Chapter 3

Shen Yunyi served tea to the imperial elders in turn, dignified and demure.

Pei Heng sat in the place of honor, but his eyes kept straying toward the hall doors.

They were halfway through breakfast, and still the familiar figure hadn't appeared.

He set down his jade chopsticks.

“Why isn't Yunzhi here?”

Shen Yunyi's hand paused around her bowl of bird's nest congee. She looked up, genuinely puzzled.

“What do you mean, Your Highness? Yunzhi isn't in the palace.”

He frowned, impatience entering his voice.

“There's no need to pretend. I heard you at the marquis's house, talking about marrying together. Now that she's a Liangdi, she ought to remain quietly in her own quarters. Why hide and refuse to see anyone?”

Shen Yunyi's smile stiffened.

She set down her bowl.

“Your Highness, have you misunderstood? We did speak of marrying on the same day. But I was marrying into your household. Yunzhi was going to Qingyuan Lane.”

“Qingyuan Lane?”

He slammed his teacup down. Scalding tea splashed his sleeve.

He shot to his feet, his tall frame suddenly rigid, his gaze fixed on her.

“What did you say? Whom did she marry?”

Startled by his sudden fury, Shen Yunyi answered, “A distant cousin of our family.”

“Yunzhi asked for the match herself. Mother didn't approve at first, but she insisted. The betrothal gifts arrived the day after they met, and the wedding was arranged very quickly. She did leave our house yesterday, as I did, but she went to Qingyuan Lane.”

Images struck Pei Heng's mind like lightning.

Their encounter at the street corner. Her astonished look. His own smug, mocking words.

She hadn't dressed so prettily to meet him. She hadn't been feigning retreat to lure him closer.

She'd been going to meet another man as a prospective husband!

An indescribable fury rushed to his head, mixed with the humiliation of feeling deceived.

“Good. Very good!”

He was so angry he almost laughed.

09

On the wedding day, lanterns and festive decorations hung across the marquis's main gate. Wedding music filled the air.

I changed into a new lotus-pink wedding gown. Without drawing anyone's attention, I left by the side gate and quietly entered a small sedan draped in red cloth.

Gu Yan made no grand display either. He set out a few tables in the little courtyard and invited some friendly neighbors to celebrate.

By red candlelight, within the warm bed curtains, he held my hand. His eyes burned with a warmth quite unlike his reserved daytime manner.

I'd thought a man so devoted to his studies would have little interest in earthly love.

Who would have guessed that on our wedding night, he would be more impatient than I was?

Afterward, we were inseparable night after night.

We were poor, but this was a warmth I'd never known in either of my lives.

At dawn, he studied hard while I cooked congee by the stove.

At midnight, he still read by lamplight, and I sat beside him mending and washing.

Sometimes, when he stayed up too late, I'd try to persuade him.

“Office and rank aren't everything. If you don't pass, we can go back to the country and rent a few fields. We'll find a way to live.”

He would always put down his brush and turn to me with smiling eyes.

“All right. As you wish.”

On the day the results were posted, I was hanging clothes in the courtyard when gongs and drums erupted outside.

Gu Yan came home surrounded by a crowd, a great scarlet flower pinned to his chest. Just as I'd heard in my previous life, he'd taken first place on his first attempt.

I stood in the doorway, watching him amid the well-wishers, unable to hide the joy on his handsome face. Warmth spread through me too.

But less than an hour later, a group of fierce-looking officers kicked our gate open.

“Gu Yan! You've been accused of cheating in the examinations. Come with us!”

His expression changed at once, and he stepped in front of me.

Without another word, they bound him and marched him toward the Ministry of Justice's prison.

I ran after them, catching only the edge of his sleeve.

The Ministry of Justice's prison—that was Pei Heng's territory.

Who else could it be?

Frantic, I ran for the crown prince's residence.

The gatekeeper recognized me, but looked troubled.

“Third Miss Shen.”

“I need to see the crown princess!”

I was almost screaming through my tears.

“Please, announce me. I'm Shen Yunzhi!”

At last, I was taken to a side hall.

Shen Yunyi sat in the place of honor, dressed with all the dignity and splendor of a crown princess.

But instead of the happiness I'd imagined she would find in marrying the man she loved, there were faint shadows beneath her eyes. She looked exhausted.

“Yunzhi? What's happened to you?”

She stared at my disheveled hair and eyes swollen from crying.

I fell to my knees and clutched her skirt.

“Sister, please save Gu Yan! He's been falsely accused of cheating. They've taken him to prison!”

