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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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