From the ends of her hair to the tips of her toes, the imperial physician conscientiously completed the full course of restorative massage.
An hour later, Her Majesty the Empress had sweated off several pounds, her snow-white skin was covered in red fingerprints, and even the center of the bed boards was weeping moisture.
"Time's up."
Li Fei smiled brightly. "The essential oils come to ten thousand taels. I'll send the bill to His Majesty."
"It's… over already?"
Su Wen opened her eyes, her voice slightly hoarse, a thick wave of reluctance welling up from somewhere deep inside her.
Her body felt a little wrung out by now… but the Bliss was unlike anything she had known in this life, a dream of pure ecstasy that walled off every worry, and she wanted it to go on without end.
"Have some water."
Li Fei supported Su Wen's sweat-slick back, helped her upright, and brought a teacup to her lips.
"I… can manage on my own."
That soft, sweet-scented embrace made Su Wen's body shiver, and she reached out to take the cup herself.
"Is Your Majesty feeling better?" Li Fei asked beside her ear.
"…Mm." Su Wen nodded faintly.
She had already disgraced herself this thoroughly; there was nothing left worth hiding.
Yet the creed drilled into her since childhood made her warn herself in silence: know the difference between dream and reality, and never, ever sink into it…
An hour a day. A taste, no more. Not one step further.
Su Wen drained the tea, her mind made up.
"So, would you like to extend the session? There are more interesting items on offer." The imperial physician coaxed her along, patient as a tutor.
At the suggestion, Su Wen's heart skipped several beats, and her legs pressed together on instinct.
The great joys of a life were the wedding night and rain after long drought. A body parched for nearly thirty years, filled to the brim by a mere hour of dew? Hardly.
In truth, that restorative treatment had been like scratching an itch through a boot. With the Meditation Method utterly failing her, a small restless flame seemed to be burning inside Su Wen, scorching her heart, leaving no inch of her skin that was not hot and itching. The tea fragrance that climbed from the tip of her nose into her skull made her want to throw everything aside, bar the door, and keep the imperial physician here forever…
"…No. The daily treatment at its appointed hour will suffice."
After a long silence, the Empress refused the temptation, her voice trembling.
She knew that she was not only Su Wen. She was the daughter of the Su Clan, the emperor's lawful wife, the Empress of the Great Song. She could not live for herself alone… a cup of water against a burning cartload was consolation enough, enough to pour bright color into a world that had held only black and white.
"All right then. I'm off to Weiyang Palace."
Li Fei spread her hands helplessly and rose to leave.
"Wait."
Su Wen's face changed in an instant, and she caught Li Fei by the wrist.
"What is it, Your Majesty?" Li Fei asked, puzzled.
In the depths of her mind, the immortals within the mirror, one in each shard, lifted their heads as one and whispered their enticements:
"You can't let her be led astray by those two fox spirits, Consort Hui and Consort Xiang…"
"And now you have a perfectly respectable excuse to keep her, don't you?"
"That dog of an emperor doesn't care about you at all. Why make things hard on yourself?"
"Wenwen, you've toiled to run the whole inner palace all these years. What's wrong with enjoying yourself a little?"
Su Wen inclined her head deeply, her body relaxing, and murmured, "Ex… extend it."
"Certainly! Although…" Li Fei agreed happily, then at once put on a show of difficulty and hesitation. "I only ever promised His Majesty that I'd treat the noble ladies free of charge and take payment for the medicine alone… If Your Majesty wants supplementary services, I'm afraid I'll have to charge the standard rate. After all, researching prescriptions every day burns through a great deal of material."
"That is no problem," Su Wen said lightly, as though it were nothing.
"Wonderful."
Li Fei launched enthusiastically into the "menu." "Palace-style reclining ear-cleaning, two thousand three hundred and thirty-three taels of gold. Bone-loosening back-walking, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight taels of gold… Distinguished guests may specify the costume, though that's an extra service fee of one hundred taels of gold~"
Su Wen had never heard of any of these services, but the words "back-walking" were plain enough to picture.
So Her Majesty found her gaze straying, unbidden, to the imperial physician's footsies. Those jade-boned, ice-skinned feet caught the light with a crystalline clarity, like flawless cold jade freshly fished from water, or fine porcelain steeped in translucent honey syrup. She could just glimpse the pink flush beneath the white of the soles, and even the line of the arch was long and slender and lovely, vivid enough to seem scented.
