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Maomao sniffed the tea, the final part of the consort’s meal and frankly the thing she was least concerned about. They drank mostly the same three blends all the time, and this was one of those. Green, with mint for clarity, a mix popular in the West, and therefor with the entirety of Gyokuyou’s household. Still, each pot that was brewed for the consort had to be sampled, just in case.

There were no untoward odors, though it was more fragrant than the last batch had been. Probably a fresh shipment, Maomao thought, though she took another deep inhale to be sure. The usual savory, verdant notes, complemented by the cool bite of the mint. Slightly floral, as always. 

Satisfied both visually and olfactorily, she took a mouthful. Probably a bit larger than it needed to be, but she liked this tea and it was unlikely to harbor any strange additives. 

Except, as she swallowed it, an unaccustomed flavor spread across her tongue. “This isn’t right,” she said, immediately, forstalling her mistress’ own sip. 

“Poison?” Hongniang asked, rushing around to Maomao’s side. Probably ready to drag her to the garden and force her fingers down her throat. 

“I don’t think so,” Maomao refuted, swirling the tea in the silver saucer again, peering at the way the light filtered through it. “But there’s a sweetness to it…you didn’t add honey or sugar, did you?”

“No,” Hongniang assured her. Mint tea, the Western girls believed, could be sweetened, but green shouldn’t be, and generally the blend was taken without any adulteration. “It shouldn’t be sweet at all; the pot we had this morning was from the same batch of tea, we’re almost out of it.”

“Almost out?” Maomao repeated, giving her cup another sniff. “This smells like it’s a fresh blend.”

“We’ve had it a few weeks,” Hongniang corrected her, looking up at her mistress with wide, worried eyes. “It shouldn’t be different from this morning’s.”

“Pour it out,” Maomao instructed, even as she took another sip. “Get rid of the rest of the leaves, too. I don’t know what’s caused the difference, and it may be nothing, but it’s better to be safe.” 

“Of course.” Hongniang nodded to Guiyuan, who took the consort’s cup and added it to the tea tray, the better to remove the suspect liquid from her exalted presence. “Maomao, stop drinking that.”

“I want to see if I can identify the problem,” Maomao refuted. “If we know what it is, perhaps we can discover wh-ohh.”

A wave of disorientation swept over her, and her hands trembled, spilling the rest of the tea. Her heart rate rose precipitously, almost like a panic attack, but it wasn’t anxiety she was feeling. “Maomao?” Gyokuyou exclaimed, rising from her seat, and Hongniang gripped her shoulders. 

“What’s happening?” the head lady demanded, tipping back Maomao’s head to look her in the face. “You said it wasn’t poison!”

“I….it….” Maomao closed her eyes against the suddenly too-bright room. “It probably isn’t. Just…some kind of drug. I think.” She swallowed, took another breath in, and then the sensations began to settle and resolve. 

Her lungs felt heavy and overburdened. Her skin was hot, and growing more sensitive with each passing moment. And her body…well. She had read stories, the Emperor’s favorite kind, no less, where women characters described their wombs as aching, their most private parts as throbbing, feeling desolated and empty. She had read descriptions of involuntary muscle contractions and gushing fluids. She had read these things with a heavy pinch of salt; sexual arousal bore some resemblance to these narratives, in her experience, but the erotic stories were highly dramatized, the better to titillate the reader. Obviously. 

Except, this was no exaggeration. For perhaps the first time in her life, Maomao was awash in the most hideous, desperate desire for sexual release she had ever experienced. 

If this was how Pairin-nee-san felt all the time, she thought blurrily, it was no wonder she was so fond of Lihaku. 

“I…I need to…leave,” Maomao stammered, her tongue refusing to form the words as assertively as she intended. “My lady, I…uh…”

“Take her to the medical office,” Gyokuyou ordered, eyes growing flinty. 

“No!” Maomao protested. “That man can’t help me.”

“Then should we call your father?” the consort asked. 

Maomao barked a laugh, highly improper, but awash as she was in wretched new feelings, she didn’t quite know how to modulate her tone. “No, my lady. I…I’ll be fine. It…will pass.” Shrugging Hongniang’s hands off before she became the focus of all the unmarshalled amorous energy now trembling through her limbs, Maomao stood unsteadily. The muscles of her pelvic floor cramped, weakening her knees for a split second, but she caught herself on the table. “Please don’t touch me,” she said, very carefully.

