“Indeed, one should look at an old friend with new eyes after three days apart,” the person said with a hint of sourness.
“Is the Prince praising the King of Huo? This concubine feels the same; he has become much more composed,” Wei Linxia replied.
“Hmph.”
“What is the Prince hmph-ing about?” Wei Linxia asked innocently.
The person turned away, pretending not to hear her while Wei Linxia played with her daughter, smiling subtly. Only when Huo City was reduced to a black dot did he turn back and hmph again.
Huo City was far from the capital, but to Wei Linxia, it seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. The eleventh prince, born to a beautiful mother, came to welcome them. Upon entering the palace, they were told to rest in the Eastern Palace. In the warm spring weather, Wei Linxia’s heart turned cold. She squeezed Xi Linxuan’s hand, and he returned a reassuring smile: “It will all pass.”
A decade after returning to the capital, the Eastern Palace was deserted. In the vast palace, only Xi Yaya’s innocent laughter echoed.
Xi Linxuan solemnly wrote a memorial to the emperor via a eunuch. Watching him place it in a vermilion box, Wei Linxia’s hanging heart slowly relaxed. Her husband’s memorial about the Crown Prince, who was almost killed in a foreign land, should please Emperor Yan.
She didn’t truly hope for a fertile fief; wherever they were, as long as they had a residence, she would be content.
The wait was longer than Wei Linxia expected, making her doubt whether Xi Linxuan’s memorial had been delivered or if Emperor Yan simply didn’t want to open it.
On a warm April night, Wei Linxia lay on her side, seeing moonlight through the thick bamboo curtain but feeling hopeless.
Suddenly, a long, ominous sound broke the silence, startling Wei Linxia into sitting up. It was the sound of a cloud board, played only when someone in the palace had died. Xi Linxuan also awoke, draping a piece of clothing over her: “Don’t catch a cold.”
“In the palace…”
“Perhaps just an old imperial concubine has passed away,” Xi Linxuan said casually, reflecting his familiarity with such sounds from growing up in the palace.
Soon, eunuchs’ sharp voices carried shocking news: someone had died, and it was the Empress.
