Chapter 32
Ruilin~
The moon hangs high above, its pale light seeping through the vast night.
I read your letter by candlelight.
I won’t ask when you’ll return.
Only that you are well.
Everything is fine, and we are all healthy. Please don’t neglect yourself.
Another letter—another poem, brief as it may be. Yi Nuo has never complained about my absence, never shown resentment, though I wish she would. To see some shred of emotion, of vulnerability, but she is composed, always so composed. She is and has been more resilient than me.
Behind a low table, I sit on my knees under the implacable gaze of the Skylord, holding scroll and brush. I slouch, trying to make my body small, a shadow to his bulk. It is difficult. My legs are too long; my frame, too tall, too broad, doesn’t go by unseen. There is blatant judging to how he watches me while pretending to ignore me. His eyes shaped like knives sliced through me, though his face is still. It is the sense of being evaluated by the heavens, and in a way I am.
The mourning robe of the Skylord cascades out in tiers of feather-light silken layers as the ghost of the dead or avoid ripples through them. The moonlight through the silk seems to be as cold as the whisper-thin starlight on its underside, a silver that halo’s his entire body here among the candlelights.
But it is the face that, despite youth, is scored with hidden wounds and with the hard times and pressures of loss and sorrow, imprinted with grief that never fully mended, and it tells of pain long gone but still alive and nearly fresh beneath it all. He’s not a talker; he talks less than thin air. But in the silence it wraps around him his grief is of ten thousands of years of stories untold.
Kneeling before him, I sit at the bottom, scroll in hand, my eyes avoiding his. Though I struggle to keep my wits about me, my eyes drawn inexorably to him, where they give me away as they skip to his desk—a battlefield of scrolls and ink-splotched papers. I never knew the other realms fought and complained as much as they do. I did not know of the petty squabbles of immortals before serving his Grace.
I turn a little, rolling, the strain in my back from trying to keep small beneath him eases. From this position, I am looking right at the desk. I watch his hands move, directing the brush with a grace that appears like it doesn’t belong to him, each black stroke of ink a pure embodiment of will, a delicate dance with the abyss.
His brush sweeps across the parchment with an otherworldly preciseness, each stroke graceful and assured, and every so often it seems to me as if the very air itself twists and cascades at his command. His calligraphy, so refined and graceful, brings to mind Princess Changying’s own script. I stare at it, fascinated, until a memory surfaces—the briefest encounter, a passing reference in one of her letters.
Toffee sweet potatoes.
Just three words on a folded paper crane. A simple thing, perhaps her dinner, but there in the words was a greater depth, an intimacy that existed for no one but me. There, in that small, idiotic detail, I thought I knew her better, and back then I also wondered what she was thinking, hoping it was me when she wrote those words.
That collective naivety about love — how we were both, in our ways, beginners at the business of heart. What a fool I’d been to cling to the delusion that Princess Changying loved me back, all while remaining as trapped as I was in my very own world as it was written. I can’t believe Yi Nuo didn’t burst into laughter when I made something grand out of nothing. I’d have laughed in her face if the roles had been reversed.
I reach up, fingers tracing the ribbon in my hair—the one Yi Nuo so lovingly tied during our last moments together. This separation has stretched on for nine long months now, adding to the three before, and I can’t help but wonder how she is, what she’s feeling. She’s two and a half years pregnant—only six months away from bringing our child into the world. I picture her, her belly round with our child, navigating her days without me. I wonder if she thinks of me as much as I think of her.
The days in the Celestial Court are bright but not warm. The rays of the sun may fall upon the palace, but they never enter the cold, breathless atmosphere that prevails within the palace walls. I have been here silently, lurking in the nuisance of the Skylord, and I am nothing but an unwelcome shadow. I’m a trespasser in his private sphere, even though he hasn’t told me to go away.
Recently, he has permitted me to enter his study — a minor privilege, one I had never thought I would be granted. Before that, for months, I had stood outside his doors, an invisible witness to the tempest building inside.
