Chapter 1
Wang Xi was my brother in name.
His face was flushed now, his brand-new crimson official’s robe crumpled into a heap of wrinkles.
“What are you looking at?” His voice was husky, with a cold undertone.
“My brother, so cold on the outside and so warm underneath.” My fingertips traced his brows and eyes.
His eyes darkened. Catching my wandering hand, he sighed. “Our guest is waiting.”
He began to rise.
“Brother…” I wrapped my arms around his waist.
“Stop it. I have business to attend to.”
He drew my hands away, stood up, and straightened his robe.
An instant later, there he stood in the half-lit dusk, once again the cool, upright gentleman.
“The guest is the Zhao family’s daughter—my future sister-in-law, isn’t she?”
His eyes darkened in the dusk. His handsome, thin lips tightened, but he did not answer.
“So your important business is keeping her company?”
“Yaoyao…” He sighed very softly.
“Is she prettier than I am?” I needled him.
He rubbed the space between his brows. “You’re different.”
I gave an idle smile. “Different, yes. One can stand in the open. The other has to stay out of sight…”
“Don’t be like this, Yaoyao.” He smoothed the disordered hair at my temples.
He always sidestepped the matter with a few words.
I ducked away from his hand. “I want to meet her.”
He frowned. The gentleness in his voice cooled. “Yaoyao, don’t provoke her. Be good.”
“And if I insist?”
“Stop making trouble. I’ll spend time with you on my next day off.”
He coaxed me as though I were a pet kept for his amusement.
Wang Xi left without lingering, clearheaded and composed.
The moment he was gone, I tore the tassel from my ear and flung it to the floor.
Wang Xi thought I loved him, loved him enough to willingly debase myself and fall with him. How could such a gifted young man, already four or five years into a steadily rising court career, be so easy to fool? He did not know that I only wanted to use him to take revenge on his father.
My elder sister and I had only each other. When Wang Xi’s father, Wang Yun, adopted us, we thought him a good man and were deeply grateful.
But kindness had nothing to do with it. He meant to use his foster daughters, supposedly young ladies of a distinguished family, to bribe officials and climb swiftly through the ranks.
He offered my sister to a lecherous, vicious eunuch. She died a violent death.
He was too powerful. I could neither bring a case against him nor kill him. I could not even protect myself.
That was when Wang Xi appeared.
I met him the day after my sister died. Before then, he had been serving as an official in Changchuan.
“So you’re the sister my father adopted.”
He stood at the top of a high flight of steps, looking down at me with a gentle, untroubled smile.
Snow swirled through the courtyard. In his tall cap and broad-sashed robe, he looked every inch the scholar.
A lotus rising unstained from the mud—that was Wang Xi.
Wang Yun was filthy and hypocritical, yet he loved his son more than life.
He kept his true face hidden from Wang Xi and never let him take part in any of his sordid dealings.
He wanted his son to spend his whole life pure and blameless, standing high above the world, untouched by its dust.
How could I allow that?
“Brother, I’m Yaoyao.” I smiled up at the man on the steps, my eyes curving with innocent delight.