The Concubine Who Was Supposed to Die in Chapter Three novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Gate With No Guard
She walks through the Emperor's garden gate by her own choice and ends up pinned against a pillar with his hand under her robe; he says he did not choose the last woman, then carries her to bed with the third bell an hour away.
Chunxi cried the whole time she was fixing the haircut.
"They cut it with a cleaver, my lady," the maid sobbed. "A cleaver!"
"It's fine," Zhiyao said. "It's a bob now."
"What's a bob?"
"A haircut that's about to be very fashionable."
Chunxi snipped the ragged ends level with her sewing scissors and sniffled.
She was eighteen, round-faced and chatty.
She was also the only person in the Rear Palace who had ever brought a Fifth Rank lady an extra blanket.
Zhiyao looked into the bronze mirror.
A lean, sharp-cheeked girl looked back at her with a blunt fringe and a small mole at the corner of her mouth.
It was a good face.
It was a face that had been written to die in a paragraph, and it was still here.
"Chunxi," she said. "What's the Jade Pavilion?"
The scissors stopped.
"The Emperor's house, my lady. At the very back of the Rear Palace, past the lotus pond."
"And the gate?"
"There's no guard at the gate."
Chunxi lowered her voice.
"Ninety-nine ladies live in this palace, and none of them has gone through it since I was a baby."
"Why not?"
"Because he doesn't call anybody. He doesn't send a eunuch, he doesn't even look."
Chunxi swallowed.
"And if you went through and he turned you away, you'd have to live here afterward."
Zhiyao turned that over.
She had a free road out of the palace, and she had the Emperor's word that nobody would touch her.
She also had a very clear memory of a thumb pressed against her bottom lip.
A big, hot hand had turned hers over like something precious.
"Help me with my hair pin," she said.
"My lady! Are you going?"
"I'm going for a walk."
"Is that an order from the Emperor?"
"No," Zhiyao said. "That's the whole point."
She walked through the Rear Palace in her faded green robe with a single wooden pin holding her fringe back.
The lotus pond was black and still.
Past it, a plain wooden gate stood open between two plum trees, and nobody was posted beside it.
She stopped in front of it for a full minute.
She was twenty-seven years old in her real life, and she had gone on exactly four dates in the last year.
None of the four had been three thousand years old.
She went through.
The Jade Pavilion's courtyard was lit with a single lamp.
A low table stood in the middle of it.
The Emperor sat behind it with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, pouring tea.
He had the forearms of a man who had once carried spears.
They were tanned and thick and crossed with old white scars, and the veins stood out when he lifted the pot.
He looked up.
For a moment he didn't say anything, and she watched his throat move.
"You came," said Ji Wuyan.
"I want to be clear about something," Zhiyao said.
"Please."
"You didn't save me today. I saved me."
"That's fair."
"I'm not here because I owe you."
"You don't."
"I'm here because I looked at your forearms across a courtroom for ten minutes and my brain went quiet."
Something moved at the corner of his mouth, under the beard.
It wasn't a smile.
It was what a smile would do if it hadn't been used in a century.
"My forearms," he said.
"And the rest of you. But mainly the forearms."
He set down the teapot.
"The gate opens both ways, Lady Lan."
He held her eyes.
"If you change your mind, now or in the middle or at the end, you walk out the way you came."
"Nothing changes. You are still safe in the Rear Palace."
"I understand." She crossed the courtyard and stopped in front of him. "Now stand up."
He stood.
He was so tall that she had to tip her head back.
She put both hands flat against his chest, over the indigo silk.
The heat of him came through it.
"I haven't done this in eight hundred years," he said.
"You're allowed to be rusty."
"I wasn't going to say I was rusty."
"What were you going to say?"
His dark eyes looked down at her.
"That I'd like to do it properly," said the Emperor.
She went up on her toes and kissed him.
For half a second he stood perfectly still, and she thought, well, that's it, he really is rusty.
