Chapter 30
Since getting married, Ruilin and I haven’t spent a day apart. We had eaten every meal together, shared the same bath water, slept with our wrists knotted beneath the same pillow. Now, after a glorious year and a half, the honeymoon was ending in a manner neither of us could have prepared for.
Ruilin gripped the message in his hand, clutching the scroll until his knuckles turned chalk white. “It’s a royal proclamation to all the realms,” he said, “The Celestial Empress… Bai Lianhua…” He faltered. “She’s passed away.” But the message did not end with her death. He continued, “High Goddess, Empress, Bai Qian, Gugu has collapsed, and has not awakened. She is not expected to survive.”
His silence lasted a long time. I stood apart, a safe distance away, pretending to busy myself with the arrangement of cushions and the folding of handkerchiefs, but in truth I was waiting for his grief to become tangible, something I could reach for and tend to.
But when it finally came, it did not land on him. It landed on me.
The first thing I felt was a sort of static. My body blunted its own nerves, as if it knew I could not bear the full strength of the blow. I stood very still—the kind of stillness that mimics composure, but is actually paralysis from shock. In my mind, I saw the faces of the two Empresses I had never seen but found I could conjure details that I shouldn’t have been able to: the curve of their brows, the angles of their cheeks. Oddly, they didn’t seem like strangers to me.
Then, without warning, my sadness peaked and overwhelmed me. My body began to shake in those tiny, humiliating spasms that preceded a full collapse. My eyes stung, my throat burned. I raised my hand to cover my face, but the tears came too quickly, wetting my sleeve in a matter of seconds. Not the elegant, single-tear mourning of a virtuous subject, but the ugly, all-consuming sobbing of a child who fears the world is ending. I tried to swallow it, to turn the sound into something soft and dignified, but the effort only made it worse.
Across the room, Ruilin heard me and came at once. There was a swiftness in his long stride. He knelt before me, took my hand in his, and pressed his forehead to my knee. I felt his breath, uneven and hot, through the layers of my skirt. In another context, the gesture had it been anyone other than Ruilin, it might have been comic or melodramatic, but here it was hopelessly sincere.
He did not speak. Instead, he pressed his palm over the back of my hand, as if to absorb the trembling by sheer force of will. When that failed, he lifted my wrist to his mouth and kissed it, as though he believed the right combination of touch and pressure might close the fissure in my heart.
I wanted to tell him I was fine, that this was all a passing fit, but the words would not come.
He shifted, rising to his feet, and using his magic frivolously to summon a basin with a cold cloth. With a gentleness that would have made me giggle under any other circumstance, he dabbed my forehead, then my cheeks, and finally my eyes, as if I were a feverish child.
He made soft, wordless noises—tsk, tsk, ai ya, ai ya—as if I am a baby that must be soothed, and I suppose at this moment I am. When he finally speaks, his voice is husky but steady, and he gingerly rests his hand on my stomach as if to soothe our unborn child with the same carefulness as he uses for the cloth.
“You mustn’t cry,” he said quietly. “It isn’t good for the baby.”
I hadn’t realized until that moment that my hands were pressed to my belly, cradling it as if to shield the life inside from the violence of my emotion. The thought that my sorrow might seep into the child—might damage it, or mark it in some permanent way—terrified me. I tried to compose myself, to take deep breaths and will my body into submission, but the sobbing did not care for reason. It came and went in waves, always more forceful than the last.
“It’s just…my” I tried to explain, but the words clogged in my throat. “hormones, but it’s too much. Too much loss all at once.”
He was a picture of empathy and understanding. Ruilin nodded solemnly, the lines around his mouth deepening and the skin under his eyes wrinkling as he pondered the depth of my sorrow. “Yes,” he murmured. “We lost our Celestial Empress mother, and now Gugu is also fading. Gugu was always kind to me, even though she openly disapproved of my relationship with Princess Changying. She scolded me for being too big-hearted, warning that it would lead to no good. Yet she always found ways to spoil me. Look at this.”
