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“Mother, I don’t think I can live like this anymore.”
It’s an ungrateful thing to say, she knows, especially to her mother. Suiren was born a commoner, and married a common man. It’s only the tides of fate that brought her not only to the capital, but to the palace—the same pure luck that led Ah-Duo to become Yoh’s milk sibling, dear friend, and eventually, his… consort.
That last one, Ah-Duo would consider bad luck. Yet another thing that’s probably ungrateful to say; doesn’t make it a lie, though.
Her child lays asleep in his crib. Just a few months ago, it had been the Imperial Brother Teixun sleeping there in his place, but Yue has entered the new year, and has overcome his bouts of sickness as an infant.
Fengming was regrettably let go once Yue healed: an assurance that she would not blab to anyone that the crown prince’s hair looked darker than usual, or that the birthmark on the small of his back had suddenly disappeared. It still aches Ah-Duo that she had to reward such loyalty with a callous firing, but there was no other recourse they could think of. Fengming held little Teixun, saw his ashy dark hair and his dark, reddish eyes. She would know, and Ah-Duo could not trust her to be discrete.
Especially not now, not with her discontent looming overhead.
Suiren’s eyes look far too old for her age as she observes her daughter. She is barely approaching her mid-thirties, only a few years older than Anshi, yet…
“My dear.” Suiren’s voice is soft. Her hair is pinned in a tight bun, with streaks of silver borne from stress rather than age threaded all throughout. She reaches out and hugs Ah-Duo close, as though her daughter isn’t eighteen-years-old and fully grown. Still, Ah-Duo treasures her mother’s affection, and shuts her eyes when she hears her mother say, “Darling, what can your old mother do for you?”
“You’re not old. But… would you listen to my wildest dreams?” Ah-Duo whispers into her mother’s robes, dragging her hand over her belly.
She’s missed a moon cycle.
Suiren nods, and Ah-Duo spills.
Her greatest dream is a simple one, in theory: to see the world. Ah-Duo wants to experience so many things, try foods she’d never even dream of within the palace and see sights that cannot be seen from within these great stone walls. She wants to feel the sea breeze in her hair, or watch sand slip through the gaps in her fingers. She wants her children to be by her side, free from the chains formed from their father’s blood.
It is more complicated in practice. The rules say she cannot leave. Ah-Duo disagrees. There is no greater power chaining her to Yoh besides her own vague affection and his intense devotion. The world would keep turning if she set foot off the premises. No one would die from a heart attack on the spot if she dared to breath non-palace air.
She wants to leave.
Suiren is quiet, her eyes stuck on Yue’s sleeping form. His little chest moves steadily, and he lets out little puffs that could almost be snores.
Ah-Duo aches.
“You want to leave,” Suiren says.
“I do.”
Suiren purses her lips and sighs. “With the boy?”
“With my son.”
“Yoh will not be pleased,” Suiren warns. “He’s his son, too. Yue would be next in line after him.”
There’s something mildly surprising about Suiren reacting to Ah-Duo’s wish like it’s something rather small. You want to leave—it makes it sound simple, somehow. She isn’t quite sure how she expected her mother to respond to that. The fact she doesn’t really respond feels like a warning.
“I don’t think I care about that,” Ah-Duo whispers. She feels like she’s in tatters when she says, “I don’t want to die here, Mother.”
That gets a reaction.
“You will not die here,” Suiren snaps, before her eyes widen. She reaches out wildly, grabbing Ah-Duo’s shoulders tight enough that her nails dig into her flesh. “Ah-Duo, please tell me you haven’t—”
“I haven’t done anything rash or irreversible, so calm down,” Ah-Duo grimaces. “At least… not yet.”
She is, after all, talking of leaving. Perhaps not the rashest thing she could do, but certainly up there.
“But I can feel myself… shrinking. Becoming less.” Ah-Duo makes gestures as she speaks, finding no other way to properly express just how confined she feels. She continues, “He wants to make me his wife now that Yue isn’t in danger anymore. He’s been visiting me every other night. And I…” Again, she drags her hand over her belly. “I’m not suited to be the Mother of the Nation. I’m just not. I have to get out of here.”
Suiren has a dangerous look in her eye. “Ah-Duo… You’re speaking of treason.”
Maybe the word is meant to frighten her, but it doesn’t.
It is against the law for a woman who has laid with the Emperor—or in Ah-Duo’s case, the Emperor-to-be—to leave the palace. Especially since she’s given him not just a son, but his likely heir. If Yoh has his way, Yue is to be the Emperor once his grandfather and father both pass onto the heavens from which they were borne in the first place, and she cannot imagine a fate worse than remaining here that whole time. She did not want to be Yoh’s consort. She does not want to be Empress Consort. She certainly does not want to be Empress Dowager.
