Chapter 2
Father wheeled around and shouted, “I gave her that pin! How could I fail to recognize it in Ru’er’s hair?”
He turned and cupped his hands toward the emperor.
“Your Majesty, I have failed to raise my daughter properly. This wretch has envied her sister since childhood. Now she has committed an unforgivable offense and still tries to drag her own sister down with her. She is a disgrace to our family! I…”
His voice caught. Actual tears shone in the corners of his eyes. “I shall consider this daughter dead to me!”
Before I could speak, Mother rushed over and struck me with a resounding slap.
My head snapped sideways. The taste of iron quickly filled my mouth.
“Your sister has always been obedient and sensible. You shameless creature—must you take the whole family down with you? You… you…”
She wept too hard to continue, covering her face with her handkerchief as her shoulders shook.
Shen Yueru shuffled over on her knees and clung to Mother’s legs. “Mother, you’re not well. Please don’t cry.”
What a touching picture of motherly and daughterly devotion.
I sat where I had fallen and wiped my mouth. Red spread across the back of my hand.
It really did hurt.
In my previous life, when she had begged me through tears to confess, every word had been coated in honey. I was her “darling,” her “good girl.”
Now I had barely brought the truth into the open, and she wanted to kill me with her own hands.
The whispers around us grew louder.
“What a vicious slap. It must be true.”
“The famous Jade-Hairpin Beauty—who would have thought she was so depraved?”
“She’s not even crying. After doing something so dreadful, she has no shame at all.”
“If I were her, I’d have dashed my head against something and died already.”
“But that red pin really doesn’t look like pigeon-blood ruby.”
“Now that you mention it…”
“Could it be… that the younger Miss Shen really is involved?”
As the murmurs shifted, Shen Yueru went deathly pale.
That was what I had been waiting for.
I straightened. Blood still marked the corner of my mouth, but my voice was remarkably steady.
“Who in the capital doesn’t know how much envy Father stirred when he bought those two pins?
“The red one was perfectly translucent, like drops of pigeon’s blood made solid. You could see its brilliant glow from ten paces away.”
“The one in my sister’s hair has no such luster. Even the bright candlelight in this hall cannot draw a gleam from it.”
“Yet Father insists it is the very one he gave her. How could I, his daughter, contradict him before everyone?”
It sounded like surrender. But who in this hall was a fool?
The room gradually fell quiet.
Some nodded slightly. Others exchanged knowing glances.
Sweat beaded on Father’s forehead. His lips trembled, but he could not force out a word.
I bowed again. “Your Majesty, there is one more way to prove my innocence.”
“Speak.”
“The place where the pair met is well hidden, in a corner of a side hall. It stays damp throughout the year, and moss covers the ground. When they were discovered, they fled in such haste that they had no time to collect their belongings.”
My gaze swept across the feet of those in the hall.
“Anyone who went there would have bits of moss and wet mud on the soles of their shoes. A simple inspection will establish the truth.”
When I finished speaking, the hall went deathly still.
I saw Shen Yueru draw her feet back almost instinctively.
“If Your Majesty doubts me, I am willing to be the first—”
“Wantang.”
A gentle male voice cut me off.
I jerked my head up.
Yan Rongyu rose from his seat.
Today he wore a pale blue-white brocade robe. His face was as handsome as ever.
But my gaze slipped helplessly to his feet. Along the edges of his brocade boots were unmistakable rings of green dampness.
My head rang.
In my previous life, after I had been falsely accused, the investigation had identified a lowly palace gate guard as my supposed lover.
It had never crossed my mind that the man could be my dear fiancé.
Yan Rongyu came before me and bowed deeply to the throne.
“Father. I have sinned.”
An uproar swept the hall.
Yan Rongyu knelt with his back straight.
“Today it was indeed Shen Wantang and I who were discovered meeting in secret.”
My pupils contracted.
“I knew it was wrong,” Yan Rongyu said, “but she was so curious about relations between men and women. For a moment, we could not restrain ourselves.”
He turned to me with disappointment in his eyes.
“I wanted to protect you. But there are many damp places in the palace. What does moss on a shoe prove? Because you managed not to step on any, must you implicate the innocent?”
“Wantang, let us stop compounding our mistakes.”