Chapter 4

Chapter 4

I took out the jade hairpin.

“You have a way to send things beyond the palace, don’t you? Sell this for me. We can split the silver in half.”

Mingru accepted it without asking where it had come from. She merely looked at me with a complicated expression.

“Such a beautiful hairpin. Can you truly bear to part with it?”

“It’s beautiful precisely because it was never meant to belong to me.”

Hugging my knees, I answered in a quiet, cool voice. I was telling her, but I was also telling myself.

Fu Jing and Yong’an were already betrothed. Yong’an was the Empress’s own daughter, the Crown Prince’s full sister, and the Fu family’s legitimate granddaughter through their daughter.

I could not compete with her.

Nor did I wish to follow in Mother’s footsteps.

What did it matter how dissolute my own fiancé was? I would still marry into his household as an imperial princess. My life could scarcely become worse than it was now.

The days dragged by. Mingru had taken the hairpin that night, but she never brought me any silver.

Neither of us mentioned it again. I remained the invisible shadow behind Princess Yong’an.

Fu Jing entered the palace less often. People said he had begun handling affairs with his father and elder brother.

Even when he did come, he spoke far less and no longer possessed his old bright, carefree spirit.

I kept my eyes lowered as I waited on Yong’an and pretended not to notice the occasional gaze that fell on me.

With Fu Jing visiting less frequently, Yong’an was unhappy. The Empress had also worn a sour expression lately. I heard palace servants whisper that the Crown Prince had committed yet more absurd offenses and provoked His Majesty-my imperial father, that was-into several fits of rage.

My father did not have a great many children, but several of his sons had reached adulthood. Beyond the Crown Prince, my Second and Fourth Brothers were formidable contenders in their own right.

Second Brother’s mother had always enjoyed Father’s favor, and her family had controlled the Ministry of War for more than a decade.

Fourth Brother’s mother was the legitimate daughter of the northern Marquis Who Pacifies the South, a woman of the distinguished Yue clan.

By contrast, the sickly Third Brother; Fifth Brother, Mingru’s master, whose mother had been born a palace maid; and Sixth Brother, who was half Korean, did not merit the attention of the Empress or Crown Prince.

That was why Fifth Brother was smoothly enfeoffed as Prince of Yan Commandery and permitted to establish his own residence outside the palace.

Mingru left with him.

On the day before her departure, I went to the plum grove. As I expected, she was there.

I gave her a small pouch containing the handful of gold melon seeds I had struggled to save.

Once Fifth Brother established his princely household, the next step would be marriage. Whatever awaited Mingru, it would be better if she had money of her own.

She laughed and handed me a pouch in return. Inside was a stack of banknotes in small denominations.

“His Fifth Highness asked me to give these to you. Once we’re beyond the palace, you will have only yourself to depend on. Spend freely where you must and make your life a little more comfortable.”

When I heard they were from Fifth Brother, I accepted them. I still pressed my pouch of gold seeds into her hand.

“Don’t tell Fifth Brother about these. Keep them for yourself.”

After a moment’s thought, I voiced the warning in my heart.

“In the future, if you cannot win, don’t fight to the bitter end. Nothing matters more than living well.”

Tears flooded her eyes. It was the first time she had cried in front of me in all those years.

Her deliberately dowdy, ugly makeup had not prevented her from becoming the foremost maid at Fifth Brother’s side. Now he would open his residence and marry a princess consort. What would happen after that?

Sooner or later, Mingru would likely be taken into his harem.

I could only pray she would not share my mother’s fate.