The air in the palace that morning was heavy, though not with rain. It was Madam Yun's sighs that weighed down the corridors. Every step I took, she followed with soft but steady warnings, her voice sharp yet strangely maternal.
"Your Highness, are you truly certain of this? The marketplace is hardly a place for one of your status. Dust, noise, the unwashed crowd… it is no setting for a Princess Consort."
I turned back to her with a small smile, the hem of my pale blue robe brushing against polished tiles. "And yet it is the setting where I was raised. You forget, Madam Yun, that before I became wife to a prince, I was simply Chyou. I breathed the air of the market, ate the food that was hawked on every corner, listened to the haggling and the laughter. It is the first place where I felt alive. Do you expect me to abandon it now, as though I had never been there at all?"
Her brows knitted tightly, and she pressed her hands together in front of her. "I expect you to remember who you are now, my lady. You are no longer the daughter of a merchant, but the Princess Consort of His Highness, the Third Prince. You carry his honor, his reputation, his household. The eyes of the city will follow you."
"They followed me before," I replied, a hint of defiance edging into my tone. "When my father was called the Lucky Commoner, the villagers stared, some with admiration, some with envy. I survived their stares then. I will survive them now."
I did not tell her the truth that it was not just survival I sought, but something else entirely. In the palace, silence clung to me like a second robe. Conversations were measured, glances concealed layers of meaning I could not untangle, and every smile hid a blade behind it. In the market, things were simple. Straightforward. A woman selling buns sold them with laughter, and a man shouting about his fish had no other intention than to empty his basket by sundown.
How I longed for that world again.
And so, after much resistance from Madam Yun, and after she ordered three guards to trail behind us at a distance (her compromise, though she still grumbled), we set out through the gates.
I had imagined slipping into the streets like a shadow, blending in with the crowd as I once had. Perhaps no one would notice me; perhaps I could pretend, even for a little while, that I was just a merchant's daughter again, bargaining for silk or candied plums.
But the moment my embroidered shoes touched the packed earth of the market lane, I realized my mistake.
The street stilled.
It was as though a sudden wind had blown out the noise. A boy's laughter cut short; a woman's call to her husband faded mid-syllable. Slowly, one by one, heads turned, and then bodies bent. In waves, like reeds in a storm, the crowd lowered themselves. Farmers, merchants, peddlers, beggars all pressed their foreheads close to the ground.
"Your Highness," voices whispered, as though the title itself might burn their tongues if spoken too loudly. "Princess Consort."
I froze. My pulse quickened. This was not how I remembered the market. Not how it was supposed to be.
The bright stalls of woven baskets and dyed silks, the fishmongers shouting prices, the women gossiping over vegetables all of it was silent now. No chatter, no barter, no warmth. Only fear. Respect, perhaps. But fear most of all.
"Rise," I whispered, my voice too soft. I cleared my throat and tried again, louder this time. "Please, rise. There is no need for this."
But they did not move until the guards stepped forward and barked the order. Slowly, they lifted their heads, but their eyes did not meet mine. They flickered instead to the ground, to their wares, to anywhere but my face.
I tried to smile, to ease the air. "I only wished to walk among you," I said, forcing cheer into my tone. "To see what you are selling today. Perhaps even to buy something. Do you have candied plums? Or fresh pears?"
No answer came.
A woman shoved her tray of pears forward so quickly that two rolled to the ground. She did not look at me, did not dare smile or speak, only held her breath until one of the guards picked the fruit up and placed it back.
I reached out and took one, placing a coin on her tray. "Thank you," I said softly.
She bowed so low her nose nearly touched the wood.
The pear was sweet, crisp against my teeth, but it tasted nothing like it used to.
As I walked further, the silence followed me, suffocating. Every stall I passed, every seller bent low, every child tugged sharply back by a fearful mother's hand. They did not see me as one of them anymore. Not Chyou, daughter of Chengguang Māo. Not the girl who once ran through these very lanes, laughing with her father as he bought silk and spices.
They saw only the Third Prince's wife. The Princess Consort.
A title had built a wall between me and the people I thought I still belonged to.
Beside me, Madam Yun's lips curved faintly, though it was not quite a smile. "Do you see now, my lady? This is no longer your world. A bird cannot return to the nest once it has been gilded."
Her words stung, though I said nothing. I kept walking, kept pretending, kept hoping to find some scrap of warmth.
It was then that I heard it two voices, hushed, but not hushed enough.
"She looks… ordinary," one man whispered to another. "Not like a noble lady at all. A commoner, they say."
"Shh, fool!" the second hissed. "Do you want your tongue cut out? She may look common, but she holds power. Remember whose son she married."
The first muttered something else, but their words were lost in the shuffle of feet. Still, it sank into me like a thorn. Ordinary. Commoner.
I turned a corner, and there the market opened into the square. Lanterns swayed above, and a storyteller's stage stood empty. How many times had I stood there as a child, craning my neck to hear a tale of generals and wandering sages? For a heartbeat, I almost saw myself again, small and eager, my father's hand on my shoulder.
But the square was silent now, waiting, watching.
I could not bear it any longer.
"Come," I said to Madam Yun, my voice breaking slightly. "We are going back."
She bowed, relief flooding her face, and gestured for the guards to clear the way.
As we walked back through the bowed crowd, I held the half-eaten pear tightly in my hand. It was not sweet anymore. Only bitter.
That night, I wrote to my father.
I told him of the silence, of the way the market stilled at my arrival, of the eyes that dared not meet mine. I told him how the pear tasted different now, not because it had changed, but because I had.
"Father," I wrote, "you once told me that wealth changes a man's fortune, but never his heart. Yet I wonder now,does power change the heart? Or does it only change the way others see it? I thought myself still a daughter of the market, but perhaps I am not. Perhaps I can never be again."
The ink bled slightly where my tears had fallen.
I sealed the letter and gave it to a servant, though I doubted it would ease my father's heart any more than it had eased mine.
That night, I lay awake, staring at the embroidered canopy above me. For the first time since entering the palace, I understood the true meaning of a cage.