Chapter 50 - 3#

And the terrifying man who looked like something from the underworld reached out toward him.

“Come here.”

That was Jingzhe’s last memory.

*

Outside Qianming Palace, Shi Lijun waited — but it was not the Emperor who came back. Only Ning Hongrú returned, with the others.

Shi Lijun raised an eyebrow at him.

Ning Hongrú met her gaze steadily. Shi Lijun gave a small nod of understanding. “The commotion from the autumn banquet has been contained for now — but Shòukāng Palace will likely make a move.”

Ning Hongrú: “This time, it wasn’t Shòukāng Palace.”

Shi Lijun agreed.

Shòukāng Palace’s position was already weakened. Noble Consort De was the highest-ranking ally the Empress Dowager had left within the inner palace. To actively strike at her would be to cut off her own remaining support. The Empress Dowager would never do that.

As for who had actually done it — in some ways that was a secondary question.

It would need to be investigated, of course. The Emperor could find out whatever he chose to find out within these walls, and that had never changed. But what he did with the information afterward—

In the usual pattern of things, if Noble Consort De couldn’t uncover the truth through her own means, the matter would probably be quietly set aside.

The Emperor rarely inserted himself into the inner palace’s disputes.

This time the only reason he had been involved at all was the lack of alternatives — and the fact that Jingzhe was mixed up in it. Without that, even the Emperor would likely not have pressed.

After all, what their Emperor had always enjoyed most was watching the animals fight.

Shi Lijun’s smile faded slightly. “…So how did Jingzhe know?”

Because Jingzhe had gone to the imperial kitchens, Zhu Erxi had heightened his precautions, and the poison had ended up in the tea — and the kitchens had, through some odd chain of events, escaped the whole thing unharmed.

Was that a coincidence?

Ning Hongrú folded his hands and said, with the ease of a man past being surprised by anything: “Does it matter why?”

Whatever Jingzhe was — informant, enemy, anything in between — the Emperor had found something he wanted, and however tightly you gripped something you wanted, you didn’t let it go. Not someone like him.

Given that, did Jingzhe’s identity actually change anything?

There was only ever going to be one outcome. Only one possibility.

Shi Lijun shook her head and left it alone.

*

Mao Zishi arrived in a hurry, and found Qianming Palace quite empty. Well — full of palace servants, as always, but no Emperor.

The Emperor wasn’t here. Again.

Mao Zishi was starting to question his own judgment. What was wrong with his timing lately? Every time he arrived at what should have been exactly the right moment, there was nobody to find.

Ning Hongrú looked at the sky and pressed his lips together. “Mao-daren, the hour at which you’ve arrived is… rather late in the evening.” Coming to make trouble at this hour — wasn’t that just asking to be a nuisance?

Mao Zishi, with complete confidence: “What does that matter? The Emperor never goes to the inner palace. Coming in the evening is exactly right — he should definitely be available.”

That logic was, in fairness, sound.

“Available,” Ning Hongrú agreed, pleasantly.

Except the Emperor was, in fact, not there.

Mao Zishi was bewildered. Surely the Emperor hadn’t actually changed his habits and taken to spending time in some consort’s chambers?

That couldn’t be right.

The Emperor had recently been fixated on a certain minor eunuch. That was precisely what had brought Mao Zishi here.

One of his people had passed along a piece of news that was a little hard to believe — but not impossible.

Jingzhe’s mother and sister may still be alive.

*

An hour earlier, the city beyond the palace walls was still lively. Though evening was approaching, the noise hadn’t abated; the Mid-Autumn Festival was only a few weeks away, and many households were busy with preparations, making offerings, gathering things for the moon-worship ceremonies.

Liu-shi was the same.

She had just come home and was sorting through what she’d bought, moving quickly and purposefully. There were only the two of them in the house, but they observed every festival, making offerings for Cen Xuanyin’s peaceful passage into the next life, and praying for Cen Wenjing’s wellbeing in the palace.

“Mama! I found out!”

A woman’s voice at the door — slightly high, a little urgent.

Cen Liang came in at a near-run, her pretty face flushed with a hot, complicated emotion. The faint redness around her eyes startled Liu-shi, who came hurrying out and wrapped both arms around her.

“Liang-er, what is it? What happened?”

Cen Liang wiped at the corner of her eye. “I — I finally found out where Papa was reburied. Mama, can we go in a few days?”

The same grief moved across Liu-shi’s face — and, mixed in with it, a faint, unsteady happiness.

