Nalan Xuan pressed his lips tightly together. For the first time, his silence was not born of arrogant disdain. He simply could not answer.
It was not that he could not see the truth. It was that he did not want to see it, was unwilling to see it. He did not want his position shaken again. Precisely because he understood that possibility, he did not dare investigate it. He was afraid that if he followed every clue to its conclusion and everything truly developed in the direction he least wanted to see, then the moment he hesitated, the moment his resolve wavered, he would lose even his reason for revenge, because everything would ultimately have been a cocoon of his own making.
“The imperial family is nowhere near as dazzling as outsiders imagine. Only those who have lived through it understand how filthy and ugly it can be.” Feng Xuanzhen sighed. He looked at the man who had insisted he wanted nothing to do with Imperial Brother’s past, yet was now listening quietly without resistance, impatience, or rejection. “My mother died giving birth to me. I grew up under the care of the current Empress Dowager. I imagine you understand better than most what it means to live under someone else’s roof.”
The Nalan family had two sons born of the same father but different mothers. Nalan Xuan had likewise grown up without his mother and had been raised by the wife of Marquis Dingbei. It was an unspoken secret among the capital’s great families. Though his status had been distinguished, he rarely appeared publicly because of his situation in the household. That was why, when he later worked as a servant at Prince Rong’s Residence, not a single person connected him with the noble second young master of Marquis Dingbei’s household. Feng Xuanzhen had known that bitterness, and Nalan Xuan had personally tasted it as well.
“As for Imperial Brother, although he had a mother and was a legitimate prince, he was no different from a motherless child like me. Everyone saw how much the Empress Dowager valued Eldest Imperial Brother, but no amount of imagination could fully describe how she ignored us, even regarded us with suspicion. The Empress Dowager is Imperial Brother’s biological mother, yet because she feared he might someday become an obstacle on Eldest Imperial Brother’s path to the throne, she once considered killing him! Have you ever imagined what Imperial Brother felt when, before he was even six years old, he learned that his own mother wanted him dead?”
“That was when Imperial Brother and I learned what it meant to endure and what it meant to hide behind a mask. Imperial Brother was never intoxicated by power, much less obsessed with the throne. We simply wanted to survive. To survive, do you understand? You carried the rise and fall of your clan on your shoulders, but Imperial Brother likewise carried the fates of everyone who trusted him, supported him, and even placed their lives and families entirely into his hands. Why are you permitted to scheme for your clan, to arrange the board and use everything available to you, even calculating your own feelings into the plan, while Imperial Brother is forbidden from doing the same? If we are counting lives and responsibilities, I’m afraid Imperial Brother carried no fewer than you, and perhaps far more.”
“A struggle for the throne is built upon the bones of countless dead. The road to imperial power is paved with the blood of kin and strangers alike. As an emperor, Imperial Brother is undeniably successful. Perhaps he may even become one of the finest sovereigns ever known. In the game between the two of you, each side has won and lost. Neither has been utterly defeated, and neither has truly laughed last. You paid with your clan but gained Imperial Brother’s love, while Imperial Brother gained the realm but lost your trust.”
“Why torment each other like this? This is not an unsolvable deadlock. Why must you keep forcing one another step by step into a corner?” Feng Xuanzhen moved closer with each sentence, unwilling to squander this final chance, the final chance to make the person Imperial Brother loved understand who Imperial Brother truly was.
“…Perhaps he loves me, but what he loves most is the throne, imperial power, and…” Nalan Xuan sounded as though he were hypnotizing himself. Even to his own ears, the words rang hollow and utterly unconvincing.
Hearing this, Feng Xuanzhen smiled and answered in the gentlest voice, tinged with helplessness. “You are both too proud and too confident. It isn’t that you do not love. It is that you do not dare to love. Two people who stay together inevitably clash, and those clashes eventually touch boundaries, infringe on what you call dignity, something both of you value almost as much as life itself. Once your dignity is violated, you both become extreme. You do not know how to express love, but you know how to hate with frightening intensity. You think you are punishing the person who trampled your pride, never realizing that you are leaving yourselves just as battered. Or perhaps you do realize it, but even at the cost of hurting yourselves, you still insist on punishing the person who wounded your pride. That is why you are so alike. The only difference is that Imperial Brother finally stopped himself at the edge of the cliff after being wounded beyond recognition. You are already covered in wounds and still refuse to see them, determined to walk this road until there is nothing but darkness ahead.”
Before Nalan Xuan could argue, Feng Xuanzhen continued. “Do not rush to deny it. Do not rush to reject what I’m saying. I only want you to truly calm down and think about whether all of this is worth it. If revenge was once everything you believed you wanted, then what comes afterward? Once everyone who betrayed you and everyone who hurt you has received the punishment they deserve, what will you want then? What will you do?”
Nalan Xuan did not know when Feng Xuanzhen left. After hearing those obviously ridiculous words, his mind became a muddled void. He had countless arguments with which to refute them, countless cutting remarks with which to mock them, yet every one seemed frozen inside his mouth, leaving him unable to utter even a single word.
He did not sleep that night, though neither did he toss and turn. He had someone move the chaise longue to the window, wrapped himself in a blanket, and curled up there with the window open. Leaning against the frame, he stared outward with an entirely empty mind.
Feng Xuanyi never returned that entire night. Nalan Xuan quietly watched the moon without closing his eyes, counted the stars in the sky, and watched the moon sink and the sun rise until Ji Yu’s voice finally sounded beside him. “Master, it is already the Mao hour. Shall we waive the morning greetings today?”
Nalan Xuan blinked eyes that were sore but strangely free of sleepiness and suddenly realized that he had truly sat there for an entire night.
There was no response from inside, so Ji Yu assumed Nalan Xuan was still sleeping. As he often did, he ordered word sent throughout the Six Palaces that the usual morning greetings from the harem were waived.
For several days afterward, Nalan Xuan did not see Feng Xuanyi again. Everything in the palace appeared unchanged, but anyone who paid attention to the endless stream of grave-faced ministers entering and leaving the Imperial Study throughout the day, and to the attendants serving before the emperor who trembled so badly they scarcely dared breathe, could easily tell that Feng Xuanzhe had received Nalan Xuan’s carrier-pigeon message and had already begun to act.
These past few days, Feng Xuanyi had almost done nothing but move between morning court and the Imperial Study, so overwhelmed with affairs that he could barely spare a moment. He had no appetite for breakfast, while lunch and dinner were carried back out exactly as they had been brought in. Watching Feng Xuanyi lose a startling amount of weight in only a few days, Mo Yan became frantic, while Feng Xuanzhen unusually turned a blind eye. Once, almost against his own will, Nalan Xuan had gone early in the morning and waited outside the court hall. From a distance, he caught sight of the dark shadows beneath Feng Xuanyi’s eyes. Instead of triumph or satisfaction, something difficult to describe stirred inside him. He knew then that Feng Xuanzhe had not only acted, but had acted successfully.
According to their original arrangement, Feng Xuanzhe and Yelü Zhen had already handled the “outside” half of their inside-outside coordination extremely well. But as for Nalan Xuan’s own “inside” half, he had truly begun to hesitate…