When I blinked awake, I was no longer in the kids’ bedroom, nor anywhere familiar in the Yuwen estate. Instead, I found myself lying on soft bedding atop a tatami floor, the scent of old wood and something floral lingering in the air. The room stretched out around me, empty and echoing, yet every surface seemed to whisper stories—masterfully carved wood, delicate as lace, and woodblock paintings that captured mountain ranges so tall they seemed to pierce the sky. Eastern dragons curled through the painted peaks, weaving between oceans of impossible flowers. The only other thing in the room was a folding screen, its thin paper painted with men and women tangled together, their bodies bare and entwined in ways that felt both ancient and strangely intimate.
I tried to turn my head, desperate to understand where I was, but my body refused to listen. Instead, I found myself rising, not by my own will, and watched as long black hair spilled over my shoulders. It took me a moment to realize I was trapped in someone else’s skin, seeing the world through her eyes. She moved with practiced grace, brushing her hair as five silent women hovered around her, their faces pale and wary, as if afraid to meet her gaze. They brought out clothes and jewelry from hidden drawers, laying them out like offerings. She picked a white jade bangle, cool and heavy, and a hairpin crowned with the Ibasan royal symbol—a dragon clutching a dove, all carved from blood-red jade. Their voices drifted around me in Ibasan, but the words slipped past me, half-understood.
All I could gather was that the woman whose life I was borrowing was a lover—or maybe just another concubine—of the Ibasan Emperor, one more name in his endless harem. I remembered hearing that the Emperor kept as many women as there are days in a year, that came from the bitter cold north all the way down south to the endless desert. Some came from noble houses, others from the dust and shadows of forgotten places. The woman I inhabited belonged to the latter, her story likely written in sorrow and silence.
By the time they finished with her, she looked almost unreal—her eyebrows trimmed and painted in perfect circles, skin powdered to a ghostly, sickly white, and black eyes rimmed in a red so deep it seemed to bleed into her gaze. When she smiled at her reflection in a bronze mirror, her teeth were black as ink, a practiced trick to hide decay. She took a cigarette, its smoke curling lazily, and swallowed a few small pills before donning a yukata adorned with red spider lilies, slipping on her shoes. Her feet were twisted and broken, shaped by years of binding, similar to techniques from ancient China. I felt a pang of pity, sharp and cold, for the pain she must have carried with every step.
Only then did she leave the empty room, her steps small and careful, attendants trailing behind like shadows. The world outside was a painted dream—a courtyard blooming with a Chinese garden, the air thick with the scent of peaches so ripe they threatened to fall at any moment. The group was headed for the emperor, I guessed, but before she could continue her torturous march, her gaze caught on a little boy in silk, no older than six, chasing a young servant boy around the pond nearly swallowed by pink water lilies. The boy in silk had her black hair, but his eyes were mismatched—one red, one blue.
When I woke up, I could still see the red and blue eyes before me. Just what kind of dream was that? It felt so real, as if I was really there.
But there was no time to lose myself in dreams—the kids were already fussing, their rare long nap leaving them hungry and impatient. I sighed, the weight of reality settling back over me, and set about cleaning them up, one after another. When it came time to feed them, I latched on the twins on either side and held off Teresa by handing her a cold baked potato, which she gnawed on with surprising delight, her cheeks and hands soon smeared with potato mash. She looked up at me, grinning her toothless, messy smile, and for a moment, the heaviness in my chest eased just a little.
That was when Emma entered with breakfast and Janus on her heel, who himself was carrying a lumpy sack on his back, which he unceremoniously dumped in front of me.
“Good morning, Madam. Have you slept well?”
“Relatively; the babies were surprisingly quiet. I just had a weird dream. Did you sleep well? You looked a bit feverish?”
I had noticed it last night but had so much else going on in my head I had totally forgotten to use healing magic on her.
!
“I… have slept… well… You don’t have to worry, I just felt a bit… ehm… hot, that’s all.”
