The Tyrant's Sickly Consort Refuses to Die novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Cup of Welcome, Again
On the first day of the twelfth month, the whole court gathered in the Hall of Clear Moon.
They came to watch the Emperor pour a cup of wine.
Two hundred guests stood along the walls in winter robes.
The General was there, in a clean coat, with a new gold belt that he plainly did not know what to do with.
Beside him stood a young corporal in a worn grey jacket, and his sister in a new green dress.
She kept wiping her eyes and pretending she was not.
The northern army had eaten rice for six weeks.
The first shipment from the recovered granaries had gone out under the General's seal.
The letter that came back had been read aloud in the Hall, and it made even the Minister of Revenue look at the floor.
Gao Shun stood at the foot of the dais with his hands pressed together.
He had asked the Emperor for a day's leave that morning.
It was the first in thirty years.
He had spent it sleeping until noon, and then standing at the door of the Hall for three hours in his best robe.
He refused to miss this.
The doors opened, and Su Ming came in.
He wore the white of the first rank, trimmed in grey, and a white jade pin in his hair.
He walked the long carpet slowly, because it was the only way he knew how to walk it, and every head turned.
He had not been told what the Emperor planned beyond the cup.
At the dais steps, the Emperor was waiting.
He wore black and gold.
His face, in the winter light, had changed since the autumn.
The red had gone from the rims of his eyes, and the grey from his skin.
There was something easier about the set of his jaw.
Nobody in the capital had called him a tyrant in three weeks, and some of them had begun to wonder whether they liked him.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Tyrant's Sickly Consort Refuses to Die are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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