Chapter 4

Of course I was awake.

But I wasn’t the only person awake in this bed.

My heart leaped into my throat. “Stop! I don’t want to see you right now!”

Luckily, Chu Yan did stop.

Though his voice was frighteningly cold.

“Wen Xiaoxiao! You…”

I interrupted him, pretending to choke back sobs. “Husband, since you’ve left, why come back?”

“You scald me, then bring me medicine. How is that any different from slapping me and giving me a sweet afterward?”

“Will the medicine make it stop hurting? Am I supposed to take it and act as though nothing happened?”

Before, I had always coaxed and placated him.

When he abandoned me on our wedding day to chase Shen Chenbi,

I said, “You were only anxious, Husband. I don’t blame you.”

When he said he wanted to divorce me and marry someone else,

I said, “If it makes you happy, I’m willing.”

The more I indulged him, the more he hated me.

But whenever he wronged me, my mother-in-law gave me silver.

It was perfect.

So in his presence, I had always been as pliant as clay.

Before today, when had he ever heard me speak like this?

He faltered, then ground out, “Wen Xiaoxiao, you don’t know what’s good for you!”

At last, he withdrew his outstretched hand.

Yes, yes.

I didn’t know what was good for me.

Please, just get out.

But I couldn’t say that.

I could only speak slowly. “Why come back and put on this act, Husband?”

“For two years, you’ve come and gone as you pleased, never caring how people laughed at me.”

“Yes, I refused a divorce and kept you and Miss Shen from being together openly. Yes, I want a child, and I bother you about it every day.”

“But marriages are decided by parents and matchmakers. What say do I have?”

I choked on a sob, playing the woman whose heart had been utterly broken.

“Nothing in my life is mine to decide. Can’t I even have a moment alone?”

I had this face of mine to thank.

It made me look, from head to toe, like a timid, honest soul.

And made everything I said sound sincere.

On the other side of the curtain,

Chu Yan fell silent.

I couldn’t see his expression clearly.

I didn’t know whether my weeping had been too pitiful.

After a long silence, he actually softened his tone.

“Very well.”

“Today, you… get some rest.”

He left.

Before going out, he paused and set the salve on the table.

Only when his footsteps had faded entirely,

and there was no more sound outside the courtyard,

did my hammering heart settle. I looked at Pei Jin, who had pushed off the quilt.

He was acting strangely too.

In the past, hearing that I had asked Chu Yan for a child

would have set him off like a lit firecracker.

He would threaten to die and make me swear never to lay a finger on Chu Yan.

But now he was frowning, his dark eyes fixed on me.

There wasn’t the slightest sign of a tantrum.

I, however, intended to have one.

I slapped him across the face.

“Happy now, watching me scared half to death?” I said through tears.

Panic crossed his face. He immediately sat up.

Like a drowning man clutching driftwood, he wrapped me tightly in his arms from behind.

“I was wrong. I was wrong.”

“I shouldn’t have put you in that position. Don’t be angry. Don’t cast me aside…”

He was the crown prince.

He wasn’t stupid.

How could he fail to guess I was pretending to cry?

Yet he still fumbled helplessly to wipe my tears.

As the veins gradually stood out on his forehead and pain gathered in his eyes,

I knew his headaches had struck again.

He really was ill.

These dreadful headaches had begun in the past two years.

The entire Imperial Medical Bureau had failed to cure him.

When the pain was mild, he could drug himself at a flower banquet to seduce me one moment, then have someone accuse me the next, forcing the issue: “You like me? Then we’ll marry.”

When it was severe, he couldn’t distinguish reality from hallucinations. He had even attacked people with a blade.

Oh, well.

Who could bear to be harsh with a sick man having an episode?

Looking at his eyes, reddened at the corners from the pain, and the handprint I had left on his cheek,

I softened and turned to embrace him.

“All right. I won’t blame you this time. But never again.”

I was so kind.

I silently congratulated myself.

I completely missed the fact that, as Pei Jin rested his head on my shoulder and answered “All right” in a flustered, bewildered voice,

his expression was content, his eyes perfectly clear.