From CEO to Concubine-Chapter 207: Glass

The plum blossoms wept, leaving a crimson trail on the fresh snow. It was fast approaching the end of winter and yet the nights didn’t seem to grow any shorter. Icicles formed on the skeletal branches of the trees in the imperial garden like the perpetual tear tracks of a forlorn wife, alone in her boudoir as she pined for her husband who was away at the distant frontlines.

A slight figure walked through this melancholic scene, accompanied only by a fresh-faced eunuch, who took his arm gently and ensured his elaborate flowing robes didn’t snag as he continued his journey towards the tall pavilion up ahead. This eunuch might appear young but none were so blind as to cross him; he wore the verdant silk uniform of the second highest rank, equivalent to Lower Four in court official terms.

This was, naturally, the head eunuch of Aiyun Palace and the new empress’ right hand.

"Master, His Majesty has made it very clear that you were to wear more layers before leaving the warmth of your palace...you’re making things very difficult for this servant..."

If anyone were to catch wind of the relaxed manner in which Xiao De spoke to Yan Zheyun, they would no doubt be shocked at their new Fengjun’s leniency. Why, a more ambitious—and foolish—individual might even be tempted to report him for his insouciance. But no one was around to listen to their conversation...or at least no one who would tattle on them anyway. The shadow guard appeared to have some sort of complicated roster going on, in which they rotated basic surveillance jobs amongst themselves when there was no specific mission to attend to, so Yan Zheyun wasn’t sure who was watching over him that day. Whoever it was, they wouldn’t bother themselves with trivial details like how he interacted with the servants of his palace.

"His Majesty is magnanimous," was Yan Zheyun’s airy reply. "And if he has a bone to pick, then this palace (1) does as well. If he thinks a commander-in-chief working himself to the point of exhaustion is what it takes to win a war, then Great General Pan has failed in his teachings."

Ever since the untimely news of the northern invasion reached the capital, Liu Yao hadn’t once returned to their bedchamber before the hour of the rat (2). To make matters worse, he was often gone by the time Yan Zheyun rose, which was almost the equivalent of 6:00 am on the dot. At this rate, one of them was going to be a young widower and it wasn’t Yan Zheyun.

It was indeed one of the empress’ roles to advise the emperor to pay attention to his health. But it was unheard of for any empress to be so bold as to admonish the emperor in front of others. Xiao De, though, was used to it by now. He’d heard his master reproach the emperor for not taking care of himself enough times by now to be immune to what others would regard as a shocking lack of respect for imperial might.

Back then, before regaining his memories, Yan Zheyun had tested the waters, his mild protests at Liu Yao’s flagrant disregard for sleep growing more impetuous with each instance that his doting husband indulged him. Now that he could recall what Liu Yao had been like since childhood, overworking himself to the point of falling ill just so he wouldn’t disappoint anyone by being a useless crown prince, Yan Zheyun dared to withhold sex if he didn’t think Liu Yao was well-rested enough.

Not that they’d been having much of that in recent times. Not at all, in fact, since his collapse and return as some bizarre triple amalgamation of souls.

Yan Zheyun’s mouth set into a determined line. Liu Yao could try to avoid the topic as much as he wanted but ever since that fateful day of his coronation, when he’d oh-so-dramatically collapsed into a dead faint in the side chamber of Liu Yao’s study, his husband had been treating him like he was made of glass.

And not just any glass. The fancy sort locked up in display cases in posh departmental stores that cost an arm and a leg per piece. Even if Liu Yao didn’t spend as much time with him in bed as he used to, the concern had become so intense that to anyone with less understanding of the situation, it might have felt smothering. The momos that dogged his every move unless he specifically ordered them not to. The knowledge that he was being watched over at all hours by the shadow guard. How the square tables in the palace had surreptitiously been replaced by round ones. How Xiao De had insisted out of the blue to take over his food-tasting task, even though it made no sense for a eunuch of his rank to be doing such a high-risk job.

Yan Zheyun knew why Liu Yao had called for measures of such lengths. He was just at a loss as to how he could reassure Liu Yao that he wasn’t going anywhere and was here to stay for good. It was a problem that went hand-in-hand with Liu Yao drowning himself in work; he was busy, to be sure, as any emperor would be with the current sticky situation they had on their hands, but Yan Zheyun didn’t believe there wasn’t an element of avoidance involved.

It wasn’t like Liu Yao to flee from difficulties. Yan Zheyun had thought long and hard about this and could only conclude that he’d done a real number on Liu Yao in the past. When it came to them, Liu Yao was no longer able to look at it from an emperor’s point of view; he was just another man and ordinary men were allowed to be scared.

