The Forbidden Proposal
The Yang family estate was unusually quiet that evening. Even the servants moved with restrained steps, as if the walls themselves were listening. Oil lamps flickered softly in the main hall, casting long shadows that danced across silk screens painted with cranes and mountains.
Yang Yuhuan knelt beside her mother, tea untouched between them.
Lady Yang studied her daughter carefully, noting the faint tension in her posture, the absence of ease that once came so naturally. "You met the emperor in the palace garden," she said, not as a question.
Yuhuan's fingers tightened slightly around her sleeve. "Only briefly."
"That is all it ever takes," her mother replied.
Yuhuan lifted her gaze. "Mother, I am Prince Li Mao's wife."
Lady Yang's expression did not change. "You are Yang Yuhuan first."
The words settled heavily between them.
Lady Yang leaned closer, lowering her voice. "The emperor has taken notice of you. That notice can shape the fate of our entire family. You will not resist what Heaven itself has placed before you."
Yuhuan's breath caught. "And my husband?"
Silence.
From another chamber, Prince Li Mao stood alone, staring at the courtyard pond. He had sensed the shift days ago—the way glances lingered, how his name was spoken with careful courtesy instead of warmth. Duty demanded obedience, yet something deep within him recoiled.
Later that night, a private audience was requested.
Xuanzong listened as Lady Yang spoke with measured reverence, her words wrapped in humility yet sharpened with intent. She proposed what could never be spoken aloud in public: that Yuhuan withdraw from her marriage under the veil of religious devotion, entering the palace not as a wife, but as a woman reborn into imperial favor.
The emperor did not answer immediately.
He thought of the law, of ritual, of the fragile balance that held the court together. Then he thought of Yuhuan—her quiet gaze, her composure, the way she unsettled him without effort.
"Leave me," he said at last.
When the chamber emptied, Xuanzong stood by the window, watching lanterns sway in the night wind. He knew this path was dangerous. He also knew he would walk it.
That same night, Yuhuan knelt before her ancestral shrine, incense curling upward like unanswered prayers. Her heart trembled with fear and longing in equal measure.
If she accepted, there would be no turning back.
And somewhere within the palace walls, fate had already begun to close its grip.