Emma looked oddly embarrassed, her eyes flickering everywhere but at Janus or me, before settling on the chair she’d claimed the night before. I wondered about it for a heartbeat, but my thoughts were already drifting elsewhere. Janus, meanwhile, looked so forlorn, like a dog left out in the rain, looking a bit oddly at the twins who had begun to push their hands into my chest in an effort to get more. But by now they had enough; any more and they would spit it out again. So while I was talking with Emma, I unlatched them, patted their backs, and put them back in their crib so they could enjoy their milk coma.
I forced a bit of cheer into my voice, hoping to hide the tangled, ugly thoughts I’d been nursing about him, and asked,
“What is that bag you are holding, dear?”
Janus’ whole face lit up at the word dear. He pressed a quick kiss to my cheek, his eyes glinting with a smug sort of pride before he said,
“Invitations.” Promptly dumping half the bag’s contents onto the changing table.
Soon the changing table—large enough for three—was buried under stacks of letters and small packages. The three of us sifted through the pile, Emma’s face lighting up in surprise before shifting to delight as she read the names and titles scrawled across the envelopes. Janus was more reserved, as if this sort of thing was old news to him, but with each letter he opened, his expression grew darker. There were invitations to every kind of event imaginable: parties, tea gatherings, masked balls, hunts, tournaments, poetry readings, theater nights, even requests from famous painters. It was overwhelming. But then there were also some other letters, too—the kind Janus was reading right now.
“What are you reading that makes you so sour?”
Wordlessly, Janus handed me the letter.
Dear Lady Yuwen
You are radiant, intoxicating, and utterly irresistible. I know you belong to another, but the way you laugh, the way you move, the way you glance my way—surely you must feel this spark, too. I ache for the chance to show you what it feels like to be truly desired, to be adored without restraint or boundaries.
[…]
All my joy would be to feel life spring from your flower- fountain that mine may keep to fill all the paths of my mind which are yours.
Stunned, I glanced at the sender’s name, half-expecting some cryptic alias. But no, there it was in bold, unapologetic letters: Bartholomew Kinston, every one of his legal titles paraded beneath.
And that wasn’t the only one. At least a dozen letters came from grown men—most with wives and families—writing to me, a married woman, their filth delivered right to my husband’s door. The anonymous ones were somehow even worse, as if secrecy permitted them to be bolder.
I hope you will see me one night when I’m asleep and dressed, sneaking over to me with a whores glow in your enchanting red eyes, gently unbutton my trousers and take out my fat…
Emma tried to sneak a peek at the letters I’d tossed aside with her cheeks once again looking feverish, but after a moment, she quietly excused herself, the tension in the room too thick to ignore.
“These rotten Bastards.”
“I don’t know. Some of them are really creative. Wanna try them out later?”
Janus didn’t answer, just shot me a warning look—he wasn’t in the mood for jokes. With a scowl, he gathered up the so-called love letters and tossed them into the fireplace, but not before scribbling down the names of the fools who’d written them. He pressed so hard the paper nearly tore beneath his hand.
I hadn’t expected him to take it so hard. I’d seen things ten times worse in some comment section back in my old life. I stood up from the bed and wrapped both arms around him from behind, pressing my cheek between his shoulder blades and letting myself breathe in the familiar, comforting scent of him. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean it. I swear I didn’t give a look or something like that. These guys just have too little blood in their heads.”
He covered my hand with his, but his anger made him crush the list of names in his fist, fresh ink smearing across his skin.
“I know you were joking; it’s just so infuriating,” he finally murmured, his voice quieter now, the sharpness blunted by something tender.
I nudged his side, trying to coax a smile. “Do other noble women get such letters?”
“A few I heard from my sisters, but rarely this many.”
So others got these too? The Capital was way more promiscuous than I thought. Sadly for them not even in my dreams would I ever fall for the likes of them. Janus was all I needed. I just hope he doesn't lose his cool when he sees these perverts or else I might have a few more patients soon.
“Come on, let’s read the rest. There’s got to be something good beneath this mess.”
And there were—letters from people I’d saved, and so many invitations I could never hope to attend them all. For the next few days, we’d be buried in planning and careful replies. But one letter stood out above the rest, enough to pull Janus’ mind away from his simmering revenge, if only for a moment—a letter from Her Holiness, Pope Lucrezia.
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