Page 86 of Forest of a Thousand Lanterns

But when Xifeng saw her, she thought,She might as well have. The woman’s face was drained of any beauty she had possessed. Though it was stark white against her silk pillows, she wore an expression of pure bliss. She held a small, moving bundle that emitted a tiny wail. The covers on the bed were clean; servants moved quietly around with rumpled sheets in their arms.

Madam Hong lit sticks of clove incense and handed one to each lady kneeling before Her Majesty. She led the group in a brief prayer forthe health and good fortune of the princess, and though the Empress smiled, her eyes never left the child in her arms.

“Blessings and congratulations upon Your Majesty and Her Highness,” they murmured.

Empress Lihua spoke in a fragile voice barely above a whisper. “Thank you for your good wishes. I feel as though I’ve woken from a dream and found myself in the heavens.” She smiled again, and Xifeng realized she was wrong. Lihua’s beauty had not vanished. Her loveliness was still there, but in paler, quieter colors, a smoke-gray autumn in place of a summer long gone. “I am the mother of a daughter I have wished for endlessly. We’ve been apart for all my life, dearest one, but now you’ve made my existence complete. The gods are good.”

Gently, the Empress shifted so they could see the new princess of Feng Lu. Beyond the edge of the blanket, Xifeng saw a pale, round face with chubby cheeks and eyes pinched shut above tiny red lips. The tips of a few precious fingers emerged from the blanket, cunningly formed, and a shock of night-dark hair lay flat against her wrinkled forehead.

“This is Jade.” Empress Lihua beamed down at her daughter. “White Jade, because she is so perfect and precious to me. How her skin glows like the winter snow.”

“She is beautiful, Your Majesty,” Madam Hong said, and for the first time, Xifeng heard emotion in her hoarse, cross voice. “A princess royal in every way.”

The eunuch at the door announced Emperor Jun, who strode into the room. Though his handsome face was careworn, his eyes were bright as he bent over his wife and child. He spoke some quiet words to Lihua, running a finger over the baby’s feather-smooth cheek.

For a moment, Xifeng imagined herself in the Empress’s place, but instead holding a tiny son, a royal prince of her bloodline. She hadnever imagined being a mother before—babies seemed too helpless, too needy—and yet she could see herself in that bed with Jun grinning down at her, hiswife,hisEmpress.Her child would be the trueborn, legitimate son of his blood that he longed for. He would insist on staying with them all day, no matter what pressing business he had at hand, and not lose interest as he did now. He had already turned away from Lihua and Jade after a final caress.

“Continue to bring me news of Her Majesty’s health,” he commanded a eunuch, who flung himself upon the ground, and left the room.

The Empress seemed blissfully unaware of his indifference or of the ladies-in-waiting flocking out of the room. Xifeng watched her with her daughter for a moment longer, drawn to the way they seemed to breathe together. Her heart tugged with the old ache, the longing for that kind of pure, wholehearted love that need not be hidden and asked for nothing in return. Princess Jade had done nothing—she had merely been born, and already she had a powerful father and a mother who would die for her. She had Lihua’s love and Lihua’s royal blood, and Xifeng would never have that, no matter how many hearts she took.

All the things I’ve had to do to get here,she thought, with a sudden maddening hatred. She had lied and lost, cheated and killed, and this tiny, helpless weakling had simply been born a princess.

Lihua lifted her head abruptly, seeming to hear her thoughts. Her serene face was jarringly different from that of the screaming woman who had accused her of poison. “Xifeng, I’d like to speak to you a moment. I was very ill last week. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

“Your Majesty does not need to apologize...”

“I am not apologizing,” the Empress said with a small smile. “I’ve felt for some time that you don’t regard me as you once did.” Her eyesran over Xifeng’s face, then quickly returned to her baby, as though cleansing her gaze with the tiny form. “But I hope whatever you hold against me will not be transferred to my Jade. I’m aware His Majesty will likely choose you for his wife when I am dead.”

Xifeng started, shocked by her bluntness.

“You are surprised. You assume because I am gentle and delicate that I am also silly and spineless, and do not notice everything around me. My parents made the same mistake. Yes, Xifeng, I know the Emperor is serious about you. He would have tired of you long ago if you had merely wanted to go to his bed.”

Xifeng remained silent, watching her stroke the baby’s small, perfect fingers.

“It was a difficult birth,” Empress Lihua said. “I am not long for this world, nor do I ask for your promise to love my daughter. But I can hope you will be good to her.”

Yes, you can hope.What use would Xifeng have for a dead queen’s useless daughter once she gave birth to her own sons?

The Empress regarded her once more. For that brief moment, Xifeng saw that what she had mistaken for weakness might have been a quiet strength instead. “I will always be with Jade, watching over her,” Lihua said quietly. “If the gods see fit to grant it, I will know whose hearts hold good intentions and I will steer her from evil.”

It was a threat, and Xifeng took it as such. She did not bow as she swept from the room, but the Empress could hardly care now. Jun was too far gone, too enamored with Xifeng to ever look at his wife again—but Lihua had her daughter, and that was all that mattered to her. She had already turned back to Jade’s tiny face as though she could see the clouds of the heavens there.

“A long time ago, when dragons walked the earth,” Xifeng heard hersay to the baby, “there lived a queen who loved her daughter more than all the jewels of her court...”

Outside, a magnificent dark blue sky had swept over the world.

The thousand stars that danced across its face glittered as though in celebration, but Xifeng kept her head down, so she wouldn’t have to see what she could not have.

Empress Lihua lingered on for two years.

Two years in which she became a ghost of a queen, living a faded life behind the closed doors of her bedchamber. She received only her daughter, the nursemaid, and Bohai, who never discovered how she had been poisoned, but determined that the metal of her cup had leached out most of the toxin given to her. It bought her precious time with Jade, during which the baby grew into a healthy, happy-hearted girl who adored her mother and seemed to understand every word said to her. She spent each evening with the Empress, hearing the story of the princess and the lover who had hung one thousand lanterns in the forest to light her way to him.

Xifeng was too preoccupied to care much about either of them. She spent her days at Emperor Jun’s side, attending court functions as his unofficial consort. The youngest prince had died of his illness, and the Crown Prince had not been heard from in over a year. The need for Xifeng to provide a new heir grew more pressing with each day, butstill the Emperor did not hasten their marriage. He was an unfeeling scoundrel whenever it suited him, but he insisted upon honoring Lihua as Empress for as long as she lived, and would take no other until her death. Perhaps he feared the Dragon Lords’ wrath.

Xifeng told herself to be content, knowing it would not be long. The Empress was no longer a threat to her, and Jun barely cared about his daughter. She was happy to let them rot away together in that chamber of death. She had not been in Lihua’s heart all these long years, so she didn’t bother keeping Lihua in hers.

So it was that in the spring of Jade’s third year, when the Empress slipped quietly away to join her forefathers in the Dragon Lords’ heavenly palace, she and Xifeng had not exchanged a word since the princess’s birth. Xifeng had been at a banquet and unable to say goodbye, though she almost wished she’d had the chance. There was something unfinished about not saying farewell, like a door left open in the chill night.

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