chapter 8
One way or another, Tang Su and I would settle matters between us today.
When word of the sudden trouble reached the Nan family, they arrived soon afterward.
Tang Su had no choice but to hand over the antidote.
Nan Jingche woke in a daze and found a dark mass of people surrounding him.
“Why is everyone staring at me?”
His family shouted angrily, “Keep sleeping, brat, and you will lose your wife!”
Nan Jingche snapped awake. He hastily grabbed my wrist and glared fiercely at Tang Su.
Tang Su’s expression was grim.
His eyes brimmed with certainty that he would have me.
He was sure Mother would never yield.
But when Mother saw the thick stack of betrothal-gift inventories, she fell uncharacteristically silent.
Page after page listed fortunes in gold and silver, along with a hundred fields, estates, and private properties. It was enough to make anyone dizzy.
Even an imperial princess would receive no more than this.
“Well? What do you say, in-laws?”
Mother stared, tongue-tied, as her head began nodding of its own accord.
She suggested giving Shen Miaoyi one page of the gifts as part of her dowry, but my brother and sister-in-law glared her into silence.
Shen Miaoyi pressed her lips together and came closer.
“Brother’s family is remarkably generous.”
I looked pointedly at the man she had called “Brother.”
Nan Jingche merely nodded. “Mm. Generous.”
He looked at me proudly.
All right. He apparently thought her barbed remark was praise.
Shen Miaoyi’s flirtatious glance failed to find its target.
Nearby, Mother, my brother, and my sister-in-law were fighting a different war of words.
A large hand suddenly dragged Nan Jingche over. Mother argued with righteous conviction.
“Miaoyi seems to like this boy as well. She is older, so naturally she should marry first!”
I nearly laughed from sheer anger.
First horses and dresses, then Tang Su, and now Nan Jingche.
Because of one dying request, did everything have to be given to her?
When I spoke back, Mother roared, “If you marry first, where does that leave Miaoyi?”
“If word spreads that we mistreated the late General Shen’s daughter, what will become of the Zhou family’s reputation?”
My sister-in-law extended one powerfully muscled arm and pulled me behind her.
“Why must you prove your care for your old friend’s daughter by being cruel to your own?”
“Even if you split one flatbread in two, no one would criticize you. Why insist on giving the entire thing to one person?”
Her voice rang with force.
“I will say this one final time. This is the marriage I chose for Xiaoshu. No one is taking it from her!”
My sister-in-law commanded Longxi’s troop deployments. Mother shrank back half a step in fear.
Chaos reigned.
Only Nan Jingche remained bewildered. “Am I the flatbread?”
I whispered, “Mm. And I am the one eating it.”
Tang Su, the Young Prince, sipped his tea with aristocratic poise–right up until Nan Jingche and I began talking.
He smashed his teacup.
Leaning forward with a smile that was not a smile, he addressed the room.
“And what if I insist on taking her?”