The dawn was muffled by a sky of steel grey.
No birds sang. No bells chimed. The wind that usually whispered through YongShen hall held its breath.
It was the death anniversary of Lady Qingsu—the woman who had once been called mother,
and who had long since become a name buried in silence.
There were no banners for her.
No offerings were placed in the imperial shrine.
No name carved into the ancestral halls of Tiānguó.
Only in a small stone altar beneath the slope behind the plum orchard, a single clay bowl waited to be filled with incense—and remembered.
Lianhua found Nanny Mei there, as she expected. The old woman knelt before the small mound of moss-covered stones, her hands clasped, her eyes red but dry. She looked up only once as.
Lianhua approached.
"You came."
"I needed to," Lianhua replied quietly.
They sat in the frost-kissed silence together for a long time. When the wind picked up and scattered fallen leaves over their feet, Nanny Mei finally spoke.
"She was already fading when he was born," she said. "We didn't know it then. But her laughter began to grow quieter… her fingers thinner."
"She was never Empress?"
Mei laughed bitterly. "She was barely acknowledged. Just a girl from a minor border province.
Chosen for a festival dance. Beautiful. Too beautiful, perhaps."
"The emperor—?"
"Desired her. For one season. That was all. When her face lost its glow, when her laughter came only in short gasps… he forgot she existed."
Lianhua swallowed.
"And Lord Shen?"
"He was her shadow. Always near, never heard. He wouldn't cry in public. Wouldn't speak unless spoken to. She told him—If you draw their attention, they'll take you from me."
Her voice shook, cracked.
"She used to sing to him at night, even when her lungs burned. Her hands trembled so badly, I had to feed her rice one grain at a time."
"She died slowly," Mei whispered. "And painfully. And no one came."
"Not even the emperor?"
"No," the woman spat. "Not once. Not when a healer was begged for her. Not when she coughed blood. Not when she finally stopped breathing."
Lianhua's fingers clenched around her robes.
"What happened… after?"
"They buried her outside the palace walls. No procession. No mourning rites. Not even a white sash at court."
Mei's voice dropped lower.
"He was only eleven. They told him he could not attend. He ran from the palace that night.
Found the tomb himself. I followed, but I was too late."
"What did he do?"
"He stood there. In the snow. Alone. For hours. He held a single lantern and stared at the earth where they had laid her."
She paused, then added, voice trembling, "And then he knelt. He dug the offering trench with his bare hands. Bled into the snow. And when I tried to help, he said—"
She closed her eyes.
"'If the heavens won't weep for her, I will.'"
Lianhua felt something inside her rupture. The cold of the stone, the bite of the wind, the silence—none of it compared to the grief that wrapped itself around her heart now.
She looked at the altar, at the small nameplate etched in her own hand earlier that morning.
Lady Qingsu.
A woman who had never been crowned. Never remembered. Except by the son who carried her in every breath and silence.
That night, Lianhua stood outside Liwei 's door.
He opened it slowly, his face unreadable.
"I visited her altar," she said.
He didn't respond.
"I spoke to Mei. I heard everything."
Still, he said nothing.
"I wanted to ask why you never told me. But I think… I already understand."
She took a breath, eyes locked on his.
"I don't know if love can bloom in silence. But I know that grief can."
She reached into her sleeve and pulled out a single white flower—the kind that only grew on the shaded side of the slope.
"I left this for her. I thought you might want to know."
Liwei 's gaze did not soften. But his hand trembled when he reached to take it.
They said nothing more.
But that night, for the first time since she arrived, Lianhua left her door unlocked.
Not for an invitation.
But for memory to have room to breathe.