"This old servant greets Fengjun with ten thousand blessings and golden health (3)." Head Eunuch Cao stepped up to meet them as their presence was announced by the door eunuchs of Tianlu Pavilion. There was a mild tentativeness to the otherwise jolly smile that was the trademark of Liu Yao’s closest confidante in the inner palace departments. Yan Zheyun interpreted this—and quite accurately so—as His Majesty ignoring advice to take reasonable breaks.

He raised an eyebrow. "How many shichen has it been?"

"...in response to Fengjun...His Majesty is inundated with urgent matters of the state and has not found the leisure to rest..." Beads of sweat started forming on Head Eunuch Cao’s forehead. It was no mean feat, making the man who was concurrently the Chief of the Eastern Depot fidget on the spot, but Yan Zheyun had made it clear that he took Liu Yao’s health very, very seriously.

Of course, he did. If history was any good indication, the mean life span of someone in the past was nothing compared to that of the future. Having the benefit of experiencing life in the future meant that he had a different set of standards that he would like to try and apply here as well, no matter how difficult. It was all well and good whenever they blessed Liu Yao with ten thousand years of longevity but that was something said to every single emperor and it wasn’t like that many of them lived to celebrate seventy years old.

"What time did His Majesty take his last meal?"

The silence stretched. Yan Zheyun waited for it to become just too awkward before he added, "This palace trusts that Cao Gonggong did what you could to remind him."

Head Eunuch Cao bowed quickly. "This old subject was useless."

"Useless? Certainly not. A servant, no matter how good standing he might have, is unable to persuade an emperor to do anything against his will, is that not right?" There was no point in blaming Head Eunuch Cao or any of the other servants for that matter. Liu Yao’s status meant that he was used to not listening to reason if he didn’t want to.

Brushing aside Head Eunuch Cao’s apologies, Yan Zheyun asked for Xiao De to wait outside while he alone stepped into the emperor’s private study unannounced. This would have been a big taboo as well, had Liu Yao not given prior orders to allow him to come and go as he pleased.

The door creaked open and Yan Zheyun stepped over the threshold and into the front chamber, where court officials often stood waiting to be called upon by the emperor within. He made sure to make some noise, exaggerating his footfalls so Liu Yao would be alerted to his presence. The lack of acknowledgement already meant that his husband had been so engrossed with whatever he was doing that he didn’t realise Yan Zheyun had arrived to drag him out of his office.

"Cao Mingbao?" he heard Liu Yao call out curtly. "This sovereign has just started on a new memorial, I’ll take my dinner later."

There was an ornate jade carving of the Great Ye’s map that separated the two chambers from each other. Yan Zheyun leaned casually against it and folded his arms, watching his husband seated at his desk, writing away in a swift cursive hand. Liu Yao was surrounded by a mountain of memorials, each one more pressing than the last, and Yan Zheyun could empathise, had also once lived the night owl life when his company had called for it, but he now knew himself to be fully capable of hypocrisy.

He didn’t want to see Liu Yao work himself to the bone. A large part of it had to do with the overwhelming love he had for the man but there was also a smaller, painful part that was wrought with guilt. As Yun Ziyu, he’d had big dreams about supporting a benevolent master to create a dynasty strong and prosperous beyond the wildest imaginations. Back then, as a youth, he’d been unbridled with his ambitions, had shared them with Liu Yao so matter-of-factly, with such little restraint, that at some point they had become Liu Yao’s dreams as well.

He’d never once thought to ask what the crown prince had wanted. He had, like all the others, just assumed that Liu Yao would want the throne.

Now, after seeing what Liu Yao had become, after seeing the fatigue etched in that beloved face, the world-weariness carved into that proud spine, he knew that Liu Yao’s love for his kingdom was borne out of love for him. This made him unsuitable for the role...or would have, had he not clung to it like it was his last connection to the lover he’d thought he’d lost forever.

He was a good emperor. One of the best Yan Zheyun had ever seen and he’d had a whole wealth of ancient history to compare to.

But he was also a lonely man. If Yan Zheyun could go back in time, he would have told Liu Yao that, yes, fuck the country, if Liu Yao had ever asked, Yan Zheyun would run away with him for as long and as far as they could.

’Cao Mingbao’ didn’t reply and Liu Yao seemed to have forgotten that he’d even spoken. So after waiting for another minute, Yan Zheyun cleared his throat before saying, in the most gentle of tones, the most brazen of things. "Your Majesty, would you take your lover later too?"

That made Liu Yao’s head jerk up in shock, his brush slipping across the memorial to leave an ungainly splotch.

"Zitong." He was clearly well-trained as crown prince, regaining his composure almost instantly although Yan Zheyun didn’t miss the flicker of guilt that he concealed almost right away. "You’re displeased."

