Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I was nineteen when I entered the palace.

Pei Chengli first saw me by the Taiye Pond.

I was dressed very simply, standing in the most inconspicuous corner of the crowd. Yet, as if by design, the wind caught my silk sash, lifting it to reveal an old scar on my wrist. It was a knife wound from the day the Cui Family’s home was raided-hideous and unrefined, yet it was the mark of someone who had looked death in the face.

Pei Chengli liked women with a story.

Because people with stories are the easiest to manipulate.

I was soon titled Concubine Ming. Three months later, I was promoted to Consort Ming.

The entire palace said I was blessed with good fortune. Only I knew that every step I climbed was like pushing myself another inch into the fire.

Pei Chengli was suspicious by nature, testing me night after night. He liked to talk about the court, the Northern Frontier, Xie Wuyang, and the Si Family while we were in bed-matters of state he assumed a woman couldn’t understand. He would then search for flaws in my seemingly naive responses.

I played along, laughing with him and drinking with him, watching myself rot away inch by inch.

Xie Wuyang rarely entered the inner palace. On the rare occasions his patrols took him outside Chengming Hall, we would catch each other’s eyes across the long palace path, looking for all the world like strangers.

The situation changed completely the day the Ninth Prince, Pei Zhaoxu, was nearly poisoned to death.

The boy was only seven. His birth mother had died young, leaving him in the palace like a blade of grass waiting to be trampled. Si Yuesheng couldn’t tolerate his existence, and Pei Chengli didn’t truly care for him. Had I not received an early warning from Xie Wuyang and knocked over that bowl of ginseng soup laced with Crane’s Crest Red, Pei Zhaoxu would already be dead.

Because of this, Pei Chengli entrusted the child to my care.

He said, “You are meticulous and have no children of your own. It is only right that you raise him.”

As I knelt to thank him for his grace, I knew the truth in my heart.

He didn’t trust me; he just wanted to watch me fight Si Yuesheng.

That night, I went to the Buddhist hall to keep watch over the shaken Pei Zhaoxu. Xie Wuyang entered through a secret door, his brow furrowed deeply. “The Si Family is getting more impatient.”

“It’s not that the Si Family is impatient,” I said, adding a stick of incense before the Buddha statue. “It’s that Pei Chengli’s body can no longer hold out.”

Xie Wuyang stared at me. “Are you certain?”

“I feed him his medicine with my own hands. Of course I am certain.”

He fell silent for a moment before suddenly asking, “And what about you?”

“What?”

“You’ve been by his side for so long, Cui Mingyi. Can you still hold out?”

The candle wick gave a sharp crack. Looking at the curls of incense smoke rising before the Buddha, I suddenly wanted to ask: if I said I couldn’t, would you really take me away?

But in the end, I only offered a small smile. “I have to, whether I can or not. There is only one step left.”

Xie Wuyang’s eyes seemed to hold a brewing storm. “You always say ‘one last step’.”

“Because there really is only one step left.”

I pulled the Arms Flow Chart-finally pieced together in its entirety-from beneath the altar and handed it to him. “The military equipment lost in the Northern Frontier all those years ago ended up in the Si Family’s private warehouses. Marquis Xie and my father were investigating the same thing.”

He took it, the veins on the back of his hand tightening.

“Pei Chengli, Si Yuesheng, and Shen Xingjian conspired together to kill your father and destroy my Cui Family,” I whispered. “Xie Wuyang, do you want to topple them all at once?”

He looked up at me.

We stood on opposite sides of an ever-burning lamp, as if separated by a river we could never cross back over.

“I do,” he said.

“Then do not be soft-hearted.”

When I said those words, I believed I could manage it myself.