Chapter 1
Chapter 1
“No… It hurts… Jiang Youze!”
Si Yan opened her eyes in a daze. Above her hung the crimson gauze canopy of her own bedchamber.
Candlelight flickered in the hibiscus-and-hydrangea lantern, bathing the room in a warm glow.
“Miss, you’re finally awake!” Her maid Linghe hurried over with a copper basin, anxiety written all over her face.
“You’ve had a high fever for three days. Her Ladyship has been beside herself. She’s fainted from crying several times.”
Si Yan braced a hand against the bed to sit up, but her body felt boneless, too weak to obey.
Cold sweat still broke out over her forehead and back. Her fingertips trembled slightly.
For three days she had burned with fever, and for three days she had dreamed.
In those dreams, Jiang Youze had humiliated and tormented her without cease, until at last she was left hanging from the city gate tower.
Even awake, that terrible pain and fear remained seared into her mind.
It had all felt too real to dismiss as an ordinary nightmare.
Linghe helped her up and settled her against the head of the bed, then took out a handkerchief to wipe away her sweat.
“Are you feeling any better, Miss? Your medicine is keeping warm in the kitchen. I’ll have someone bring it…”
Si Yan looked at the sky through the half-open window. Her voice was still hoarse from the fever.
“Linghe, Jiang Youze… How is he?”
The handkerchief paused in Linghe’s hand. She stole a cautious look at her mistress’s face.
“Miss, Young Master Jiang underwent castration yesterday. He is to enter the palace in seven days…”
Her voice dwindled as her mistress’s expression grew worse.
The rest caught in her throat. She did not know whether she ought to go on.
Her mistress and the young master of the Jiang family had grown up as childhood sweethearts, innocent and deeply attached.
Throughout these three days of unconsciousness, she had called his name countless times.
At the height of her fever, her cries had been so agonized that even Linghe had wanted to weep.
But the Jiangs were charged with treason, a crime punishable by the execution of all nine branches of a family. Who dared have anything to do with them?
Anyone who did would die.
Close as the Si and Jiang families had been, His Lordship no longer allowed the servants even to mention them. Her Ladyship had cried so much she could not leave her bed.
Linghe bit her lower lip. In the end, she finished what she had to say.
“Miss, His Lordship says our household will have nothing more to do with the Jiang family.”
Si Yan pressed a hand to her chest and slowly closed her eyes.
Scenes from the dream rose clearly in her mind, one after another, each painfully vivid.
She saw Jiang Youze’s face.
The face she had traced with her fingers countless times had become strange and terrifying in the dream.
Those eyes, always so tender when they looked at her, had turned cold, sinister, deranged, steeped in an implacable hatred.
He hated her.
Hated her for actually abandoning him when he needed her most.
Hated the way she spoke of him to others, as though he were a worn-out shoe to be discarded, disgust in her eyes and an eagerness to wash her hands of him.
Hated her for breaking their engagement and planning to marry someone else.
“Qingqing,” he had murmured in the dream, his gentleness enough to make her skin crawl. “Do you have any idea how much it hurt?”
She did.
She knew now.
When her mistress remained silent, Linghe assumed the fever had left her muddled and she had yet to come to her senses.
“Miss, don’t dwell on it. Your health matters most…”
She dipped the handkerchief into the copper basin, wrung out the hot cloth, and laid it over Si Yan’s face.
“His Lordship said that once you woke, you were to give him the betrothal jade pendant so he could call off the engagement.”
Call off the engagement?
Of course. The Jiang family had fallen, and Jiang Youze was a convicted criminal. What was the point of keeping this betrothal?
Was she to let it drag the Si family into the mire as well?
Then she had had that dream. It had frightened her into three days of high fever that had left her half dead.
Si Yan tore the cloth away. Her voice rang out, sharp and clear. “Who said I was calling it off?”
“Miss?”
Startled by her reaction, Linghe gaped, her mouth wide enough to fit an egg.
“B-b-but… You said only a few days ago that you wanted to…”
She was so flustered she could barely speak. “You said the Jiangs had committed a terrible crime, and you couldn’t…”
“That was a few days ago! Today is today! I’ve changed my mind! I’m not doing it, not doing it, not doing it!”
Si Yan threw back the covers and tried to get out of bed, but her legs were so weak she nearly fell to her knees.
Linghe caught her at once. “Slowly, Miss! Your fever has only just broken. You’re still weak!”
With Linghe supporting her, Si Yan shuffled to the dressing table and sat down.
She reached for the drawer beneath her dressing case and took out a red sandalwood box.
It was small but heavy in her palm, made of fine small-leaf red sandalwood.
The edges had been polished to a soft patina, plainly from being handled and stroked over and over by its owner.
Inside lay some twenty neatly stacked banknotes and a few valuable pieces of jewelry.
The betrothal pendant rested at the very bottom.
It was carved with twin lotuses on one stem, their stalks and leaves entwined, the two blossoms growing together to symbolize a love that would never part.
On the back were engraved the family names Jiang and Si.
Si Yan stared at those two characters. Her hand shook harder and harder.
In the dream, Jiang Youze had held this pendant between his fingers and questioned her with a cold smile, poison in his eyes.
“You were certainly quick to return this when you broke off our engagement, Qingqing.”
Quick was hardly the word for it.
What had she done in the dream?
Right before Jiang Youze, she had raised the pendant high and smashed it onto the ground.
The jade had shattered with a sharp, piercing crack. The twin lotuses had split in two.
She had looked down at him, her voice full of disgust and contempt.
“You’re a eunuch. How could you ever be a match for me?”