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Yue elected to take a long walk after she left the birthing den. She didn’t want to return to her own rooms, which felt as vast and empty as a fortress. Her desire to visit Shenlei waned greatly as she moved, instead replaced with a desire to breathe the cold, fresh air and let it invigorate her.

While she walked, she thought of Kexin.

There might have been other children born, or perhaps not. The only one that mattered was the one she had heard announced. Maybe Shenlei was not the boy’s father, and the healer had lain with someone more kin to a mongrel.

It was possible, and if it was true, that meant nothing good for Lady Kexin. The opposite, however, meant nothing good for Yue.

There were many possibilities, and each one overwhelmed her. She, who did not so easily become overwhelmed! Between two boughs of hanging verdant vines, the Empress stopped to hang her head. It felt no good to hate a child.

Wei Jun appeared before her. He spoke all the words that her mind also had – was she so easy to read? It was more likely that the situation was so apparent that all who saw it could see it for what it was. Maybe they watched eagerly, waiting for the brilliant entertainment of her downfall.

Breathe.

“It is nothing.” The ivory woman looked at Batu then, clarifying for him what she knew to be true about the hierarchy of the Dynasty. Even if it was a son of Shenlei's, Yue was fairly confident that the bastard would not be legitimized. Dynasties rarely tolerated orphans and bastards, and were often less than kind to them despite Yue's best efforts.

It equally distressed her that Kexin's child should grow up impoverished, but the truth was that: “The Son of Heaven would never commit such dishonor.” To sow children outside of marriage was an insult to every wife Shenlei had into his harem. It was unreasonable to think that men potent enough to become Emperors would not take every woman that was owed to them, but to create infighting within one's own dynasty?

The Empress held Batu's gaze, daring him to challenge the idea to that she may wrestle with it. It was nothing, or it was everything.

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Yue was cursed with a soul that could not rest. Even if she had the time, she would deny to understand the benefit that rest could provide her. Her sole interest, which was perhaps reflected in the Batu’s deepest intention, was to create a world more palatable to those weakest, those unable to care for themselves, because they could not fight a dynastic system that was a thousand years in the making.

Even now, the true reason the Empress struggled is that her intuition told her, with a strength she could not deny, that Lady Kexin was a friend. The responsibility she felt toward Kexin’s child was, itself, motherly. Amongst Tianlong, the Empress was mother to all.

But she also felt betrayal – the shards of bone that had entered her heart, knowing that her two closest confidants had acted, together, without her. Shenlei had a requirement that he no longer asked his Empress to fulfill. Kexin would no longer align her success as a healer with her success in procuring an heir from Yue.

Heaven's Mercy was convinced that Kexin had figured out another way to give Tianlong what it needed, superseding the Empress itself.

The Empress, forgetting herself for the merest of moments, shook her head from side to side to rid herself of the unwanted internal commentary. Shenlei hadn’t. Kexin wouldn’t. They would never leave her like that, alone on a proverbial island. They had been those closest to her in the world.

With a contraction of her diaphragm, she forced an indignant snort through her coal-black nares. You speak of the Son of Heaven. It was a cold sentence, said as if she had not sought out the exact challenge he now offered – but if Batu could look beneath the shortness of her implied command, he would find gratitude.

If they were now verbally sparring, then Yue assessed her Imperial Guard to muster up some kind of advantageous position.

You mustn't dishonor the great Crystal Dragon himself, she jabbed, certain he knew it could be treason to speak against the Emperor. He was in no danger here – she was certain of that, too.

There was a very close circle of court members who were granted Yue’s ear and immunity for their unending honesty. Even if that honesty hurt to hear. Even if that honesty might be treasonous to others.

It is nothing. she posited once more, with a lash of her tail. Let that be it! was written all over her frame, from an arched tail to the lift of the fur on her shoulders. But she waited, giving Batu silence to fill with the thick, throaty sounds of his voice.

She attempted to pull those words forth, with nothing more than her desire to hear them.

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Yue could not dispense with the smirk that spread across her lips, thick and dripping with appreciation.

Amongst the court of Tianlong, the lack of an heir was a taboo subject. If anyone put words to wind, it certainly wasn’t in front of the Empress herself. It was the great white elephant of the Dynasty – the lack of sons, from Yue, or from any of the harem.

The Emperor considered the mention of it an act of perfidy. As such, she had only ever spoken about this with one other soul – Kexin. The healer had been bound by oaths, she had thought. Oaths to protect her secrets, and place the health of her patients above her own.

Yue wished she could speak to her mother about it. She wondered often if Mǔqīn (mother) had ever found herself no more than a field of barren, fruitless soil. It must be an ancestral curse, was the wisdom of the Crystal Dragon. It was the only truth she had ever received about it.

