Chapter 21

She wouldn’t leave — so Xie Yan thought…

“Your Majesty!”

Su Jiao jolted awake from her sleep, a startled cry tearing through the silence of the pitch-black night.

Xie Yan, who had been sitting at the table, turned around in an instant.

“What’s wrong?”

Su Jiao’s expression was dazed. She had dreamed of a scene that should never have appeared in her dreams.

It seemed to be the same rainy day she had died — the imperial palace, inside and out, draped in white mourning cloth, black lacquered coffins, wailing cries filling the sky, and the Emperor whom she had angered into unconsciousness seemingly never waking again. She had floated in midair and watched as his face — pale and cold as it had never been in life — was closed-eyed and laid into the coffin.

“Su Jiao?”

Seeing that she didn’t answer, Xie Yan crossed the room in a few strides. Su Jiao’s gaze flickered.

A cool hand pressed against her forehead, jolting her back to her senses. She met the eyes of nineteen-year-old Xie Yan, and only then did she realize what she had cried out in her panic.

Her body stiffened, and Su Jiao opened her mouth on instinct.

“Just now, I —”

“Did you have a nightmare? I heard you call Father Emperor’s name. What is it — did you dream that I was punished by Father Emperor again?”

A dark flash crossed Xie Yan’s eyes as he took in her alarm, and he curved his lips into a smile.

“Mm.”

She quietly let out a breath of relief and nodded along with his words, pushing the nightmare from her mind.

Dreams were usually the opposite of reality.

Even in life she’d had the strength to behead a Noble Consort and slay an imperial prince — surely he would wake up before long. How had she dreamed something so absurd?

That the two of them had died on the same day.

Her thoughts settled, and only then did she notice that her forehead was soaked in cold sweat. Su Jiao took her handkerchief and dabbed it dry.

“What hour is it?”

“Nearly dawn.”

Xie Yan paused.

“Chang Lin has something to report.”

Chang Lin was summoned and came inside. After hearing what he had to say, Su Jiao’s drowsiness was swept away entirely.

“There were traces of disturbance at the mausoleum? And my brother went to the imperial mausoleum again and again?”

Her heart began to race. She hadn’t expected that this one inquiry would actually turn something up.

The imperial mausoleum had nothing to do with the Su family. Why had Su Wei disturbed Mother’s tomb, and why was he going to the imperial mausoleum so frequently?

“Is it truly impossible to investigate inside the imperial mausoleum?”

Chang Lin shook his head.

What he had discovered was all from outside the mausoleum — entering the mausoleum itself was simply out of the question.

Su Jiao evidently realized this as well. The brightness that had lit her eyes a moment ago dimmed at once.

She sighed. Xie Yan moved to her side.

“Chang Lin may not be able to get in, but that doesn’t mean no one else can.”

“You mean…”

Su Jiao thought he had another plan and felt a sudden lift of hope.

Xie Yan leaned close to her ear, curving his lips without a sound.

“It’s only the imperial mausoleum. You are imperial family too.”

The implication in those words made Su Jiao go rigid.

For a long while, she said nothing.

****

It had rained over the imperial city all day, yet by evening the palace had grown lively.

The Noble Consort had given birth to the Emperor’s seventh imperial prince, and Emperor Jia, overjoyed, ordered a banquet. All the civil and military officials were summoned into the palace, and the imperial grounds blazed with lanterns and decorations — a grand and joyous sight.

As night fell, Su Jiao was still turning over the day’s events in her mind, sitting alone beneath the covered walkway, when a figure suddenly appeared at her side without warning.

“Come.”

Xie Yan extended his hand toward her.

“For what?”

“The city outside is lively tonight. Father Emperor has decreed a general amnesty, and the guards outside Yongning Hall are lax. Would you like to slip out for a walk?”

A walk?

Su Jiao was momentarily stunned, then nodded repeatedly once she understood.

If she could go out and clear her head a little, that would be good.

She placed her hand in Xie Yan’s palm, and he pulled her to her feet.

