Chapter 3

When I was nearly six months pregnant, an epidemic broke out in Suzhou.

At first, I did not think much of it. I busied myself gathering the capital’s ladies to donate money and supplies.

Then someone told me,

“His Majesty is at his wits’ end. His Highness has personally requested permission to go and contain the epidemic.”

It struck me like a bolt of lightning.

By the time I hurried home, he had already packed his clothes.

I threw myself into his arms, tears streaming down my face.

“Your Highness!”

“There, there. Don’t cry. My imperial brother has been extraordinarily good to me. He needs someone now. How can I refuse to go?”

“Besides…”

He grinned slyly and stroked my belly.

“My brother has promised that if I settle the trouble in Suzhou, he’ll make our little girl an imperial princess when she’s born.”

“An imperial princess of our Great Zhou gets her own fief and household troops.”

I bit my lip. I could not stop the tears.

This should have been good news for me.

If he died in Suzhou, His Majesty would compensate my child.

I would have the whole of Prince Rong’an’s estate to myself, and never a worry for the rest of my life.

That was what I had always wanted. Why did it hurt so much now?

Smiling, he crouched down and poked my belly.

“Little girl, your father’s off to earn you a princess’s title. You’d better be born beautiful to repay me. Take after your mother, and that’ll do.”

“Ningning, wait for me. Take good care of yourself.”

Reluctantly, miserably, I let go. It felt as though my soul had been pulled out of me.

Before leaving, he brought Mother over to keep me company.

Seeing how wretched I was, she could not help saying,

“You’re only sixteen, after all. However sensible you are, it’s still easy to fall in love. Your brain hasn’t even finished developing.”

“Mother! What are you saying?”

“All right, all right. I’ll stop. You’ve only just married. Of course everything’s lovely now. You’ll understand someday.”

For an entire month, no news came from Suzhou.

During that month, I went through almost every old book I could find.

Mother scratched at her head, distressed on my behalf.

“Oh, none of this is helping. Let me think. Let me think what those posts I read said.”

In the end, with Mother’s help, I tested and found a prescription that could treat the epidemic.

I wept for joy. Just as I was about to send it to Suzhou, word came that Zhou Jing had fallen ill himself.

I was frantic, but Mother refused to let me go to him.

“You’re pregnant! Medical care here is so poor. Do you want to die?”

I struggled to calm myself.

“Mother, I have the prescription. I won’t die. This baby isn’t born yet. I need a son if I’m to secure the prince’s estate and all its wealth.”

“If it’s a girl, what if the empress dowager makes us adopt a boy?”

Those words were only meant to deceive Mother.

I had decided long ago that this birth had to produce twins, a boy and a girl.

Everything in the prince’s household would belong to me alone.

“I don’t care about any of that! You’re my daughter. I only want you alive! Nothing else matters to me.”

“If you were the one in trouble today, he’d run faster than a rabbit!”

Mother began to cry, but I could not wait. Every second of delay cut through my heart.

“Mother, isn’t it perfectly natural for young people to fall in love?”

“I’m human. I wanted a life of dignity and power, so I did everything I could to marry well.”

“At least for now, he is sincere with me. I cannot be a heartless, disloyal wife and fail him.”

“Mother, I’ve read books too. I have my own pride, my own sense of honor.”

I ordered guards to keep Mother there. Then, heavily pregnant, I took medicinal supplies and physicians from the capital to Suzhou.

If Zhou Jing truly was going to die, at least I would see him one last time and do right by the year and more we had spent as husband and wife.

I, Shen Ning, might be a woman raised behind the walls of a noble household, but I could shoulder responsibility. I was no less capable than a man.

And so I went, sustained by the headstrong courage of youth, putting life and death out of my mind.

Many years later, when I recalled what I had done that day, it seemed absurd. Yet I missed it too.

The young are young, after all.