But if that was just so, then how could Yue have ever come to be?

When the Empress spoke, it was with a stiff upper lip that flashed the tips of bone-white fangs. Do you wish to defame both of your superiors in one conversation? She admired his ability to do so. The lowered octave obscured what she thought of him: how could a man so skilled at working pelts be able to understand the subtlety of what she needed in that moment?

As soon as you...
Soon was nothing, to her. Soon was the water in a river, rushing by. As gone as quickly as it came.

She needed a receptacle. She needed perspective. She needed motivation. She needed a reason to care.

Mayhaps Batu said such things selfishly, for the length of his life and tenure at court had been tied to hers. He would not wish to slide to the bottom of yet another turn of dynastic rule – but such supplicants did not speak like this. They did not mention the unmentionable. They did not give her what she needed.

Heaven’s Mercy turned her head, sealing shut her eyes, the sinister smile gone. They will forget soon enough. She did not want Kexin and her son to be irrelevant, but she wanted to see them in the palace even less. Yue wanted to feel as though she could govern without the unending, heedless speculation of others.

It left a bitter taste.

Her shoulder stayed turned. Perhaps I already carry the prince that Tianlong requires. Her voice was too flat to carry any truth, or belief in its truth – but for a moment, Yue could rest in a reality where the possibility existed—a mere moment, where her womb was not a thinly veiled dark note.

Her Imperial Guard would contest the idea, as he had been doing in this conversation, without fail. But until he did, there was the faintest outline of a possibility.

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Batu was a smart man, to deactivate the explosive he held before him, which baited the flame to light its own ignition. He knew when to push her, and to Yue’s dissatisfaction, when to yield. Mayhaps she got herself too incensed – pushed into ideas that were stranger than fiction, unable to be believed. She, with the Emperor’s child? To be fair, it had been the work of fiction.

Rarely did her pregnancies ever make it far enough to be called such.

He didn’t know what it meant to be barren. He didn’t know what it felt like to be the hinge upon which a dynasty rocked (and if he did, it was Yue who was yet to understand). Even when surrounded by one she considered close, the Empress could not feel more alone.

It did not excuse her lashing out or give her the right to barter for distraction, using the peace of others as her main bargaining chip.

The Empress lost her fire. No, it is I who should apologize. Her shoulders, usually two scalloped mountains carried high behind her back, had fallen. She looked as lousy as she felt, feeling guilt over the tone she had taken with Batu. There is no right answer. There’s nothing anyone can say, the woman explained succinctly.

It was all a game, one where everyone lost. Why would the Gods play such games? With her, their most divine mouthpiece?

Carefully, she dragged her gaze back to Wei Jūn. Lady Kexin… Is she alright? Yue asked, suddenly realizing how uncaring she had been to someone who had once been her friend. Yue herself knew the trials of birth – and she could remember, behind her cloud of anger, that there had not been much celebrating of Lady Kexin's successes before she departed.

and... her son?

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In Batu’s small, lovely ways, he continued to defy her. If she claimed there was nothing anyone could say to heal this deep wound, then he would at least try. He did not usher in grand ideas about the coming of heirs or assume infidelity. Instead, he relied on promises already made. He sought to deepen their meaning.

Yue breathed. This, along with the idea that the heavenly (yet temperamental) dragon had not decided to smite Kexin and her son, as a punishment for her own misdeed and ill-thoughts, soothed her. Like the warm waters of the jungle when it ran down her back, she felt her muscles release. Her being unclenched.

She was not alone if she wished not to be. She could not shun those around her, blockade them from her heart, if she wished to have company in her travails.

One of Yue’s many dilemmas was how to appropriately express gratitude to those who devoted themselves to her. The Empress only had handmaidens because they wanted to serve her. Batu guarded her days because he desired to do so. Fear rarely could convince others to give their lives, the way that love could – and the best way to repay a life devoted was to keep it safe. To value, honor, and cherish it.

She did not want to diminish their devotion in any way, but so often Yue wished –

If only it was that simple.

Batu’s gaze was wandering, but not in her direction, as she was accustomed. The Empress strode forward, paws placed delicately on the earth, with her head held low. She sought his gaze. There is so much you cannot shield me from. Not exactly the relaxing notion that she had reached for, but there was a certain comfort in it.

An acknowledgement that no one could do everything. At least not perfectly. Not when the ask in question, could be considered impossible. For example, he could not shield her from her thoughts. He could not prevent societal pressure. He could not force her body to function apart from its norm.

The realization that protection was a fallacy no longer pained her. The Empress had long since accepted this, and she looked at him with the eyes of one who knew what it was like to sacrifice themself.

The warrior inside of her, regarded the warrior inside of him.

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