There were still two or three guards outside Yongning Hall, so the husband and wife made their way to the long ladder at the back of the rear hall.

Su Jiao climbed up the ladder and reached the top of the wall. Looking down at the drop of several zhang below, she felt her courage falter.

“How on earth are we supposed to — ah!”

Before she could finish, Xie Yan’s arm wrapped around her waist and swept her off the wall, leaping down together.

They landed on the ground, light as feathers.

Su Jiao’s face had gone white with fright, and it took quite some time before she recovered her wits.

Palace attendants hurried to and fro, too busy to venture this far to the Cold Palace. Xie Yan led her along for a while before finding a random set of steps and sitting down.

“My leg wound hasn’t healed yet. Would you like to walk around elsewhere on your own?”

Su Jiao hesitated.

“We won’t be discovered?”

“We won’t. The palace is busy tonight — no one will notice out here.”

His words tempted her greatly. These past two days her heart had been weighed down with unease, and if she could walk it off, all the better.

From where he sat on the steps, Xie Yan watched her expression from above, rubbing his fingertips together before smiling at her again.

“If you want to go, then go for a walk.”

A moment later, Xie Yan watched Su Jiao’s retreating figure and let the smile slowly fade from the corners of his mouth.

“Has she been drawn away?”

Chang Lin appeared without a sound.

“That person and Young Master Su have already met inside the ruined hall ahead — right along the path the Prince’s Consort will take.”

Xie Yan gave an almost imperceptible nod and sat alone on the steps, as though waiting for something.

Su Jiao made her way out from Yongning Hall. The air of the imperial palace after the rain was noticeably fresher, and she breathed a long sigh, deliberately choosing paths where fewer people walked.

As she passed by a ruined hall up ahead, a low exchange of voices drifted into her ears.

“In that pile of things you sent, I only managed to find one bracelet — and it was already shattered when it arrived. I spotted that woman wearing one just the same, so I took it.”

“You’re certain it’s the same?”

The second voice carried a trace of displeasure. Su Jiao’s footsteps stopped dead.

That was… her brother?

“It can’t be wrong — aren’t they all her belongings?”

“This piece is something I need to give to Jiaojiao. She is very familiar with Mother’s things, and if it’s wrong… she’ll grow suspicious.”

The person on the other side let out a derisive laugh.

“It’s just a bracelet — what suspicion could it raise? If I were you, the moment that woman was brought here, I would have simply fed your sister the fake-death pill right then and there, whether she was willing or not.”

Su Wei seemed displeased.

“This is a matter between her and me.”

“Naturally I have no interest in your affairs with her. But that woman at the imperial mausoleum — get rid of her soon.”

Su Jiao’s heart hammered as she pressed herself behind a large tree, peering out through the gap with just her eyes.

Two silhouettes were concealed behind the window lattice.

“And I took a risk coming here today just to bring you this bracelet. This time, it counts as Young Master Su owing me a debt.”

“Owing you? I’d say you were quite happy to come.”

Su Wei let out a scornful laugh.

“Happy? I am a man who is already dead. Being seen here by anyone means a death sentence.”

“Your Highness has mastered mechanical arts and bone-contortion — you managed to cheat death three years ago, and tonight you’ve come back to revisit this old place. Can you truly say there is no satisfaction in your heart?”

Su Wei’s words carried a pointed meaning.

“Today is the very day of your death three years ago. You survived it. Right now the Emperor is celebrating the birth of his young son with the whole realm — how could he ever imagine that the man he personally ordered put to death is standing inside his very palace, and that before long he will…”

“Su Wei.”

The other person cut off his words, though it was not difficult to hear that his tone was indeed pleased.

Su Wei smiled.

“…Coming to take an early look at the realm you will one day rule — is that not good?”

The figure on the other side shifted, and from behind Su Wei’s concealment, a pair of eyes appeared.

He wore a face veil, just as he had on that day at Huguo Temple — yet those familiar eyes…

Su Jiao’s heart all but leapt into her throat.

