The smell that rushed into Feng Xuanyi’s nose made his temples throb. It was not a scent he knew well, yet it was carved deeply into his memory. He had encountered it only once before, mingled with the smell of blood, in the event Feng Xuanyi least wished to acknowledge and least wanted to face.
Nalan Xuan was unsurprised by Feng Xuanyi’s silence. It was only natural that neither could completely decipher the other’s thoughts. “How forgetful. Wasn’t this the very medicine you personally ordered bestowed upon me back then?” He leaned forward, lifted his face closer, and let their breaths mingle until he could feel the warmth Feng Xuanyi exhaled. The curve of his lips deepened. “Back then, you decided whether that child lived or died, and I had no say. Today, I decide whether this child lives or dies, and all you can do is watch.”
“Heh, look at me. I was so impatient I started talking without explaining anything.” Nalan Xuan straightened and put a little distance between them. A smile seemed to bloom from the depths of him, reaching his eyes and brows. One hand gently stroked his still-flat abdomen through the heavy robes of the empress as he gazed calmly into Feng Xuanyi’s eyes, unwilling to miss even the smallest change in his expression. “There is still a little life here, even now. He is your child. But very soon, he will no longer belong to this world, just like his older brother or sister before him. Whether you acknowledged that child or not, they were both my children. Since you decided that child’s life and death, let me decide this child’s life and death. How fair.”
Countless times in the dead of night, Nalan Xuan had imagined what it would be like when the two of them finally confronted each other directly. Screaming, cursing, furious accusations, even coming to blows, he had envisioned every possibility and prepared countless replies, both for whatever Feng Xuanyi might say and for everything he himself would answer. Yet not once had he imagined reality would be this calm. Now that the moment had truly arrived, his heart was utterly still. He should have hated him, yet now he only found Feng Xuanyi pitiful. Every word came slowly and evenly. Even Nalan Xuan himself thought he sounded cold-blooded, like an observer standing outside the world, responsible only for stating the facts and incapable of feeling anything beyond them.
He calmly watched Feng Xuanyi’s eyes snap wide and fill with blood. There was none of the satisfaction he had imagined, and certainly no sense of vindication. Feng Xuanyi’s chest rose and fell violently, his breathing growing heavier until he suddenly roared, “Summon an imperial physician!”
A heavy thud sounded outside, as though someone had been so startled by the shout that they fell over. Then came the chaotic noise of palace attendants scrambling to pull one another upright, followed by rapidly retreating footsteps as someone sprinted away while trying to tread as lightly as possible.
With their exceptional internal strength, even through the closed door, every movement outside seemed to unfold directly before Feng Xuanyi and Nalan Xuan.
“It’s useless.” Nalan Xuan turned and walked back to where he had been sitting, lowering himself into the seat with leisurely ease. Perhaps he had already grown accustomed to the pain, or perhaps the first time was always the one that cut deepest. The cramping in his lower abdomen was nowhere near as suffocating as it had been before. He lifted the bowl level before him, turned it upside down in front of Feng Xuanyi, and shook it. “Not a drop left. If miracles truly existed, that child back then would not have been lost either.”
“Do you have to do this? Do you have to torment me like this?!” Feng Xuanyi strode forward and stopped abruptly before Nalan Xuan. He seized Nalan Xuan’s wrist, trembling as he desperately controlled his strength, wanting Nalan Xuan to understand his pain without actually hurting him. “He is your child too. How could you bear to do this?!”
For one instant, Nalan Xuan almost laughed. He stared in disbelief at the furious Feng Xuanyi standing so close before him and nearly asked aloud, Have you lost your memory?
“He is my child, but he is also your child…”
“You hate me so much that you would hurt yourself, even hurt an innocent life, without hesitation?!” Feng Xuanyi cut him off. Yelü Zhen’s words had at least served as a warning, yet after all the days and nights Feng Xuanyi had spent thinking, all the methods he had devised to placate and compromise, all for the sake of leaving the two of them some space to turn things around, reality had still moved faster than his imagination. Nalan Xuan always caught him unprepared. Just how ruthless did someone have to be before he would not even spare himself?
“Let me finish.” Nalan Xuan was in no hurry despite being interrupted halfway through. He waited until Feng Xuanyi had said his piece and even thoughtfully allowed him several breaths to recover before continuing softly, as though afraid of waking someone from a beautiful dream. “How can you accuse me? Why is it acceptable when you do the exact same thing, but not when I do it? Let me tell you whose child the one you personally ordered aborted back then really was.” He leaned closer, as though he wanted to engrave every angle of Feng Xuanyi’s handsome face into the depths of his soul. “You may have doubted his bloodline, but he truly was yours. Your own biological child. Though saying it now no longer matters.”
“Since you were capable of personally killing your own flesh and blood back then, why can’t I do the same today? Why is it called considering the greater situation when you do it, while when I do it, I’m harming both others and myself? Back then, you never asked me a single question. You did not even give me the chance to offer a reason, explain myself, or plead for that child’s life. You made your own assumptions and decisively determined his fate, then left me alone to endure the consequences of losing him. I have never understood why.”
“Even now, I still want to ask you the very question you just asked me. How could you hate me so much that you were willing to drag an innocent life into it?” Nalan Xuan deliberately pronounced the word “innocent” slowly and distinctly. “But then I thought there was no point asking. You were so heartless, so cold-blooded. Apart from power and position, who had you ever truly cared about? So I decided there was no reason to waste my breath. But I was curious. I still wanted to know on that child’s behalf what terrible crime he had committed that made you, his own father, fear him so much that you had to destroy him. So I thought and thought, until I came up with a far more efficient way to get the truth.”
Seeing Feng Xuanyi’s ashen face, Nalan Xuan remained utterly composed and met his eyes seriously. “Perhaps Your Majesty can enlighten me. Why were you capable of hating me so much that you would not even spare your own child, a completely innocent life? Simply because half his blood came from me? If so, then I think this child is equally unnecessary. This world has no place for him either.”
Feng Xuanyi pressed his lips tightly together, struggling to suppress the rage and remorse threatening to erupt. His teeth bit through his lip hard enough for a winding trail of blood to run from the corner of his mouth, yet he did not notice. His eyes remained fixed on Nalan Xuan. Rather than hatred, what filled them seemed more like a desperate wish for Nalan Xuan to understand, to comprehend, perhaps even to forgive something that Feng Xuanyi himself knew was selfish and agonizing. “Bastard!”
That single word was meant for Nalan Xuan, but also for himself. It was meant for two men who had no right to call themselves fathers, two men who, for the sake of their own desires, had repeatedly treated the lives that should have been closest to them as though they were something cheap and disposable.