They dressed him in death as if it were a coronation.
Crimson robes, heavy with gold thread, pooled like spilled sunset around the base of the jade dais. The imperial crown—those thin bands of dragon-carved jade and dangling pearls—rested perfectly upon his dark hair. His face was calm, too calm, the way a lake looks before a storm breaks its skin. Only his eyes betrayed the truth. They moved, swift and sharp, taking in every shadow, every breath, every tremor in the grand hall.
Li Wei, my husband. My Emperor.
My executioner.
"Raise the prisoner," Grand General Huo's voice cut through the thick incense. It was a blade drawn leisurely from its sheath, confident and cold.
Hands seized my arms, fingers digging into the bruises that already painted my skin beneath the torn scarlet of my Empress robes. They had stripped away my phoenix crown. My hair, once a thousand carefully coiled strands, was a dark ruin around my shoulders. Somewhere between the battle and the binding, between Li Wei's last command and this grotesque theater, I had lost a shoe. My bare foot slid on the polished stone as they dragged me forward.
The court watched.
Ministers in their dark robes, embroidered with cranes and tigers that would never bleed. Concubines behind their jeweled veils, eyes like chips of ice peeking over unfurled fans. Two hundred witnesses to a spectacle they did not understand.
I forced my chin up.
Let them see what they had made of their Empress.
At the top of the steps, Li Wei stood. The dragon throne loomed behind him, empty. He had risen from it when they brought me in, refusing to judge me from above. That small defiance was something only I and Grand General Huo seemed to notice.
Huo's armor whispered when he moved, plates of dark steel overlapping like scales of some ancient, patient beast. He stood to the Emperor's right, the position of a protector, though today his hand rested too casually on the hilt of the execution blade. Not the ceremonial sword; that thin, showy thing of gold and lacquer lay untouched on its silk cushion. No, Huo's fingers curled around a working weapon, its blackened steel drinking in the light.
He meant this to be remembered as a cleansing.
He meant this to be permanent.
They forced me to my knees. My bones struck stone, and the impact jarred something loose in my chest. A familiar heat, faint and sullen as an ember buried deep beneath ash, stirred. My Phoenix Core. Broken, cracked, but not yet extinguished.
Not while I could still see him.
Li Wei descended a single step from the dais. The movement was small, nearly nothing, easily missed if one did not know how careful he always was with ceremony. I knew. I watched the way the light caught on his sleeve, saw the tremor that ran through his hand before he stilled it.
"Feng Lian," he said.
Not "Empress." Not "Criminal." My name, the one he had first spoken in the orange glow of a paper lantern on a rain-slick street long before the crown.
I searched his face. For fear. For regret. For some secret plan that would sweep us both away from this moment.
All I found in him was a terrible, resolute tenderness.
"Your Majesty," I answered, because the court watched and the court remembered every syllable.
Huo stepped forward then, bowing his head with precisely measured respect. "Your Majesty, the guilty must be sentenced. The empire aches. It needs closure."
Closure. That was the word they now used for my death.
"Her guilt has not been proven," Li Wei replied, voice mild. Only I heard the low current of iron beneath it. "There was an attack on the imperial treasury. There was fire. There was panic. That is all we know."
"We know more," Huo said, and his gaze slid to me like the shadow of a guillotine. "We know the treasury's wards were shattered from within. We know the flames were not of this world. We know that when the smoke cleared, the Empress stood in the center of the ruin, untouched, her eyes burning like live coals."
A murmur rippled through the court. Flames, they whispered. Demon. Omen.
They had not seen what I had felt. The roar in my blood, the way the gold in the treasury had liquefied and bent toward me like worshipers, the scream of my own soul cracking open as power—wild, blinding, merciless—erupted from the cage of my flesh.
I had not meant to awaken.
I had only meant to live.
"It was an accident," Li Wei said quietly. "She was frightened."
Huo smiled, or something near it. On his face, the expression had all the warmth of metal cooling on an anvil. "The phoenix is many things, Your Majesty. Frightened is not one of them."
The word dropped into the hall like a stone into a still pond.
Phoenix.
It was forbidden to speak of such beings within the palace walls, outside of sanctioned myth. Yet Huo spoke it easily, eyes on the Emperor, as if daring him to deny the name.
My lungs were tight. Each breath tasted of incense and secrets.
"If you will allow it, Your Majesty," came a soft, tremulous voice from behind the veil of silk screens, "Consort Mei Yin has prepared a statement on behalf of the inner palace."
A rustle of delicate fabric, the scent of jasmine thickening the air. Mei Yin emerged, her steps tiny, perfectly measured, her white mourning robes making her appear even smaller, more fragile, than usual. Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears—always there, those tears, like jewels she had learned to wear.
She knelt gracefully, sleeves spilling over the polished stone. When she raised her head, she did not look at me. She looked at Li Wei with the aching devotion of a woman in love with her own tragedy.
"Your Majesty," she whispered, "we—your lesser wives—are afraid."
The court leaned forward.