As he lowered his gaze, the angle of his flawless features made him appear every bit the deity he was, but his earnest smile when he caressed the pearl hanging from his belt made him seem boyishly young. “This Qingqui luminous pearl was a gift, and it wasn’t even my birthday. She only gives these out on birthdays, but I was an exception and she also secretly slipped bags of sunflower seeds and sugar cubes into my pockets when no one else was watching.”
“I have had no one do that for me since my mother’s death. In her way, Gugu’s generosity was immeasurable. She loves like no one else.” He stopped, dabbing at my swollen eyelids, his own voice faltering for the briefest moment before he forced it steady again. “But, Yi Nuo, this is something you must grow accustomed to. In the immortal courts, nothing happens gradually. It’s always a flood, never a drizzle.”
A weak, hiccuping sound escaped me when I tried to laugh, stifled by the weight in my chest. My throat felt raw, as if the tears had scoured it clean from the inside out.
He pressed the cold cloth to my forehead again, this time leaving it there, and wrapped his other arm around my shoulders, enveloping me in the familiar herbal scent of his robe.
Ruilin’s voice was lower now, almost hesitant, as if he feared the next words might break me down further. “There are things I must do,” he said. “Things that cannot be delayed, no matter how much I wish they could.”
I braced. “What is it?” My voice was thin, almost transparent.
“I have to go, but only for a few days.” He squeezed my shoulder, remorse flooding his tone. “Since the world believes I am still to marry Princess Changying, I must mourn Empress Bai as if she were my own mother. It is a matter of etiquette, nothing more,” he said, pausing to let the words settle. “But if I fail to appear at the rituals, someone will notice. They will start to ask questions—dangerous ones.” His jaw worked silently, the muscles jumping under his skin. “The right moment will come for me to speak with Princess Changying, to clear up every misunderstanding before I proudly introduce you to the world. To formalize what we already are.”
He waited, searching my face for protest, for an argument, for the eruption of anger he must have expected. But I was too tired, too hollowed out by my own grief to summon any resistance, and I understood what he had to do.
He leaned forward, cupping my chin and tilting it gently upward until our eyes met. “Do I have my wife’s permission?” He spoke the word—wife—as he did if it was something precious and to him it was. His gaze roved over my features, memorizing the arch of my brow, the curve of my lips, the salt-stained track of tears on my cheeks.
“You do,” I whispered, my voice shaking with the force of missing him already. “I promise not to cry.”
He smiled, faint and lopsided, then reached up to wipe away a stray tear with the callused pad of his thumb. “You are a terrible liar, Yi Nuo, but cry only a little. Think of the baby.” His lips were warm and soft as they brushed across my brow, lingering in a way that made the whole world recede to a thin, bright line. He held me for a moment longer, our foreheads pressed together, breathing the same air.
“I love you and our baby more than life itself. If anything happens, I’ll come right back.” He touched my belly, then the side of my face, before rising to his feet. The change in temperature was immediate. I clutched at his sleeve, but he gently disentangled my fingers, pressing a last kiss to my palm before stepping away.
He paused in the doorway, half-shrouded by the shadow of the corridor, and looked back one last time. I drank in the sight of him—the proud, stubborn set of his jaw, the silk of his robe, the tenderness he always showed—and tried to imprint it on my heart so I wouldn’t forget.
The whisper of his silken robe faded, leaving only the shuddering hush of my breath. I sat very still, the cold cloth now lukewarm in my hands. Its dampness cooled my fevered face, grounding me in this reality, the only proof that the last half hour had actually happened.
Yingpei~
A-li’s voice had taken on an unexpected softness when he spoke, much like father and uncle Mo Yuan.
I don’t think it’s good for Father to be alone,” he said, the corners of his lips twitching with a private anxiety he was unwilling to show to anyone other than me. He punctuated his statement by digging the tips of his fingers into the back of his neck—a nervous habit he’s had as long as I can remember, but now hinted at a deeper strain.