Today, like so many days, we are silenced. There is no sound but the scrape of my brush against the parchment and the purl of the soft scroll as I copy the assembly’s minutes. Light falls through the immortal glass above, leaving beautiful patterns on the floor. The skylight creates an ethereal, soft glow in the room, casting it in celestial light, like the petals of a lotus in full bloom. The lingering fragrance of incense, barely noticeable, is a soothing presence in the still atmosphere.
Skylord Ye Hua remains behind his desk, caressing the scroll with his long fingers, but he is staring off somewhere else in the distance as if his thoughts are wandering back to a place and time so ancient, I could never understand. A servant quietly enters, her head down bowed with respect, carrying a white bowl of hotpot of revitalizing soup. It smells of herbs and earth, the scent of life.
“No need. Take it away.” The Skylord says, his voice cooler, his attention never leaving the parchment.
The Celestial Swan pauses, and doubt flits through her eyes. I glance up from my scroll, then I get up quietly, gliding like water into that distance between us.
“If it pleases Skylord,” I whisper, my tone meek, “May I have it instead?”
The Skylord’s black eyes shift on me, sharp as a knife, the gravity of his attention settling on me like a fleshy, suffocating shroud. “Why would you consume that which was meant for me?”
Respectfully, I dropped my gaze down and chose my words carefully. “I am not worthy, but I desire to save the imperial kitchen from thinking their labour was in vain. The ingredients are unusual, many of them unique. I know that the Heavenly Lord’s second son King Yingpei selected them particularly with great care. The herbage and the ingredients are sent every day by the Qingqui King for your grace. I fear it might upset the Qingqui King if his filial piety wasn’t accepted.”
He looks at me for a long moment, expression indecipherable, before giving the slightest of nods. I take the bowl from the addressing, thank the servant, and I drink. The dark broth is bitter, earthy — a taste of the land that gave birth to it. It warms my stomach and stills the ache, cleansing the heaviness of my mind, at least for the time I can enjoy it.
When I am finished, I head back to my scroll, my brush fixed as I write the words of the council. The Skylord stares at me for a while, and his glare is really deep; it’s as if he is measuring the marrow of my bones.
At last, he speaks, the sound hushed like an echo shattering the silence: “ You are…always… bright.”
Bright. He says it as if it’s a condition, a curse that he hasn’t wrapped his head around yet, a curse that he wants no part of. “Too much so for this court,” he goes on, in a brisk tone, the air of a cold wind.
I blink, then smile faintly. “I’ve been told so before.”
He sits up rigid in his chair, graceful hands interlocked in steeples before him. He gazes directly into me now, as if for the first time. “Aren’t you afraid of me? Don’t you find Nine Heavens difficult?”
I hesitate, choosing my next words carefully. This is the first time his Grace has spoken to me about something not related to Celestial matters. “I am afraid of you. Nine Heavens, I find it… quiet. But not cruel. There is peace found in stillness, even though I don’t really get it. If only the Skylord would assign me more work.…” I cut myself off, realizing I am about to cross a line. “I like the little Princesses and Princes. One day I want to have many children too.’
There’s a long silence between us, heavy with unspoken thoughts. I can practically hear the wheels of his mind turning as he processes the words I’ve just said. And then he talks some more, away and dreamy sounding, after a time: “You never ask for anything.”
My brush falters, apprehensive, so I say the first thing that comes to mind. “Should I?”
“Most do. Everyone wants something.” The Skylord spoke stoically; it was a role he’s been born into, one he has reinforced, though I suspected it was now a mask to hide his vulnerabilities. Even his loneliness.
I lower my head, weighed down by my own wants. “I only can when it’s earned.”
His almond-shaped eyes narrow a little, looking speculative. “Why exactly are you here?”
“It was an honor to be asked by Crown Prince, and I wish to obtain sufficient merit to make a request of the Celestial Emperor,” I respond, low, yet firm.
He ponders this for a bit and then inquires, “You’re already promised to my Changying. Is it my absolute approval that you are looking for?”
Even now, hearing her name makes me jump. The words ring oddly, and I wince, a sudden discomfort because it’s been almost a year since I’ve heard someone say it aloud. I feel like I’m deceiving everyone by not announcing that she called off our engagement. And strangely, no one has questioned me about it or even mentioned it while I’ve been in Nine Heavens.
