Chapter 14 Beside the Sickbed
When I woke again, it was already late at night.
I was lying in the bedchamber of the Eastern Palace. The luan-and-phoenix embroidery on the canopy was elaborate. Gold thread flashed cold under the candlelight.
Xiao Huai An was slumped at the bedside, his hair messy, heavy dark circles under his eyes.
At the sound, he jerked his head up. His eyes were webbed with blood. “Wen Yan, you’re awake?”
I wanted to speak. My throat felt as if it had been burned. Every breath carried the taste of rust.
He hurried to bring water and fed it to my lips with a small spoon. His movements were clumsy as a child’s.
“The imperial physician said you were struck with Qianji Yin.” His voice was shaking. “The antidote has already been used. You will get better. You will…”
I looked at his blood-red rims and suddenly found it funny.
In my last life, when he ordered Elder Brother to his death, his rims had been red like this too. He had said, “This is for the greater picture.”
So an emperor’s tears had always been this cheap.
The gaps between the poison’s attacks grew shorter. Each time the pain rose, my bones felt as if they would snap inch by inch.
Xiao Huai An always held me, kneading my spasming limbs. He kept talking of the peach blossoms in Jiangnan, saying that when I recovered we would take a boat on West Lake.
“Wen Yan, listen to me.” He kissed my forehead, cold with sweat. “General Wang has already been taken. Wen Shu has been settled properly. The Wen Clan will be fine.”
I looked at the earnestness in his eyes and suddenly wanted to tell him that it would be better if I died.
I knew he could use my death as an excuse to wipe out the opposing forces at court, confer a posthumous title on me and turn the Wen Clan into a monument for winning hearts, and write in the histories, “Wen Yan died for the nation, and the emperor wept for three days,” never mentioning in what torment I had died.
In the end I said nothing.
Only, when he wiped my hands, I used all my strength to grip his fingertips.
His hand was very warm, like the hand warmer he had stuffed into my palms in my sixteenth year.
“Xiao Huai An.” I finally squeezed out a few words, my voice hoarse as a broken gong. “Don’t let the Wen Clan…”
“I know.” He cut me off, his rims even redder. “I promise you. I will never let anyone touch a single hair of the Wen Clan again.”
I smiled. The smile pulled at the wound, and I coughed up a mouthful of blood.