The skin under his grasp turned red, leaving a blotchy mark that persisted well after he released his hold. I observed him without making it too obvious I was staring, seated cross-legged on the edge of his bed, his posture slightly slumped under the unseen burden that had weighed on him ever since the funeral ceremony started.
“We can’t be everywhere at once.” He frowned, forcing himself to stop digging at his neck. “I need to keep searching for Yinger with our uncles and you should do as you’re doing, going back and forth between Nine heavens and Qingqui. Thus, I’ve asked Ruilin to stay and serve Father. After the rituals, he agreed to keep an eye on father as his assistant. Father needs someone with him, since Ying’er isn’t here.”
There was no accusation in the way he said this, but the implication was impossible to miss: That the three of us—myself, A-li, and our eldest jiejie—our efforts had begun to scatter either from necessity or by choice.
“Do you think second Jiejie could be…” I hesitated, unwilling to finish the sentence. It felt as though saying a thing out loud could thrust it into existence, make it unignorable. “Why hasn’t she come home? Surely she’s heard by now about mother, and Bai Lianhua.” The silence that followed was not the gentle hush of two siblings in accord. It was a silence with teeth.
He leaned forward in his chair, elbows balanced on his knees, and buried his face in his hands for a brief, unguarded second. The room lighting cast shadows so when he looked up again; the effect was jarring: the cascade of his black hair fell over his shoulder, framing his face in a way that made him the spitting image of father.
“Amnesia,” he said, his voice laden with frustration and hope. “Zhe Yan thinks Ying’er might be wandering around not remembering who she is.” His green eyes, usually steady, flickered. “He was adamant her star shines brightly. I know she is alive.” He took a shuddering breath, and then as if trying to convince both me and himself repeated, “I know Ying’er is alive and I will find her. So when mother wakes up we will all be there.”
He ran a thumb across his bottom lip. “As for Ruilin—he isn’t just there for Father’s sake. He’s also there for the sake of appearances.” He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “After Bai Lianhua’s funeral, the rumors are going to get worse. They’ll start picking apart every little crack in the family. We need to hold steady, or we’ll drown in their stories.”
He was absolutely right. Among the immortal clans, ours was the most powerful—ostensibly the most envied, but also, almost inevitably, the most resented. There had always been those who whispered about our family’s supposed failings, who predicted our collapse with an ill-concealed relish.
Now, with Empress Bai Lianhua dead and Mother on her deathbed, the rumors were more inventive than ever. They said Father had lost his mind and spent nights lost in an opiate induced haze again, that our second sister had run off to become a wandering spirit because she could not abide the sight of her own relatives, and that she was carrying the bastard child of a mortal.
As for A-li himself, the rumors were even stranger. He was accused of using forbidden dark magic. I was described as “unnatural”—too clever, too garrulous, too affectionate and possibly homosexual with a well-documented habit of giving out hairpins like a girl to other girls. It stung, not because it was false, but because the world, despite respecting and fearing us, was so eager to believe the worst.
A long silence stretched between us. I stared at the space between my boots then looking at A-li, picking at the skin of his thumb until it puckered and bled, a nervous tic made compulsive since the funeral. Every time he did it, I wanted to seize his hands and hold them in mine for safekeeping, but I’d long ago learned that attempts to soothe him outright only made the wound fester.
Instead, I waited out the silence and watched his gaze travel the length of the room before landing back on me. “Dege has a point,” I said. “Ruilin is unnaturally positive and unfettered by father’s gloominess. I’ll send a decree to the Phoenix Emperor requesting he release Ruilin from his duties through the mourning period. There’s precedent—the Phoenix Emperor himself spent two hundred years with Royal Great-grandfather when he was Ruilin’s age.”
