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It was cold. So very cold.
They descended into the night. An avalanche in the dark. The rotten smell of sulfur burst into the frigid air…
When she saw him, she danced and laughed. Spinning by the crenellations, round and round and round.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Loulan!”
His blade fell from his grip. She filled his arms.
“Loulan…Loulan…” His hand pressed at her heart, warm and wet.
Her lips moved, voiceless at first, then: “…Do you remember the first time we met? It was snowing like this, too—”
His sight blurred, mind frazzled, incomprehending. Pressure, he needed to put pressure. “…Shh, don’t talk.”
“…My sister.” Then she corrected: “Our sister… spare her. The children, please…they are much of a victim as…” Red oozed out of her painted lips. “I…so sorry…so…sorry—”
“Suirei!”
Their sister rushed to their side.
He begged her, clutching Loulan close. “Help her, please. Help my wife…”
But Suirei could only watch them both, eyes wide and tearful.
No. No, no, no…
She wasn’t gone. Not like this. Not when she was still gazing at him, still smiling. Not when he had finally accepted the burden of Heaven, made peace with his fate. Not when someone had finally seen through his mask and still accepted the man underneath. Not when her presence had made his duty bearable—that love made his surrender a victory.
She wasn’t a reward for his submission to his destiny, she redefined it.
She couldn’t be gone. She couldn’t.
She couldn’t let it all fall to meaninglessness.
He bent down, pleading to her heart. “My love, please.”
“Y-Your Majesty,” Suirei quivered beside him. “She’s…she’s—” she grabbed her sister’s hand and wailed.
———
Snowflakes fell from the sky.
The Rear Palace was dusted with snow. The winter at the Royal Capital was softer, delicate, not like the veil of white that blanketed Shihoku as if nature itself was trying to wash the corruption clean. Loulan thought it wouldn’t have been such a bad idea. Her marionette limbs took each incisive step towards the Garnet Pavilion. Her title ‘Pure Consort’ almost made her laugh. She had seen so much debauchery that despite being untouched, she felt like she was covered in filth.
Shenmei, the woman who bore her, made sure she was well-aware of what she called her ‘feminine wiles’.
“The young Emperor I heard was a sorry excuse of a man.” Her expression made an ugly twist. “Sick in body, sick in mind, just like the rest of that mottled family. Make sure you get a son in your belly. Force him, if you have to.”
But the young Emperor was neither sick of body nor of mind.
“He looks just like him,” her father, the Prime Minister Shishou, once remarked idly.
Loulan didn’t ask who. She knew. It was the face her mother hated the most. A face that both mocked and rejected her. The young Emperor’s father, the child molester, insulted her mother with his apathy that she had never recovered from the shame.
“Your Majesty, Lady Loulan,” the Matron of the Rear Palace introduced them.
The Son of Heaven did look divine.
Loulan could understand her mother’s hate.
It was shame, as she expected, but also envy.
He tilted his head, greeting her in her own pavilion. An unseeming sight for an emperor.
It was winter. It was his first visit.
Loulan was well-bred. She knew the proper bows, exuded the perfect temperament, and moved with perfect grace. But inside, she was squirming. She was a product being bartered by her family to secure their power in the realm. She was incubated for this purpose alone.
She was here to make sure the Ka Dynasty ended with the last living male.
When they were alone, he gave her a performative smile.
They both knew why they were here and neither had a choice.
Loulan had prepared everything; the bath, the wine, the aphrodisiacs. Anything to ensure he had a good time while she had enough alcohol to get her through the night. This would be her routine until their mating would successfully produce a needed heir.
An heir of Shi blood.
Then, like insects after the mate was over, her husband would be devoured and his carcass would ensure their off-spring lived on as the new Son of Heaven. An unwitting sacrifice.
For her mother’s wounded pride.
Maybe, if she was avenged, she would be healed and everything would be better.
Loulan coccooned herself in that lie. It was easier than facing the fact that despite his aloof personality the young Emperor was an unexpectedly decent man.
Their first night went by without an incident. Then the second, and the third. Every time, she dressed up, making herself paradoxically enticing and unnerving. And yet, all they did was eat and talk. The aphrodisiacs lessened, the incense less cloying, and he asked and asked and asked; about the clothes she wore, the cultures that inspired them, what she did in her free time—everything but the duty they were supposed to be doing under the sheets.
And on one uneventful afternoon, she slipped.
His visit was uncalled for. She had dressed up as a maidservant and ventured to the northern part of the palace where contrabands from her father’s scheme passed through. An attendant of the former Precious Consort had found a kitten here. Ever since then they had been extra careful. Only the Precious Consort remained at the Rear Palace out of consideration by the Emperor himself as his niece was still a toddler. As for the rest, those that had once laid with the previous Emperor, were likely sequestered at the nunnery.