A single glance was enough to set her pulse hammering. If those pressed against her back, wouldn't she—
Su Wen's spirit gave a shudder.
"Your Majesty, you like feet."
Li Fei's voice was unhurried and warm. She lifted one glistening foot and brushed the toes against Su Wen's calf, the soft, boneless sole curling and stretching, teasing and swaying.
In that instant, two snow lotuses of untouchable purity turned into soft white rabbits, or into willow withes swaying in an ambiguous spring breeze, stirring ripples upon ripples across the lake of the Empress's heart.
The itch along her calf threw Su Wen's breathing into disorder. She drew her legs back, not daring to look again at those soul-stealing feet, and forced calm into her voice.
"Then… then give me this palace-style reclining ear-cleaning. I have never heard of it before. It sounds novel."
—Running your own business really does pay faster than working for someone else.
At that, Li Fei's smile grew even more radiant.
Even as the top courtesan of the Golden Tangerine Tavern, selling a bottle of liquor after all that effort had brought in only a few hundred gold coins, and she'd had to swallow a cut of up to ninety-nine percent. Now that she was out earning on the side, a few words and a laugh netted her over two thousand taels of gold. Even if the purity was a bit low, converted into gold coins that was still tens of thousands in the ledger.
Faced with such an enormous fee, the imperial physician adopted a thoroughly professional attitude. Not the least bit put off by Her Majesty's orange juice, she climbed straight onto the sopping bed.
And faced with an imperial physician all but burrowing into her arms, the tall, noble, older wife shrank back again and again like a skittish doe.
Li Fei lay on her side on the pillow, facing Su Wen, hooking the strands of hair off her cheek with a fingertip, her moist eyes meeting the Empress's.
"Your Majesty, don't be so tense."
"I am not. I am simply unaccustomed to sharing a bed with another."
Su Wen forced herself to hold the imperial physician's gaze, though an unnameable bitterness rose in her.
So many years of marriage, and she had always slept alone…
"You'll grow accustomed to it."
Li Fei said it with weight behind the words, then gently took the Empress's hand and laid it on her own waist.
Big and small are always relative. Beside the tall, mature Su Wen, Li Fei looked rather petite, her ink-black eyes still damp, harmless as a newborn fawn.
Tucking the hair that covered half her face behind one ear, Li Fei smiled, demure and gentle. It was tea she gave off, not wine, and yet it was more intoxicating than any wine.
"Your Majesty, ear-cleaning soothes the emotions and settles the spirit…" Li Fei explained in a soft, unhurried voice.
"Mm."
Su Wen nodded. But staring at that face of extraordinary allure from so close, she found her composure scattering. Even with her eyes shut, sweat ran off her in streams and her body temperature climbed and climbed.
She tried to steady her runaway heartbeat with deep breaths, and only drew more tea fragrance into her nose, until her thoughts drifted further and further loose.
"It may tickle a bit."
The imperial physician's instructions echoed at her ear, gentle and patient and maternal. "But whatever you do, don't move. Ears are delicate things."
"I understand." Su Wen nodded faintly.
Li Fei smiled a little, drew a goose-feather wand out of *, breathed once over the snowy down, and only then brought it to Su Wen's ** ear.
That flourish, clearly, was another thing she had learned from Lady Zhihua.
"Your Majesty, I'm going to ****."
Their eyes met, and the fuzzy, downy goose-feather wand *.
"Nn…"
Su Wen drew a deep breath, her body going taut, looking hard-pressed to endure it. Then, as that long breath left her nose, she slowly loosened again.
"Relax…"
Miss Top Courtesan's breath was as sweet as orchid, and her nimble five fingers worked the feather wand, the soft down rustling faintly. It tickled, and it was wonderfully comfortable. Su Wen's eyes half-closed as she gazed in silence at Li Fei's focused, gentle expression, emptied her mind, and quietly savored the ease of the massage, casting every worry behind her.
More than the touch, what truly set Su Wen's heart trembling was the warmth of it in her spirit.
The imperial physician's movements were so light, so patient, so meticulous that Su Wen — a woman doomed to be a gay man's wife and left in the cold for years — felt herself cherished.
An attachment and dependence rose out of her without her willing it. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep, and yet she could not bear to shut them.
Through that long shared gaze, Su Wen's eyes, lonely and cold as autumn water, slowly turned soft, until beneath the imperial physician's attentive, tender look they nearly melted into the tender waters of spring.
