Chapter 4
Chapter 4
The palace banquet ended, and we returned to the Eastern Palace.
I followed the Crown Prince into his bedchamber.
“Close the doors. All of you, withdraw,” he said to the attendants.
The candlewick trembled faintly.
Outside the window, the snow was piling higher.
He stood before me and held out his hand.
I froze for a moment.
Then I understood, knelt down, and began to undress him.
“Why are you shaking?”
His voice was calm, yet it carried the crushing weight of a man who held life and death in his hands.
“My hands are cold.”
“Are they?”
He stared deeply at me.
“The moment you leave him, my beloved consort’s hands turn cold?”
I lowered my head and did not answer.
When my fingers touched the jade belt hook at his waist, he hooked one arm around me and lifted me off the floor.
With an arm around my waist, he carried me toward the bed.
Then he threw me down onto it.
Weightless for an instant, I reached out and tore down the bed curtains.
His breathing was far too close.
I could not stop myself from shrinking away in disgust.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked.
“Your Highness, whatever you want to do, do it quickly and leave.”
I stopped dodging.
I looked straight into his dark eyes and said, word by word, “In any case, I never felt anything to begin with.”
A burning pain exploded across my face.
He had slapped me.
“I truly cannot bear to hit you.”
He stroked my cheek as it slowly swelled and reddened.
“But you are far too disobedient.
“What courage did he give you that you dare defy me at the risk of your life?
“Are you not afraid of the nine familial exterminations?”
Hearing that, I laughed.
“Your Highness, my eldest sister is also included among those nine kinship groups.”
He paused.
Then his lips curved as well.
The Crown Prince summoned more than a dozen maids and eunuchs into the hall.
“My beloved consort.”
He helped me up with a gentle hand.
“Go stand in the center of the hall.”
I rose and stood barefoot beneath the candlelight.
“Take off your clothes yourself.”
He said, “Keep taking them off until I tell you to stop.”
At those words, several eunuchs lowered their heads even further.
I stared at him.
One garment.
Then another.
His gaze darkened by degrees.
But even when there was nothing left to remove, he still did not tell me to stop.
Cold wind poured in.
I could not help shivering.
After a long while, he asked, “Did he touch you?”
I wrapped my arms around myself.
Still, I did not speak.
He gave a cold laugh and said to the maids, “There is something filthy on your Lady. Search every inch of her and find it for me.”
The people of the deep palace had their vicious methods.
Especially when it came to testing a woman’s chastity.
They could turn a woman from a human being into livestock.
But that was something I had lost long ago.
He only wanted to humiliate me.
The pain drove tears from my eyes.
I collapsed to my knees, cold sweat pouring out of me.
“Why is my beloved consort crying?”
His expression remained as mild as ever.
Bit by bit, he took in every trace of humiliation on my face.
I could not endure the pain and struggled again and again.
He ordered them to bind my hands and feet.
Like an animal, I was suspended there for their viewing.
Only when my blood ran down and seeped into the cracks between the patterned square tiles of the Eastern Palace did he finally lift his eyes and signal for everyone to leave.
The hall doors closed.
He walked up to me and loosened the ropes.
Drained of strength, I toppled forward and sprawled across the floor.
He raised his foot and ground my face into the tiles.
“Did he touch you?”
He repeated the question.
His voice was dark and eerie, like a bottomless pool.
But I said nothing.
I had no strength left.
The Crown Prince crouched down and studied my expression.
After a long while, he suddenly laughed.
“He did not touch you.
“He actually did not touch you!”
The Crown Prince laughed louder and louder.
In the end, he slumped onto the floor and reached out to brush away the loose strands of hair plastered to my forehead by cold sweat.
“He thinks you are dirty.”
No.
That was not true.
Xie Liuzheng did not touch me because I was afraid.
I would curl up in his arms.
But every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was the Crown Prince’s venomous, snake-like face.
I was so afraid that even when Xie Liuzheng touched me, I would flinch by instinct.
But the Crown Prince would never understand any of that.
The Crown Prince carried me onto the bed and asked with concern, “Are you cold?”
My whole body was trembling.
“Good. You should be cold.”
As if soothing me, he stroked my hair.
“When you are cold, it will not hurt as much.”
He drew a sharp little knife from inside his robe.
“What is Your Highness going to do?”
“Has my beloved consort heard of tattooing punishment?”
I shrank back.
He seized my ankle in a tight grip.
“Be good. Do not move.”
His blade pressed coldly against my thigh.
“Tell me, if I carve my character here, what reaction will he have when he sees it in the future?”
He lifted his head.
His deep, peach-blossom eyes fixed on me.
“I am not a criminal.”
“I have done nothing wrong.”
I took a deep breath and tried to slow the fear rising inside me.
“What Your Highness is doing violates the law.”
“What law is needed to deal with one’s own wife?”
He set the tip of the knife in place.
“Besides, you have no sense of shame.”
I fainted from the pain.
The wound became infected.
Fever came again and again.
It took a full week before I woke.
The moment I opened my eyes, I found my personal maid Ah Ying sobbing at my bedside.
“Lady.”
She wiped away her tears.
“It is all right now. It is over.”
She had been with me since childhood.
She was the only trusted person my grandmother had left me.
“Ah Ying, I finally dreamed of Grandmother.”
She had been gone for many years and had never once visited my dreams.
“What did the old madam say to you, Lady?”
“She said the same thing you did.”
It is all right now.
It is over.
Ah Jin, do not be afraid.
Red lanterns hung outside the hall.
Ah Ying said the Lantern Festival was approaching.
“Zhaoyang Palace has sent word. There will be a palace banquet on the day of the Lantern Festival.”
Ah Ying said, “But Lady, you have not fully recovered yet…”
“It is fine.”
If I could enter the palace, I could see Xie Liuzheng.
There had never been a moment when I wanted to see him more than I did now.