Her mother means well, but saying Ah-Duo won’t die in the palace at this rate is a simple lie. She’s already been made into the Crown Prince’s flower. Once a woman bears the weight of an imperial’s love, she is rooted into the earth and is not allowed be moved.
But ‘is not allowed’ is not the same as ‘cannot.’
“I don’t care.” Ah-Duo’s voice cracks, burying her face into Suiren’s neck. “Mother, I really don’t think I can live like this anymore.”
It’s tragically easy, especially with help.
“Your hair,” Suiren says mournfully, staring at what was once Ah-Duo’s luxurious silky hair scattered across the floor.
“It was necessary for the disguise.”
Lady Anshi’s voice is hushed—but even, as calm as a lake. Ah-Duo would have never expected the Empress’s help in this, but maybe she should have. Only someone else truly trapped in the palace would understand, and Ah-Duo struggles to imagine anyone else as trapped here as Anshi. Kept here since before she was ten… It’s horrifying to think on, and all the more emphasizes to Ah-Duo that the imperial line is not always heavenly righteous. It’s a punishable thought, but her thoughts are the least of her concerns.
The disguise in question is a merchant’s outfit—procured for her by Anshi herself. Suiren had taken the gamble for Ah-Duo and gotten the Empress involved—a feat of tremendous proportions, in Ah-Duo’s humble opinion, that speaks volumes of the trust between Suiren and Anshi.
“I will do my best to fake your death for you,” Anshi says, delicately sweeping Ah-Duo’s hair off the ground. Suiren looks like she wants to vehemently protest Anshi performing a chore, but Anshi never looks up to let herself be corrected. “That man’s proper consorts are always throwing themselves into the moat when he chooses their underage ladies-in-waiting over them. Thanks to the warmth of the season, their bodies bloat and become difficult to identify. Perhaps, with a little luck, even my Gyouyoh can be tricked.”
“He’ll hate me, for dragging Suiren and Yue down with me,” Ah-Duo remarks. Both are leaving with her. She does love Yoh in her own way, but so much of that has become clouded with discontentment. He knew her dream, and still asked her to sleep with him. Maybe he simply didn’t think he was being cruel. Ah-Duo does know she’s being selfish by depriving Yoh of his son, but she also can’t find it in herself to care.
“He might,” Anshi agrees serenely. It’s venomously refreshing. “But you want your freedom, don’t you?”
Ah-Duo grips her trousers. “I do.”
“Then go,” Anshi says softly, her vibrant eyes cool with… jealousy? Disdain? “Take your freedom and ride into the night, Ah-Duo. Take it between your two hands and never look back. Live the life the Emperor-to-be has taken from you.”
Ah-Duo’s never been well-versed with reading Anshi, but there’s something the Empress is leaving unsaid that Ah-Duo can clearly hear: live the life the Emperor took from me.
Ah-Duo nods dumbly. From beneath her clothes, Yue twists slightly, but seems generally pleased with his place in the world, warm against his mother’s breast. Ah-Duo pats herself down and hands Anshi a letter—a ‘suicide note’ to give to Yoh when Anshi decides is best to.
Suiren bows once the Empress has tucked the note away into her robes, clutching Anshi’s hands in her own. “Take care of yourself, my lady,” Suiren says, hushed and intense. “Take care of Yoh and the second prince for us, as best as you can.”
“I, and many others, will do our best to soothe Gyouyoh in his grief to come,” Anshi agrees.
“He won’t have to mourn overlong,” Ah-Duo says somewhat callously. “There are other flowers for him to pluck.”
Anshi’s smile is tight and knowing. “His favorite might be the orchid, but you’re right. There will be other flowers for him, and other fruits. Take care of Zuigetsu, and take care of yourself, Ah-Duo.”
She drags her hand across her belly one last time. There is life teeming there, she’s certain—and it is a life that will be free.
Ah-Duo looks up at the night sky, and at the brilliant light of the moon surrounded by a sea of stars. The moon and stars… her children are guiding her out. Ah-Duo isn’t typically one for this type of spirituality, but she can feel this in her gut, right alongside her unborn child.
After all, it’s not just her freedom she’s reaching for.
Ah-Duo, Suiren, Yue, and the unborn child too small to verbally acknowledge scurry off into the night, and the night breeze in her short hair feels like victory.