Chapter 2

# Chapter 2

The longer I lived in the Eastern Palace, the more clearly I saw how deeply the Crown Prince and Crown Princess loved each other.

I heard they had met when they were young. The Crown Princess had once tried to run away from home and fallen from an apricot tree. The Crown Prince happened to be passing and caught her.

She was the youngest daughter of the Duke of Zhenguo, with two older brothers serving in the army. Having grown up in such a family, she too had loved weapons and martial arts from childhood.

People had once questioned whether a woman with so fierce a temper could become the future mistress of the realm. Yet she performed the role splendidly. For the Crown Prince, she forcibly tamed her restless spirit and became dignified and virtuous before everyone.

She simply had no talent for cooking. Only the Crown Prince could swallow the white fungus soup she made.

Her name was Feng Yueshang-a beautiful name that made me think of the moon above the grasslands.

Her grandfather, the old General Feng, had fought mine for half their lives, with victories and defeats on both sides. Now it was the Crown Princess’s turn to face me. We competed in mounted archery, and she had not been boasting: astride her chestnut mare, she truly looked the part.

Of course, her archery could not compare with mine.

By the end, she threw down her bow, panting and sulking. Under her breath, she complained that if embroidery and zither lessons had not wasted so much of her time, she would never have lost.

I smiled and told her I would practice archery with her whenever she wished.

Her eyes brightened, then dimmed again. Linking her arm through mine, she said, “Ah Zhu, if only I had met you sooner.”

I knew why the light had faded from her eyes.

For the Crown Prince, she had broken her own wings.

But had I not done the same?

However large the riding ground, it was not half as vast as the prairie. Never again could I gallop wherever I pleased.

The Crown Prince sometimes spent the night in my rooms, but we never consummated our marriage.

It was one thing for a man to lie beneath the same quilt and talk with you. It was quite another for him to keep doing nothing but talk, night after night.

I understood then that he truly held no romantic affection for me. He had married me only to fulfill a political duty. I let go of any hopes of my own, and together we maintained an unspoken understanding.

Strangely, the way he treated me only made me think more highly of him. I respected him as a man of honor. Though he could not avoid taking multiple wives and concubines, he had found his own way to give the Crown Princess a lifetime of faithful love.

Yet beneath that respect, I felt a faint sorrow.

I was the brightest pearl of the grasslands, and for the sake of peace between two realms, I was going to wither into an old maid.

That sorrow reached its peak on my birthday, when the Crown Prince, of all things, sent me a luminous pearl from the Western Regions. The moment I opened the box, it filled the entire room with light so bright that no candles were needed.

I hated him for seeing only his moonlight and never the glow of his pearl.

In the end, I smashed the pearl to pieces and wept bitterly.