“My lady,” Yinghua’s voice called, “Master Jinshi is--Maomao? What’s wrong--”

“Don’t touch me!” Maomao reiterated, more forcefully, as Yinghua’s steps drew close. 

The other handmaiden sucked in a shocked breath, but she obeyed, keeping a respectful couple of paces away.

“What’s going on here?” a voice asked. The most beautiful voice Maomao had ever heard, although she had heard it quite a bit. 

He sounded like salvation. He sounded like disaster. The timbre of his voice made things quake that she had never been aware had muscles. 

That was bad, Maomao realized, as though from a very great distance. She had to get away from him now, before the aphrodisiac completely overruled her ability to control her behavior. She couldn’t risk looking at him, being touched by him. Under the influence of whatever this was, she might well beg him to take her in front of everyone, out of her mind. 

So with her eyes lowered, she turned on her heel and tried to rush out of the room.

Perhaps the aphrodisiac impaired cognition, too, she thought, since had she been in her right mind she would have known he would never simply let her. 

Indeed, she ran nearly directly into him, and he seized her wrists to prevent her fleeing. 

“There was something in the tea,” Hongniang reported. “Maomao said it tasted sweet, and ordered us to pour it out even though she doesn’t think it’s poison.”

She felt him shift, and forced herself to breathe shallowly, lest the frankly delicious mix of perfume and body smells wafting off of him make her condition any worse. The callouses of his hands rasped against the skin of her wrists, and she whimpered. 

“Something sweet?” he asked, deadly serious, and then he was tilting her chin up with one hand. Her hand, she realized, had seized the front of his robe when he released it. Tears were beginning in her eyes, and the discomfort in her belly grew ever more poignant. And then he forced her to look at him. 

She lost control of her breath, her chest beginning to heave, and his eyes widened. “I know what this is,” he said simply.

“What is it?” Gyokuyou asked, her voice near frantic though she hadn’t moved. 

Jinshi didn’t answer. Moving with an urgency he usually eschewed, he bent and swept Maomao clean off her feet, tucking her to his chest. “Gaoshun,” he ordered, briskly, “can you fetch a blanket?”

Maomao buried her face against his chest, clenched her fingers in his robe, and held on as he took her who-knew-where, his steps hurried. The scent of his body was almost soothing, in fact, contrary to her expectations, and as she assimilated that fact she nearly sobbed with relief. But each deep breath she took seemed almost to flood her sexual organs with need. 

“Here, master,” Gaoshun’s voice said, and Jinshi paused long enough for a second pair of hands to tuck a heavy blanket around her. 

“Hide her head,” Jinshi ordered, still serious. “She won’t thank us if anyone knows it’s her I carried out of the rear palace.”

“Of course.” The hands tucked the blanket over her hair, but left just enough space for her to breathe. “Should I summon Master Luomen?”

“No,” Jinshi ordered, summarily. “That’ll only distress her.”

He must really know what this was, Maomao thought, as she felt him begin to move again. A wracking shiver coursed through her, and abruptly she was desperately grateful for the blanket. Not just for the anonymity it granted her, but for the heaviness and the warmth. The pressure stifled the worst edge of her longing. 

“Master Jinshi, what--” an unfamiliar voice asked, but Jinshi didn’t stop. 

“One of the maids,” he said, in an unrelenting voice. “I’m taking her to a proper medical officer. There’s no time to waste.”

“Of course,” the other man--a eunuch guard?--deferred.

His body felt really very nice, pressed up against her and surrounding her as he was. His arms…not bulging with muscle, but hardened and holding her aloft with no shaking or readjustment. With her cheek pressed against his chest she could feel the curvature of pectoral muscles, again much more defined than she might have expected of a eunuch. But she had seen him less than scrupulously dressed before, and knew his body was manlier than others might be. 

It was just, now she wanted to lick every facet of that masculine form. 

“Soon,” he soothed her in  a murmur, as though he had read her mind. “We’ll be in private soon. I’ll help you.”

She wanted to say, thank you , or perhaps, lock me alone in a cupboard with dildo, please . Instead, an unintelligible  whine issued from her throat, and his steps hastened even further. 

A door opened. After a few more paces, another door opened, then closed.

“Gaoshun, leave us,” Jinshi ordered, imperious and intense.

