Chapter 2

Ran Ling hurried over to collect me. Looking both alarmed and uncertain, he sounded me out cautiously.

“How did it go?”

“Awful.”

“What was awful about it?”

I told him the privy at the princess’s estate was perverse. More than a dozen people had surrounded me while I did my business. There had even been a lacquered box full of dried dates beside me. Who ate dates while relieving themselves? When I finished, someone handed me a bean cake. Did everyone in the capital like eating in the privy?

Ran Ling looked ready to crack.

He explained that the dried dates were meant to plug one’s nose, and the soap beans were for washing hands.

Oh. So that was it.

“Our privy isn’t allowed to be like that,” I told him. “Nobody has any sense of boundaries.”

He stared at me. “Anything else? Did anything else happen?”

I shook my head.

“Did anyone say something to you?”

I shook my head again. “I don’t remember.”

“Nothing happened that you particularly cared about?”

Another shake of my head.

Then he got angry. Very angry.

“Feng Lingyun, did you go all that way just to take a dump?”

I stared at him.

Since when could a person relieve herself incorrectly? Hadn’t he told me to make myself comfortable?

Ran Ling did not return to our bedroom that night.

My maids, Shengli and Kaixuan, were anxious, but I merely ordered them to put out the lamps so I could sleep.

Life on the southern border was bitter, and our military funds were cut more savagely every year. The capital offered riches, a tall bed, and soft pillows. I deserved every bit of it.

Enjoying even one second less would be disrespectful to the years my mother had spent planning for this day.

As for Ran Ling, Mother had said he was a good man. More importantly, he wasn’t good only to me; he was honorable by nature.

The Feng clan had always taken husbands into our household, but we abandoned that tradition for him because our family was on the brink of destruction. Mother said that if the Fengs fell, we could not stake our survival on the loyalty of a husband who had married into our clan.

“Instead of gambling on a man’s feelings or conscience, gamble on his character.”

She also said a man like Ran Ling wouldn’t behave disgustingly even if his feelings changed.

So one night away meant nothing. He wasn’t capable of doing anything truly vile.

The next day, just as I was preparing to unpack more of our luggage, Empress Jiang suddenly summoned me to the palace.

She was the late crown prince’s mother and had fought Ran Ling and his mother for years. When her husband, the emperor, finally fell ill, she hanged Noble Consort Qiao and hunted Ran Ling across the realm.

Unfortunately for her, my father marched out to receive Ran Ling and pulled off a clever substitution that fooled his pursuers. When the crown prince died last year, Ran Ling seized the chaos to fight his way back to the capital with me and became the strongest of the surviving princes.

Empress Jiang probably hated the Feng clan.

That was fine. I hated her too.

Ten years ago, when the emperor first fell ill, she seized control of the court and repeatedly cut the southern frontier’s military budget until our people could barely eat.

I was wondering how I ought to face my enemy when I remembered Mother’s instruction: “Anything inside the palace is his family affair. Let him handle it and take care of yourself.”

So I sent someone to find Ran Ling.

I assumed he had gone out. Instead, my maid made a circuit of the estate and discovered that he had spent the whole night hiding somewhere inside.

I stared. “Where were you hiding?”

“That’s none of your business,” he snapped.

Very well.

“Her Majesty has summoned me. You need to come with me.”

After a moment’s silence, he agreed.