At Nalan Xuan’s command, no one in Fengyi Palace dared breathe a word about Xia Xue’s arrival or departure. Once Xia Xue was gone, Nalan Xuan ate his belated lunch in excellent spirits. It truly was a rare good day, with one piece of good news after another. Naturally, he erased the little episode with Feng Xuanyi from his mind completely.
Suddenly, a pigeon with red eyes and brown claws landed on the windowsill of Fengyi Palace’s sleeping chamber. Looking closely, a tiny white paper scroll had been tied to one brown leg, nearly blending into its snow-white feathers.
Nalan Xuan walked over. The carrier pigeon was neither skittish nor afraid of people. It stayed perfectly still as he caught it and removed the paper from its leg, then waited patiently on the windowsill for his reply, almost as though it could understand what he wanted.
He unrolled the paper. A single line of clearly formed handwriting appeared before his eyes. It was Feng Xuanzhe’s hand: Imperial Mother sent someone. Everything went smoothly.
The Empress Dowager had moved exactly as quickly as expected. Though she had lived in seclusion for so long and no longer involved herself in worldly affairs, that did not mean her influence had ceased to exist. If Nalan Xuan had still harbored a few doubts before, he now knew they had been entirely unnecessary. A smile rose unconsciously to his lips. He stopped beside the writing desk, dipped his brush in ink, and swiftly wrote his reply: Keep yourselves concealed. Wait for my word. Act when the opportunity comes.
He folded the paper and tied it back to the pigeon’s leg. As though checking the new weight, the bird shook its claw, spread its snow-white wings, and took flight.
A faint smile lingered at Nalan Xuan’s lips. Feng Xuanyi, since you said that power was once the only thing in your eyes, but now your eyes hold something besides power: me, then I will show you this: not only will you fail to have me, you will also lose the power you cling to so tightly.
Having only just finished fending off a beauty who kept throwing herself into his arms and an envoy who would not stop talking beside him, Feng Xuanyi discovered for the first time that having a beauty in his embrace could feel like sitting on a bed of needles. In the past, he would probably have accepted the offer with a smile and enjoyed a casual dalliance. Now, he could only smile bitterly.
The tension drained from his body. He slumped back against the dragon throne and, looking somewhat exhausted, raised a hand to pinch the tightly furrowed space between his brows with thumb and forefinger.
“Your Majesty.” Mo Yan lifted the padded curtain, quietly rounded the folding screen, and dropped to both knees, his head lowered as he reported respectfully, “The Xiliang envoy is outside requesting an audience.”
Yelü Zhen. Feng Xuanyi’s brow, which had only just begun to ease, tightened again. Instinct told him this would bring nothing good. He did not want to see the man, but he could not refuse. Gathering himself in silence, he straightened his back on the dragon throne and once again became the sovereign seen by the world, expressionless and unapproachably dignified. “Summon him.”
Mo Yan had barely stepped out before Yelü Zhen followed him in. A faint smile rested on his face, his manner relaxed and leisurely. His etiquette was proper enough, yet no matter how one looked at him, he seemed less like an envoy representing a nation before an emperor and more like someone out sightseeing.
Feng Xuanyi patiently waited until Yelü Zhen had finished examining the imperial study from top to bottom and inside out before asking unhurriedly, “May I ask what brings the Third Prince here?”
“Nothing in particular.” Since he had not been offered a seat, Yelü Zhen was not quite bold enough to provoke trouble by sitting down on his own. He stood calmly in the hall and looked at Feng Xuanyi, as though trying to see through those equally placid eyes to whatever emotion lay hidden beneath. After a long while, something seemed to occur to him. His expression shifted with sudden understanding, and the sympathy and pity in his gaze grew even stronger. “I only wished to thank Emperor Huawu. During my stay in the imperial capital, I have received no small amount of leniency and care from you. So, as a modest gesture of gratitude, I came to tell you a secret.”
He seemed to reconsider his wording. “Actually, no. Perhaps it is no longer a secret to you. This is something between the two of you in the first place, so just consider me overly talkative and indulging in a little idle chatter.”
“Members of the Changyu Clan are human, yet not entirely human. Divine blood flows through their bodies. They are descendants of gods, yet they were also abandoned by those gods, neither wholly human nor wholly divine. They possess abilities ordinary humans do not, but they are far from omnipotent. Their greatest secret concerns the continuation of their bloodline. Perhaps you have already seen it yourself. Descendants of the Changyu Clan, male or female, can bear children. But unlike ordinary humans, there are no signs at all during the first eighteen months of pregnancy. Only after eighteen months will the pregnancy become detectable by the pulse, and six months after that, the child can be born. If I have calculated correctly, when the empress lost the child, the pregnancy should have been close to six months along, correct?” Yelü Zhen had rambled on for some time in a way that seemed almost impossible to follow, but at the end he suddenly smiled and turned the question into something that sounded more like a certainty.
A remark that should have amounted to nothing made Feng Xuanyi’s entire body go rigid. Sweat poured from him as though his muscles had seized. Every word Yelü Zhen spoke struck his chest, each dull reverberation louder than the last. He seemed to turn into a statue, his eyes widening as he stared viciously at Yelü Zhen for a long moment, almost as though he wanted to devour the man alive with his gaze. Then he forced the words out through clenched teeth, one syllable at a time. “Impossible.”
Yelü Zhen did not hurry to argue. He met Feng Xuanyi’s murderous stare without a hint of fear and asked seriously, “Is it impossible, or do you simply refuse to believe it?”
“Who are you? And what is your relationship with Nalan Xuan?” It was not as though Feng Xuanyi had never investigated in secret. Soon after Nalan Xuan first arrived in Xiliang, the Emperor of Xiliang had made him Prince Nanyang and placed him over a fief bordering closely on the Hua Dynasty. At the time, Feng Xuanyi had not thought much of it. He had assumed Xiliang merely intended to use the former General Who Pacifies the West, who already knew the defenses along Hua’s western frontier, as preparation for a future campaign against Hua. Looking at it now, such a rapid elevation to princely rank might not have been as simple as he had believed.
“Me?” Yelü Zhen blinked. “Naturally, I am the Third Prince of Xiliang. As for what relationship I have with Nalan Xuan…” He deliberately drew out the final words, keeping Feng Xuanyi waiting. “You do not need to know. I doubt it matters to you anyway. The question now is whether you believe what I just told you. No, that is not quite right. The question is whether you are willing to believe it.”
He did not believe it. Of course he did not. Why should he believe such absurd nonsense spoken so casually?
Yet the answer that should have come instantly lodged in Feng Xuanyi’s throat. He could neither force it out nor swallow it down.
If he believed Yelü Zhen, if the timing was as the man said, then the child Feng Xuanyi had killed with his own hands had been his own flesh and blood with Nalan Xuan, his biological child, innocently killed because of his decision and his final moment of suspicion. How could he accept that? How could he believe it?
Feng Xuanyi’s eyes narrowed dangerously. There was no madness, no hysterical loss of control. Outwardly, he remained exactly as he always was, lofty and unshaken in the face of change. “Is that what you came here to tell me?”
Yelü Zhen was slightly disappointed not to see the shock and loss of control he had expected. He shrugged, suddenly bored.
“If you have nothing else, you may withdraw.” Feng Xuanyi looked away and leaned against the right armrest, his index finger tracing the intricate dragon pattern carved into it again and again.
Yelü Zhen bowed without much interest. He had failed to see the entertaining scene he had anticipated, but he did not forget to leave behind one final remark to fan the flames. “If the two of you ever have another child, I wonder whether Empress Yu would be willing to keep it for you.”