The headache was real—a splitting, blinding thing that pulsed behind my eyes.
"My lady, you're finally awake! You nearly frightened this servant to death." Songzhi propped me up and pressed her thumbs against my temples in slow, practiced circles.
I let my gaze sweep across the bedchamber. Still Yikun Palace. Songzhi's robes were those of an Attendant—the lowest rank—which meant the Emperor had not yet stripped me of my title. Not yet.
"What hour is it? Where is my brother?" I asked.
"The hour of the Rat, my lady. His Majesty has just issued an edict ordering the… the Grand General to guard the city gates…" Her voice shrank to almost nothing by the end.
I hurled my pillow to the floor. Every maid in the room dropped to her knees.
"My lady—my lady, please calm yourself! This servant will send word to the General at once—beg him to petition the throne again, invoke the old campaigns, the victories—" Songzhi was already backing toward the door.
"Stop." My voice cut through the air. "Are you a fool?"
In my last life, did the Nian clan truly fall because my brother's arrogance finally pushed the Emperor past his limit?
A general whose power overshadows the throne. The Emperor had always known that. And we—my brother, my father, all of us—had walked into the trap with our eyes wide open, mistaking the Emperor's silence for trust.
"Get word out. Tell my brother to guard those gates quietly. He must not stir trouble—and above all, he must not wear the imperial yellow riding jacket while doing it." My own composure startled me. I hadn't expected to be this clearheaded, not now, not with time running out.
Songzhi stared at me, confusion plain on her face.
"Go!" I snapped.
She flinched, bowed, and hurried out to carry my orders.
In the main hall, the Huanyi Incense threaded out through the perforations of its bronze burner. The fragrance that had once pleased me now turned my stomach.
I didn't tell the maids to dispose of it. After all these years, the damage to my body was long done.
But it wasn't only my body that had been ruined, was it?
I drew a sharp breath through my nose, forcing the sting in my eyes to retreat.
Heaven would not grant me even this small mercy—to return at the crest, when the Nian banners still flew over half the empire. If I had been sent back to those years, I could have rewritten everything. Instead, here I was—grasping at the fraying hem of a fate already unraveling.
My brother did not, this time, patrol the city gates in the Emperor's yellow riding jacket. And because of that, the Emperor found no fresh offence to seize upon. My brother's life was spared—for now.
* * *
Still, the sins of my previous life were dragged into the light one by one. The Emperor demoted me. Attendant Nian—the lowest of the low. Every concubine who had once lowered her eyes before me now smiled behind her sleeve. Songzhi was stripped of rank as well and returned to serve me as a common maidservant. Meanwhile, Cao Qinmo—who had once been my co-conspirator—had reinvented herself as Concubine Xiang, every trace of our shared scheming scrubbed from her record.
Nian Fu and Nian Xing were exiled to the frontier. The rest of the clan, the old and the young, were left untouched. That, all things considered, was already a mercy.
I could live with this. After all, time was on my side.
* * *
The Nian clan had all but vanished from anyone's lips. Meanwhile, the Zhen family and the Guaerjia clan were rising like twin suns. Word had it that the Empress herself had championed Guaerjia Wenyuan's entry into the palace.
I had never been one for books or philosophy, but this fall from grace had taught me one lesson well: favor in this palace is thin ice over a black river—the more weight you place on it, the more spectacular the plunge.
"My lady, His Majesty has retired to Cuiyu Pavilion for the night," Songzhi reported.
I hummed in acknowledgment. Noted.
Zhen Huan had been right about one thing—an emperor's nights never belong to a single woman. I despised myself for ever hoping otherwise.
"You don't need to tell me these things anymore," I said.
Songzhi dropped to her knees instantly, back curved low. "My lady, His Majesty has a tender heart beneath it all. If we keep petitioning, he—he will surely show mercy!"
I rose and pulled her to her feet. "Silly girl. Where exactly do you see sentiment?"
"My lady…"
"I know your heart is in the right place. And I promise you this—as long as I draw breath, I will never let you suffer."
Songzhi shook her head softly. "This servant has attended my lady since childhood. There is no suffering to speak of."
For the first time, I pulled her into an embrace and buried my tears in the fabric at her shoulder.
* * *
Guaerjia Wenyuan entered the palace as expected. Pretty face, no doubt about that—but even emptier in the head than I had been in my former life.
Two well-placed remarks from me and the girl had already worked herself into a rage. I, however, was careful not to be the tyrant I had once been. No arrogance, no scene for anyone to cite against me.
She did run to the Emperor in tears, of course. But the Emperor cared about appearances. Having already demoted my brother, he was loath to let the court say he had turned on me as well. He said nothing.
Cao Qinmo, on the other hand, continued pressing the Emperor to have me executed—to pacify the harem, she claimed.
"Fool," I murmured, sprinkling Huanyi Incense into the burner.
Cao Qinmo was shrewd, but ambition had blinded her. The Emperor had never truly wanted me dead. Perhaps he kept me around to hold leverage over my brother. Or perhaps—just perhaps—he still carried a sliver of guilt toward me.
A pity, then, that Cao Qinmo misread the character the Emperor chose for her title—Xiang. She took Zhen Huan's interpretation at face value and saw honor where there was only warning.