“I would not dare,” I say softly, my voice deep, almost tender as Yi Nuo’s face floats to mind. “What I am asking is of more personal importance to me.” And after a second I say. “Forgive me, your Grace, but…. I wonder if you have been getting enough rest. You hardly eat or drink anything served to you, and you never seem to sleep. Even your children inquire about your presence more.”
He squints, but his voice is level, without condemnation. “Know your place. Ruilin, you are too bold.”
“I’m not being disrespectful,” I correct myself, my voice soft and sincere. “But when she wakes up—Empress Bai—won’t she feel pained to see you like this?” The air between us stops, the charge in the room heavy as metal. Something in his expression shuts down, but he says nothing.
“I think she will awake sooner than others might expect,” I proceed, my conviction thickening my tone. “I also believe… Empress White Lotus hasn’t died and abandoned you or the imperial children though it might appear so.”
His deep-set eyes reveal something old and raw for the first time, appearing lost, wavering, and vulnerable. He doesn’t say anything, but I feel the ripple of ancient grief pass between us so tangible I can almost taste the bitterness.
“I have often pondered the Empresses,” I mumble. “Of the broken soul of High Goddess Bai Qian, of how Empress White Lotus Empress came to be, bearing a fragment of the High Goddess’s soul. Some would say they were two separate women, but… I do not think so. I believe Empress White Lotus came into your life because Gugu sent her to you. She was not ready, but she was afraid you might lose hope.”
“Worried I would lose hope?” His voice is a rumbling bass, low and solemn. Between the two of us, it almost sounds… dare I say, childish.
I nod slowly. “And when Gugu came back, Empress Bai Lianhua began to disappear. For her job was done. She was the stepping stone, the bridge between you and Gugu, the Skylord’s first real love.”
The silence between us stretches, the fullness of his grief spreading between us like an abandoned mountain. The air is heavy with something older than the two of us. Finally, he speaks. “Would you like to go home?
My heart jumps up in my chest, hope blossoming like a delicate flower. “I would. “But I am not done here yet.”
The Skylord turns to face the horizon, his back silhouetted against the fading dusk. Seeing him reach for his cloak, I quickly stand, sprint to his cloak and hold it out for him. He gives me a stern look. “Return home for a week. Come back and when the mourning period is over, and your service is no longer needed, I will agree to your one request.”
My heart races, a thrill bubbling within me. “Really?” I pause, wondering if I seem too eager to leave, but the thought of seeing Yi Nuo outweighs everything. I can’t help but show it.
He looks briefly over his shoulder. “The soup will be left untouched when there’s no you,” he mumbles, a trace of sardonic amusement dancing in his voice. “So you have to come back — Not because I will miss you but for other people.”
I bow low, my heart full. “Thank you, Heavenly Lord.”
As I start to leave, he throws this on almost as an afterthought: “You’re not what I expected, Crown Prince Ruilin of the Phoenix Clan.”
The Skylord has never addressed me in such a formal way, but oddly; it feels as if he is warming up to me. I grin a little, somewhere between surprised and amused. “I’m not who I thought I was either, and I barely expect anything from myself.” A stupid grin spreads on my face. “This way, I never disappoint myself.” Sadly, my joke goes unappreciated by him, who stares at me stone faced.
“Tell the Princes and the Princesses you won’t be visiting this week. I have heard they are fond of you. They’ll be curious where you’ve disappeared to and cry their eyes out.” And now he turns his eyes on me, sharp as if a new realization, a bright light bulb, has just flicked on in his head. He dismisses me with a single nod of his head, and his expression though rigid, carry a hint of something I can’t name.
I bow, my heart tugging at the image of his children. As long as I am not serving the Skylord, I check in on them—young toddlers, barely weaned and now missing their mother. I take them sweets from the kitchens, sit with them in the gardens, and tell them fantastic tales they don’t yet understand. It is a small thing, but it feels significant, even meaningful, as if practicing.
Soon, I will be a father.
