chapter 5
chapter 5
The Emperor rebuked the Crown Prince in front of the entire court.
An endless procession of gifts arrived at the Shen estate as a sign of imperial consolation.
The imperial physicians examined Grandmother and reported that overwhelming anger had caused her to faint. She would need peace and quiet to recover.
Then the Crown Prince appeared at our gates with every manner of tonic—and with Jiang Xinyue beside him.
Neither of them looked pleased. This visit was, after all, an admission of defeat.
They had probably been forced to come.
Attendants filed in behind them carrying rare medicinal ingredients.
The Crown Prince cleared his throat. “Has the Old Madam improved? I have come especially to see her.”
I lifted one hand. A maid stepped forward to guide him to Shoukang Courtyard.
The Emperor must have pressured him into this visit. He was here merely to put on a show.
I had no need to listen to his hollow expressions of concern for Grandmother.
He ordered an attendant to present me with a brocade box. Inside lay a jade pendant carved with a blue phoenix.
It was an object made exclusively for the imperial family, bestowed only upon the Crown Princess as a symbol of her exalted rank.
But I remembered the white jade pendant Jiang Xinyue had shown me that day. That had been the Crown Prince’s personal possession.
The difference between the two pieces of jade revealed exactly where affection lay.
The Crown Prince looked at the pendant and lowered his voice. “Our wedding will not be postponed again. The Ministry of Rites has selected the sixteenth of next month. Xinyue has also agreed to step down and become my secondary consort. If the two of you live in harmony from now on, it will be a blessing to the Eastern Palace.”
Step down?
Did he mean that she was graciously yielding my place to me?
Even after the uproar of the past few days, the Crown Prince had learned nothing.
He still believed that allowing me through the doors of the Eastern Palace was an immeasurable favor.
The Emperor had confined him to his residence and rejected both his journey to the northern border and his request to delay our wedding. Everyone at court knew it.
Even this visit had been forced upon him by imperial authority.
Yet to this day, he believed that taking a wife on one arm and a concubine on the other, then ordering us to live in harmony, would resolve everything.
My gaze cooled. “Your Highness should keep the pendant until after the wedding.”
When I did not take it, displeasure tightened his face.
“Xinyue was upset and caused a disturbance,” he said under his breath. “But Father has already berated me and punished her. The Shen family has received every reward and courtesy it was owed. What more do you want? Push too far, and you will end with nothing.”
His voice was full of impatience.
“Your Highness came to make peace. You should behave like a man seeking peace.”
The coldness in my voice startled him into awareness. His manner softened by a fraction.
He still had a few polite words to exchange with Grandmother. I left Shoukang Courtyard and found Jiang Xinyue standing beside the pond.
She did not dare enter Grandmother’s rooms now.
Though she had been forced to come with lowered eyes and a bowed head, resentment still burned beneath her pallor.
I had heard that the Empress Dowager’s most formidable matron had spent a month in the Eastern Palace under orders to discipline Jiang Xinyue. She must now understand how the methods of the deep palace could torment a person without leaving obvious wounds.
Her complexion was bloodless, and her gaze wandered.
But it was not enough.
I had one more revelation for her.
“You look very much like someone—the wife of the current Minister of the Court of Judicial Review.”
Her lips trembled. She stared at me in alarm. “What did you say?”
I repeated myself. “You bear a striking resemblance to that minister’s wife. When the Crown Prince looks at you, he is seeing another woman—the woman he wanted but could never have, the woman he still regrets losing.”