Chapter 5
The soldiers stepped forward to take my sister away.
Seeing that Grandmother would not care whether she lived or died, she immediately turned to Mother.
“Mother! I am your own flesh and blood. If all the Song women were being enslaved together, I could accept it.
“But every one of you has been pardoned while I alone am to be sold. It isn’t fair!
“Can you truly bear to watch your daughter suffer like this?”
Mother had always respected Grandmother, but Song Huaiyu was still her biological daughter. The instant I saw her wavering, I cut in.
“Eldest Sister will not be exiled.
“She is now a slave who can be bought and sold.”
I looked at Xie Yu. “Your Highness, may I buy a servant to keep beside me?”
The things Song Huaiyu had said before my death in my last life had been strange—”strong female lead,” “sacrificing relatives,” “beautiful, powerful, and tragic.”
I had not understood everything, but I could guess that she wanted every close member of the Song family dead so she could fashion herself into a tragic, fiercely independent heroine.
There was nothing wrong with standing strong against adversity. What was wrong was climbing over the corpses of those who loved her.
If Mother softened and brought her home, she might well destroy the entire family and lead us to the same ruin as before.
I could not let her succeed.
Xie Yu was still intrigued by me. At my request, he agreed without much thought.
He had a confidant give me two taels of silver. “That is enough to buy one slave.”
My sister reacted as if the sum itself were an insult. “Am I worth only two taels to you, Your Highness?”
“Even two is too much.”
I took back one silver ingot and handed the soldier a single tael. “Prince Chen’s household will buy this convict.”
Xie Yu behaved outrageously, but the emperor doted on him. The officers sent to confiscate our estate therefore treated Prince Chen with great respect.
The soldier truly accepted the tael and replied formally, “Regarding the Song family, Your Highness should enter the palace and make your case to His Majesty in person.”
Xie Yu drew me into his arms. “Naturally, I must protect my beauty’s family.”
The sharp scent of sandalwood clinging to him made my head ache.
Prince Chen was not even convincing in his act. What drunken wastrel carried such an austere fragrance?
As the slave I had bought, Song Huaiyu entered Prince Chen’s residence with me.
Xie Yu did not go to the palace at once. He was so indolent that he appeared not to care about an imperial edict.
No wonder outsiders called him absurd.
Once we entered, he released my hand and told me to choose a courtyard in the inner residence for myself.
He had not yet married, though stories of his affairs had circulated for years.
He was forever accused of molesting village girls or teasing female musicians while drunk.
He liked to cover a beauty’s face with a red bridal veil and carry her grandly into his residence.
After a night of pleasure, he would drive her out the next morning.
That was how Prince Chen earned his reputation as a lustful man who used women and cast them aside.
Strangely, none of the common women he supposedly abducted ever pursued the matter afterward.
Their faces were covered when they entered, so outsiders had no idea who had actually been carried inside.
“His Highness has only one secondary consort,” said Nanny Tao, who led me into the inner residence.
“She is the chancellor’s second daughter. Other women are allowed to spend only one night here and are sent back the way they came the following morning.
“Be obedient tonight, Miss. Whether you leave or stay tomorrow will depend on what you can do.”
Xie Yu appeared to collect beauties. In truth, those women, like me today, were props in his public performance. He carried them frivolously into the residence and sent them home at dawn.
The secondary consort could remain because she came from an influential family.
I had no family standing at all and was the daughter of convicted traitors besides.
As Nanny Tao said, if I possessed no special “ability,” I would be sent home the next day like all the others.
The Song family had fallen. If I was “returned,” I could never raise the family back up by myself.
As anxiety gnawed at me, Song Huaiyu sneered beside me.
“It was me His Highness fell for at first sight. When I refused him, he settled for you.
“Those other women he abandoned were probably the same sort of shameless temptresses as you.”
She adjusted her hair. “Men surely prefer a fierce, independent woman like me…”
What an astonishing creature she was. She preached independence while viciously hunting down women with no choices, all to prove her own purity.
Before I could answer, Nanny Tao turned and slapped her.
“This residence has strict rules. What slave dares interrupt her master?”
Clutching her swollen right cheek, my sister stared in fury and disbelief.
“You dare strike me? I am the eldest young lady of a general’s household! My grandfather was the Grand General Who Pacifies the Realm! My ancestors are honored in the imperial temple!”
Nanny Tao laughed. “I heard the eldest Song daughter boasts that she relies on no man. Why are you suddenly so eager to borrow glory from a general’s household?”
Song Huaiyu flushed, silenced by her own logic.
She tried to fight back, but two guards twisted her arms behind her and kicked her knees out from under her.
“A newly purchased slave belongs in the rear courtyard for proper discipline!”
At Nanny Tao’s command, the guards dragged her away.
I watched coldly and did not plead for her.
My sister screamed in rage,
“Song Huaixin, I will be waiting for the day Xie Yu throws you into the street!”