Phoenix Realm
Feng Ming~
Ruilin’s palace rose like a celestial lotus above the clouds — its golden eaves arched high like wings mid-flight, silver roof tiles shimmering with the pale luster of river jade. Each tile was glazed to perfection, curling like waves frozen in moonlight, bearing etched figures of birds of paradise mid-dance. Along the colonnades, lanterns of mist crystal hung in symmetrical rows, their light shifting with the breeze, glowing like captured starlight. The scent of blooming tea blossoms wafted through the air, soft and sweet, barely disturbed by the rustle of silk or the creak of wood.
This was Yiang Yu Palace. A dwelling sculpted by divine artisans—reserved only for the Crown Prince. High above the rest of the realm. Sacred, resplendent, exalted.
It should have been mine.
I wandered the cloistered path beneath the vermillion pillars, my hands folded behind my back, boots whispering over veined white marble like passing thoughts. Idle, yes—but sharp-eyed. Ruilin had been summoned to the Nine Heavens, and yet his residence pulsed with vigilance. Too much vigilance. The air carried an undercurrent of tension, like strings drawn taut on an unseen guqin.
His personal guards—clad in phoenix-etched armor—knelt the moment they laid eyes on me, as was proper. Yet none moved to part the gates. No one invited me inward. They didn’t need to say anything. Their silence spoke volumes.
What could my ever-righteous brother be hiding behind those gilded doors?
My interest, once casual, sharpened like a blade unsheathed.
I circled the outer walls, weaving past the ancient peach trees, their blossoms overgrown and trailing like memory. I knew this path well—Ruilin had shown it to me when we were boys, long before we became rivals in anything that mattered. A childhood secret tucked in petals and stone.
With a bound light as breath, I leapt over the back wall and landed amidst the garden mist. The jade pool stretched before me, its surface still as a polished mirror. I moved like shadow, dodging the maids who passed with trays of lotus congee and silk towels, and that ever-watchful nosy Lue Lue, whose gaze and footsteps always seemed too knowing.
And then I saw her.
The mortal. Yi Nuo.
So this was what he guarded so fiercely. Not a relic. Not a scroll. Not some buried weapon of the ancients.
But a woman.
She sat beneath the pergola on the Jade Terrace, where morning light poured like golden syrup through the carved lattice beams. A frame of silk embroidery rested in her lap, her slender fingers guiding the needle with quiet precision. Her head was bowed, hair swept into a coiled chignon, held in place by a red silk ribbon the shade of pomegranate wine. Each strand glinted in the sun, soft and dark, as though spun from twilight. Her skin, pale and luminous, glowed with the serenity of moon-washed jade. Long lashes cast feathery shadows on her cheeks, and her lips—full, softly parted—moved ever so slightly with each breath of focus.
She had changed.
The mortal flower had bloomed.
Gone was the slight, willowy girl I remembered—nervous, hesitant, almost ghostlike. In her place sat something far more arresting. She had filled out, not just in form but in presence. Her face, gently rounded, held a quiet radiance. Her lips were flushed, her hair longer and thicker, as though nourished by some secret spring. And there it was: the unmistakable swell beneath her sash, the fuller curve of her breasts.
Pregnant.
A slow breath escaped me, and with it, a huff of disbelief that nearly turned into laughter.
So, this was what my dutiful brother had been hiding behind the Eastern Palace’s tight-lipped guards. Ruilin—the righteous, untouchable Crown Prince. So pious, so proper. And yet here she was, living proof he had broken every rule he claimed to uphold. A mortal, no less. While betrothed to Princess Changying.
The irony tasted sweet on my tongue.
And her gown—it was unmistakably the handiwork of my eldest sister. No seamstress in the lower realms could craft something so fine. The fabric shimmered in pale lilac and muted gold, phoenix-threaded silk that formed a ring of rising cranes and plum blossoms along her sleeves and hem. Beneath that, layers of cloud-white silk whispered as she moved, like mist drifting over still water. Her aura drew the eye, pulled the breath. She was impossible to look away from—like a lotus rising untouched from muddy water.
Desire stirred. Dark and wicked.
The image bloomed, unbidden—of her like this, ripe with my brother’s child, beneath me as I covered her instead of sunlight. The thought made my mouth curl.
I stepped forward, barely veiling my intent behind the polished charm of a prince. My smile bloomed slowly, honeyed and hollow was the one all women fell for.
