Chapter 2

Chapter 2

When I was ten, Yanzhou fell. I followed the refugees south, heading toward the Capital.

As we passed outside Qingzhou, we traveled along the river. I saw someone indistinctly bobbing on the surface, drifting with the current.

I jumped into the bone-chilling water and slowly swam back to shore with an unconscious young girl on my back.

Back then, I had no idea the pale girl I had fished out of the river was Her Highness the Crown Princess, lost among the common people.

She and I depended on each other, begging along the road, scraping by for more than three years.

Zhao Xizhen was painfully thin-skinned. If I asked her to knock on a door and beg for food, she could stand there for an hour and still fail to say a word.

So I was always the one who went begging, then came back and shared the food with her.

Once in a while, when vendors closed their stalls, a kindhearted one would give us steamed buns. I would tuck them into my chest while they were still warm and bring them back to her with the greatest care.

She had only taken one bite when, in her haste, she choked.

I hurriedly fed her water.

Her face turned red from coughing. She held my hand and looked at me.

“Ziyou, when we get to the Capital, I’ll treat you to something even better.”

I said, “All right. We’ll both find work and earn lots and lots of silver.”

That was the full extent of my ambition.

Who could have imagined that once we entered the Capital’s territory, she would become the exalted Her Highness the Crown Princess?

Outside the city gates, she knelt for me and petitioned the Son of Heaven, asking him to acknowledge me as his adopted son, bring me into the palace, and bestow upon me the title of Commandery Prince Pingyuan.

At first, Her Highness the Crown Princess treated me very well.

But before long, rumors spread about how the two of us had begged our way to the Capital, and they were impossible to suppress.

The people in the palace did not dare slander the Crown Princess, so they turned their malice on me instead, giving rise to even fouler gossip.

That was the first time Zhao Xizhen lost her temper. She punished quite a few people.

That night, she came to see me.

“Ziyou, you are a Commandery Prince. As long as you carry yourself properly and learn the palace rules well, no one will dare look down on you.”

“Why do I have to stay in the palace?”

I did not want to suffer all those cold stares either.

“They just want to drive me away. Then I’ll leave.”

“For my sake, Ziyou.”

I stared up at her in a daze.

She laid her hand against my cheek, her gaze utterly serious.

“I want you by my side. If you do not leave me, I will never abandon you.”

After saying that, she kissed me gently.

It seemed she had understood before I did that the reason I treated her so well was because I loved her.

Unfortunately, rumors cut deep.

I learned the etiquette and rules, but she grew tired of protecting me. Little by little, both in front of others and behind closed doors, she began to distance herself from me.

As I looked into the eyes of the woman I loved, a bitter ache spread through my chest.

“Zhao Xizhen, I’m leaving.”

A cold voice sounded by my ear.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

I jolted awake from the dream.

Zhao Xizhen was sitting by the bed, applying medicine to the side of my face as she stared at me coldly.

“You are Commandery Prince Pingyuan. Where else do you think you can go?”