Loulan took her time chasing and sketching the insects that permeated the wilder northern palace when she saw one of her ladies-in-waiting run towards her.
“His Majesty,” she panted. “His Majesty is on his way to the pavilion—”
They ran. She went through the backdoor, her servants quickly shedding her clothes off and draped her with a new one. They fanned her incense as they worked on her make up, fear of discovery thudding in her chest. She made it to her receiving room without a hitch, thanks to her remarkable attendants. A warm tea and snacks were already prepared.
His attendant opened the door and he entered.
Loulan covered her nervousness with her fanning.
“Is this a bad time?”
A beat. “No, Your Majesty. Please.” She gestured at a lounge.
But the man went past the offered chair, past the table, and stood directly before her. His hand came down slowly on her shoulder. She froze. Then his other hand slid below the other, cupping something as he withdrew them. He opened them slowly.
Loulan saw a jewel beetle inside.
Her heart stuck to her throat.
“There is a bug on your shoulder,” he said simply.
“Indeed,” she said neutrally. “At least it’s pretty and doesn’t smell.”
It extracted its transparent wings beneath its iridescent carapace and flew off, making her ladies-in-waiting panic.
“Open the windows,” she ordered and immediately the beetle saw green and freedom.
“They would make for precious inlays,” the Emperor commented idly.
“I think they are more precious in the wilds where they are allowed to roam free.”
He smiled. The first real one he directed at her. “You’re fond of them.”
“Not of them, specifically,” she evaded. His gaze was patient. Expecting. She could play dumb. Ignore his silent request to talk, but for the life of her she didn’t know why she responded: “I like insects. I find them a fascinating topic to study.”
He now accepted her offer to join her afternoon tea as he blew on the steaming cup. “Do tell.”
“Your Majesty, I’m quite certain you are busy. I don’t wish to bore you with a young girl’s childish interest.”
“I’m done with my work for the day,” he said before drinking. The ceramic made a tinkling sound as he returned it to the table. “And I wish to spend my time here with you.”
And so she told him about the beetles, the cicadas, the dragonflies. The differences between chitins and carapaces, between shell and skin. Their flight patterns. The ones who crawled on the ground. The tough ones, the deceptive ones. Where each could be found, and how each shaped the world they lived in.
On and on until the sun had set and the moon rose in the sky. He listened and asked and listened.
Little by little, she began to molt.
It started when she showed him her sketches to clarify what they had discussed prior. Locusts and grasshoppers were often intertwined, but they were as different as could be, and she showed him through her watercolors.
Again, he was an apt student.
They had spent the day in the northern part of the palace; her paradise, showing him around his childhood home and guiding him to see it in a new light. She hadn’t noticed that each step made their bodies closer, that each laughter drew their breaths nearer, and in every bug caught his hand would linger on hers a beat too long. And so when they were sitting in the dewy grass, joy radiating beneath their skin, the kiss came as naturally as breathing.
That night, they made love.
The mantises taught her that sex was violence. The arachnids had shown childbirth was death. Every insect had to to fight for their lives the moment they broke their shell. There was no mothering. Shenmei taught her that, too.
Then why was he so gentle? Why did she crave it so? Why then as their child grew within her, she felt excitement just as much as she felt fear?
Why was the sight of his hand on her belly the most beautiful thing in the world?
Suirei had asked her: “Are you certain?” Her sister looked at her with genuine worry. Her own mother died in the hands of Loulan’s mother, just because she bore an imperial blood.
“I’m certain,” Loulan replied with a strength she never knew she had. “Our fates will be different.”
They walked leisurely at the Rear Palace, home to the Emperor’s harem—her husband’s cattle farm where women compete just to have a moment’s time with him. She glanced at him, trying to read through his thoughts, but he remained opaque. The maidservants giggled after bowing as they passed. Her husband was beautiful, more beautiful than any person had right to be, and Loulan knew the women who clamor to enter the gates didn’t want to merely win an Emperor’s favor—they were here to win a man’s heart.
But the garden still had no flowers, except her.
She was glad. She was horrified.
Her fantasy of him would shatter any moment now and she didn’t want to let go.
“You leave me with nothing to manage,” she said lightly, clenching her fingers on the hammer.
Strike. Strike now before she fell, before she opened herself up for ruin. Controlled destruction. Rubble by rubble. Shard by shard.
He laughed, unaware of the cracks in her porcelain heart.
He gazed at the empty pavilions: Jade, Crystal, and Diamond. “If I did give you something to manage, promise me you wouldn’t mind?”