Yan Zheyun cocked his head to one side. "I came here accompanied only by Xiao De and without putting on an extra layer of robes. Are you displeased with me?"

The furrow that was perpetually on Liu Yao’s brow these days deepened. "...was that deliberate?"

"No but it does help you put yourself in my shoes, doesn’t it?" He walked over to stand right in front of Liu Yao’s desk. Without falling to his knees, he was at a greater height and even as empress, this was a breach of imperial etiquette that could potentially earn him a banishment to the cold palace as it was one of the strongest signs of utmost disrespect for the emperor.

But Liu Yao just reached out to take his hand and squeeze it. "Ah Yun..." Not that it mattered but this was the name Liu Yao used most often with him, possibly because he associated it most with the mortal vessel that Yan Zheyun’s souls resided in right now.

"You’ve been working endlessly for over a month now. Great General Pan has successfully engaged the North in battle and I know that you’re personally overseeing the delivery of military rations because you don’t trust the Ministry of Revenue or the Ministry of War." At the end of the day, they just didn’t have enough manpower that they could safely use. Reforms were in place but Great Ye was on the cusp of a breaking point and they needed urgent help. "You can’t control everything all the time, Ah Yao. You have Supervisor Liu and your eyes and ears at your beck and call." In this day and age, without modern technology, the flow of information was greatly slowed; they only learnt just recently that Wu Zhong and Prince Haerqi had survived pursuit.

"But the warlords grow restless," Liu Yao countered. Ever since the north had invaded on the pretext that Liu Yao had broken armistice and murdered their envoys, the warlords and the neighbouring kingdoms had been disgruntled by Great Ye’s so-called lack of trustworthiness. Everyone knew it was just an excuse to remonstrate in the hopes of gaining some form of appeasement but every day the missives that poured in from all over the country speaking of such unrest gave Liu Yao a headache. Even right now, the South was starting to stir. Given the uncertainty of the entire situation, Yan Zheyun could understand Liu Yao’s urge to pour over memorials constantly in the worry that there was something buried deep in there that was of urgent concern. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

"Grand Preceptor Du and Grand Tutor Lu are also looking through the memorials for you," he coaxed. "You won’t miss anything, okay? And even if somehow, by chance, something gets overlooked, we’ll fix it together."

Liu Yao sighed and leaned back into the chair, drawing Yan Zheyun around the table to pull him lightly into his arms. Even this gesture was a lot more careful than before, as though even the slight roughhousing would cause Yan Zheyun to shatter into irreparable fragments.

"Logically, I know that," Liu Yao said. "But I cannot help but need to do something."

Just last week, the interrogation of the servants of Imperial Concubine Hui’s palace had been completed. Till death, none of her closest maids and eunuchs had admitted the identity of the mysterious man who had slept with her before murdering her. None of them had acknowledged that they had heard or seen anything wrong or untoward before the incident. As Liu Yao had appeared to accept the theory that she was a fox demon, he’d agreed to have the body burnt but in secret, had arranged for another coroner to complete the examination behind the morning court’s back.

She’d been poisoned. Or, she had taken poison. The first coroner had somehow omitted to mention this to him and was no longer providing his services for the throne.

That, along with how tight-lipped the servants of her palace had been, had made Yan Zheyun’s blood run cold. And now that even his last secret had been revealed to Liu Yao, he no longer had any reservations. Zhang Xiu’s true colours and the despicable nature of the princes of the first rank, Yan Zheyun had shared it all, confident that even if Liu Yao had reservations, he would not persecute Yan Zheyun for the warning.

And sure enough, Liu Yao hadn’t. He was just unable to decide at once what to do. Paying Zhang Xiu back for the betrayal or figuring out his brothers’ plans to rebel against the throne weren’t solutions he could implement with a simple snap of his fingers. But as long as the dangers remained, he would constantly be worried about losing Yan Zheyun again.

It wasn’t hard for Yan Zheyun to comprehend. But he really didn’t know how to help him except...

...serve as a distraction, perhaps?

"Your Majesty needs to do something?" he asked, sliding his arms around Liu Yao’s neck with a feigned coyness that he knew Liu Yao enjoyed. He felt the firm arm around his waist tense and he felt a sense of satisfaction as he watched Liu Yao’s gaze heat up, the desire in them warring with the restrain he’d been using to contain himself ever since Yan Zheyun had passed out.

"Ah Yun, your body is rather frail and of a cold disposition. The imperial physicians have recommended ample rest and recuperation to avoid permanent harm to your constitution—"

"I want to be fucked," Yan Zheyun interrupted, his uncharacteristic bluntness rewarded by a spectacular jaw-drop. "Either you do me, Your Majesty, or I’ll go back to Aiyun Palace now and dig out that biggest of jade penises you so kindly provided to me all those months ago—ah!"