Page 83 of Forest of a Thousand Lanterns

She looked as Xifeng had never seen her. This was not the gentle, soft-hearted woman who had confessed her desire for a daughter. This was a wild, untamed animal, with blazing eyes like those of thetengaru.The huge, swollen belly on her frail body looked obscene and unnatural, and it shook with the rest of her when she spotted Xifeng.

“Murderess!” the Empress shrieked. “You poisoned me. You... poisoned me!”

In her frenzy, one of the sheets tore, releasing her wrist. She immediately used the fingers of her free hand to scratch at her thighs and knees, leaving scarlet tears in their wake. Two eunuchs leapt into action with a new sheet, apologizing to her as they re-bound her wrist.

Bohai stood nearby, perspiration beading his forehead as he crushed leaves into powder. “You must be calm, Your Majesty,” he pleaded. “I’m making something to help you sleep.”

The Empress strained and struggled, her eyes feverish. “It was her, it was her, it was her.”

“Xifeng could not possibly have done what Her Majesty suggests,” Kang said in a low, urgent voice to Bohai and Madam Hong. “The Empress is always surrounded by guards for her protection, and Xifeng is always with her own guards, including myself.”

The physician nodded apologetically. “Her Majesty is too ill to know what she’s saying.” He tipped the medicine into the woman’s mouth as a eunuch held her head. Within minutes, the Empress stopped thrashing and lay still. Her head lolled to one side and at last, it was quiet. “Change the bedclothes now and get me some cloth to dress her wounds,” Bohai told the maids, wiping his forehead, then turned to Xifeng again. “How’s that shoulder of yours?”

Xifeng had forgotten her own injury. “It’s fine. What happened to the Empress?”

“I don’t know,” the physician muttered. “I make her medicine myself every day. I haven’t let another soul touch it, and every morsel of food she eats is tasted by a servant first.”

“Are you certain she’s being poisoned?” Madam Hong asked, wringing her hands.

Bohai nodded, distressed. “She shows indications of long-term poisoning. The dosage has been increased slowly, gradually. Clever to do it in such a way that I wouldn’t recognize the signs until too late.”

“How terrible,” Kang murmured. “I recall the Crown Prince accusing Lady Sun of poisoning the Empress, before she left. Could there be truth in his claim?”

Xifeng nodded in approval. “Perhaps we know at last why she abandoned court. She is far from the reach of the Emperor’s justice by now.”As far as death, in fact.

The physician’s lips thinned. “Lady Sun or no, this has been going on for months... perhaps years. There is an imbalance of the elements in Her Majesty’s constitution. The tone of her skin, the vomiting, the seizures and confusion.” He sighed and turned to Kang. “Did you find Lady Meng?”

“I’m sorry to say she drowned herself, sir. I found her body half frozen in the pond. Unfortunately the face has been...” The eunuch glanced at Xifeng and Madam Hong in a show of fearing for their delicate sensibilities. “She seems to have lost control of her drinking. She damaged herself with the knife in her frenzy, but I knew it was her from her clothing.”

Xifeng wondered whom he had killed to dress up as Lady Meng. Some unsuspecting maid, perhaps, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. More lives to cover up the lives they’d already taken. More deaths to pull over their innocence like a shroud.

Bohai sighed heavily. “I’ll inspect her later, when I’ve finished here. The Emperor will have to be notified as soon as he awakens.”

“I’ll see a message is sent to him immediately,” Kang promised.

“You need to get some rest,” Bohai told Xifeng. “You’ve had quite an ordeal tonight.”

If only he knew the true ordeal,she thought as she left the room obediently.

If only he knew the Xifeng to whom he had just spoken was a different being from the one whose shoulder he had bound.

The Emperor came as soon as he could to see Xifeng. He dismissed the eunuchs and took her into his arms carefully, to avoid jostling her shoulder. His embrace felt strange and familiar all at once—the sensation of arms around her that did not belong to Wei, of warm hands on her back that were not his. And when he pulled away, she was momentarily surprised to look up into a face that was not Wei’s.

He scanned her face and swore as his anxious gaze returned to her wounded shoulder. “What you must have endured. Thank the gods she did nothing worse.”

“I am sorry for her,” Xifeng said, and meant it. Her final act of kindness to Lady Meng had been to close her staring eyes, shielding her from her last glimpse of the callous world.

Jun dropped his arms, seeming to realize how close they were, and stepped back respectfully. “Bohai told me what the Empress said to you in her feverish state. I apologize for her unjust accusations.”

“It isn’t your fault.”

“Isn’t it?” He turned to the window, where snow fell steadily from an ice-gray sky. “Sometimes I wonder if I corrupt these women merely by being myself. I’ve lost two concubines, and now I may lose my wife as well. There must be something about me that poisons them.” He gave a heavy sigh. “My youngest stepson is ill and dying, and now I have sent my heir, the Crown Prince, tohisdeath.”

“His Highness insisted on going to lead the negiotations for his brother’s life,” Xifeng said gently. “He told me himself how much he worried about the second prince fighting overseas. He will not rest until he brings him home alive.”

“He won’t succeed.”

“But he was very adamant at the council that...”

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