“A delicate scene I’ve stumbled upon,” I mused, mimicking my father’s voice that was smooth as aged plum wine. “A blossom-court beauty, right here in the Eastern Palace. Tell me, Yi Nuo—since when has my brother grown so… eclectic in his tastes? Collecting mortals now, like rare curios to ornament his halls?”
She rose with grace, movements fluid as if choreographed by moonlight. “Yi Nuo greets the Second Prince,” she said with a shallow bow, her voice calm, her eyes unyielding. Guarded. Cold. Yet that steel edge only intrigued me more.
Ah… fascinating.
I let my gaze rake down her figure in full with a slow drag that tickled me—lingering where the sash no longer clung as tightly to her waist. Her belly, slight but unmistakable, gave her away.
“Pregnancy suits you,” I murmured, letting my words curl in the air between us like incense smoke. “You carry it well. So ripe. So… tempting.”
She lowered her lashes, attempting to veil her discomfort. “Second Prince overestimates,” she murmured. “I am not—”
But even as the denial left her lips, I saw her spine stiffen. She drew in her stomach subtly, instinctively.
Too late.
A knowing smile touched my mouth.
“Curious,” I said, circling her like a curious cat, idle hands clasped behind my back. “Did Ruilin ever speak to you of Princess Changying? You remind me of her—uncannily so. Especially around the eyes. Well except hers are green.”
No answer.
But her slender fingers curled ever so slightly around the cuff of her sleeve. Ah. There it was—the crack beneath the surface. Tiny, but there it was.
I stepped closer, close enough to taste the scent of plum blossom clinging to her robes. “I wonder,” I said softly, “when the Princess returns… what then? After all, she made Ruilin vow never to take another wife. And you, dear Yi Nuo… what would become of you?”
My hand drifted upward, fingers grazing the air beside her cheek like the whisper of wind before a storm. She leaned back, subtle and swift, avoiding contact by a breath. That hint of recoil sent both thrill and challenge through me.
I pressed on.
“Will you be cast aside? Forgotten like so many mortal women before you?” I murmured, eyes gleaming. “Even with his child in your belly? Or will the noble Changying open her arms and claim the child—raise it as hers, while you’re left to vanish into the dust? The Princess is a healer and has a soft spot for mortals. In fact, her older brother brother was birthed from a mortal body.”
Still, she said nothing.
But her silence roared louder than thunder. It chafed at me, this unfettered calm of hers. This maddening restraint.
She was not meek.
She was not trembling.
She was infuriatingly still.
Ruilin’s mortal woman was made of iron beneath silk. A flame banked beneath river water.
I hated it. And I wanted it.
A twisted thought unfurled, unwanted and potent—of her not beneath Ruilin, but astride him, commanding him like a general in silken robes, eyes lidded, mouth parted in ecstasy. I felt the curl of something dark claw its way up my throat. A chuckle, despite myself, a chuckle escaped me, gruff and sudden, picturing her turning my perfect brother into a beta. Then she flinched—barely—but it was enough. The mask slipped.
A sliver of satisfaction slid into my bones, and heat raced to my loins.
I leaned in until the distance between us was no more than a whisper. My voice dropped to conspiratory whisper as if I were speaking of treason, and in a way I was. “If it were me…” I breathed, “you wouldn’t be discarded. Mortal or not, I’d have you honored. Adorned. Given the title of imperial concubine. My concubine.”
My gaze swept over her again, slow and devouring. I took in every line, every curve softened by pregnancy. The bloom of life beneath her robes only deepened her allure. She was a rare fruit at the height of ripeness—and I, too well-acquainted with temptation, felt the ache of hunger rise.
“Oh, I would worship that body,” I said, the words uncoiling with wicked softness, “and you would learn just how thoroughly I could make the delicate Yi Nuo.. well, you’re not that delicate but I could make you weep with pleasure until you beg me to stop. You should consider jumping ship while you still can rather than linger and get swept out into the sea of the forsaken.”
I tried to control the smugness in the smirk that pulled at the corner of my mouth and failed. This deadpan faced woman could rival haughty Princess Changying who had the same disposition. Her expression did not shift, but her throat tightened, a swallow she could not hide.
And there it was again—a crack in the stone.