“Of course. Of course we’ll go together.”

The Chongyang Festival was still a month away, and a proper grave visit would be more fitting then — but neither of them could wait that long.

And besides — the Mid-Autumn Festival was nearly here.

A time for the whole family to gather.

Except that one of them wasn’t here.

Liu-shi felt the familiar sting in her nose at the thought.

“I just don’t know if your father’s remains are still… complete,” she murmured, worry threading through her voice. He had died before anyone came to collect him — even if he had since been reburied, she didn’t know in what condition. “We should ask, when we go, what they did when they found him…”

Liu-shi worried that if something was missing, it might follow him into his next life.

Cen Liang managed a smile. “Mama — Papa died in prison.”

It was objectively a terrible thing to say. And yet she said it with a trace of something that was almost relief.

Liu-shi blinked. “But — he was sentenced to execution.”

Cen Liang wiped at her eyes again, and shook her head.

“The Huang family’s fall has been made public — I went to see the official notice board and had one of the clerks read it to me. It says that Papa — didn’t survive the interrogation in prison. Huang Qingtian used someone else in his place at the execution ground.”

This had been investigated and confirmed, and had been posted on the official boards for months now, weathered by rain and wind. Cen Liang had arrived to the news late — months late — but she had finally arrived.

She had thanked the clerk, and then cried the whole way home.

Liu-shi gripped Cen Liang’s shoulders and wept, and laughed, both at once. “I always told you to study properly with the tutor and you never would listen, and now look — you have to ask a stranger to read it for you — well — this is wonderful. Truly, truly wonderful.”

Once, knowing that Cen Xuanyin had died from the violence of interrogation rather than by beheading would have seemed like a poor comfort. And yet it was better — because of something fragile and perhaps irrational, but real.

The body intact. No missing pieces. A better chance at a good next life.

Liu-shi had barely finished the thought before she clutched Cen Liang again, suddenly panicked. “Liang-er — what if they mixed up the bodies? It was a switch, you said — what if your father ended up buried somewhere else, with the wrong name—”

Cen Liang held her mother and shook her head against her shoulder.

“It’s alright. There was a confession. They were buried at the common graves, and everything has been exhumed and identified. It’s not wrong.”

Liu-shi’s trembling hand found Cen Liang’s head and stroked it gently. “Good. Today I’ll get some paper money and some offerings, and tomorrow — we’ll go see your father.”

Cen Liang nodded, pressing close.

With the Huang family’s fall, the old case of the Cen family had been reviewed and overturned — a considerable comfort to both of them.

If they chose to reveal who they were now, they might receive compensation, or at least have someone looking out for them. But after discussing it, both had decided: they wanted no part in any of that. They were managing on their own, and they had no desire to return to the old world of connections and obligations.

The Cen family had not been without friends or allies. But when the trouble came — particularly when it had meant crossing the Huang family — not a single one of those friends had moved.

It was the few people on the lower fringes of society who had tried to help.

Liu-shi had learned enough about how people treated each other. She had no wish to go back.

*

Jingzhe was dreaming.

He knew it, with the particular clarity that dreams sometimes permit.

He was playing by the pond. Cen Liang was on the bank calling to him, but Jingzhe dove under anyway, swift and pleased as a fish.

The cold current slid past his skin. He liked the underwater world — quiet, no one making noise at him.

Some time passed. Jingzhe surfaced, and found Cen Liang sobbing loudly. His mother was holding the small, wailing girl, looking at Jingzhe with an expression caught between exasperation and amusement.

“You little menace — look what you’ve done to your sister.”

He’d been under too long and frightened her.

Jingzhe grinned, pressed his small hands against the bank’s edge, and began to pull himself up.

A pair of hands even cooler than the water closed around his small body and lifted him out.

Jingzhe yelped, flailing in midair.

“Wet little dog,” said a cool voice.

Jingzhe’s whole small body went rigid. He looked down, alarmed, into a pair of dark, dispassionate eyes.

He instinctively brought his knees together.

“Ha ha ha, brother, put Jingzhe down before you get your hands wet.” Cen Xuanyin’s voice came through the gate — a bright, easy laugh. “Come in, come in — didn’t you say you wanted to play wéiqí?”

The person holding the wet child looked at his parents with perfect composure. “Cen-xiong. I have a request.”

Cen Xuanyin walked over to Liu-shi’s side and took Cen Liang from her, looking on with idle curiosity. He looked very young — people often found it hard to believe he’d had two children at his age.

