Chapter 8
Chapter 8
But at that critical instant, the Empress Dowager’s personal matron arrived.
My blade froze in midair. With great interest, I said, “Matron, your timing is perfect. You can see this with your own eyes, and when you return to the palace, you’ll have an explanation for the Empress Dowager.”
I was just about to strike.
The matron cried out in panic, “Your Highness, why not look at this first?”
Clutched in her hand was the jade pendant Zhao Huaishang always carried with him.
My pupils constricted, and killing intent chilled my gaze. “His belongings never leave his person. Why is it in your hands?”
The matron looked deeply at me. “Blades have no eyes on the battlefield. A letter came from the army. General Zhao went missing in battle, and there has been no word of him since.”
I understood the naked implication in her eyes all too clearly.
If they had his belonging, then they still had the man.
For Zhao Huaishang, I took one step back.
I owed him that much.
The matron had Pei Pingjin carried away, and Lu Qingshuang dragged off as well.
Afterward, the capital was rife with rumors. They said I was jealous.
They said I was petty and narrow-minded.
They said I refused to lend the Marquis’s Estate a life-saving pill, made up an excuse, and nearly killed the Prince Consort.
When the rumors were at their most rampant, the Empress Dowager sat across from me with all the airs of an elder.
She bestowed upon me some Guzhu Zisun.
Her smile gathered in the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, pressing out crisscrossing lines of naked ambition. “This tea is worth more than gold and is a rare treasure in this world. Princess, why not take it back and have a taste?”
Without betraying a thing, I declined. “I favor Mengding Shihua. I cannot stomach this tea’s bitterness.”
The Empress Dowager’s smile faded. Her hand continued to stir the tea bowl as she spoke as if to herself. “Choosing tea is like choosing people. Preference is not important. What matters is what suits you.”
“Rather than reaching for what is far away, you might as well hold on to Guzhu Zisun and give it a try.”
“I can guarantee that once this tea suits the princess’s palate, the Mengding Shihua will surely produce an abundant harvest next year.”
She was not talking about tea at all.
She was using it to warn me.
If Pei Pingjin and I tried to be a true married couple, if I behaved myself and served her purposes, then Zhao Huaishang could leave unscathed.
If I remained stubborn and unyielding, then Zhao Huaishang would become a lamb waiting for slaughter.
She had found my weak spot. All I could do was rise with a smile and accept the gift.
When I turned away, my face was cold as frost.
The Empress Dowager ordered Pei Pingjin to move into the Princess’s Residence.
Separated from me by only one wall, he and I became a pair of masked spouses, each harboring our own schemes.
To spite me and avenge that pool of blood, Pei Pingjin openly raised his cousin’s status in the household.
I turned a blind eye to everything he did and sent batch after batch of people to the border with all possible haste.
At last, after waiting in torment for many days, the reply from the border and the secret letter from the Marquis’s Estate landed on my desk at the same time.
I opened them one by one and read through them line by line.
After smiling as I finished every last letter, my gaze went cold, and I tossed them all into the brazier.
Those grudges and passions, those entanglements of love and hate, were licked up by the flames and turned into a scatter of silver ash beneath my feet.
The Empress Dowager wanted to use marriage and the back courtyard to sever my limbs, to turn me into a trapped beast in a cage!
I met Ling Yun’s eyes. “The debt of favor and vengeance is settled. I owe him nothing now. And as for them, they deserve to die.”
The two next door still had no idea I had resolved to kill them. Under the Empress Dowager’s protection, they continued to sink into drunken revelry and dreams.
They even pressed closer inch by inch, testing my limits.
Jewelry worth a fortune-Pei Pingjin used my silver to buy it, then turned around and placed it around Lu Qingshuang’s neck.
Rare Shu brocade-he brazenly demanded it from me, then handed it over to Lu Qingshuang to make dresses.
My flowers, my jewelry, even the one-of-a-kind volumes in my study.
So long as Lu Qingshuang took a fancy to something, all she had to do was move her lips, and Pei Pingjin would present it to her with both hands.
When he met my gaze, he was utterly confident. “The Empress Dowager said that Cousin suffered fright and grievance because of Your Highness. I am merely expressing Your Highness’s apology on your behalf, to soothe her.”
I did not even lift my eyelids. I let him come in brimming with excitement and leave flushed with triumph.
The matron was so anxious she practically stamped her feet. “Such fine things, all gone into a dog’s belly. This old servant’s heart aches just looking at it.”
“Let me have Ling Yun kill them, so they stop dirtying Your Highness’s eyes.”
“Filth like that-one dead would hardly be too many.”
Seeing the matron so furious she was practically baring her teeth, I could only find it funny.
Back then, when both my hands were stained with blood and I insisted on climbing to the very peak to seize power for myself, she had worried. Though it was a matter of either they died or I did, she had still wondered whether I might be killing too many.
Now that I was not killing, now that they were trampling over me, she felt more heartache than anyone.
I touched the scar on her forehead and said softly, “They are all just worldly possessions. What is there to be angry about? Besides, they may have the life to take them, but they won’t have the life to spend them.”
“From now on, keep two female guards with you at all times. If you get hurt again, you really will have to lie in bed and let me support you in your old age.”
The matron refused to admit defeat. “I am not old. I am still waiting to see Your Highness marry and help Your Highness raise a little prince or princess!”
But I had already been married before.