Chapter 5

Zhou Zhi was the young marquis.

Enjoying such imperial favor, if he set his mind on protecting someone, he could certainly find ways to pressure maids and older serving women no longer bound by indentures into changing their testimony.

At worst, it meant an outright breach with the Pei family.

There was no material evidence or witness against me. The few maids and servants present insisted it had been an assassin. However far the Chancellor’s influence reached, he had to swallow the loss.

And Pei Xiang, even after nearly dying, still insisted on remaining at the marquis’s residence. For his daughter’s happiness alone, the Chancellor had to endure it.

Afterward, however, more than ten maids, older servants, and guards followed Pei Xiang everywhere. Finding another chance like that to kill her seemed unlikely.

I returned to Moon Pavilion. After that night, Zhou Zhi stopped coming to see me.

He was probably still angry.

When I went to find him, he avoided me.

Before I could decide what to do next, the man I had glimpsed in the crowd when I fell into the river came to see me.

When Xiaotao announced him, I was in my room sharpening a hairpin.

I wanted to make it sharper.

What if I got another chance?

“Will you see him, miss?”

At that familiar name, the pin nearly pierced my finger. Xiaotao was quick to take it away.

“Yes.”

I took a deep breath, suppressing the anger and hatred inside me.

“I ought to see how the future prince consort is doing—the man who made a game of me.”

He stood in the courtyard.

Wearing a pale ivory robe, his hands clasped behind his back beneath the pear tree, he looked just as he had when we first met.

At the beginning,

Pei Xu had merely made a wager with his friends. After losing it, he pretended to be a destitute young man in trouble and collapsed outside my door.

I saved him and cared for him attentively.

I had no other intentions. I had a younger brother and sister to raise, and even after turning fifteen, I did not dare marry.

But after half a month together,

one day Pei Xu suddenly said he had fallen in love with me.

Then he confessed everything, including the absurd wager. He swore before me that he would marry only me, even if it meant breaking his engagement to the princess.

My heart did stir then.

He was a handsome young man. It was hardly strange for me to feel something.

But once I learned who he was, I understood the gulf between our positions and immediately put those feelings aside.

He insisted it must be his engagement that troubled me. So one day he vanished, leaving only a letter saying he had gone home to discuss ending it.

That very day, Pei Xiang arrived with her servants.

The memories surged and receded like a tide.

Looking at him again, I felt none of that old fluttering. Only immense hatred remained.

If he had not insisted on doing everything his way,

my brother and sister would not have died so horribly.

Pei Xiang deserved death.

But was Pei Xu not a murderer too?

He seemed overcome when he saw me emerge, and immediately moved to take my hands. Xiaotao reacted faster, shielding me behind her.

“Please conduct yourself properly, Young Master Pei.”

Though I had no formal position in the residence and everyone still called me Miss, they all knew I belonged to the young marquis.

“Ah Yue, you… why are you here?”

His voice seemed choked. Even with Xiaotao blocking him, he could not resist reaching to touch my face. This time I moved away first. Startled, he slowly lowered his hand, his eyes full of guilt.

“Even now, you’re asking me such a stupid question?”

I laughed coldly.

Perhaps, back then, Pei Xu really had not known of his sister’s schemes. Perhaps she had invented some lie, saying I had disappeared or died suddenly. However hard he thought, he could never have guessed I had been sent to a cheap whorehouse.

Yes.

A cheap whorehouse, at first.

Pei Xiang had meant to send me to a brothel, then suddenly changed her mind. “Letting her become a courtesan is too good for her. Send her to a cheap whorehouse to serve rough men and beggars. That’s the proper place for this little seductress!”

Such houses were the lowest kind of brothel.

Most of the women were disabled or had grown old and lost their looks. In any case, they were worth little, so they were left there.

A few copper coins could buy a girl for the night.

So beggars and penniless laborers could save a handful of coins and choose whichever one they liked.

Many girls caught diseases. They were hastily wrapped in mats and thrown out.

I had hatred in my heart then.

I did everything I could to make the madam see my value, even if it left me covered in wounds.

Only that way could I reach the finest brothels, the ones visited by the rich and powerful.

Only by meeting such men could I find a chance for revenge.

The suffering of those five years

made me hate Pei Xu, Pei Xiang, and everyone in the Pei family more and more.

She did not have to pay for murder because a whole family stood behind her.

How could I not hate them?

Pei Xu had seen me by the river that day.

Knowing his nature, he would certainly have sent someone to investigate where I had been.

He would have wanted to know what I had suffered. Yet he still asked me that stupid question, seeming to pity me while driving straight into my wounds.

Hearing my words, Pei Xu’s face changed at once. Guilt spread across it, and he began apologizing over and over. “Ah Yue, I truly meant to marry you. I was willing to break off the engagement with the princess. But before I could persuade my parents, my sister told me you had taken your brother and sister away because you didn’t love me, and died on the road.”

He looked up, his eyes full of love.

“At first I didn’t believe it. That body’s face had been destroyed. I couldn’t recognize it, and I couldn’t believe it was you. But I had seen your brother and sister. There was blood on their faces, yet I could still recognize them. So I…”

He fell silent, and I finished for him.

“So you thought I was dead. Perhaps you grieved for a while. But you stopped talking about ending the engagement, and next month you’re to marry the princess. Isn’t that right?”

I laid the truth before him.

All that supposedly genuine love was nothing but a lie.

“No. You’re the only one I’ve ever loved. I thought you were dead, so it made no difference whom I married. That’s why I agreed to marry the princess. But now you’re back, I won’t marry anyone else!”

He spoke with absolute conviction.

I sneered inwardly, then tested him. “Are you saying you’d defy the imperial decree and break off the marriage for me?”

Pei Xu did not hesitate.

He nodded.

“For you, I would.”