She smiled. She crumbled.
“I promise.”
Her entire being shattered.
The days passed as she dreaded any news of the palace gate opening to welcome another noble lady. Younger and prettier than her. In her mind, they always were.
Her husband greeted her with a surprise, and for a moment, she forgot her torment. He had rolled paper under his arm and he spread them on her living room table. It was a blueprint of…
“A chair?”
His smile widened as he rounded behind her, arms around her midriff, kissing her neck.
“A throne,” he nibbled at her ear.
She turned, confused. “A throne?”
His eyes twinkled. His fingers pointed at the design, two seats on equal footing—dragon and phoenix dancing as one.
“Do you like it?”
“It is…beautiful,” she said, unsure of where he was heading with this. If it was what she thought it was. But to hope was to hurt. To rise and to fall. So, she waited. Hopefully. Helplessly.
He took both her hands in his.
“Rule with me.”
Loulan was quiet. Her pulse racing. “Rule?”
“As my co-regent. As my Empress. My only one.”
He kissed her wrist and she lost all ability to breathe.
“That is unheard of.”
Shenmei’s doll, after all, was only meant to be seen, not heard.
He chuckled on her hair. She wore them more simply than her mother taught her. He seemed to appreciate it. “You wanted to manage things, then manage the empire with me.” He pecked her forehead. “Save me from your father.”
If only he knew…
She laughed despite herself. Despite her fears. Her anxiety. Her betrayal.
“You promised you wouldn’t mind,” he pouted adorably like a child.
Her eyes welled. “…I said that, didn’t I?”
He became serious, thumbs running on her trembling knuckles. “…Well?”
Loulan couldn’t stop the tear that fell.
“I accept, Your Majesty.”
She bowed, but a curled finger to her chin made her stop. She glanced up. His face softened. “No, say my name. Accept it as my wife, as my equal sovereign.”
“I accept… Zuigetsu.”
He lifted her up. Her feet dangling in the air. Her surprised yelp was swallowed by his kiss. He twirled them both round and round until she felt dizzy—in sheer adoration and happiness.
It was the summer of their love.
But autumn winds were beginning to blow at a distance.
———
Mother was unsatisfied.
Her doll was all dressed up in phoenix crown and still she wasn’t satisfied. On the contrary, mother’s hateful gaze fell on her.
Envy did not discriminate.
So, when news of her pregnancy reached her, she called for her daughter to visit home. Zuigetsu resisted at first, but Loulan pleaded to let her go. Or else her mother would reveal the corruption and the rebellion that Loulan herself was the spearhead of.
No, she couldn’t bear for him to find out. Father couldn’t be trusted, not when it came to mother. He was already a devoured husband.
The most elaborate carriage was drawn for her and her entourage were consisted of the best Imperial guards and physicians. They proved unable to defend her when Shi forces had surrounded them in an ambush. While the sole princess of the Shi clan was dragged by the hair to their mountain fortress where she was locked up and tormented by the one woman who should have provided her unconditional love.
But love did not exist in Shenmei’s world—only pride and shame.
And Loulan committed the worst crime of all: she surpassed her.
A doll should never best her creator. What good was a puppet that didn’t dance once she pulled the strings?
At twenty-four weeks, she lost their child.
The pain in her heart was worse than the pain in her belly. She wailed as she cradled the lump of blood that would have been their baby. A life that wasn’t given a chance to live.
Shenmei will die. She will die. She will die. Die, die, die…
What her mother hadn’t known was she left a message and an instruction before she had left. Suirei would find them. She would heed her words, even if it broke her.
That was why they trusted one another.
The lock on the taibon opened. The children would be put to sleep. The gunpowders exploded.
As the forbidden army invaded the fortress, as she heard her father’s feifa echoed in the night, as her mother screamed in much deserved terror—Loulan laughed. She danced to the beat of footsteps. She saw her mother’s blood spilled on the floor and she kept dancing. Then they turned to her. Their Empress.
A traitor.
She aimed her modified feifa, a smaller one her father gifted her. She had hoped mother would wrestle her of it and kill herself once it backfired, but she never did. A pity.
Loulan grinned. “Bang!”
And they fired.
“Loulan!”
He was once called the Prince of the Night, her moonlight, her flame—and she the hapless moth.
The moment they grew wings…they find their partner and then they die.
Did they die happy?
As she lay, bleeding in his arms, him choking in his tears.
She thought of the lone cicada she once saw, large and foreign and so unlike the ones she had found when she and Suirei had played in the meadows during spring. It called out into the void, vibrating its thorax with all its might. But the poor thing was far from home and yet it sang and sang, still waiting for another’s chorus that would forever be unsung.