Rustle, rustle—
With each small sound of the ear-cleaning, tea fragrance and plum fragrance mingled in the air. Su Wen's breathing lengthened, yet her body ran hotter and hotter, the sweat from her palms soaking into that exquisite curve of waist and sliding down over the pale white of her belly, where over a thousand Charm Marks flickered in and out of sight.
Without noticing, Su Wen's thoughts blurred, and she slipped of her own accord into the state of the Meditation Method.
Regaining a measure of clarity, Su Wen was astonished to find the mirror repaired and new again, whole and flawless, without a single crack left to be found.
More than that, she sensed dimly that her own soul had grown rich with vitality, brimming with life… the soul-damage that had plagued her for so many years had simply healed.
—Meditating upon an immortal maiden has such miraculous effect?
In the middle of her disbelief, Su Wen suddenly grasped another problem.
—But… if that's so, doesn't it mean I can never again, with the imperial physician…
The thought turned her cold from head to foot. Her illness was cured, and still she pressed a hand to a faintly aching forehead.
More painful than a whole life of loneliness is tasting happiness and then losing it.
Anxiety over gain and loss swept over Su Wen like a tide, drawing the brows of this ever-steady, ever-proper Empress into a knot and leaving her hands cold.
"The mistress of the Empress's palace, and yet you flinch like this?"
"If you want it, fight for it."
"Life is short. Why not take your pleasure while you can?"
In the blackness, the demon in the mirror looked at Su Wen, its murmurs coiling around her ears, luring her down.
Seeing her waver, the demon in the mirror slowly raised one slender arm, and five long fingers reached out beyond the mirror's surface to give the badly shaken Su Wen a light push from behind.
Su Wen stumbled a few steps, and after a spell of dizzying vertigo, the imperial physician's face swam back into her vision.
Only now the tips of their noses were pressed together as if their very hearts were, four lips a hair's breadth apart.
Su Wen could feel her breath clearly, warm against her skin, carrying that rich tea fragrance. She could see Li Fei's trembling lashes too, and the small shifts of feeling in those widened eyes — from startlement, to confusion, to gravity, with a thread of bashfulness running through it all.
And just as Su Wen realized she had somehow, without meaning to, demanded a kiss unannounced — a rude and presumptuous thing to do — a slim jade-white forefinger rose quietly and came to rest between their lips.
"Your Majesty, I'm a licensed practitioner, you know. For you to do this…"
The startled imperial physician turned her face away, blushing, and began scolding the Empress in flustered embarrassment, a note of reproach in her voice.
Under that rebuke Su Wen's heart pounded so hard that the thin fabric over the imperial physician's chest quivered along with it.
She forced her feelings back into order and explained, guilty and rattled, "I…"
But to her surprise, the imperial physician turned back, fixed her with a serious stare, and said gravely, "For you to do this, I'll have to charge extra…"
"Wh… what? How can you be so frivolous—"
Su Wen could not comprehend it; anger and heartache surged in her at once.
"I once had a friend named Bai Mengtian."
Li Fei let out a long, mournful sigh, cutting off the accusation before Su Wen could voice it. "She had a terminal illness, and her one last wish before she died was to know what a KISS felt like."
"And who would have thought — after that KISS, a medical miracle occurred. Her terminal illness was cured!"
"That was the moment I understood that medicine has its limits."
"In treating the sick, we physicians need more than superior technique. We need a spirit of humane care, to meet the patient's emotional needs wherever possible… And the evidence bears it out: when a patient is relaxed and in good spirits, the illness resolves faster and the prognosis is better."
"I know it sounds rather casual… but as they say, a healer's heart is a benevolent heart. So long as it cures the patient, we ought to have the resolve to cut our own flesh to feed the hawk. What is so trifling a sacrifice next to that?"
"As I see it, a KISS given in this spirit of humane care is no different from breathing mouth-to-mouth to save a drowning person, or sucking the venom from a snakebite with your lips. It is lofty, it is pure, it is great, a method of nursing wholly free of vulgar interest…"
—Such medicine is far too heterodox.
Su Wen meant to argue, then thought again: was her own attitude toward Consort Xiang and Consort Hui any less scandalous?
Waves of bitterness churned inside her, and yet, meeting the imperial physician's clear bright eyes, she could not bring out a single word of reproach.
Her head began to ache again.
"So, does Your Majesty require the humane care service?"
Li Fei asked it timidly, though her eyes carried unmistakable threads of encouragement and expectation.
Su Wen's gaze came to rest on the imperial physician's soft, pink, delicate lips, and her scalding breath turned ragged.