Cao Qinmo died. Everyone assumed it was guilt and anxiety from having betrayed me that did her in. No one guessed that the hand behind it belonged to the Emperor and the Empress Dowager.
A bitter taste bloomed at the back of my throat. If the Nian family had already been this powerless back then, would the Emperor even have bothered gifting me the Huanyi Incense in the first place?
Zhen Huan persuaded the Emperor to let Consort Duan raise my daughter Wenyi. Consort Duan adored children; she would love the girl as her own.
The palace looked much as it had before—and yet nothing was the same. Once Guaerjia Wenyuan moved into Cuiyu Pavilion, the Emperor practically took root there.
Night after night, even when it was not Songzhi's turn to keep watch, she still came to sit with me for a while.
I treasured her kindness and treated her with all the warmth she deserved. When the lanterns are bright and the wine flows, everyone crowds around. It is the one who trudges through the snow to bring you a single coal who is truly rare.
Cuiyu Pavilion suffered a fire, just as it had before. The blaze was small. I didn't bother asking who set it. Back when I couldn't see past my own jealousy, I had believed that if Zhen Huan died, I would finally have peace, finally have favor. Now that my eyes were open, I saw the truth—so what? Remove Zhen Huan, and another would take her place.
Noble Lady Qi was moved out of Cuiyu Pavilion. The Emperor declared the residence a gift for Zhen Huan alone.
Those words. I knew them well. They echoed the very promise the Emperor had made when he first ascended the throne—that Yikun Palace would be mine, all mine.
I held my tongue. And gradually, the Empress's watchful gaze drifted away from me. A fresh crisis had seized her attention—Concubine Wan was about to be elevated to Imperial Consort.
* * *
The Empress had never been an easy adversary. I had known that since our years in the princely manor. With Concubine Wan about to be elevated, there was no way the Empress could sit still.
Sure enough, it wasn't long before she made her move against Zhen Huan.
Zhen Huan was confined to Cuiyu Pavilion for accidentally wearing one of the late Empress Chunyuan's gowns. The whole affair baffled me.
After Empress Chunyuan's death, the Emperor had doted on me, on Shen Meizhuang, on Zhen Huan, on An Lingrong—one after another. Back in the princely manor, I had been brazen enough to wear robes meant only for the principal consort, and the Emperor hadn't punished me then. He'd laughed and taken me horseback riding.
Yet now, Zhen Huan had merely put on the wrong dress…
"My lady, the Grand General—your brother—has sent a letter." Songzhi's voice pulled me from my thoughts.
I snatched the letter at once.
My brother, it seemed, had finally read the situation. Not once in the entire letter did he mention the Nian clan's contributions to the empire. Instead, he urged me to take care of myself. The relief loosened something in my chest. At least for now, I didn't have to worry about him acting on impulse and bringing down a death sentence on his own head.
"Songzhi, grind some ink for me," I said.
If my brother could send letters, then so could I.
In times like these, a letter from family carried more weight than any medicine. But beyond putting my brother's mind at ease, I had questions—things about our years in the prince's manor that I needed answered.
I had been far too sheltered back then. The moment I took a fancy to the Prince of Yong, I begged my brother to arrange the match, ignoring every warning my mother laid out. Looking back now, I wanted to reach through the years and shake that girl by the shoulders.
* * *
News drifted out of Cuiyu Pavilion: Zhen Huan was with child. I had long since accepted that children were not in my fate. On the rare moments when I was alone, I allowed myself a brief flicker of envy—nothing more.
If we were talking about schemes, the Emperor hadn't only schemed against me. There was Consort Duan, too. That bowl of so-called pregnancy-stabilizing medicine that had destroyed the child in my womb—Consort Duan had taken the blame for something the Emperor had orchestrated.
When the Prince of Yong ascended the throne, he named Consort Qi a full Imperial Consort—equal in rank to me. I had been too naive in those days to see through that move.
The Zhen family was impeached. I was more convinced than ever: the Emperor would never allow any single clan to thrive for long. The Nians had fallen. Now it was the Zhens' turn. And after them—who would be next?
I watched from a distance as Guaerjia Wenyuan clutched Attendant Xin's arm, forbidding her from paying respects to Zhen Huan.
* * *
Another letter arrived from my brother before long. In it, he described the days before I entered the princely manor.
I had always known the Emperor and the late Empress shared a deep bond. But I had never grasped just how far that devotion went. He took her riding. He carved a jade hairpin for her with his own hands. He performed sword dances for her. And the Empress had given all of herself to him in return—dancing the Startled Swan amid spring blossoms, drifting across the lake with him in summer, brewing wine together in autumn, trudging through snow to find wintersweet in the cold months. Had they been ordinary people, the world would have called them a match made by heaven.
My brother's words were guarded, but the truth struck me clear as glass: every woman the Emperor had favored—me, Zhen Huan, An Lingrong, even gentle Shen Meizhuang—we all carried a shard of the late Empress within us.
The Emperor was piecing together a broken mirror. But no two shards are ever quite the same.
At the end of the letter, my brother mentioned that the Emperor was recruiting soldiers. My brother intended to enlist and wanted to know my thoughts.
I knew my brother's nature. He would never resign himself to a lifetime guarding city gates. The only reason he had endured this long was that I was still inside these palace walls, and our family was still alive. I wrote back, giving my support—but I underlined every word of caution: he must learn to endure, no matter what came his way.