“Master--”

“I said, leave us. I’ll find you when you’re needed.”

“Of course, Master.” A brief pause.

“You may guard the door, but from the end of the hall,” Jinshi told him.

The door creaked and closed, and then Jinshi heaved a sigh.

“We’re alone,” he reported, in a much softer tone. “What do you need? To be touched? Fingers? A mouth?”

A mouth , Maomao thought, suddenly fervent with the impulse to lick between his lips, taste his tongue. She reached blindly for his face, the blanket falling away from her body, and he obliged her, hitching her up so their faces were nearly even. 

And then his lips were on hers, and she felt like she was drowning. 

Every caress of his mouth made her skin itch, stoked the heat in the pit of her belly, and she clawed at his clothes to pull herself closer. Her mouth was open to him, and he licked into it, driving a shuddering series of exclamations from her. 

“Please,” she begged, when he broke the kiss. “Please, Jinshi-sama!”

“What do you need?” he asked her again, urgently, and she shook her head frantically, unable to prioritize or even enumerate the things she wanted.

To be penetrated, so deeply it would break her. To be crushed under him. To be kissed until her lips bled. To have every inch of her skin sucked til it was purple with bruising. 

“Alright,” he said, “I’ll…I’ll do my best.”

He laid her down on something, and panic shot through her, that he would be further away. “Not leaving,” he assured her, and then his hands were occupied with the ties on her jacket. 

Her breasts felt more than swollen, practically ready to burst, and it hurt when he brushed over them, as he carefully stripped her bare. The air in the room felt freezing even as her skin burned, and she thrashed involuntarily when he grazed a nipple. 

It was like an electric wire directly from that touch to the juncture of her thighs, an electrical shock that made her cry out. Then something hot and wet was closing over that nipple, making her quiver and pulse and groan through clenched teeth. 

And then seconds later, a hand slid under her skirts and caressed her vulva. 

“Please,” she said again, and then, “please, please, please--!” It was the only word she could articulate, and even that, poorly. More a continuing whine than discreet phonemes. But it worked, and Jinshi deftly stroked between her outer labia, finally, finally giving friction to the sodden, swollen tissue between. 

He ran his fingers up and down along the folds of her, mapping, circling, and applied his tongue to the bud of erect flesh in his mouth, his head bowed over her like a supplicant, and Maomao writhed under him. Her vaginal walls clenched and unclenched, grasping for something that wasn’t there, but the pleasure of his delicate touches was enough to trigger the shortest, least satisfying orgasm of her life to date. She came with a keening cry, jolting against him, and when she began to settle he lifted his head to meet her eyes, leaving her breast glistening and red where he had suckled at it.

“Any better?” he asked, and she found that, yes, it was. If only by the slightest of margins.

“Inside,” she managed to articulate. “I need--something--”

“Ah,” he realized, and slid a finger down to her entrance, then up and in. 

It hardly felt like anything, wet as she was, and the frustration of it made her nearly weep. “More, please ,” she begged, uncaring at the indignity of it. Nothing mattered except his presence, his touch, and the yawning chasm inside of her that pleaded to be filled. His eyebrow ticked up, but he slid in a second finger, and then when she shook her head, a third. 

It wasn’t enough, she thought, despairingly, but it was better than nothing.

Much better.

He curled his fingers within her, eliciting an abortive shriek, and then he began to thrust, simulating the penetration she so desperately wanted. Each push brushed against the spongy ceiling of her inner walls, and drew a guttural moan from her, but that alone wasn’t enough to drive her back over the edge of anything. 

Rather, he held her in a sort of suspended animation, too awash in pleasure to be properly miserable but too aroused and strung out to be satisfied, either. 

“Harder,” she implored him, and his face flushed. His eyes were so beautiful, she thought, suddenly caught in them as he diligently worked between her thighs. They were the loveliest color, and in them it seemed like all the adoration and worship in the world was welling, and something darker, too. 

“ Harder ,” she insisted, reaching out and catching his hair in her hand. He licked his lips and placed his free hand on her belly. 

And then, indeed, he went harder. The rhythm of his fingers changed, more solid jolting and less smooth slide. He seemed to be trying to reach the deepest parts of her, and still she felt empty. Each thrust felt delicious, but left her more frustrated and devastated than before. She bore down on his hand, wriggled her hips, curled her toes and tried to sate herself, but it wasn’t working. Was only keeping the agony at bay in the merest sense.

