chapter 3
Shock flashed through me.
At this hour in my previous life, I truly had been unconscious in the side room.
I looked up. Chu Heng was staring at me, suspicion and disbelief twisting his face.
The moment our eyes met, I understood.
He had been reborn too.
He leaned closer, his mouth curling into a sneer. “Shen Heng, you truly cannot bear to be without a man. It makes no difference whom you meet—you have to seduce him, don’t you?”
I suppressed the urge to slap him and arranged my face into blank confusion.
“I do not understand what you mean, my lord. I fell into the lake, and His Highness was kind enough to save me.”
He searched my face as though trying to decide whether I was lying.
At last, he snorted. “You think Prince Chen would ever want you? Look at who you are. You think you’re worthy of him?”
My nails bit into my wet sleeves and pressed into my palms.
I had only just returned to this life. I had no plan and no protection. Openly turning against him now would do me no good.
I lowered my gaze. “I truly do not know what you mean. My clothes are soaked. I must return and change.”
Raised voices sounded in the distance. The same young men were coming back, talking as they walked.
“What a waste. That dose was strong. Who knows which lucky bastard got to—”
The speaker spotted Chu Heng and fell abruptly silent.
The men exchanged looks, their expressions almost comical.
While Chu Heng’s attention was elsewhere, I wrenched my arm free, stepped back, and gave him a faultless curtsy.
“There are unrelated men present, my lord. I will take my leave.”
I turned and hurried away without waiting for his answer.
Behind me, Chu Heng demanded through clenched teeth, “What did you mean just now?”
Young Master Zhou gave an awkward laugh. “Don’t be angry, my lord. We only wanted to help you vent your temper. You were always saying that girl in your household had no shame, so we thought we’d teach her a lesson—”
“Who told you to touch her?” Chu Heng’s voice rose sharply.
“But weren’t you the one who kept telling us what she was like—”
“Shut up!”
My sister was waiting outside our rooms when I returned.
The moment she saw my drenched clothes and the man’s robe around my shoulders, all color left her face.
“Heng’er, what happened? Who hurt you?”
She pulled me into her arms. I clung to her, breathing in the familiar scent of soapberries on her clothes, and at last my tears began to fall.
In our previous life, everyone in the marquis’s manor had tormented us in one way or another.
Before the entire household, the marchioness had called us a pair of seductresses. She said one sister served the father and the other served the son, and neither possessed a shred of shame.
My sister had not yet turned thirty when she died.
Holding my hand at the end, she had whispered, *Heng’er, I failed you. I should never have brought you into this manor.*
But I was the one who had failed her.
If not for keeping me alive, she would never have become the marquis’s concubine.
I had been six that year, and she fifteen. Our parents contracted an epidemic at their post and died within three days of each other. Our clansmen seized the family property, called daughters a burden, and threw us out.
I still remembered my sister wearing a married woman’s hairstyle that day. She crouched before me, wiped away my tears, and smiled.
“Don’t cry, Heng’er. Your sister is going to live with a wealthy family. You will have good things to eat too.”
But the marchioness was viciously jealous. My sister had suffered every year she spent in the manor.
Over the course of a decade, I watched a bright, lovely girl wither into a sallow concubine. She never complained in front of me. Yet I saw the bruises on her body. I saw her sitting alone by the window late at night, weeping. I saw her limp after the marchioness forced her to kneel for hours.
There was nothing I could do. I could only make myself small and cautious, trying not to add to her burdens. I had planned to marry once I came of age and take her away with me.
In the end, I had brought a catastrophe upon her instead.