Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Never leave Xiao Yu.

I had indeed said those words.

When Xiao Yu was attacked on his journey south, I fell off the cliff with him. I had only broken one arm, but his injuries were far worse than mine. He could no longer walk.

I found some wood, tore my clothes into strips, and used my teeth and my one remaining arm to tie the knots, barely managing to make the planks into a stretcher. Xiao Yu leaned against a large rock for support and watched me in silence for a long while before saying, “Idiot. You should kill me while you have the chance.”

“I don’t want to kill you.”

“Don’t you hate me?”

“Of course I do. But I don’t want to kill you. The girl you grew up with was taken from you for no reason, and as the crown prince, you still had to swallow your anger. If I were you, I wouldn’t have been able to let it go either. Besides…”

Besides, Lian Cheng was dead, while I was still alive.

Xiao Yu had wanted to kill me, but in the end, he had not.

That night, Xiao Yu developed a high fever. He could no longer swallow the roasted rabbit or the wild fruit I had picked in the mountains. With no other choice, I cut my finger and smeared the fresh blood on his lips for him to suck.

Perhaps the smell of blood was too strong. After only a few mouthfuls, he stopped drinking. Instead, he seized my wrist and murmured, “An Ran… An Ran…”

I did not know where a dying man found such strength. I could not pull free, so I simply took his hand and answered him again and again, “It’s me. Rest easy, Your Highness. I will bring you back to the palace.”

“Don’t want to go back… Don’t leave…”

“I won’t leave.”

“Never leave.”

When Xiao Yu stood high above everyone else, I had never dared look him directly in the eye.

But now, both his legs were broken. He was covered in countless scrapes, his face smeared with mud, blood, and sweat. Without his fine robes, with his hair a mess and his face filthy, he looked like a beggar. And yet I dared to look at him.

Perhaps, in that moment, I pitied him for falling from moon in the sky to mud on the ground. Or perhaps I felt that life truly had not been easy for this long-suffering crown prince. In any case, after hesitating for a moment, I finally answered him.

“All right. I will never leave.”

I repeated it more than a dozen times before he seemed to hear me. He mumbled, “You said it yourself,” and then fell completely unconscious.

That was the only time Xiao Yu ever lowered his guard in front of me. I took it only as feverish delirium. After all, when dawn came the next day and he woke, he was once again that crown prince who looked at me with cold eyes.

Looking back on it now, those events felt so distant they might as well have belonged to a previous life. I never expected Xiao Yu to still remember. I thought he had forgotten it all.

I had said I would never leave.

Counting it out, it had already been eight years.

Eight years without family or friends, lowly as a speck of dust, met with cold eyes day after day.

Xiao Yu refused to let me leave the palace.

I served at his side as I had before, and I never mentioned leaving again.

By day, everything about me seemed normal. Compared with before, I even appeared a little more cheerful.

Only when night fell and all was quiet could I not stop myself from hurting my own body.

The dagger cut across my arm again and again. I watched, expressionless, as bright red liquid welled out, and only then did I feel I could still count as alive.

Sometimes I would think of Xie Lin’an, but only for a moment, and then I would let it go.

I no longer cared about the outside world. I cared about nothing at all.

I ate less and less, and the wounds on my body grew more and more numerous. Once, while I was helping Xiao Yu change his clothes, he frowned and caught my wrist.

“What is wrong with you? How did you get this thin? You serve before Us. Others will think We have been mistreating you.”

I withdrew my wrist and answered obediently, “Perhaps it is because the weather is hot. It will be better once winter comes.”