chapter 2

chapter 2

Tears flooded my eyes.

So there had been a chance to save her. If I had not been tempted by the food and wine, that person would never have found an opening. At least my sister would not have faced her last terror alone.

I wiped my face and forced down the grief rising in my chest.

“My lord, the report contains one more finding that has confounded me for ten years.”

I met Xiao Yan’s searching gaze.

“A virgin, three months pregnant.”

His long fingers stilled on the yellowed file. “How was that established?”

“A midwife examined her before witnesses. The passage was tight, the pelvic joint unopened, and her virginity mark intact. She had never been touched by a man.

“Yet her lower abdomen was hard and swollen. Her areolas had darkened, and a dark line ran down from her navel—all signs of a three-month pregnancy.”

Xiao Yan tapped the desk. “Was she tested for poison or disease?”

“Both possibilities were investigated.” My throat tightened. I had knelt below the Court’s stone steps during that first examination, and Father later received a copy of the report as the law required. I remembered every word.

“Virulent poisons from the southern border, such as Bloodvine and Heartbreak Seed, can cause blood to congeal and the abdomen to swell. But such poisons leave brutal signs: bleeding from the orifices, withered hair and skin, bruising, ulceration. My sister’s face was dark from hanging, but her hair remained black, her nails pink, and her skin unmarked. Poison could not explain it.

“Nor could disease. Dropsy makes the belly feel like a water skin and slosh when shaken. A distention of wind sounds hollow when tapped. The midwife said my sister’s abdomen was solid and heavy beneath her hand, as if it held a real object. It was neither water nor air.”

I spoke each word deliberately.

“There were no signs of poison and none of false swelling. Nothing in medicine or toxicology could explain her condition. I have examined hundreds of poisoned bodies and searched every medical and criminal record I could find. My sister’s body remains the one riddle I cannot solve.”

Xiao Yan rose and walked to the window.

“Then only one possibility remains.”

My heart lurched. “What?”

He looked at me with a flicker of pity.

“Pei Yin, after ten years of investigating crimes, you know this: when every impossibility has been eliminated, whatever remains—however unbelievable—is the truth.

“The case was sealed at the highest level. It was neither disease nor poison, but a meticulously designed human crime.”

Sweat beaded across my brow.

“Its architect’s greatest cruelty was understanding the human heart and using imperial authority as the knife. A crown princess died on her wedding night while pregnant. The imperial family did not want truth; it wanted dignity. To preserve the Eastern Palace’s reputation, His Majesty could never permit anyone to investigate how a virgin became pregnant. It was easier to condemn the Pei family for moral corruption and silence the realm.”

My voice choked. “Yes. Father knelt outside the Hall of Supreme Harmony all night, insisting my sister was chaste. In return, the family was stripped of rank and office, though spared execution.”

“A dead end,” Xiao Yan murmured. “Your father must have lost hope and intended to withdraw from the world with his family.”

“But Mother refused.”

I swallowed the taste of blood.

He looked at me in surprise. Everyone who had witnessed the events had been silenced, and the Court’s file reduced the family’s ruin to a few lines.

“Mother would not believe my sister was pregnant. She staked her own honor and imperial title on a petition to open the body and prove her daughter’s innocence.”

Xiao Yan sighed. “Our law forbids cutting open a corpse except in extraordinary cases. Mutilating the dead violates every human bond. But to prove her innocence, it was indeed the only path left. What did His Majesty decide?”