Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The arrow wound on Lu Yuheng’s shoulder flared up repeatedly, and he suffered from a fever for three whole days.

I stayed by his bedside, originally just wanting to see if he would simply die like that. But when he truly began calling my name over and over in his delirium, even my breathing became erratic.

Confused by the fever, he gripped my hand and refused to let go.

“Lanyin,” he murmured, “don’t look back.”

I didn’t understand.

Or rather, I didn’t dare to understand.

After he woke up, the first thing he did was order his men to drag me to the side courtyard to be punished with twenty strokes of the cane.

The charge was negligence in administering medicine and disturbing the Prince’s peace.

Everyone in the mansion said that the Prince of Qin was cold-hearted after all.

I lay prone on the long bench, the pain making my vision go dark, while my heart slowly turned to ice.

It turned out that taking that arrow for me that night was nothing more than a casual gesture for him. In his heart, I was still just a disposable criminal slave.

Once the executioners withdrew, I was the only one left in the room. When the door opened, I didn’t even have the strength to lift my head.

Not until a familiar scent of medicinal herbs drifted down.

Lu Yuheng sat by the couch and personally applied the medicine for me.

His hands were usually steady, but today they were trembling violently. When the salve touched the wound, my whole body tensed from the pain, and I finally couldn’t help but hiss.

His movements paused, and his voice was very low. “Endure it a little longer.”

I turned my head away, refusing to look at him. “Why must Your Highness the Prince of Qin come personally? To show mercy after having me beaten?”

He remained silent for a long while before saying, “If I hadn’t punished you today, Empress Dowager Xie’s people would have used it as an excuse to take you away.”

“So what if they took me?”

“You would die.”

Those two words again.

I suddenly laughed, my eyes burning. “Lu Yuheng, do you think that as long as you keep me alive, you’ve done right by the Ye Family?”

He didn’t answer.

I looked up at him and, for the first time, saw an expression bordering on pathetic vulnerability on his face.

But that trace of vulnerability vanished in an instant.

He finished bandaging my wound and stood up, returning to the impenetrable Prince of Qin once more.

“Ye Lanyin,” he said, “you only need to stay alive. You don’t need to worry about anything else.”

I closed my eyes and ignored him.

It was from that moment on that I began to secretly investigate the old case of the Ye Family.

I couldn’t enter the study of the Prince of Qin’s Mansion, but I could enter his Medicine Pavilion. Many memorials and secret letters were delivered along with the medicinal herbs. After reading them, he would casually tuck them into a hidden compartment, never hiding them from me, as if he were certain I couldn’t understand the court’s political situation.

But my father had been a Censor during his lifetime.

I was well-acquainted with the overt and covert schemes of officialdom. Moreover, after enduring these years in the Yeting and the Prince’s mansion, even the most naive person would have learned.

I slowly pieced together the truth.

The year the Ye Family met their downfall, the military funds for the Northern Frontier had been embezzled layer by layer. The ones truly in secret communication with the enemy were the Xie Clan, the maternal family of Empress Dowager Xie. My father had found the ledgers and was preparing to submit a joint memorial, but someone beat him to it by forging letters and framing him for collaborating with the enemy.

And all the evidence was ultimately placed on the Late Emperor’s desk.

I finally understood that the Ye Family didn’t lose to the evidence; they lost because Lu Yuheng had not yet reached a position where he could overturn the case.

But even so, I still didn’t want to believe him.

If he truly wanted to save the Ye Family, why wouldn’t he tell me a single word of the truth?

Why did he watch me hate him, resent him, and poison him time and time again without ever explaining?

The answer came in the spring of the following year, when I stumbled upon it myself.

That day, he went to the palace to discuss politics, and a new batch of old books and records had been delivered to the Medicine Pavilion. While I was organizing them for him, I accidentally bumped open the bottom-most hidden compartment.

Inside the compartment, there were no gold or silver treasures, nor were there any classified military reports. There was only a stack of old memorials with frayed edges from being flipped through so many times.

The top one was actually a petition to clear the Ye Family’s name.

The date of the signature was the seventh day after the Ye Family’s house had been seized.

Flipping further down, there was one from the fifteenth day, the twenty-sixth day, the second month, the third year…

A whole boxful.

Every single one was written by Lu Yuheng to the Late Emperor.

Every single one had been rejected.

My fingers trembled so much I could hardly hold the paper. Finally, at the very bottom, I saw a secret letter with blood-stained edges.

There was only one sentence inside.

“This subject has secretly sent the young son of the Ye Clan out of the capital to be registered under a military household in the Northern Frontier. I hope Your Majesty will quell your anger and allow this subject to atone for this transgression with future merits.”

I recognized the handwriting.

It was Lu Yuheng’s.

I felt as if I had been struck by lightning, my ears ringing violently.

Ye Zhiyuan wasn’t dead.

My only brother was actually still alive.

And the man I had spent all these years hating with all my might had, from the very beginning, been burying the Ye Family’s dead, trading his own life for my brother’s, and submitting memorials over and over to clear my father’s name.

I sat on the floor clutching that box of memorials, suddenly crying until I couldn’t breathe.

It turned out that all these years, it wasn’t that he didn’t save us.