The First Imperial Prince!

Three years ago, the Emperor personally ordered his execution… it truly was the First Imperial Prince.

He hadn’t died after all?

Her thoughts grew more tangled with every moment. Just as the First Imperial Prince stepped out past the window lattice, Su Jiao hastily hid herself behind the tree.

Su Wei emerged from the ruined hall right after, the smile already gone from his face, his fingers turning a white jade bracelet over and over in his hand.

That was… her mother’s.

Everything she had overheard threw Su Jiao’s heart into utter chaos. Chang Lin’s report from earlier surfaced again in her mind.

So her mother had indeed been taken to the imperial mausoleum by her brother. What had happened to her mother… was also her brother’s doing, every bit of it.

Su Jiao dug her fingernails into her palm, and blood welled up at once.

She had never imagined it — the brother she had lived alongside for over ten years could truly have done something like this.

Her mother, hidden away in the imperial mausoleum by him — was she alive, or dead?

Su Jiao’s chest tightened, and the choice she had faced during the day presented itself once more.

Yet she knew she no longer had any other path to choose.

****

As Su Jiao made her way back along the small path, a light rain began to fall again.

Palace attendants hurried past in all directions. A palace maid noticed her walking alone through the wind and rain and, passing by, pressed an umbrella into her hands without a word.

Su Jiao clutched the umbrella, her mind in disarray.

If in this life it was her brother who had caused her mother’s death, then what of her previous life?

What she had believed to be a heart seizure in her previous life — could it, perhaps, not have been one at all?

Her thoughts churned in confusion. She raised her head without thinking, and there, still sitting on the steps where she had left him, was Xie Yan.

Perhaps his knee wound had not yet healed — he hadn’t moved from the spot the whole time. He sat drenched in the rain, which made his brow and eyes look all the colder and more severe. Yet when he caught sight of her approaching, he curved his lips into a smile, and something harmless and gentle came over him.

Her throat tightened suddenly, and she thought again of the figure she had seen opposite Su Wei.

That person was the reason Xie Yan had spent three years — and then another two — wasting away in Yongning Hall. Once he had clashed with the Emperor in defense of his older brother and earned the Emperor’s contempt, a once-spirited imperial prince had been ground down through the best years of his life in the Cold Palace. And now it turned out that… that imperial prince had not only survived, but was lying in wait in the shadows, with designs on the throne?

Looking at Xie Yan like this, the two of them facing each other across the curtain of rain, she thought of the words she had just overheard outside the ruined hall. One was her brother. The other was his.

Watching him, Su Jiao was suddenly struck by how alike their circumstances were now.

She wanted to speak. She wanted to tell him everything she had seen and heard today. The words rose to her lips, yet she didn’t know how to begin.

Would he believe her if she told him? And in his current state — could he bear such a cruel truth?

Torn and unable to decide, she looked at the young prince before her — though he could be unpredictable, his feelings still ran deep — and for the first time she felt hesitation, and a reluctance to cause him pain.

Under Xie Yan’s gaze, she walked toward him one step at a time, the heavy rain soaking through her clothes. The closer she drew, the more clearly she could see him. When she finally reached him, she lifted the umbrella over Xie Yan’s head.

“It’s raining.”

Xie Yan drew close beside her, and together they held the umbrella so that it sheltered them both.

Rain-chilled fingertips tangled with Su Jiao’s.

“Shall we go back?”

His brows curved, a hint of harmless warmth in his gaze.

The scales within her heart slowly tipped and gave way.

Su Jiao closed her eyes and let him take her hand and lead her forward.

So be it. As things stood, she couldn’t leave anytime soon regardless. If he was still the same as he had been in her previous life at this point — still that same person — then why burden him with such a cruel truth right now?

The person at his side leaned against him. In the rain, Xie Yan smiled a quiet, shadowed smile.

From the moment she had returned, he knew that the trap he had laid tonight was a very good one.

She wouldn’t leave.

At the instant his fingers closed around Su Jiao’s, that was what Xie Yan thought.