Chapter 3

I dressed for the palace, though the elaborate robes of a princess consort made me uncomfortable. Inside the carriage, I kept tugging at my sleeves and the tassels dangling from my headdress.

Ran Ling sat beside me, still angry, and made no effort to help.

Eventually, he couldn’t stand it anymore. “Haven’t you noticed that I’m angry?”

I nodded. “I know.”

He looked surprised. “You know? Then why—”

“My mother says the capital is a place of painful memories for you. The late crown prince drove you to the brink of death, and Pei Ruoxue, your childhood sweetheart, abandoned you.”

Ran Ling said nothing.

“And now you have to face that old demoness. Of course you’re unhappy. But things are different now. Mother says, ‘When the great roc rises with the wind, don’t look back—soar ninety thousand miles into the sky!’”

Fired up by my own speech, I slapped him encouragingly on the shoulder.

He stared at me. “While you’re giving this rousing speech, has it occurred to you that I’m angry with you?”

I jumped. “Impossible! I’m the person who treats you best. My mother says you aren’t an ingrate.”

He stared a little longer, then silently peeled my hand from his shoulder.

After a moment, he took it in his own. Looking rather dejected, he concluded, “Your mother is right.”

Of course she was.

When we entered the palace, Pei Ruoxue was seated beside the empress.

The moment she saw us from afar, she rose. Her eyes lingered on Ran Ling before she quickly turned her face away.

Ran Ling looked down at me.

“The empress wants to use her to humiliate us,” I whispered.

He was silent.

“We mustn’t fall into their trap.”

He gave me a complicated look. “No wonder your mother is always praising your remarkable state of mind.”

I beamed. “Naturally.”

He refused to whisper with me after that and led me forward to pay our respects.

The empress looked positively delighted. “It has been so many years, Prince of Jin. Look—do you recognize her?”

I found myself wondering how she could be smiling, even glowing. Her son hadn’t been dead for long.

Then she turned to me. “You probably don’t know her, Princess Consort. She is—”

“I know her. She’s Pei Ruoxue. My family took her in once and saved her life.”

Pei Ruoxue had eloped with Ran Ling while he was fleeing, and when my father sent troops to bring him in, of course they brought her too. I wasn’t exaggerating. We really had saved her life.

The empress was speechless.

Pei Ruoxue stiffened, then hurried over to bow. “Little Sister Lingyun. I never imagined that in the blink of an eye, you would grow up and marry the Prince of Jin.”

As she spoke, she glanced at Ran Ling with a wealth of unspoken feeling.

“I never imagined you would suddenly be repudiated either,” I said.

Her face froze. “I wasn’t repudiated. We separated by mutual consent.”

She looked at Ran Ling again. He stared straight ahead without expression, although the corners of his mouth seemed rather stiff.

Was he trembling?

“Oh,” I said. “So you separated by mutual consent.”

Pei Ruoxue’s eyes reddened.

“You… you…”

I waited.

With tears in her eyes, she choked out, “I deserve whatever humiliation you choose to inflict on me. After all, I wronged the Prince of Jin back then.”

I was baffled. “He wasn’t the only person you wronged. You’re the one who started calling me a ‘savage,’ aren’t you?”

She had invented the nickname in the southern borderlands while she was still eating my family’s food. Yet somehow, before I even reached the capital, everyone there was using it.

Was her conscience perfectly clear about that?

Awkwardness settled over the room.

“I’ll visit you later so we can catch up,” Pei Ruoxue said, then walked away.