Then his hand closed around the back of her neck.
He kissed her back so hard that her knees went.
He tasted like tea and smoke.
His beard scratched her chin, and his mouth was hot and slow and certain.
He opened her lips with his tongue.
A noise came out of her that she did not recognize.
He walked her backward across the courtyard.
Her shoulders met a red lacquer pillar at the edge of the porch.
He pinned her there with his hips and his chest, and his hand never left her neck.
"Zhiyao," he said into her mouth.
She hadn't told him she wanted him to use her name.
She decided to be glad about it.
"Say what you want," he said.
It was a low, dark voice, and it didn't ask.
It had ruled gods for three thousand years, and it made her stomach drop through the floor.
"Your hand," she said. "I want your hand on me."
"Where?"
"Under my robe."
"Where under it?"
"Between my legs, Wuyan, don't make me draw you a picture."
He made a sound.
"Good girl," he said.
Her whole body shuddered.
His big hand pushed up the hem of her green robe, slid over her thigh, and found the edge of her underthings.
His fingertips traced the wet silk.
"You're soaked," he murmured.
"I told you. The forearms."
"Tell me again."
"I'm soaked because of your forearms."
He pushed the silk aside.
He ran two fingers slowly along the whole slick length of her pussy.
She bit her own lip hard enough to hurt.
"Look at me," he said.
She opened her eyes.
His face was an inch from hers, serious, intent, with a flush high on his cheekbones.
His fingers circled her clit, lightly, and her hips jerked.
"There?"
"Yes."
"Harder?"
"Yes, God, yes."
He pressed, and rubbed in small hard circles, and the pillar was cold against her back while the rest of her burned.
She hooked her leg around his thigh to open herself wider.
He took the invitation without a word.
Two thick fingers slid inside her, curled, and found a place that made her gasp out loud.
"There," she said. "Right there. Don't stop."
"I won't."
"Say it again."
"I won't stop," said Ji Wuyan.
He fucked her with his fingers, steady and deep, with the heel of his hand grinding against her clit on every stroke.
Her thighs began to shake.
His mouth found her throat and sucked at the skin there, and his beard scraped her collarbone.
The pleasure rolled up through her stomach.
"Wuyan, I'm going to..."
"Then do it," he said against her neck. "I've got you."
She came with her head thrown back against the pillar and his name in her mouth.
Her pussy clenched down around his fingers in long, hard pulses.
Her whole body went tight and then loose, and he held her up with one arm around her waist.
He did not take his hand away until the last shudder had gone.
Then he drew his hand out of her slowly.
With his dark eyes fixed on hers, he put two wet fingers in his mouth.
Zhiyao stared.
"Jesus Christ," she said faintly.
"I don't know that god."
"He's a... never mind."
She was laughing and shaking at the same time.
She put her forehead against his chest and breathed in rain on warm stone.
"When was the last time?" she said into his robe. "For you. I mean the real last time."
His arm tightened around her.
"Eight hundred years," he said. "The ninth woman. She came through this gate too."
"What happened?"
"I don't remember why I wanted her."
He said it plainly, without any heat.
"I remember that I did. I was a fool about her for three years. I didn't choose her, Zhiyao. I never worked out who did."
She lifted her head.
He looked as if he had just surprised himself.
"That's a strange thing to tell a woman you've just made come," she said.
"Yes," he said. "I don't know why I told you."
She kissed him again, softly this time, to give him somewhere to put it.
When she pulled back, he scooped her up under the knees, and her stomach flipped.
"Where are we going?"
"My bedroom. You were sentenced to die at the third bell tonight."
She looked past his shoulder at the dark sky.
Somewhere above the clouds, a bronze bell was getting ready to ring the hour she had been written out of the world.
"I know," she said.
"It's an hour away." He carried her through the door. "Stay, and I'll make it the best hour of your life instead of the worst."
Zhiyao wrapped both arms around his neck.
"Wuyan," she said. "Hurry up."
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