“I need to see His Highness. Please let me see him.”

Shen Yunyi hurried to help me up, but her face filled with distress and uncertainty.

“Get up first, Yunzhi. His Highness hasn't returned to the residence these past few days. I haven't seen him either.”

I froze.

10

On the third day, I finally saw Pei Heng again, in that same small courtyard.

His eyes were bloodshot. His once immaculate robe was disordered, and a dark, frenzied air hung about him.

None of his former smug assurance remained.

“You've come.”

He looked up at me, his voice hoarse.

I stayed where I was.

“Your Highness, please let Gu Yan go.”

“Let him go?”

His quiet laugh sent a chill down my spine.

“Yunzhi, agree to one thing, and I'll release him at once.”

“What?”

“Divorce Gu Yan.”

He rose and came toward me, step by step.

“I can marry you as my secondary consort. If that feels beneath you, once I ascend the throne, I can make you empress.”

It was the most absurd thing I'd ever heard.

“Have you gone mad, Your Highness?”

“Yes, I've gone mad!”

He roared and seized my shoulders so hard it felt as though he would crush the bones.

“I thought that if I married Shen Yunyi, everything would fall back into place. But I was wrong. Whenever I look at her, all I see is you!”

Pain and frenzy churned in his eyes.

“I fell in love with Yunyi at first sight when we were children. After I was sent to the Cold Palace, I thought she was the one bringing me food. So of course I believed I loved her. When she died in our last life, I hated you to the marrow.”

“But this time, I've put everything right. I have the ending I wanted. Why do I feel so empty it frightens me?”

“I understand now.”

He pressed his forehead to mine, his breath hot.

“You're the one I love, Shen Yunzhi.”

I shoved him away and retreated two steps, trembling all over.

“Stop talking nonsense, Your Highness. You've married my eldest sister, and I've married someone else. I don't love you.”

“You don't?”

His gaze turned savage.

“Then I'll make you love me.”

He lunged, clamping one hand around my wrist and roughly pulling at my clothes with the other.

The sound of tearing fabric was painfully sharp in the quiet courtyard.

“Let go!”

I struggled desperately. From the corner of my eye, I saw a celadon vase at the edge of the table.

In my panic, I knocked it over and snatched up the sharpest shard.

Clutching it, I held it to his neck.

“Don't touch me, or...”

I stared at him, my voice shaking.

He laughed. Instead of retreating, he stepped closer.

“Or what? You'll kill me?”

“If it's come to this, why don't you? We can start all over again.”

Looking at him, I suddenly felt terribly tired.

I turned the shard in my hand and drew it across my own neck.

Bright red blood ran down my pale skin.

The pain darkened my vision, but I bit my lip and forced myself to remain standing.

The madness on Pei Heng's face froze, then gave way to bloodless horror.

“Yunzhi!”

He didn't dare move. He could only watch the blood stain my collar red.

Only then did he understand that I would truly rather die than yield to him.

“You win.”

His hands fell, his voice frighteningly hoarse.

“Someone! Summon the imperial physician!”

I was kept under house arrest in that courtyard.

After the physician dressed my wound, the guards at the gate increased tenfold.

Pei Heng didn't come to see me again. Every day, however, he sent the finest medicines and food.

I knew he would neither let me die nor let me go.

11

On the twelfth day of my confinement, the courtyard gate finally opened.

It wasn't Pei Heng who came, but two expressionless eunuchs, ordering me to attend the emperor at once.

I touched the still-aching scar on my neck and followed them through gate after palace gate.

In the imperial study, the emperor sat behind his desk, looking at the memorials spread before him. His expression was dark and unreadable.

“I know what the crown prince has been doing,” he said, his tone betraying neither pleasure nor anger. “I have already reprimanded him.”

I knelt with my back straight and said nothing.

He laid down his vermilion brush. His gaze rested on the bandage at my neck.

“As for Gu Yan, I have examined him in person. His learning is indeed exceptional. I have confirmed him as this examination's top scholar.”

I looked up sharply, my heart pounding.

“However...”

His words turned, and an emperor's coldness entered his eyes.

“Though the charge of cheating has been cleared, his conduct remains a subject of discussion. It would not be fitting for him to hold office in the capital. I value his talents, so I have appointed him deputy magistrate of a distant county. He is to take up his post at once.”

“Since you are his wife, I may allow you to remain together. Will you follow him to that harsh, cold place, or stay in the capital?”

He studied me as though watching an interesting game of chess.

