Page 51 of Forest of a Thousand Lanterns

A tremor ran through her hand. The wound from Guma had vanished, and these would as well if she could find some lifeblood. It would be simple to find something small and weak in the gardens. But to take yet another life for her own benefit... She could not. Shemustnot. Xifeng pictured thetengaruqueen’s fathomless eyes when she had delivered her warning.

“Lady Sun would be jealous of the Emperor’s horse if she could.” Empress Lihua rose and paced the room, brow furrowed as she made the sign of the Dragon Lords. “I won’t leave you at her mercy. Starting tomorrow, I’d like you to serve in my household alone. I will inform Madam Hong and she will find a suitable occupation for you.”

Xifeng gripped the table, all thoughts of thetengaru’s disapproval gone. “Truly, Your Majesty? You would bestow such an honor upon me?”

Empress Lihua’s lips didn’t quite form a smile. “There is something about you, Xifeng. You belong here, but to what end, I know not. Perhaps you’ve come to save me.” She gestured to an object beside the tree of a thousand lanterns: the poultice Xifeng had made for her. “My appetite has improved greatly. But let’s not hurt Bohai’s feelings, for he has tried longer than you have. All I know is that if you were my child, I wouldn’t let that woman within an inch of you.”

Xifeng’s heart lifted and soared. She knelt until her forehead met the floor, her eyes prickling with emotion even as gooseflesh rose onher skin. Everything was happening as it should, but all so fast she scarcely had time to draw breath. In one day, she had met the Emperor, and now she would be close to his wife—the woman whose place she would take.

The Empress extended her hand, and Xifeng took it, trembling. Thinking of the future, of what was meant to be, was no better than wishing for this woman’s death. “I don’t deserve such kindness from you, Your Majesty,” she whispered.

If only you knew...

Empress Lihua tucked a strand of hair behind Xifeng’s ear, and it felt so natural that her tears sprang anew. In this abrupt hunger, she thought she knew what it might be like to be a daughter, and what kind of mother the Empress might be to a girl.

“Perhaps now you will find yourself on a better path,” the older woman said. “Sleep now, my dear, and come back to me tomorrow.”

But as grateful and overjoyed as she felt, Xifeng’s heart sank as she left the royal apartments. The Empress thought she was merely showing kindness to a lonely, friendless girl, but she had unwittingly embraced her fate. There could only be one ending to this story, one woman who could sit upon the throne of Feng Lu.

And it would not be Empress Lihua.

Kang was waiting by the pond when Xifeng left to collect her possessions and move them to her new chamber in Her Majesty’s apartments.

“I’m to serve in the Empress’s household. Starting tomorrow,” she said, still stunned.

He gave a laugh of genuine delight. “Didn’t I say you would find success here? How do you feel about being plucked away from danger?”

“Tigers can still climb trees.” Xifeng’s heart sank again as she touched her cheek. “How can I succeed in Her Majesty’s household like this? Bohai gave me a salve for the pain, but he warned there might be scars.” The very word made her physically ill.

Kang tilted his head. “You’ll be under much more scrutiny as one of the Empress’s ladies,” he agreed. “But at least now you’re under her protection. I do wonder whether our gentle Empress is gathering you closer because you’re Lady Sun’s enemy.”

“You think the Empress is plotting against Lady Sun? It seemsbeneath her.” She wondered if the concubine were watching them from her darkened windows. Her chest tightened when they passed the place where she’d knelt at the mercy of Master Yu’s whip. “Those hundred lashes weren’t for any comb, real or imagined.”

The eunuch growled. “She’s depraved. I’d like to snap that alabaster neck in two.”

“How many stripes did you get?”

He looked her in the eyes. “Ten.”

For merely speaking to Emperor Jun, the concubine would have given Xifengten timesKang’s punishment. Lady Sun had saved the most violent, horrific punishment for her, and who else would resort to such measures but the Fool?

Xifeng gritted her teeth. “She will pay for what she’s done to us. There has to be a way.”

Everyone despised Lady Sun, from the Empress down to the lowliest maids. The woman hung by a thread, but by the most important one at court: the Emperor. That was the thread Xifeng had to rip from the tapestry.

Xifeng closed her eyes, imagining a winking from within her ribs. The creature had made her feel such powerful anger before. She almost,almostlonged for that fury again, for this time it seemed more than justified. What dark visions would it give her? An alligator trap whose teeth widened for the concubine’s limbs? A torch to singe the flesh from her bones?

Her eyes flew open in horror at herself, her delight fading. “Thank you, my friend,” she told Kang. “You saved my life tonight.”

“Then you truly believe I am your friend now? You trust that I will protect you?”

“And I will protectyou,if I can,” she promised.

When Xifeng returned to bed at last, her sleep was filled with poison smoke, steel-tipped daggers, and the forgotten springs, locked in time, waiting for someone worthy. Waiting for her.

She felt the creature dreaming inside her, pressed against her impenetrable heart, its head a vault of toxic reveries. And when she woke in the inky blue darkness, hours still before the first rays of morning, she knew she needed to speak to Guma. She needed to see her, if only in a vision, and to hear her advice.

At the very least, she needed to try.

---