She felt so alone, even as he touched her in places no one else ever had. He was too far away. He was distant and covered and she would never be able to feel him lodged deep within her, but his skin--his skin--

With wild hands, Maomao groped for him, his shoulders, and dragged at them. “Nearer,” she implored him, “Need you--closer.”

Jinshi’s breathing was no longer even, and his cheeks were flushed, but she didn’t care if her wantonness was embarrassing him. “ Now, ” she ordered, pulling on his hair to compel him, and he obeyed, withdrawing his fingers from her body and scrambling to his feet.

It was a monumental exertion to roll up on to her side and push at the collar of his robes, but he seemed to grasp what she needed--how could he possibly know what she needed so desperately?--and let his outermost garment fall to the floor, shrugging out of the sleeves of his inner robes so they hung from his sash, exposing his chest, his back, his arms. 

The groan Maomao produced as her heated skin met his would not have been out of place in the rooms of the Verdigris House, where women routinely learned to fake more enjoyment than their customers were capable of provoking. But here it was visceral relief at the warm and texture of his body, as he spread himself over her and wrapped his arms around her.

They were kissing. Or perhaps they had always been kissing. Jinshi’s breath burst from him in desperate puffs, small noises beginning in his throat, too, and Maomao mewled into him as he sucked her lip, laving it with his tongue. The heaviness of him felt right , weighing her down and keeping her from being pulled away by the rushing current. He anchored her, sheltered her. She hitched a leg around his back to draw him closer, then the other. Perhaps she could drive away this seething yearning, use the press of him and the taste of his tongue in her mouth to fool herself that she was full, that she was complete , maybe--

With the pressure of her heels she encouraged him to grind into her, press his hips into the place she wanted him more badly than she’d ever dreamed possible. 

He obliged her with a gasping groan, thrusting his hips against hers, and she felt--

She felt something that had no business being there, but in her state she noted only that he was hard and he felt long , and relief coursed through her like over-fermented wine foaming from its bottle. 

“This,” she demanded, breaking the seal of their lips and reaching between their bodies to seize him, “I need this.”

Jinshi froze, stayed frozen as Maomao tugged at his sash, then gave up and began pushing the front of his robes apart, trying to access the appendage she’d so adroitly found.

“Wait,” he said, and his voice was a desperate rasp. “Maomao--”

“Please,” she begged again, and in nearly the same moment she succeeded in her efforts to excavate his erection from the depths of his garments. It was his turn to keen as her hand wrapped around the shaft of him, pulling, squeezing. Her thighs trembled around him, and she gritted her teeth against the pang of intense feeling that shot through her nether regions at the sound of his voice.

“I don’t have--can--” Jinshi was no more sensible now than she was, “if--you can make something to stop a child?”

His words barely registered, as she redoubled her efforts to pull him closer with her legs. “Jinshi,” she panted, the length of his penis heavy and hot in her hand, “Inside now .”

“But--”

“I don’t care ,” she exhorted him, managing to compose a whole complete sentence only by the skin of her teeth. “If you don’t--I’ll--”

Jinshi gave in. She felt his hips begin to move, not carefully but almost abandoned, and she guided him til his head pressed against the slick, still-aching core of her. Her hand dropped away as he pushed inside, just a little, and she found herself pinned, pushed wide open, in the process of being speared on his body. 

It was…

Exquisite .

She was far, far too wet and ready for there to be any pain, any tearing, but he was enough to stretch her, to make her feel that her body had to make room for him, and that, that had been what she couldn’t quite reach before. 

His hips jolted, nudging deeper, and she arched her back to take him in. He made a noise she had never imagined from him before, something so rich with emotion and desperation it flipped her stomach. 

“Move,” she pled, pulling herself onto him and reverberating with the impact his length inside of her. 

“Fuck.” He squeezed his eyes shut, and fear rose up in her again. Was he going to pull away, was he going to run--

But instead he withdrew just enough, and thrust himself back inside of her. She grunted at the feeling, and her eyes stayed fixed on his face, screwed up and unreadable as it was. He thrust again. Again.

Her eyes slipped closed as he fucked into her body, as the girth of his penis pulled at the her inner labia, as the blunt thud of his landing within her drove her temperature up and made her breathing frenetic. Her legs didn’t feel spread enough, wrapped around his hips, and she let him go, straining to force her knees wide apart, to offer him better access, to better facilitate his movement inside of her. 

