Phoenix Rising

088

The tip of the embroidery needle that Zi-ning had been using pierced through the surface of her index finger.

"Ah!" she winced, raising her wounded finger to her lips.

It was barely noticeable, given that the fabric of her wedding robes were already a deep, vibrant shade of red, but she could still spy the tiny spot of blood that now stained the gold thread of the wing of the mandarin duck that she had been finishing up.

She set down the needle and sighed.

Not a good omen, she thought, to have spilled blood so close to the day of the wedding ceremony.

She looked out through the doorway, half expecting Hana or Shujin to come bearing a letter from Zhenghuan, but there was no movement but the gentle swaying of the branches of the gingko trees in her garden. It had been several days since she had last received news from Zhenghuan. While he had been away in Hua, he had written to her every other day. She had complained, in jest, about it being far too excessive, but when the letter did not arrive as expected, or for the next four days after that, a feeling of unease began to seep into her mind.

Getting up from her seat in front of the embroidery rack, she walked over to her writing desk and picked up the sheet of parchment that lay there. This was the last letter she had received from Zhenghuan, telling her that Princess Xuan's funeral rites were over and that he would be returning from Wulihe very soon.

Zi-ning ran her fingers across his lively brush strokes, a faint smile stretching across her face.

You're overthinking things. He'll probably climb in through the window to spring a surprise any moment now.

It took approximately a week to travel from Huangcheng to the capital of Hua, so if her calculations were right, then the Duan entourage should arrive back in the next day or two. After that, it would only be one more week before the wedding.

She gazed upon the crimson robes hanging upon the embroidery rack, with phoenixes, peonies and auspicious mandarin ducks dancing across the fabric in gold and silver. She had done all of the embroidering herself, so it was hardly of better quality than the wedding robes made by the imperial tailors she had worn in her previous life, yet she knew she liked this one much better. It was imperfect, but it had come from her own hands, and she would soon wear it to marry a man that she had chosen herself.

A man she had come to love.

"Miss! Miss!" Hana came running into her room, flustered and sweating.

"How many times must I remind you that there's no need to be so—"

"The crown prince is dead!"

Zi-ning swallowed, the rest of her words remaining stuck down her throat. "What did you just say?" she asked.

"The crown prince is dead. His body was brought back to Huangcheng this morning and now everyone's talking about it."

"How... That's not possible." Zi-ning immediately left her quarters and began heading toward her grandmother's. If this was indeed true, then her father would soon deliver the news to the old madam, as he always did.

But it couldn't be true.

Ru-quan could not be dead, because Zhenghuan was there to protect him. Unless...

She shoved the thought away, not willing to entertain that horrible possibility. Yet, as she walked, she remembered the letters that never arrived, and dread continued to pool at the base of her gut.

"How could something like this happen?" she heard Old Madam Song cry out, before she even stepped foot into the parlor.

"The imperial physicians have already examined the body and confirmed that it belongs to the crown prince. The king has collapsed from grief," Minister Han answered. He looked up when he heard Zi-ning enter, then simply sighed loudly and shook his head.