…
The older woman, taller and fuller of figure than Li Fei, was now curled up in the imperial physician's arms like an infant.
—Women's money really is easy money…
Her Majesty had not lost herself completely; she had kept the chastity of the imperial house intact. But the imperial physician had not only inflated essential oils worth a few dozen taels of gold in materials to a sky-high ten thousand, she had also dropped the labor fees for both supplementary services — palace-style reclining ear-cleaning and humane care — solidly into her own purse.
In that moment, the imperial physician's gaze seemed to pierce layer upon layer of palace walls and behold all those gleaming, golden consorts.
"The fourth layer of the Furnace Battle-Qi is as good as funded…"
Li Fei murmured it under her breath, her money-making heart already stirring.
She lowered her head, saw that the woman in her arms was breathing long and slow, judged her more or less asleep, and eased her arm free, meaning to hurry off to the next appointment.
"Don't go…"
Su Wen's eyes were shut, yet half asleep and half awake she clamped her arms tight around Li Fei's waist, and those white-python legs of hers locked around Li Fei's calves.
This stately, proper, self-possessed mistress of the Empress's palace now had tears glinting at the corners of her eyes and the air of a small bird seeking shelter, a plea in her voice. "Stay with me a while longer…"
Su Wen had been lonely too long, and had endured too long. In this moment the softest, most riddled-with-wounds part of her heart overpowered her reason, leaving her clutching and fearing loss, unwilling to wake from a sweet dream steeped in tea fragrance, wanting to hold onto this warmth and steadiness for as long as she possibly could.
"I won't go. I'll stay with you."
Li Fei lay back down on the soaked bed and patted Su Wen's sweaty, hot, almost light-reflecting back.
Feeling has always been mutual.
Never mind that Her Majesty, caught between the demon in the mirror within and the imperial physician without, had in the space of two short days been driven back to her last line of defense, everything else already surrendered.
She had captured Li Fei in the single instant they first met.
Faced with her ideal type, Miss Top Courtesan's defenses always ran into the negative.
Li Fei lay there quietly and let the time slip past. These consorts of the inner palace weren't going anywhere; not one of them could sprout wings and fly.
"Thank you."
Not until the sky darkened did Su Wen's eyes slowly open.
"It's only my duty."
Li Fei bent her head and breathed deeply of the plum fragrance in her hair.
Su Wen's eyelids fluttered.
However glibly Li Fei talked, however many arguments she had, Su Wen knew that in her own heart, at least, the two of them were no longer simply physician and patient. Only a hair's breadth separated her from the other consorts of the inner palace.
—I really am an utterly wretched Empress…
Su Wen laughed once at herself.
All this time she had been guarding against Consort Hui, terrified that she or the imperial physician would be lured astray — and in the end, the one harboring crooked thoughts about the imperial physician was herself?
But from this dream, there was no waking now, no matter what.
—Here in Funing Palace, let me be selfish and indulgent, just a little. Once I step outside the palace I can be the Empress everyone reveres again… Hah. Even Consort Hui is more honest than I am.
Su Wen's eyes were dark and unreadable, and by the time she came back to herself the two of them were fully dressed and standing a few paces apart in the hall, as though everything before had been nothing but a fleeting dream.
She turned, and gave her order without joy or sorrow.
"What happens in this palace, no third person is to know."
The Empress was the Empress once more. With her back to Li Fei she stood aloof and coldly beautiful, stately and self-contained.
Only, at this hour of waking, some melancholy and sorrow could not help showing in her eyes.
"This humble official obeys."
Li Fei bowed deeply.
Amid the soundless sigh, Li Fei suddenly poked her head up and asked, "Then… tomorrow's treatment. Are we still on?"
The lofty, cool, unfeeling mistress of the Empress's palace was yanked straight back down to the mortal world. She curled her fingers tight and said, with a touch of embarrassed vexation, "Simply come of your own accord."
"Okey-dokey."
The imperial physician went bouncing off with a light, skipping step.
Only once that figure — seemingly carefree to the point of heartlessness, and impossible to give up — had vanished into the dusk did Su Wen let the strength go out of her. She slumped into a chair and cursed with a laugh.
"Little brat."
____
________________________________________
💖 Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 50 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter to warm your hearts.
🚀 Community Reward: If we reach 20 supporting members, we'll have a +5 chapter marathon across all stories! The romance won't stop.
👻 Come to our secret corner: Search for GirlsLove on (P). You know that's where the magic happens... 😉