"We do not question your judgment," Mei continued, voice shaking delicately. "But the night the treasury burned… when the palace shook and the sky reddened… in the aftermath, we heard things. From the servants." Her lips trembled. "They say Her Majesty the Empress walked through the fire without fear. That her hair burned but did not burn. That her shadow was shaped like wings."
Lying little dove.
My hair had burned. My body had blistered. I still bore the faint maps of those wounds beneath these robes. But lies dressed in wonder are more delicious than any truth.
"Such stories are for children," Li Wei said. A warning, soft as a drawn bowstring.
Mei pressed her forehead to the floor. "Forgive us, Your Majesty. The inner palace is full of children. We are easily led astray." She let a single tear fall to the stone between her hands. "We only beg that the danger be contained. For the safety of the heir."
A low, shocked gasp rose from the crowd.
There was no heir.
We had tried. The gods had not listened.
Li Wei's hand tightened on the rail of the dais. The tiny crack of lacquer under his grip was almost inaudible.
"There is no heir," he said, the words coming slowly, as if he had to carve each one out of his own flesh.
Mei looked up, eyes wide, glistening. "Not yet, Your Majesty. But surely there will be. And if stories of a Phoenix Empress spread, think of the fear, the unrest. Think of what enemies would do with such knowledge. We are weak women; we are afraid. The Cold Palace… it is harsh, but it is safe. For all of us."
The Cold Palace.
Those words were another kind of sentence. Not death, but something colder, slower. A place where unwanted wives and inconvenient royalty went to dissolve into forgotten dust.
A cage of ice instead of flame.
My fingers curled against the floor until my nails bit my own skin. I tasted copper at the back of my throat.
Huo watched me, and a flash of satisfaction crossed his eyes. Not triumph—he did not think of this as victory. No, he saw it as necessary architecture. Ensuring the empire stayed standing.
In that moment, another voice sliced into the hall, a new blade thrown into a field of already too many.
"Your Majesty! Forgive this late arrival!"
All heads turned. A young man—no, not that young; he only seemed so because of the lean lines of his body and the hungry brightness in his eyes—strode up the center of the hall. He had not been there when I was dragged in. His robes were military-cut but plain, lacking the ornament of high rank; the dark blue of the border patrol, stained with road dust. Yet he walked as if he owned the ground beneath his feet.
Huo's gaze narrowed a fraction.
"Commander Yan Jian," Li Wei said. "You were not summoned."
"An oversight, I hope," Yan replied, dropping to one knee at the foot of the dais. He bowed his head deeply, but the corners of his mouth held the ghost of a smile. "I come with news from the northern frontier. News that touches on today's… proceedings."
Huo's fingers left the hilt of his blade and clasped behind his back. It was the smallest of tells, but I had learned to read such things. Something about this commander unsettled him.
"The north can wait," Huo said. "The matter before us is urgent."
"Indeed," Yan agreed, raising his head just enough that I could see his eyes. They were sharp, dark, and unafraid. "That is why I risked arriving unannounced. The barbarians at our border have never before inquired after our court gossip. Yet a captured scout spoke of a rumor traveling among them." His gaze slid to me, thoughtful. "They say the Dragon has married a Phoenix. And that together, they will burn the heavens."
The hall shivered with whispered panic.
Huo's jaw tightened. "You torture prisoners for fairy tales now, Commander?"
Yan laughed softly. "I do not need to torture men who believe they are whispering to a god, General. They volunteer their prayers."
Li Wei said nothing. He watched the newcomer with that same measuring stillness he reserved for storms and ministers.
"What do you suggest?" he asked.
Yan's gaze flicked between my husband, Huo, Mei, and finally, me. He bowed his head again, but there was a glint in his eyes that did not match his humble posture.
"I am but a blunt sword, Your Majesty," he said. "I do not understand the subtleties of phoenixes and flames. I understand only that an empire divided between fear and awe is an empire with a thousand exposed throats. If this rumor spreads, it will draw enemies to you like moths to a brazier."
"The solution," Huo said, seizing the momentum, "is clear. The phoenix tales must be silenced at their source. The Empress must be confined. Her powers—whatever their nature—must be suppressed. For her sake. For all our sakes."
"And if confinement does not suffice?" Yan asked mildly, eyes still lowered. "If the fire grows in the dark?"
Huo's expression did not change. "Then we will do what must be done."
Cold. Calm. Unyielding.
Li Wei stepped down the remaining steps until he stood directly before me. The hall held its breath.
"Raise her," he said.
The guards obeyed. They hauled me to my feet, my arms held so tight I could feel bruises blooming already. I faced my husband. My Emperor. My doom.
He lifted a hand as if to touch my cheek, then dropped it. That tremor again, running along the tendons of his wrist. His eyes were very dark. Very clear.
He knew.
He knew what slept inside me now. Knew what I could become if given time, focus, fuel. He was the only one who had seen the full shape of my awakening in the treasury, the only one who had stood within arm's reach of me as gold melted and stone groaned.
"Feng Lian," he said, softly enough that only those closest could hear. "Do you trust me?"