A-li gave a derisive snort, his features twisting with something halfway between amusement and disgust. “Two hundred years trapped with that old miserable uptight mossback? No wonder the Phoenix Emperor turned out so weird asking Mother to consider a reverse harem.” He rolled his eyes, but the tension in his shoulders seemed to slacken, just slightly. He leaned back and let out a long, steady breath, then—unable to resist—added, “Still a better fate than being stuck here with Father glowering holes into the walls. We will reward Ruilin with whatever he asks after he completes his task. He will be most deserving.”
“You need to go to mother. General Ming and the uncles are waiting for me,” he said with knitted brows, waving me away as he grabbed his sword with fierce determination, appearing more ready for a hunt than looking for our second sister. It was in that moment that the stark contrast in how the three of us had responded to the relentless avalanche of losses that had ravaged our family struck me with overwhelming clarity.
In the days since Empress Bai Lianhua’s death, there was some truth to what others were whispering. The formalities of mourning had revealed fault lines no one had realized were there—even in a family such as ours, which had always prided itself on ironclad unity.
A-li, firstborn and always the character, had transformed overnight. Where once he’d been the golden prince, beloved for his irreverence and his knack for defusing palace tension with a perfectly timed joke or outrageous prank, he now stalked through the grounds with his jaw set and back ramrod straight, a prince transformed into the Skylord he would one day become.
When Father withdrew into his rooms, emerging only to attend ceremonies with red-rimmed eyes—A-li filled the vacuum, standing at the right hand of the throne in silence, never once betraying how much he wanted to be by mother’s side instead, or how much he hated the scrutiny. The other immortals watched him with a keenness that bordered on creepy, waiting for his composure to crack. It never did.
My eldest sister disappeared to Qingqui in response. She stayed by Mother’s side holding her hand always convinced she could feel what mother was feeling sleeping. She told Migu when to feed the fire and when to let the flames become embers to cool the Fox Den and slept at mother’s feet.
She eats little—sometimes just a slice of frozen persimmon and a cup of cold tea and only to insist—repeatedly, that she won’t leave until Mother wakes. When Father visited a few days ago, she ignored him completely and never offered an apology for missing Bai Lianhua’s funeral.
She wouldn’t even look his way.
No one knows what transpired to create this sudden rift in their relationship—she won’t say—but we learned she was only a few paces behind mother when she entered Bai Lianhua’s garden, and something she saw there has made her view Father as an intruder, a traitorous scoundrel, turning her into a loyal unwelcoming guard barring his access.
As for me, the youngest, my role was as undefined as my temperament. I tried to hover at the edges of everyone else’s pain, offering whatever comfort I could: a bowl of congee placed silently at Jiejie’s side; a fresh inkstone on A-li’s desk; a note, unsigned but written in my neatest hand, slipped under Father’s pillow with the words “Don’t forget to eat.”
When the calamities began to arrive in rapid succession—first Bai Lianhua’s sudden death, then mother’s collapse, and second jiejie’s continued disappearance—I found myself ricocheting between my obligations and loyalties to each wounded member of my family, unsure where to land but Zhe Yan’s blunt but strangely comforting advice stayed with me: “What’s gone is gone. Focus on who’s still here.”
For someone as flippant as he, Zhe Yan had a talent for stripping situations to their brutal core. Earnestly, he was a whirlwind of emotions, yet the healer in him had no time for sentiments towards another when his Xiao Wu clung to life.
In the ever-shifting emotional landscape, only Ruilin and Uncle Mo Yuan remains constant. Each day, Uncle Mo Yuan faithfully stands by Father, a supportive older brother. Father needs him, then descends from the Nine Heavens each evening to return to Mother. In the warmth of the fox den, he firmly scolds her, calling her a wayward disciple who refuses to heed Shifu’s instructions and awaken. His voice sometimes softens, offering patience—but only another 20,000 years to her existing 50,000, matching her 70,000-year wait for him. He says she, of all people, should understand the calculation and logic.
Sometimes, he whispers so softly, his long fingers tracing her features, his words lost to me. But in those gentle touches, I sense his deep love, a love I sometimes believe she feels, too.