Chapter 3
As I grew older, the rumors in the capital never ceased. If anything, they became more outrageous by the day.
Some claimed the Princess was secretly a man who had disguised herself as a woman all these years in order to seize the throne.
At first, the Princess saw no reason to dignify such nonsense. But as the story spread, it slowly took on a darker shape.
People began whispering that she kept assassins, stockpiled arms and provisions, and meant to rebel.
The accusation was absurd. Yet the Princess had been brilliant since childhood, and the late emperor had once said that if she had been born a son, the throne would unquestionably have been hers.
He might not have meant anything by it. Those who heard him did.
Soon a prophecy was circulating throughout the capital: A woman emperor shall rise, destroying Xia and restoring Zhou.
It named no one, but coupled with the latest rumors, everyone thought of the Princess.
An emperor’s heart was impossible to fathom. The reigning emperor, after all, was ruthless enough to eliminate every one of his brothers after ascending the throne.
To ease his suspicions, the Princess entered the palace and wept bitterly.
The Empress Dowager was still alive, and the Princess and Emperor had grown up together with a deep affection for one another.
The Princess appealed to their family ties, and the accusations truly were baseless.
The quickest way to break one rumor was to give people another, more compelling one.
Word began to spread that the Crown Prince favored men and that his male favorite was several months pregnant.
No one should have believed anything so ridiculous.
But the Crown Prince’s obsession with his favorite was common knowledge. They ate and slept together every day; he lavished a fortune in gold on the man and even neglected the Crown Princess for his sake.
The court seethed with discontent, and the Emperor took notice.
To restore the Crown Prince’s standing among the people and officials, the Emperor sent him to suppress a minor provincial revolt.
The Crown Prince swiftly quelled the trumped-up uprising.
What no one expected was that he then rebelled for real.
When the Emperor received the news, he coughed up blood and collapsed that very night.
At the time, the Princess was taking Mama and me around a little town south of the Yangtze, petting cats and admiring the scenery.
The evening sun scattered soft gold across the lake. I watched Mama lean against the Princess’s shoulder.
Their heads drew closer and closer. Years of experience had taught me exactly what came next.
A large, callused hand covered my eyes.
“Is this still necessary?” I asked flatly. “It’s not as if I haven’t seen it before.”
A woman’s low, rich voice sounded beside my ear. “My lady had better see less of such delicate matters.”
I tried to pull the hand away, but it did not budge.
I let irritation sharpen my voice. “Let go, Wen Ying.”
After a moment, she obeyed. Her head hung as if she were the injured party, but her actions had been forceful enough.
At some point, the scrawny girl who had looked like a bean sprout had grown taller than me.
She had trained in martial arts year after year until calluses covered her palms and she stood straight as a pine. Whenever she accompanied me through the streets, people mistook her for a handsome young gentleman.
She was putting on that meek expression again, so I ignored her.
Sister Xiaocui came out carrying a tray of pastries. One glance at the tension between us, and she decided I had bullied Wen Ying. I could have grown a hundred mouths and still failed to defend myself.
Wen Ying raised her downcast head just enough to show her beautiful peach-blossom eyes, tears shimmering in them. “My lady may do anything she wishes to me. I accept it willingly.”
Over the years, Wen Ying had become an expert at this kind of innocent manipulation. She had gone from timid and reserved to shamelessly skilled at acting pitiful and spoiled.
I still remembered her first year with me, when I asked her to sleep in my room.
She agreed. In the night, I woke needing the chamber pot and saw that she was still awake.
Her great eyes glittered in the moonlight like sparkling waves.
I wrapped my arms around her from behind. She was so thin that her bones pressed against me.
I quietly asked why she was sad. She said she missed her father and mother. She wanted to go home and ride horses across the grasslands.
I had once overheard the Princess telling Mama about Wen Ying’s past. Both her parents had died in war.
By the time the Princess found her, traffickers had sold her from hand to hand several times, and she had been starved thin as a bean sprout.
The Princess could not bear to leave her in misery. She had been looking for a companion for me, so she brought Wen Ying home.
I firmly turned her around to face me. Her eyes remained lowered, hiding everything in them.
“Don’t cry. If you miss them that much, you can think of me as your mother.”
She stared at me in speechless confusion.
I knew she must have been moved beyond words.
Wen Ying was nominally my personal guard, but no one in the household treated her as a servant. Whatever I had, she had too. Sometimes I even suspected Mama and the Princess favored her more than they did me.
Only that fool trained every day through wind and rain, swearing she would protect me forever.
We wanted to stay far from court and its struggles for power, but an edict still arrived from the palace.
The Empress Dowager had died. As her only daughter, the Princess had to return to the capital.
When the news came, the Princess, who never showed joy or anger, wept for the first time.
It was the first time I had ever seen her cry. Even in grief, she was regal and beautiful.
She shut herself in her room and allowed only Mama inside.
Wen Ying and I paced anxiously beneath the window. Peering through a crack, we saw the Princess leaning against Mama.
They spoke softly to each other, one murmured phrase at a time. We stood too far away to hear them. Neither Wen Ying nor I caught a word.
We stayed until our legs went numb, at which point Sister Xiaocui seized us both and hauled us off to bed.