barrier creates such dangerous friction, the imperial tutors are unfit to handle her.
Zhen will personally oversee her instruction in our tongue.
Every evening.
In her quarters.
Free from the prying eyes of fools.”
Pang’s heart hammers against his ribs.
He realizes the horrifying truth in an instant: the Emperor hasn’t punished the barbarian woman at all.
He has locked everyone else out so he can have her completely to himself.
“Deliver the scripts to Consort Xian tonight.
Tell her Zhen expects her calligraphy to be flawless.
Dismissed.” The Emperor decrees.
“Your slave obeys, Wansui Ye.” Pang’s voice cracks, as he scrambles backward out of the room, bowing frantically, desperate to escape before the Emperor changes his mind.
Alone in the dark, Wenzong turns toward the screen leading toward the Inner Court.
The cold mask of the tyrant slowly cracks, replaced by a strange, dangerous anticipation.
The heavy lacquer doors clicked shut, sliding smoothly into place.
The frantic, shuffling sound of Eunuch Pang’s retreating footsteps faded down the long stone corridor until there was nothing left but absolute silence.
Emperor Wenzong stood motionless beside his dark ironwood desk.
The cold, terrifying mask of Bixia—the unyielding, flawless ruler—slowly ebbed away, leaving only the sixty-year-old scholar alone with his thoughts.
He walked over to the tall lattice window, throwing open the wooden shutters to let the crisp evening air cut through the suffocating scent of burning sandalwood.
Out in the vast courtyards of the Jing Dynasty, lanterns were being lit, flickering like a sea of trapped stars.
A zither, he thought, and the microscopic, entirely unfamiliar tug pulled at the corner of his mouth again.
She used her foot.
In the privacy of his own mind, Wenzong let out a low, breathless sound that was dangerously close to a laugh.
He spent every waking hour surrounded by sycophants who measured the angle of their kowtows to the millimeter.
His court was a flawlessly orchestrated machine.
Yet, a single, wild Russian woman had walked into his garden, looked the most powerful woman in his harem in the eye, and completely shattered the script.
He didn’t care about her “loss of face.” She was from the frozen Siberian frontier; she didn’t even know what “face” meant.
To his supreme, clinical intellect, her raw survival instinct was a marvel.
She had broken the rules because she didn’t acknowledge them.
And he was secretly, deeply proud of her for it.
But his gaze hardened as he looked toward the eastern sector of the palace, where Consort Xian’s estate lay.
Did Xian truly think he was blind to her little theater?
He had known her since they were children.
She was a master of passive-aggressive palace politics.
She hadn’t organized that gathering to welcome Katya; she had set a calculated trap to publicly humiliate a helpless captive.
Xian was striking at Katya because she sensed his fascination.
By targeting the foreign woman, Xian was trying to assert dominance over his private desires.
It was a petty, jealous overreach.
Worse, it was politically dangerous.
If Katya was broken or driven to despair, the fragile northern peace treaty would collapse.
Xian was risking the empire’s borders for her own bruised pride.
Wenzong leaned against the window frame, his dark eyes fixing on the distant, secluded roof of the Palace of Solitary Radiance.He had played his hand perfectly.
The public reprimand would ruin Xian’s social leverage, leaving her too busy saving her own reputation to plot another trap.
And by placing Katya under “imperial house arrest” and appointing himself as her harsh tutor, the court would see it as a grueling, disciplinary punishment.
No one would dare question why the Emperor visited her every night.He had built a fortress around her, locking out his jealous court, his plotting generals, and his furious consort.
Now, she is mine alone, Wenzong’s internal voice settled with absolute, terrifying clarity.
For sixty years, he had lived by the cold laws of logic, viewing love and romance as the foolish weaknesses of lesser men.
Yet, his heart was hammering against his ribs at the mere thought of walking into her quarters.
He was the Emperor.
He commanded armies.
But tonight, he was a man eager to sit across a table from a captive woman, just to hear her voice curse him in a language she thought he couldn’t understand.Wenzong turned away from the window, smoothed down his heavy silk robes, and stepped into the private corridor leading toward her sealed pavilion.
The game was set.