“If you wish to stay, I can arrange a marriage for you into a branch of the imperial clan. You would want for nothing for the rest of your life.”

I bowed until my forehead touched the cold golden tiles.

“I wish to follow my husband to Lingnan. To the ends of the earth, in life or death, I will not leave him.”

The emperor didn't seem surprised. He merely waved a sleeve.

“Very well. You may withdraw.”

When I left the palace, the setting sun was fading.

A familiar figure waited outside the gate, his hands clasped behind his back.

Gu Yan wore a new official's robe, clean and neat.

He turned. At the sight of the wound on my neck, his eyes reddened, but he asked no questions.

I couldn't hold myself together any longer. I ran into his arms and sobbed against his chest.

“I'm sorry. I've dragged you into this. You earned first place, and now you have to go so far away because of me.”

“Foolish girl.”

He stopped me, holding me tightly, his palm gently patting my back.

“What does the capital's splendor mean without you beside me?”

We went home and packed only two changes of coarse cloth clothing.

Before dawn the next day, a simple donkey cart carried us out through the city gate.

High on the gate tower, Pei Heng stood in his everyday princely robes.

Beside him, the emperor clasped his hands behind his back and spoke coldly.

“Look what you've done. Over a woman, you've estranged yourself from your wife and given the world cause for gossip.”

“If the crown princess hadn't told me everything, who knows what else you might have done?”

Pei Heng said nothing. His nails dug into his palms until blood seeped out.

“You are confined to the Eastern Palace. If you dare set so much as half a step beyond the capital in the next ten years, I will strip you of your title.”

The emperor swept away.

Alone in the wind, Pei Heng watched the donkey cart recede into the distance.

12

In the end, the emperor did value talent. The supposedly distant place was merely a little farther from the capital.

It wasn't some impoverished, forbidding mountain wilderness.

There, Gu Yan was free to put his abilities to use. He repaired irrigation works, reformed the local administration, and encouraged farming and sericulture.

In only three years, the once barren district was becoming a place where people could live and work in peace.

Our own life, like the loquat tree in the courtyard, grew greener by the day.

In our second year there, I gave birth to a daughter. Delicate and lovely, she looked remarkably like Gu Yan.

Letters came often from the capital, most from my eldest sister, Shen Yunyi.

Her handwriting was as graceful as ever, but its old radiant freedom was gone. A faint weariness lingered between the lines.

She apologized. She said she should never have coveted what wasn't hers and taken the place as crown princess that should have belonged to me.

Now she and Pei Heng were merely strangers sharing a bed, each lost in a separate dream.

He was busy with affairs of state and usually slept in his study or duty room. Even when he returned to their bedchamber, they kept to separate corners and faced each other in silence.

“Yunzhi, I've come to understand too,” she wrote.

“Rather than wait for him to change his heart, I'd do better to stay with the children. At least that gives me something to look forward to.”

I ran my fingers over the slightly blurred ink, my heart full of tangled feelings.

I wrote back, sending preserved fruit and coarse kudzu cloth from Lingnan. She sent silks and books from the capital.

Until one day, all I received was a thin sheet of paper.

It read:

“Yunzhi, don't reply anymore. Don't send anything either. It all ends up in someone else's hands. Take care of yourself. Don't worry about me.”

My heart sank.

She didn't need to say more. “Someone else” could only mean Pei Heng.

From then on, all contact between me and the capital ceased.

Time slipped by. Ten years passed in a breath.

Through sound administration and a growing reputation, Gu Yan rose from deputy county magistrate to prefect, then became a high official governing a region.

Upright and incorruptible, he was loved by the people.

The young man who had once topped the examinations had finally become the man he wanted to be, here in the south, far from the center of power.

And I, once the Shen family's third daughter, had become the mistress of the Gu household.

We had sons and daughters. Our life was peaceful and steady, like the river flowing quietly past our door.

The scraps of news that reached us from the capital grew ever more troubled.

They said Crown Prince Pei Heng's erratic conduct had cost him the emperor's favor time and again. His former glory was long gone.

The other princes contended openly and in secret. The struggle over the succession had become fierce.

Completely isolated, Pei Heng was trapped in the Eastern Palace, crown prince in name alone. He could rarely even step outside.

I stood in the courtyard, watching Gu Yan after his return from court. In his everyday robes, he looked radiant as he cheerfully played with the children.

Evening light rested on his shoulders, warm and steady.

The wind passed. Loquat leaves rustled.

In this life, I had finally heard the beat of my own heart and found the place where I truly belonged.