“Is this--” he tried to ask, his own speech ragged, and he finally opened his beautiful eyes to look down at her, sweat starting to bead around his hairline. She watched him, entranced by the reddening of his lips, the way his brows furrowed and his eyes nearly rolled up when she tightened her muscles. 

“Good,” she assured him, but her hands were still roaming, looking for purchase to encourage him to move faster, enter her more forcefully. Perhaps he took her hint, or perhaps he simply couldn’t prevent himself, but his pace increased, a single-minded fervor seeming to fall over him. 

He watched her squirm and arch and try to meet him, pushed inside her body again and again and again, and his expression was too full for her to parse, too mixed full of emotions and heady pleasure and something she didn’t want to identify. 

It was working, though, she felt herself tightening, growing a little more sensitive with each thrust, with each nudge of the head of him. He was going to draw another orgasm out of her, this one hopefully enough to banish the uncontrollable desire, or at least dampen it. She could feel it, the coiling, the bright white kernel of it behind her belly button. Her body rang like a bell with each rejoining, and her eyes lost focus, staring at the fuzzy outline of his head as he drove her beyond the edge of her endurance. 

Her voice ripped out of her as she crossed the precipice, and by some sainted miracle, Jinshi pushed deep inside and stayed, giving her tiny, deep thrusts but not withdrawing, not leaving her, not letting her feel alone for even a moment. The spasms wracked through her, almost a kind of pain, though they left in their wake something like contentment. It felt like it went on for hours, a tunnel filled with hot wind and threatening to tear her apart, but she was tethered by him, by Jinshi around and  inside and over top of her. 

When she came down, there were tears on her cheeks and she was sobbing, and Jinshi was still above her, looking anguished.

“What’s wrong?” he pleaded, leaning closer, and in so doing pushing further inside of her, earning another shudder of aftershock. 

She could only shake her head, reaching out to hold him, to gather him close to her, because what words were there for the beautiful, terrible things she was feeling? He relented, letting his head sink against her shoulder and her arms circle his neck. 

For several long moments they remained as such, still joined, as the last sparks fizzed across her skin, leaving her feeling wrung out, reduced, and yet still somehow a little bit aroused. 

“Jinshi-sama,” Maomao said, finally, her voice worn down, “are you…you can move again. If you want.”

His shoulders trembled, even as he pressed his mouth to the curve of her neck. It was instinct to pet him, to stroke the back of his head and run one palm down the muscular stretch of his back, and with only that persuasion, he resumed at a gentle pace, one that moments before would have rendered her furious by its delicacy. 

Now, she savored it, how careful-seeming it was, the restraint it bespoke, and she savored the small, precious groans he made, moving inside of her not to sate her, but for his own gratification. 

She did not let herself think about how he was moving inside of her, not yet. Not while she could feel him mouthing words into her skin, not while his nails dug into the meat of her thigh, little though there was. Instead she rode the distant waves of pleasure his thrusts still gave her, as he worked towards his own climax. There were ways to help a man along, she knew, had been taught in exhaustive detail, but she didn’t necessarily want for him to be done just yet, so she tilted her head and pressed her face into the spill of his hair, and basked.

“Maomao,” he whined, “I need…”
“Take what you need,” she sighed, and he did, grinding into her and pressing deeper, moving faster, his panting groans growing more frequent, until he cried out and nearly crushed her in his embrace.

That was exactly what she needed, she mused, floating on the lingering waves  of her own orgasm and the extent to which he had overwhelmed her body. Hardly any part of her was apart from him. She felt taken . It wasn’t something she had ever expected to want, but then, whatever that substance was it was potent. Frightening. 

And he had known what it was just by seeing her reactions, and had known exactly what she would need to return to herself, even if she could certainly tell the aphrodisiac was still in her system. This man who’d once asked her to test food he’d been gifted for adulterants, who had known to be cautious. 

“Who helped you?” she asked, carding her fingers through his long, silken hair.

A very long moment passed before Jinshi replied, muffled against her shoulder, “No one. I barred the door, and rode it out alone.”

His voice broke on the last word, and there was still enough terror of alone left in her that her arms tightened around him by impulse. 

