Page 72 of Forest of a Thousand Lanterns

So when Xifeng was at last summoned to the royal bedchamber one morning, she obeyed in surprise. Her Majesty was sitting up in bed with an older woman beside her on a stool, bent and gray in the simple cotton clothes of a servant.

“Xifeng, come in,” Empress Lihua said warmly, as though nothing could or had ever soured between them. She seemed in high spirits, but her pale, wan face—already drawn with ill health—was beginning to show the weariness of pregnancy. “You’re in time to hear the story. I tell it to the baby every day, and when she is born, her nursemaid Ama here can help tell it.”

“She, Your Majesty?”

The Empress tapped her rounded stomach. “It will be a girl. I hear her speaking to me. She says she is what I have waited for... what we all have waited for. And I, in turn, tell her who she is. I tell her of theDragon Lords who created our world, and of the Dragon King whose blood runs through her veins.”

Xifeng imagined the child curled inside the Empress’s belly, tiny heart pumping the most precious lifeblood on Feng Lu. But lifeblood was easily taken.

“And I tell her the story of the two lovers in the Great Forest. Do you know it?”

“My... aunt rarely told me stories.” Xifeng’s voice shook, unable to say the wordmother. Weeks ago, Empress Lihua might have responded to the longing in her voice. But now her eyes and her heart were wholly fixed on the unborn child in her belly.

“A long time ago,” Her Majesty said in a dreamy voice, “when dragons walked the earth, there lived a queen who loved her daughter more than all the jewels of her court. She gave her everything her heart desired and asked for one thing in return: that the princess marry the man chosen for her. But the princess had already given her heart to a poor musician. He had a voice like a bird and taught her to love the song of the trees sheltering the palace. Though he begged the princess to reconsider, for his was a life of hardship, she vowed to be his wife.

“They made a plan: he would hide in the forest and leave behind a trail of lanterns. Some of them would be draped with red cloth, and it was these she should follow to join him. But before she could do so, her intended discovered their romance and followed his rival into the trees. He killed him with a single stroke of his sword, before the musician could drape any of the lanterns, and the blood splattered one.”

Xifeng hadn’t realized she had leaned forward to better hear until she saw Ama, the old nursemaid, watching her. The woman’s face broke into a smile Xifeng did not return.

“The princess was led to believe her lover had abandoned her,”Empress Lihua continued, “and that his neglecting to leave behind any red lanterns was his way of telling her not to run away with him. So she married her intended as the queen wished, but grew sad and silent. She ordered all of the lanterns in the forest to be lit and spent her days walking among them.

“One day, she came upon a single red lantern she hadn’t seen before. Her heart rejoiced, knowing her lover had wanted her with him after all. On a nearby branch sat a drab brown bird chirping the song the musician had written for her. The bird shed tears of blood and indicated that the princess should drink them, but she refused.

“Three times she came to hear it sing, and the familiar tune it trilled made her grow more certain that the bird was her lover returned. She told the queen, who urged her to drink the tears, knowing how unhappy she was. The princess understood then that her mother had relented at last, and bid her farewell. She returned to the forest and drank the bird’s blood tears, and in doing so, turned her arms into wings and her hair into feathers. She flew to her lover on the branch by the red lantern, and it is said they still live there today, joined in eternal love.”

Every nerve in Xifeng’s body felt charged and on edge. It was only a silly tale, but something about the lanterns in the forest resonated—warned her to be aware.

She closed her eyes and saw vivid images behind her lids: scented spirals of incense; a pool of silent, heartless women; a card depicting a girl in disguise, her foot hovering over the edge of a cliff. And lanterns, one thousand lanterns blazing in the forest, just out of reach. But what they meant and had to do with her, she couldn’t guess. It was a secret she felt she ought to know.

Empress Lihua dismissed the nursemaid. “I’d like you to stay and talk awhile with me, Xifeng, as you used to.”

“I would be honored, Your Majesty.”

“Bohai says I will deliver a strong child. A true miracle. He is as surprised as I am,” the woman said. A gentle, satisfied smile softened her features, as though she had proven the physician wrong. “The baby will come in the early days of winter, when the envoy leaves for the mountains. Perhaps I’ll be able to see them off and ask them to pray for the princess’s health.”

“I will do the same.” But Xifeng heard the hollowness in her own promise. She had no more use for gods who ignored and neglected her. Only one had answered her prayers, and it wasshehe cared for—not some spoiled sapling of a brat who hadn’t even been born.

The Empress gave a slow nod, looking at Xifeng as though she saw a stranger. She picked up an ornate cup, holding it with both hands as she sipped. “I loathe the taste of Bohai’s new medicine, but he’ll never know. It would be like insulting a meal in front of the cook.”

Xifeng felt a gnawing emptiness as she watched the Empress take another sip. It was as though Her Majesty had vacated a hole in her heart and nothing could fill it again.

There are consequences for everything we do,Guma had said. Even—and maybe especially—for the way the Emperor had looked at Xifeng on the night of his wife’s birthday.

The Empress’s thoughts seemed to run the same course, as she lowered her cup with shaking hands. “His Majesty is taken with you,” she said directly. “Lady Sun’s departure hasn’t upset him as much as I assumed it would, and he has praised you in my hearing more than once.”

“He is kind and gracious to remember me.”

“You’re a memorable woman. Worthy of any man’s notice, even that of the Emperor. And you are nineteen, quite old enough. Do you wish to marry?”

In her eyes, Xifeng saw she knew, or at leastsuspected,that Xifeng had something to do with Lady Sun. She clearly believed Xifeng would take the woman’s place; maybe she even hoped for it, so she could keep her close as she had Lady Sun for years.

“I’d like to marry, if the right man wanted me. But I want to be a wife, as you are. Lady Sun had wealth and comfort, but not a marriage—a partnership, a joining of equals.” Xifeng thought of Lady Meng, too, trapped in a promise to one man while longing for another.

“And this is what you believe you deserve?”

“I do.”

For the first time since Xifeng had entered the room, the Empresstrulylooked at her, without fixing her mind on herself or her baby. “A queen’s marriage is not as secure as you think. Her husband can put her aside at any time if he is displeased in the slightest. And there is always someone waiting at the door, ready to pounce when that should happen.” The Empress lowered her eyes to her belly. “Thetengaruhave told me for years of an enemy on my doorstep. A masked usurper. This person, they told me, would seek to end my line in fire and darkness. To work on behalf of an ancient feud.”

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