When We Meet, Spring Blooms - Chapter 3

The next day, a palace attendant brought a bowl of contraceptive medicine. Gu Shiyu looked utterly sincere. “Yinyin, you’re still too young to have a child. This is a secret palace formula. It won’t hurt you.”

With very mixed feelings, I drank it.

And kept drinking it for three years.

Three whole years of contraceptive brew. It finally made me throw up.

Beside me, Gu Shiyu went pale. “Yinyin, is this morning sickness?”

“Summon the imperial physician!”

Three years had done wonders for the boy’s height. They hadn’t saved his brain.

I was retching so hard my eyes watered. I seized his hand, wanting to shake some sense into him. “How many times do I have to tell you? Holding hands does not get anyone pregnant.”

Flustered and indignant, he leaped back, pulling away. “Oh, honestly! We already have a baby. We can’t make another one today!”

He understood nothing. The suggestive talk, though? Endless.

The physician he summoned was an old man with graying hair and beard. Physician Zhang was also a friend of my father’s despite the age gap, which hardly inspired confidence in his judgment.

As he took my pulse, his fingers pressed lightly, then hard. As he studied me, he leaned close, then drew away.

A whole cup of tea could have been drunk before he finally stroked his beard and said, unhurriedly, “I have good news and bad news. Which would Your Majesties prefer to hear first?”

“Save the mother!” Gu Shiyu said without hesitation.

I rubbed my temple. “The good news.”

“Her Majesty is not pregnant,” Physician Zhang announced at a leisurely pace.

Gu Shiyu looked baffled. “How is that good news?”

Physician Zhang remained perfectly calm. “Because you must consider both pieces of news together. The bad news is, Her Majesty has been poisoned.”

“Poisoned?” My heart sank. “Physician Zhang, please examine His Majesty too, just to be safe.”

Gu Shiyu and I ate and lived together. If I had been poisoned…

The physician shook his head. “There is no need. This poison affects only women. Prolonged exposure would prevent Her Majesty from conceiving. Exposure during pregnancy would cause a miscarriage.

“Fortunately, Her Majesty has been receiving proper restorative treatment, and we discovered it in time. A few doses of a tonic will put everything right.”

Gu Shiyu shot to his feet, his face terribly dark.

He had never taken any other consorts. Apart from the two of us, Empress Dowager Dong was the only true mistress of the palace.

The dowager had long wanted her niece to enter the imperial household. Her dislike of me was nothing new.

Gu Shiyu had grown into his features. Now taller even than most grown men, he was lean and handsome. Standing before me, he blocked more than half the sunlight.

I squeezed his palm to tell him not to rush into anything.

Physician Zhang watched our silent exchange with a cheerful smile for a moment, then tactfully took his leave.

The dowager’s niece was Dong Rushuang, famed as the capital’s greatest beauty.

Had she been born a few years earlier, the loyalist Li family might never have been the one to send a daughter into the palace as empress.

Our relationship wasn’t actually that bad. All those rumors about us clawing at each other whenever we met and secretly pulling each other’s hair were entirely the work of that old troublemaker, the dowager.

Of the three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, she summoned Dong Rushuang to keep her company on three hundred. Her real intentions could hardly have been more obvious.

Still, Dong Rushuang mainly had me to thank for becoming the capital’s greatest beauty.

If her aunt had sent her to Ziqian Hall a few times less, if she’d run into me a little less often, she would never have learned to tease cats, play with dogs, and keep parrots. Nor would she have mastered pai gow, mahjong, and dice, or walked Wanwan for me every day in exchange for a few pointers.

So the Dong family had been forced to build her a reputation as the capital’s greatest beauty. They couldn’t very well tell the truth and call her the capital’s pai gow champion.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen her in a while.

After her coming-of-age hairpin ceremony, the Dongs had realized she had no chance of entering the imperial household. They had simply sent her back to the ancestral home in Shuofang to arrange a good marriage there.

Now that the dowager was stirring things up again, she would probably be back soon.

Well… there went her dream of conquering Shuofang.

The medicine Physician Zhang had prescribed was ready.

Under Gu Shiyu’s anxious gaze, I lifted the bowl of black liquid, tipped my head back with practiced ease, and downed it in one go.

Help. Now I wanted to throw up even more. It was so bitter.

Bitter, with an astringent edge and a fishy tang. But that tang… Why was it so familiar?

“This tastes just like the contraceptive brew!”

I stared at Gu Shiyu in shock. He looked equally shocked.

Except his shock was three parts chagrin, six parts guilt, and twelve parts disbelief that Physician Zhang would deliberately give him away.

His expression had more layers than the medicine. I was so angry I laughed.

I narrowed my eyes. “Your Majesty. You’ve deceived me for three years. What a bitter experience.”

Bitter. That medicine was so very bitter.

Gu Shiyu remained perfectly composed.

“Well, since it’s come to this… Would it help if I got on my knees?”

“But! Yinyin, could you please hear me out first…”

Devious little bastard of an emperor.

I gave a cold laugh. “No. Straight to the kneeling.”

Gu Shiyu choked on his words.

“But… Yinyin,” he said pitifully, “I’d still like a chance to explain.”

I considered it.

“Fine. Explain on your knees.”