They lay together, entwined, as their heartbeats slowed and the sweat started to dry on their skin. She could tell that Jinshi was softening, still inside her, as the resistance of him grew less and less, and finally he shifted, pulling out of her body and rolling off of  her just far enough to ease her breathing. 

“What happens now?” Maomao asked, looking down at his face. Sweaty, patchy with sex flush, lips bitten, he looked as wrecked as she felt, but he was still appallingly gorgeous. Unspeakably gorgeous. He peered up at her from under his lashes, and his mouth twisted into a moue of discontent. 

“Ideally, nothing,” he told her, an unsteady kind of calmness forced into his voice. “I…can’t imagine Gaoshun won’t have figured out what we were doing in here, but he won’t spread it around. This isn’t the first case of aphrodisiac poisoning he’s seen, after all. But otherwise, no one needs to know. If you tell your colleagues you went to a medical officer in the outer court they’ll never learn differently. We just have to be sure our stories match up.” He seemed exhausted by the end of his speech, and Maomao felt her disbelief leak onto her face. 

“No one will question it? Even the Emperor?” 

Jinshi exhaled, hard, and closed his eyes for a moment, as though in prayer. “He might,” he admitted. “But he knows…that I have similar experience. And if anything he’ll probably just be amused that I finally took someone to bed.”

“Who are you?” Maomao wondered aloud, at the eunuch who was a not a eunuch, who had just implied that the Emperor of their country would look kindly on him not only possessing his most delicate parts, but having used them with a woman of the rear palace, handmaiden or no.

Jinshi grimaced. “I hadn’t intended to tell you yet,” he grouched, “but considering the circumstances…Jinshi is a role that I play. My name is Ka Zuigetsu, Maomao. Do you know what that means?”

Did she know what that meant . She stared at him flatly, something unpleasant writhing in her gut. Of course she knew what that meant. Only two men in the entire country had the name Ka , at least until an Imperial son was born. One was the Honored Emperor himself. The other was his little brother, the Prince no one ever saw, who was supposedly so useless he never left his rooms. 

What would the people say if they knew their Crown Prince was really the most stunning man in the world, more perfect and charming than the loveliest courtesan or princess, and run off his feet with work, keeping his brother’s harem ticking like clockwork while he handled a whole slew of plots, strange goings-on, and other people’s bureaucratic nonsense besides?

More to the point, what would they say if they knew he had just bedded the illegitimate daughter of a whore, a girl so far beneath him she shouldn’t aspire to breathe the same air?

“Your Highness,” she croaked, mouth running dry, starting to try and push herself up and away from him. 

Him, whose semen was still inside her body. Him, who lay half on top of her, with his head cradled against her shoulder. 

“Don’t do that,” he commanded fiercely, rising up on his elbow to lean over her. “Don’t run away from me, Maomao. Not…not right now.”

She subsided, but the damage was done. She was painfully aware of her nakedness, her skinny, angular body displayed to him, the clay on her face, the sheer absurdity of her folly. 

“What am I to do then, Your Highness?” she queried, and her heart clenched at the look on his face. 

“Jinshi,” he corrected her. “Outside this room, I will only ever have been Jinshi.”

“Jinshi-sama,” she parroted, to demonstrate her compliance. 

“If you must,” he sighed, very nearly pouting. He looked her over again, from her disheveled hair to her legs, one knee still raised and spread, exposing…everything that mattered. She flushed and closed her legs, restoring an ounce or so of modesty.

“You didn’t bleed,” he noted.

“I might have done, if you’d used that right at the start,” she told him, tartly, nodding at the much diminished but still respectable organ between his legs. “But if things are slippery enough the skin just stretches, it doesn’t always tear. Even the first time.”

He frowned and rolled off her properly, the better to set about tucking his illicit possessions away and restoring himself to a state of normal dress. “Why are we told to expect blood on the first night, then?” he asked, sounding genuinely perplexed, and Maomao snorted. 

“How many men do you think ensure their wives are that ready for them?” she asked acerbically.

Jinshi’s brow furrowed profoundly. “Is it not in everyone’s best interests?” he pointed out, and she had no choice to but to lower her face into her hands and laugh. 

