The Concubine Who Was Supposed to Die in Chapter Three novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wrong Chapter
Zhiyao wakes on the jade floor of the Hall of Ten Thousand Lamps, sentenced to die at the third bell, and points at a steward's sleeve; the Emperor takes her by the wrist and opens his garden gate, and the Holy Maiden wakes behind him.
Lan Zhiyao woke up kneeling on cold white jade with her hands tied in front of her.
A stranger's hair lay around her knees.
It was her hair.
Somebody had just cut it off.
She touched the ragged ends at her chin with her bound hands, and a guard behind her kicked the back of her knee.
"Eyes down, poisoner."
Zhiyao did not put her eyes down.
She looked up the length of the biggest room she had ever seen.
Thousands of paper lamps hung from the ceiling on gold chains, and every one was lit.
Every courtier under them was dressed in silk and not breathing.
At the far end, on a black throne carved with dragons, sat a man in dark indigo robes.
He was broad as a door, with a close black beard and silver at his temples.
His eyes were open, and they were looking at nothing at all.
Behind his throne, on a low couch, a small pale girl in white lay with her eyes shut while a physician fussed over her wrist.
Zhiyao knew that couch.
She knew that girl, and the throne, and the man, because she had read all of it on the night bus two days ago.
The book was called The Heaven-Chosen Empress.
The girl on the couch was the Holy Maiden, the heroine.
The man was Ji Wuyan, the Immortal Emperor, three thousand years old and about to fall in love.
Zhiyao was the other one.
She was the concubine who put poison in the heroine's tea in chapter three and got her head cut off in the last line.
The book had not even given her a name until the sentence.
She had closed the app and typed one furious comment about it before her stop came up.
Now she was kneeling in the sentence.
"Concubine Lan Zhiyao, of the Fifth Rank," a heavy voice read out.
Chancellor Cen Hongdao stood at the foot of the throne, a smooth man in plum robes with a jade seal on his belt.
"She put heartbreak root in the Holy Maiden's welcome tea, and the Maiden lies half dead."
The Chancellor turned to the throne and bowed low.
"Majesty, the law is the law."
The Emperor's mouth moved.
"Third bell," he said.
His voice was flat and low, and his eyes did not move.
"Behead her."
The guards hauled Zhiyao up by the elbows.
She was twenty years old in this body and twenty-seven in her own.
She had exactly one thing nobody else in this room had.
She had read ahead.
She looked past the Chancellor at the thin man in grey who stood behind him with his hands folded.
He was the Chancellor's steward.
Every few seconds his right hand slid up his left sleeve and pressed something flat against his wrist.
"Your Majesty," Zhiyao said.
Nobody turned.
"Your Majesty, look at the Chancellor's steward!"
The guard on her left clapped a hand over her mouth, and she bit it.
He swore and let go.
"The man in grey," she shouted, "has a green paper packet in his left sleeve, and he keeps touching it!"
The steward's hand froze on his wrist.
The Emperor's eyes still did not move.
Two guards got her under the arms and started dragging her backward toward the doors.
Zhiyao did the only stupid thing left.
She planted her heels and threw her whole weight forward.
The guards lost their grip, and she hit the three steps of the dais.
She went up them on her knees.
She threw both bound hands over the Emperor's wrist where it lay on the armrest and held on.
His skin was hot, hotter than a person's.
Something jumped between them, and it ran up her arms and into her chest.
The Emperor's eyes moved.
They came to her face and stopped there.
The man who had looked at nothing looked at her.
"You're hurting my wrist," he said.
He did not sound hurt.
He turned his hand over until her bound hands lay in his palm, and he lifted her chin with his other thumb.
The thumb rested on her lower lip.
The whole court watched it.
"Say that again," said the Emperor, very quietly. "The part about the sleeve."
"The man in grey," Zhiyao said against his thumb. "Left sleeve. A green paper packet."
The Emperor did not look at the steward.
"Search him."
Four guards crossed the floor at a run.
The steward tried to bolt, and a guard caught him by the collar.
A flat square of green paper fell out of his sleeve and landed on the jade.
A guard opened it with one finger.
White powder lay inside, and the physician bent over it and went gray.
"Heartbreak root, Majesty."
The steward threw himself to the floor.
"The Chancellor's order," he began. "No, I mean, it was me, only me, I hated Lady Lan!"
The Chancellor's smooth face did not change.
"The wretch acts alone," he said. "I knew nothing."
"No," the Emperor said. "I don't suppose you did."
He pulled one end of the silk cord, and it fell off Zhiyao's wrists in two pieces.
He stood.
Up close he was a head taller than any man in the hall, and he smelled like rain on warm stone.
"The sentence is void," he told the court.
"Lady Lan goes back to the Rear Palace. Her door stays hers, and so does the road out of it."
He looked at the guards.
"Anyone who touches her will answer to me."
Then he bent down, and his beard brushed her ear, and his voice dropped so that only she could hear.
"The garden gate of the Jade Pavilion has no guard, Lady Lan. Nobody has walked through it in eight hundred years."
Zhiyao's heart was going like a drum.
"Is that an order?" she whispered.
"I don't give those anymore." He straightened. "The third bell tolls at midnight. The gate is open. You don't have to come."
Behind the throne, the Holy Maiden coughed and sat up.
"Majesty?" she said weakly.
Every face in the hall turned to her.
Every face softened at the same moment.
In the book, this was the moment the Emperor looked at the Maiden and fell in love on the spot.
He did not turn around.
His hand was still wrapped around her wrist.
Zhiyao stood on the dais in a convict's haircut, with her wrist still wrapped in his hand.
She thought, very clearly, that none of this was in the book.
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