Chapter Nineteen

Ling Xin thought she knew pain. Training for her dancing had been painful throughout her childhood. The beatings she'd received from her nanny when she'd been willful had been painful. But this pain was of the heart and mind. This pain was of love lost.

I wish we had never met.

He loved her. She'd seen that in his eyes and in his pain.

I wish I had turned you away.

She loved him with a fierceness that burned hotter every day.

I will never risk like that again. Now that I know the price of failure.

There was nothing more to be done. Even if she had a plan, even if she could think of a way out of this agony, he would not do it again. He would not exercise in the garden, even if her father had not set a guard to watch her. He would not find a way to kiss her again, even if he was in their house for more hours now than ever before.

And he would not even look at her though she and her mother were tasked with teaching Manchu to him and Li Fei. That was the most ridiculous thing of all. Le Fei did not speak Manchu, so Ling Xin was forced to be his teacher. She had to see him every day, had to hear his voice. And she had to sit and hear her father's grudging praise when he understood whatever task her father set him.

The days ticked by.

Every one of them, she was forced to see him, hear him, even speak to him in Manchu. All while her heart broke over and over again.

And then it was over. She saw him for the last time, whispered, "I love you," as he left, and then watched the door close behind him. In the morning, she would enter the Forbidden City, never to emerge again.

Misery.

In the darkness of the garden, she turned her back on her packed trunk and began to think desperate, terrible things. Wild schemes, each more fanciful than the last. Crazy wishes that could never come true.

It was late and she was a fool because she was there, hoping to hear the sounds of Zhi Hao's exercise. She wanted, one last time, to hear his breath, to pretend she felt the wind from his blows, and to remember how he'd faced down her father and said that he loved her.

"Do you think me a fool?" Li Fei asked as she sat down beside her cousin.

Ling Xin jolted. "What? No! Of course not."

"Then why do you think I would be content to marry a man who loves someone else?"

Ling Xin looked away, her heart squeezing tight at the thought of Zhi Hao with her cousin. "He is a good man. He will treat you well."

"I do not want ‘well.' I want the emperor." Li Fei stretched out her hands. "Everyone thinks that because I am small, I am not fierce. I am, you know. I am strong enough to be empress."

Ling Xin looked at her cousin. "I understand now how you changed. Your lover was killed. Mine is gone from me forever." She looked to the garden wall that separated her from Zhi Hao. "Perhaps I, too, will grow hard."

Li Fei snorted. "I am not hard. I know what I want. Do you?"

"I want him," she said, her voice a bare whisper. "I love him."

Her cousin waved that away with a flick of her fingers. "But do you want to be empress?"

"What?"

"Ugh!" Li Fei groaned as she looked to the sky. "You are too lovesick now to think straight. I, too, spent weeks in grief, but no longer. It is time for you to choose."

This time Ling Xin was the one who scoffed. "Did you not hear? I chose for him to live. I chose for him to thrive with a career and a good wife." Her voice broke on that last word.

"Does your father strike you as a man who can kill?" Li Fei asked. "I grew up in the north. I have seen bandits and know the look of a man who will murder his daughter's true love in the name of ambition."

Ling Xin turned and stared at her cousin. "Your father?"

Li Fei nodded, and her expression was indeed fierce. "Not yours. So I ask again, do you want to be empress?"

"No!" The word burst out of her. It had been building for years, but now it crystalized into a statement that would infuriate her entire family if they'd heard. "I do not want to live in the Forbidden City. I do not want to watch for daggers in every shadow. And I certainly don't want to seduce anyone but Zhi Hao!" She dropped her head into her hands and spoke through the tears that flowed so easily these days. "But what can I do? I leave for the Feast of Fertility tomorrow."

"And he leaves for the imperial exam." Li Fei gently pulled on Ling Xin's shoulder until they were once again eye to eye. "Can you not think of a way that all three of us may get what we want? With a little daring, for which you are well known."

She looked at her cousin, confusion and a surging hope at war with each other. None of this made sense. What could her cousin have planned? And yet, seeing Li Fei now, she abruptly realized the woman was much more devious than she'd ever imagined.

"I…I do not know what you are thinking," she finally said. Her mind was filled with longing and had no room for plots. She was lost and filled with the memory of him saying that he wished they had never been together.

And then she heard a raspy bark and jerked around to look for the source. There! On the wall inside the bower where Zhi Hao had first stroked her to ecstasy. There, she saw two black eyes and a hint of red in the shadows.

"A fox," she whispered.

"What? Where?"

But when Ling Xin pointed, the animal had disappeared. And so as her hand slowly lowered, she knew the truth.

"It was the fox spirit. And it was annoyed with me."

Li Fei peered into the darkness, her words coming out with quiet urgency. "What do you think that means?"

Ling Xin knew she was making up what she wanted to believe, and yet the fox had been there. And if it was giving her a message, then she would grasp it with both hands. "That Zhi Hao and I were chosen for a reason. The fox has been there every time we…we became close."

"You think it is urging you to boldness?" her cousin pressed.

"I do." She turned to Li Fei. "What is your plan?"

*

Li Fei's planwas simple, though very difficult to enact. Ling Xin was to leave in the morning in a palanquin. The family had arranged for a great show of dismay with mourners and heralds wailing the family's grief at losing so perfect a daughter.

Once in the palanquin, Ling Xin would switch places with Li Fei. They would change clothing and do Li Fei's make up in the closed litter. Then Ling Xin would slip away in a peasant's garb, pretending to be a child come to see the display.

All she needed to do then was make her way to the inn where Zhi Hao was staying, marry him, and ruin herself, not necessarily in that order.

Li Fei assured her that her father would relent eventually. Ling Xin would have the happy marriage with the man she loved, and Li Fei would capture the emperor's regard and become empress.

The difficulties in executing the plan were myriad. Fortunately, Li Fei had figured out all the details, including how she would use the bribes her father had spent for Ling Xin. They were cousins, after all, and the moment she mentioned the earl as her uncle, the bribes would transfer to her since Ling Xin would not be there.

As for tomorrow morning, when Ling Xin would be leaving for the Forbidden City, Li Fei knew how to fake an illness, ensuring that everyone would leave her alone to rest in the dark. Everyone would think she grieved the loss of her chance, since it was well known that her family had planned for her to compete at the Feast of Fertility.

It sounded complicated, but Li Fei was adamant she could do it. More importantly, she had already gotten the costume for Ling Xin and the direction of the inn where Zhi Hao would be staying before the exam.

All they needed now was the will to try something so daring.

And daring was something Ling Xin had in abundance.

*

It did notgo off as planned, but it was close.

They were caught by the porters carrying the palanquin. It took nearly all of their money to buy the porters' silence. Worse, the bearers refused to wait outside the Forbidden City with Li Fei because they would not give generosity to loose women. They left Li Fei in the line of contestant palanquins to suffer in the coming heat.

Li Fei swore she didn't mind. And then after a quick hug, she bid Ling Xin away to find her own fortune with the man she loved.

All that was left was to get to the inn where he rested.

On the opposite side of Peking.