“Yes,” she said, “yes, it is. But no one teaches them, and women aren’t worth enough to most men that they’d make the effort even if they knew how. If the man can take his pleasure, why should he care about his wife’s? It’s her duty to lie with him, regardless.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Jinshi agreed, but his tone was not sanguine. He stood before her, looking…almost totally respectable. The only signs of their tumble were his crushed collar, a few disordered hairs, and the general state of his complexion, which was receding back to its usual heavenly pallor at a slow creep. 

“Come here,” he beckoned, and Maomao went. Unusually compliant, maybe, but it was hard to know how to behave. She stood, still and obedient, as he tidied her, tucking her underrobe inexpertly and trying to fasten her jacket. “I can’t manage it,” he finally confessed, and she might have smirked at him as she undid his work and fixed herself up. “Dressing other people is a learned skill,” she told him, to take the sting out of it. “Suiren could teach you.”

“I’d prefer it if you did,” he told her frankly, and her ears went hot at the implication. She chose to ignore him in favor of letting down her hair, combing it out with her fingers, and refastening it. 

He took the hint, smoothing his own hair into a more than half-way decent simulacrum of the sleek perfection of Suiren’s original handiwork. Good enough that hardly anyone would notice he had messed it up in the first place.

And then they were each examining the other, and declaring they would pass muster. 

But before he let Maomao  open the door, Jinshi stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. She glanced at it, but didn’t shake him off. 

“I tried to ask, earlier,” he said. “Is there something you can take? To prevent conception? Or, if…”

“There are a few things,” she assured him. “And if all else fails, there are half a dozen kinds of abortifacient plants growing just in the southern quarter.

“I seriously doubt any of the palace women have the expertise to identify or use them,” she went on, seeing the look on his face. “It’s a compound of unworldly virgins, Jinshi-sama.”

Unlike her. Unlike her, twice. Her cheeks did heat a little, but she stared him down despite it. 

“Alright,” he sighed. “I believe you. And I know you’re keeping an eye out.”

“Of course.” 

He opened the door and let her pass through first. At the end of the hall, with an expression of studious blankness, stood Gaoshun, facing away and doing a splendid imitation of a man who had heard nothing of the goings on in yonder bedchamber. 

Maomao couldn’t control her own circulation, despite all the experiments she had ever run. She flushed like an apple, and refused to meet either man’s eyes as they proceeded out of the building together.

In the end, Jinshi’s previous experience was enough to point them to the perpetrator of the attempted drugging, though it was unclear what that person had stood to gain from dosing the Emperor’s consort with a powerful aphrodisiac. They were summarily punished, and Maomao was content to be ignorant of any of the details. 

Gyokuyou and her ladies were solicitous in the extreme when Maomao returned to the Jade Pavillion some hours after she left it, plying her with tea--”Just tea, we’re sure of it, here, it’s important to drink after you’ve been ill, isn’t it?”--and asking after her treatment and symptoms. 

Fever, she told them, dizziness, and some rash behavior. A bit like alcohol, though her reaction had been extreme. She was, she assured them all, none the worse for wear, and her father had checked her over himself. 

All true, in a way. 

When Jinshi had sat her down in front of her father and told him what he suspected she’d been dosed with, the old man had given the pair of them a look of deepest scrutiny, but his discretion as a physician was powerful enough to overrule any untoward reaction. He had certainly guessed what had transpired to ensure his daughter appeared before him in relatively good health, with only a mild temperature and a lingering shiver to evidence her earlier plight. She’d known it when he made her drink a second cup of tea, one very popular with the girls at the Verdigris House and other brothels. But that tea had come without judgment or scorn, merely a fond and concerned smile. Her dad really was the best doctor in the country, and probably the best father, too. 

The Emperor was indeed apprised of their mishap, and after his anger on behalf of Gyokuyou had been suitably satisfied, he’d needled his brother shamelessly for finally having bedded a palace woman, but refusing to make her even his mistress at the very least. Had she not successfully guided him through the Shrine of Choosing? Maomao was practically his little brother’s consort, even if their first encounter had been under such unscrupulous circumstances. Jinshi chose not to pass any of those remarks along to Maomao, and both of them were happier for it. 

Things proceeded, in fact, almost entirely as usual, with the simple caveat that Maomao now knew exactly who her erstwhile employer truly was, and that employer was much less disposed to tease her in certain ways.

In the following weeks, she accompanied  him on a hunt, where an attempt was made on his life. By their combined wits, they survived, of course. In the end, no frogs were harmed in the adventure that ensued.