Jingzhe watched in horror as the person holding him, in front of his very young parents, said something absolutely terrifying.

“I would like to ask the two of you — when the time comes — to give Jingzhe to me.”

The burning shame and panic of it woke Jingzhe with a strangled sound, nearly tumbling him off the bed.

He blinked frantically, as though blinking could shake off the horror. He must be losing his mind to dream something like that. A nightmare. An absolute nightmare.

How could his father have been friends with Rong Jiu? The two of them appearing together in the same dream, in the same place — already unnerving. And that request— what was that—

He slapped his own face. The sting cleared his head.

He looked down at his own hands.

Clean.

No alarming red. None of that dizzying pull. The burning want — gone.

He looked toward the other side of the bed.

Rong Jiu’s eyes were still closed. He appeared not to have been woken by the noise.

But his arm was still around Jingzhe’s waist, and they were pressed together closely enough to share warmth — enough that even Rong Jiu’s skin had taken on a little heat.

That perpetual cold was always somewhat disorienting. It made Jingzhe wonder, from time to time, whether Rong Jiu was actually human. Sometimes the word demon seemed more accurate.

As it had last night.

Jingzhe’s face drained of color as the memory settled back in, piece by piece.

He covered his mouth. His hands were faintly unsteady.

The smell of blood was completely gone. And yet Jingzhe felt it still — as if it had soaked into him, into his bones, into the spaces between, that sweet smell still lingering—

Sweet.

He gagged involuntarily, gripping his own arm.

The thick, slick feeling moving down his throat — he never wanted to remember that again.

The arm at his waist pulled him in more firmly. Rong Jiu’s voice held the last thread of sleep, fading almost before it registered: “Still want more?”

Jingzhe had been bracing himself to apologize for everything. The question stopped him cold.

Rong Jiu sat up. Both his wrist and the side of his neck had been wrapped in clean white cloth — he must have dealt with the wounds after Jingzhe lost consciousness.

Slowly, methodically, he began to unwrap them. One layer, then another. Then he extended the arm toward Jingzhe.

Jingzhe’s breath came unevenly. He shook his head. “I — I’m not drinking that.”

Rong Jiu’s fine brows drew together slightly, his voice soft. “Jingzhe. You’ll like it.”

Jingzhe clamped a hand over his mouth and shoved himself to the far side of the bed. “I don’t need it.” Clear. Firm. Final.

…Why?

He was genuinely confused now. The buff should have run its course by morning. So why did Rong Jiu still want to—

Rong Jiu studied him, with that focused, almost dissecting gaze, as though he could see clean through Jingzhe’s skin to every organ underneath.

Then, with the air of someone setting something down: “Alright. It seems you really don’t want to.”

He reached for the fallen cloth and tried to rewrap the wound one-handed. But one hand was not enough, and the cloth kept slipping.

Jingzhe had retreated to the far edge of the bed and was perfectly content to stay there.

But he watched Rong Jiu try once, and again, and struggle on a third attempt — and exhaled, closed his eyes, and dragged himself back out.

He knew Rong Jiu was probably doing this on purpose. He fell for it anyway.

He pulled the cloth from Rong Jiu’s hand and wrapped the wound properly, his movements practiced and quick. When he finished, he intended to retreat again to his corner of the bed — and was caught by the wrist.

The injured wrist. The same hand.

Jingzhe’s planned resistance stopped immediately. He stayed very still.

The bandaging had barely been dry before the wound had started pulling apart. The last thing he wanted was to tear it open further.

“Jingzhe.” Rong Jiu’s voice was cold, and yet carried a heat that made no sense alongside it. “I’m glad.”

Yes — Jingzhe could feel it. The excitement radiating from him was almost palpable, almost spilling over. He had rarely seen any emotion in Rong Jiu this vivid.

The injured hand tightened on Jingzhe’s wrist and pulled.

White teeth closed on his wrist — over the pulse point, where the blood moved closest to the surface.

Rong Jiu pressed down lightly, with a gentle, deliberate drag of his teeth — as though something in him also wanted, was also reaching toward something.

Jingzhe stared at what was happening. Understood it, a beat too late. The blood left his face.

If Rong Jiu had still been trying to feed him blood, that might have been the buff’s residue.

But this?

Rong Jiu wanted his blood. Was this the buff too? Or had this been his intention from the very beginning, long before any of this?

And Jingzhe finally understood — whether before or now, those violent wants had always come from somewhere real in Rong Jiu.

His nature. Unchanged. Unchangeable.