One Lifetime Is Never Enough

1.53 Dragon and Phoenix

She could feel the intensity of his gaze, only then she dared to slowly tilt her gaze to meet his.

"There. Now you are willing to see me properly," there was an amused tone in his low voice.

"This man is so unfair."

"Emperor... .", she muttered softly after a few seconds of contemplation.

"Can you not call me SongWang like you used to, Ying-er?"

"This man is so unfair."

She suddenly became somewhat irritated. They both knew the past was just a past. The past time when they both called each other by their little names – it was gone forever.

Now, he was the Emperor. She was the Empress.

And she knew one sole reason he actually even visited her chamber tonight.

"SongWang...," She conceded. Why would she not play along with his little game? After all, she was now far too old to care about winning or losing,

"Do you blame me for my rudeness at the banquet?"

As she tried to keep looking into his eyes, she admonished herself that despite what she had been trying to convince herself, this man still caused tiny butterflies to form in her stomach.

Zhang SongWang gave her his usual lopsided smile – one corner of his lips was lifted higher than the other. It never changed. It was the smile of someone so confident in himself, it was the smile of a conqueror.

Just how he had conquered her.

He shook his head.

Who were they trying to fool? Surely, he would have noticed as well – why she had lost her composure in front of so many subjects.

She thought she had come back to life. Complete with her heavy-lidded eyes, complete with her heart-wrenching voice.

"SongWang," her cheeks began to grow warm in her inner-anguish, "She... that singer...," she stressed her word on the young woman that had made her restless, 

"That child, that is called Bai YuLan...,"

"I saw Royal Consort Chin-fei in her."

Zhang SongWang's smile was frozen.

She took a deep breath.

"See? He noticed."

"Chin-fei – JingYi-mei --, they look similar. Even the voice is similar."

Despite years of training in her composure - that even when she was sleeping, her posture was always perfect –, her shoulders slumped.

"Forget it, I am much too old to stage a play. Especially when the fool in this play is only myself."

She had spent her childhood and youth being groomed to be this man's partner.

She had spent her blossoming years, waiting for him to come back. For him to be her King, and for her to be his Queen.

Then he came back from the Northern Plains, with another young woman in his arms.

Despite everything, he still made her, his Queen. But Zhen HeYing knew that she was never the queen in his heart.

JingYi – who was later titled as Royal Consort Chin after her death – had that privilege.

[Though arduous, separation is endured]