chapter 1

chapter 1

Surprise flickered across the Crown Prince’s face when he saw me.

After all, Jiang Xinyue—the woman who had traveled a thousand miles in search of her husband—was standing right behind me.

Ignoring the strange looks from the attendants and maids around us, she darted past me and threw herself into his arms. She wrapped both arms around his waist and called softly, “Husband.”

Every gaze shifted to me.

I preserved what dignity I could as a daughter of a noble house, raising my handkerchief to my lips and coughing twice.

The Crown Prince was still frozen in shock. Only those two quiet coughs brought him back to himself. He looked down at the woman in his arms. “Xinyue, why are you here…?”

He faltered. The woman in his embrace blinked up at him with glistening eyes, all soft fragility and helpless appeal.

Her eyes reddened in an instant. “Didn’t you say you were only going to the capital to find your family? Why did you never come back? I searched for you for so long.”

Now every eye was fixed on the two of them. Even I had been reduced to a spectator, and I was curious to hear how the Crown Prince would explain himself.

He stammered for some time before managing, “My circumstances were uncertain then. I didn’t dare tell you everything. I meant to send for you once matters were settled.”

At that, Jiang Xinyue finally looked at me. Her gaze swept over me, hostility flashing beneath the appraisal, before her expression softened into perfectly measured hurt.

Lowering her voice, she said to him, “But after I reached the capital, everyone said the Crown Prince was about to marry—that the Crown Princess would soon take her place in the Eastern Palace. Then what… does that make me?”

A few tears fell at precisely the right moment.

The Crown Prince’s heart softened. He wiped them away and soothed her. “Now that you’re here, stay for the time being. We will discuss everything else later.”

Miss Jiang was clever. Once offered a way out, she took it. Having won his sympathy, she knew better than to keep pressing him.

As for the “everything else” he mentioned, he was most likely referring to her title.

A maid led Jiang Xinyue toward the rear courtyard.

As she passed me, a taunting gleam rose in her eyes and a faint smile curved her lips.

This Miss Jiang was clearly no simple fisherwoman.

The Crown Prince and I had nothing to say to each other. I turned and returned to the Shen estate.

Bad news, however, never stays hidden for long.

Word that the Crown Prince had already taken a wife among the common folk swept through the capital, becoming the favorite joke of every teahouse and dinner table.

My marriage to him became a laughingstock, and the Shen family lost face with it.

There had been no imperial decree formalizing their union, but he and Jiang Xinyue had performed the wedding rites as commoners. Their bond had been established, and he admitted as much himself.

Everyone praised Jiang Xinyue’s remarkable fortune. She had been nothing more than a fisherman’s daughter from Jiangnan when she rescued a young man from the river. The convenient husband she gained turned out to be the exalted Crown Prince himself. People said she had been born under a lucky star and risen to heaven in a single step.

Only I was left in an impossible position.

Wherever I went, peculiar looks followed me.

So I shut my doors and declined every invitation that arrived from the capital’s noble households.

I waited.

I waited for the Crown Prince to come to me.