Chapter 17
Edward Quan ·
I watched his back vanish down the long corridor. My smile grew colder.
We’d see?
Fine.
We had plenty of time.
Just then, a young eunuch approached quietly, slipped a note into my hand in a flash, and withdrew into the crowd.
I opened it.
Unfamiliar handwriting, graceful and free.
[The enemy of my enemy… is my friend.]
A brief signature beneath.
[Third Prince, Zhao Kai.]
13
Zhao Kai.
The name stirred almost nothing in my memory.
In the previous life, he had been nearly invisible in the palace. Gentle, courteous, neither competing nor contending.
Immersed in poetry, calligraphy, and painting, apparently uninterested in politics.
Of all the princes, he seemed the least threatening and least noticeable.
After Zhao Yi’s accession, he received an idle princely title and took his family to his fief, almost disappearing from public view.
I had never regarded him as a rival for the succession.
Never truly looked at him.
Now the thin note felt like a great stone thrown into the still lake of my heart.
The enemy of my enemy.
Who did he mean?
The enemy was Zhao Yi.
The friend—him?
Me?
Or us?
When had he begun thinking this?
Had my rebirth disturbed the supposedly settled board and shown him an opening?
Or had ambition long hidden beneath his uncompetitive exterior, unwilling to remain beneath others?
I clenched the note. My palm was cold and damp.
If even Zhao Kai secretly coveted that position, how many secrets and hungry wolves in this palace, this capital, had I never seen?
Suddenly, revenge seemed more complicated than I had imagined.
Far more dangerous too.
I held the note to a candle and watched it catch, curl, and turn to ash.
Enemy or friend, I couldn’t act rashly.
On this board, I could trust only one person completely.
Zhao Heng.
I had to tell him.
That night, I returned to the abandoned western temple.
He was there already, as though expecting me.
A steaming pot of tea stood on the table. Its gentle fragrance spread through the quiet.
He looked up steadily.
“Has something happened?”
He went straight to the point.
I nodded and told him every detail of the day’s palace events and Zhao Kai’s note.
He remained silent for a long time.
His slender fingers tapped slowly on the table. The dull sounds in the chamber made the air heavier.
At last, he spoke softly.
“My third brother…”
His voice held something I couldn’t distinguish—coldness, mockery, or grief.
“He’s cleverer than you’ve seen.”
“Crueler than anyone thinks.”
He looked at me, his eyes seemingly bottomless.
“Do you know who found me after my fall?”
I shook my head.
“Him.”
He spoke slowly.
“He happened to pass by. Found me unconscious and badly injured. Brought me back himself.”
“He overruled everyone and insisted on the finest imperial physician.”
“When everyone, even Father, thought I wouldn’t survive, he sat beside my bed three days and nights.”
He smiled, colder than ice.
“The world says we’re devoted brothers.”
“What it doesn’t know…”
His voice lowered, eerily calm.
“His people tampered with my horse.”
“They also poured oil on the mountain road I used every day.”
My heart dropped heavily.
Cold rushed from my feet to my head.
I couldn’t believe what I heard.
That gentle, modest, apparently unambitious prince had caused the fall that disabled Zhao Heng’s legs?
“Why?”