My throat closed. Somewhere deep in my chest, the cracked core of my being pulsed, a fragile heartbeat of heat under all this crushing cold.
"Yes," I whispered.
He smiled then, the smallest, saddest smile I had ever seen on his lips. It was almost nothing. It shattered me.
"In this hall, before heaven and earth," he said, voice rising, carrying now to every ear, "I proclaim that the Empress Feng Lian is to be stripped of her seals and titles. She will be relocated to the Cold Palace until such a time as the court deems her… fit to return."
Gasps. Shock. Mei Yin's eyes flashed triumph for a heartbeat before she buried it under a fresh flood of tears.
Huo inclined his head, satisfied. Confined, not executed. It pleased his sense of order. It gave him time to build new walls.
My heart staggered. Cold Palace. I had expected it—Mei had laid the path, Huo had lit the torches—but to hear it from Li Wei's mouth was like having my ribs pried open.
"However," he continued, and the word hung in the air like a second blade, "the responsibility for her confinement, safety, and… special needs will rest solely with the Grand General Huo."
A flicker of surprise crossed Huo's face, swift and vanishing. He had wanted control; he had not wanted accountability.
"Your Majesty," he began.
Li Wei lifted a hand, silencing him. Then he looked at me. Only at me.
"In addition," he said, the weight of each syllable pressing down on my chest, "let it be known that should any attempt be made upon the Empress's life while in confinement, the one found responsible will be considered guilty of high treason against the Dragon Throne."
His gaze flicked, just once, to Mei Yin before returning to my face.
I understood, in that instant.
He could not save me. Not now. Perhaps not ever.
But he could chain my enemies.
He could buy me time.
I wanted to scream. To fall at his feet and beg him to choose me over the throne, over the empire, over all these watchful eyes and whispering mouths. I wanted to ignite, here and now, to burn away their fear with something greater—terror.
Instead, I swallowed the fire, forcing it back into its shattered prison. My vision blurred. Not with tears. With heat.
Yan Jian watched me with the quiet fascination of a man taking the measure of a weapon.
"I accept the burden," Huo said, bowing, voice clipped. "The Empress will be… secure."
Mei Yin hid her smile behind her sleeve. Later, she would add the ash to my food with her own delicate hands, eyes brimming with concerned pity while the Spirit-Numbing poison leeched the heat from my core.
"Take her," Li Wei commanded, the tone of the Emperor returning to his voice. "Escort the former Empress to the Cold Palace. See that she wants for nothing essential."
Essential. Air. Water. Enough food to keep me alive. Nothing that would help me heal.
The guards began to drag me backward, away from him, away from the dragon throne, away from the life we had built out of fragile glass.
"Li Wei," I said, forgetting myself, forgetting the hall, forgetting everything but the way his name tasted like blood and honey on my tongue.
He flinched as if struck.
Then he smiled at me, and this time there was no sadness in it. Only fierce, blazing pride.
"Forget me," he said, too low for anyone but me to hear. "And fly."
The world snapped.
Huo moved.
For a heartbeat, I thought he had drawn his sword at me, that he had decided confinement was not enough, that he would spill my blood on the same stone that had drunk so many sacrifices before.
But he did not move toward me.
He moved toward the Emperor.
Steel flashed.
The hall erupted.
I screamed, or I think I did. Sound became a distant thing, muffled under the roar of my own heartbeat. I saw Huo's blade, black and hungry, streaking toward Li Wei's chest. I saw the shock on Yan Jian's face, too genuine to be feigned. I saw Mei Yin's hand fly to her mouth, more in delight than horror.
And then I saw Li Wei step forward.
Step into the path of the descending blade.
He moved with the same grace he had always carried, whether he was lifting a teacup or signing a decree that would change a thousand lives. No hesitation. No fear.
The sword that should have pierced my heart slid into his instead.
For a moment, there was no blood.
Just the look on his face.
Relief.
As if this were the outcome he had planned all along.
"NO!" The sound tore out of me, raw and scorching.
Heat exploded in my chest, tearing at the fractures of my Phoenix Core, forcing light into the cracks. Power surged, wild and ravenous. The air thickened, the torches along the walls flaring into sudden, frantic brightness.
Flames licked at the edges of my vision.
Li Wei turned his head toward me, lips pale, blood rising in a slow, dark flower across the rich red of his robes.
His eyes found mine and held.
"Fly," he mouthed.
Then the blood came. Too much, too fast, soaking into the gold embroidery, dripping onto the stone that would never forget.
The guards tightened their grip on me as the heat in my body bucked and screamed, desperate to leap free, to consume, to undo.
Something cold struck the back of my neck—a pressure point, a blow honed by years of training. Huo's work, or one of his dogs. Pain flared, white and bright, and the world tilted.
The last thing I smelled before darkness swallowed me was burning incense and my husband's blood.
They say a phoenix cannot rise without a sacrifice of fire.
I did not know until that moment that the sacrifice would be the man who taught me my own name.
When I woke, the Cold Palace was waiting.
And somewhere beyond its frozen walls, a soul that had once worn a crown was already clawing its way back from the gates of hell.