It was that every time he saved me, he had to push himself an inch deeper into the mire first.
When Lu Yuheng returned that night, I was still sitting in the Medicine Pavilion.

His footsteps came to a sudden halt when he saw the unfolded reports scattered by my hand.

We looked at each other across a room filled with lamplight, neither of us speaking first.

Ultimately, it was I who broke the silence.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

My voice was as raspy as if it had been ground by sandpaper. “Why would you rather let me hate you than say a single word?”

He stood there, his spine pulled taut like a bow drawn to its limit.

After a long time, he walked toward me step by step, knelt down, and reached out to wipe the tears from my face.

“Because I couldn’t protect you back then,” he said. “Lanyin, only by making everyone believe you hated me and had nothing to do with me would they keep their blades away from you.”

“But what about me?” I clutched his lapels, trembling as I sobbed. “Did you ever think that I would hurt, too?”

His hand froze in mid-air, and something in the depths of his eyes finally shattered.

“I did,” he whispered, his voice so low it was barely audible. “That is why every single day, I hurt more than you.”

That night, the ice that had stood between us for seven years finally developed its first crack.

For a long time afterward, I felt that it was perhaps the closest I would ever come to happiness in this life.

After finishing his work late at night, Lu Yuheng would stop by the Medicine Pavilion to hold me for a while. When I grew drowsy, he would take the half-finished prescription from my hand and finish transcribing it for me. On the day the apricot blossoms were in full bloom in the capital, he would secretly take me out of the city to watch the lights of ten thousand homes at the foot of the mountain.

He said, “Once I take that seat, the first thing I will do is overturn the case for the Ye Family.”

Leaning against his shoulder, I asked softly, “And the second?”

He lowered his head and kissed my forehead. “Marry you.”

I laughed and called him a fool.

But as it turns out, fate’s greatest talent is pushing you back into the abyss just as you finally dare to believe.

In the year the Late Emperor fell gravely ill, the Xie Clan grew desperate and attempted a palace coup under the cover of night.

Lu Yuheng led troops into the palace to suppress the rebellion, and the palace gates burned for three consecutive days. During those three days, I did not see him; I only knew that the secret letters sent back grew more urgent with each passing one. By the morning of the fourth day, when he burst into Tingxue Courtyard covered in blood and dragged me from my bed, I thought he had gone mad.

He shoved a cold jade medallion into my hand, his voice incredibly hoarse. “Take this and leave the capital immediately.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Ye Zhiyuan is waiting for you at the North Gate.”

My heart jolted violently.

“Empress Dowager Xie already knows you’re alive and that the Ye Family has an heir. She sent someone to poison you with Red Wither Poison.” He stared at me, emphasizing every word heavily. “There is no cure for this poison; the longer it lingers, the more painful it becomes. The capital is about to descend into chaos, and I won’t be able to look after you. You must leave first.”

Only then did I realize that the tightness in my chest and the blood in my cough over the past few days were not caused by the constant state of fear.

“What about you?”

“I have to go back.”

“Back for what?”

“To ascend the throne.”

He spoke so calmly, as if he were merely remarking that it was a clear day.

With reddened eyes, I grabbed his hand. “Lu Yuheng, don’t leave me behind alone.”

This time, he finally didn’t push me away.

He pulled me into his arms and held me tightly, as if he wanted to meld me into his very blood and bone.

“Lanyin,” he whispered against my ear, “trust me one last time. Once I have secured the throne and cleared the Ye Family’s name, I will come to fetch you personally.”

But in the end, I didn’t make it away.

Empress Dowager Xie’s people intercepted us at the North Gate, and over half of our men were killed or wounded. In the chaos, I was taken back to the palace, while Lu Yuheng stepped over that blood-soaked ground to sit upon the dragon throne.

On the first day of the New Emperor’s reign, he issued a decree to imprison Empress Dowager Xie and seize the assets of the entire Xie Clan.

On the third day of the New Emperor’s reign, a secret report arrived from the Northern Frontier-the youngest son of the Ye Family, Ye Zhiyuan, was still alive.

On the seventh day of the New Emperor’s reign, the old case of the Ye Family was reopened for trial.

On the tenth day of the New Emperor’s reign, the Exoneration Edict spread throughout the capital.

The whole city was saying that His Majesty was decisive, resolute, and a man of great sentiment and loyalty.

Only I remained locked away in Changning Palace, growing sicker by the day.

I coughed up more and more blood, and the pain in my chest felt as if someone were repeatedly grinding it with a blunt knife. Over a dozen batches of imperial physicians came and went, and one round of medicine was replaced by another, yet they could only help me hold on for a few more days.

Lu Yuheng came to see me every night.

Sometimes I would feign sleep and hear him sitting by the bedside, silent for a long time.

Sometimes I would wake up coughing to find him changing my handkerchief, the sleeves of his Dragon Robe covered in dried medicinal stains.

I asked him, “Has the Ye Family been exonerated?”

He said, “They have.”

I asked again, “And Zhiyuan?”

He said, “He has returned to the capital. He is outside the palace; you can see him once you’ve recovered.”

I smiled, but in my heart, I knew that I would likely never see that day.