Half a month had passed since Xiao Shuwan married into Prince Ning’s Estate.
These past two weeks had been even more miserable than the hardest days she had endured in the Xiao family manor.
It wasn’t that she lacked food or warm clothing.
It was that she couldn’t even see Prince Ning.
Every morning, she would send Cui’er to inquire about the prince’s condition, and the answer was always the same.
“His Highness is unwell and is not receiving visitors.”
She was his princess consort—not a visitor.
But the servants of Prince Ning’s Estate clearly didn’t see it that way.
In front of her, they respectfully addressed her as “Princess Consort.”
The moment they turned their backs, their expressions changed completely.
She had personally overheard two maids gossiping beneath the corridor.
“The princess has been here for half a month, and His Highness hasn’t even seen her once. What a joke.”
“I heard she spent her wedding night alone. Poor thing…”
“Poor? Who told her to insist on marrying into this estate? Everyone in the capital knows about the prince’s health.”
Xiao Shuwan had been so furious that she rushed out and berated the two maids on the spot.
The maids knelt and begged for mercy.
She ordered each of them to receive ten strokes of the paddle, believing it would serve as a warning to the others.
Instead, the next day, Madam Lu came to see her.
“Your Highness,” Madam Lu said calmly, “when maids in the estate make mistakes, it is this old servant’s duty to discipline them. You’ve only recently entered the household and are not yet familiar with its rules. In the future, there is no need for Your Highness to handle such matters personally.”
A single, lightly spoken sentence stripped away every ounce of her dignity.
Grinding her teeth, Xiao Shuwan demanded, “I am the Princess Consort. Don’t I even have the authority to discipline a few maids?”
Madam Lu looked at her without the slightest trace of arrogance or submission.
“Of course Your Highness has that authority. However, the rules of this estate were established by His Highness himself. This old servant merely wishes to remind Your Highness, lest you unintentionally break them and displease the prince.”
Once Prince Ning’s name was invoked, Xiao Shuwan had no choice but to swallow her anger.
At last, the day came when she was allowed to meet him.
Madam Lu informed her that the prince was in relatively good spirits today and had summoned her to pay her respects in the main courtyard.
Xiao Shuwan changed into her finest robes and adorned herself with her most exquisite jewelry.
She examined herself in the bronze mirror again and again, making certain she looked radiant before following Madam Lu.
The prince’s bedchamber was spacious.
Yet every door and window remained tightly shut.
The air was thick with the mingled scents of medicinal herbs and incense—a cloying sweetness mixed with the odor of decay that made her stomach churn.
Suppressing her nausea, she entered the inner room.
On the elaborately carved canopy bed reclined a man.
Prince Ning, Mu Hanzhao, was only twenty-two years old.
Yet he looked closer to a man in his thirties.
His complexion was so pale it was nearly translucent.
His lips were an unhealthy grayish purple.
His eye sockets were sunken, his cheekbones sharply pronounced, and he was so thin that little remained but skin stretched over bone.
“This humble wife greets Your Highness.”
Xiao Shuwan knelt gracefully, her voice soft enough to melt hearts.
Leaning against his pillows, Prince Ning narrowed his eyes and studied her for a long while.
“Raise your head.”
She obeyed, revealing the gentle, elegant smile she was best known for.
He watched her for several breaths.
Then he let out a dry, rasping chuckle, like air escaping from a broken bellows.
“So you’re the Xiao family’s eldest daughter?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“I’ve heard…” His voice carried an eerie chill as a strange smile curled at his lips. “You volunteered to marry me?”
Her heart skipped a beat, but she maintained her composure.
“I have long admired Your Highness’s grace and bearing. Becoming your consort was entirely of my own free will.”
Prince Ning suddenly erupted into a violent coughing fit.
He coughed so fiercely that his entire body doubled over, as though he might cough up his very organs.
The eunuch beside him hurried forward with a handkerchief.
After coughing for what felt like forever, the prince finally stopped.
There was blood on the cloth.
He glanced at the bloodstains without the slightest change in expression, handed the handkerchief back, and looked at Xiao Shuwan once more.
“You admire me?”
His voice was even hoarser after coughing.
“What is there to admire in a dying invalid?”
Still kneeling, Xiao Shuwan found herself unable to answer.
Prince Ning made no move to let her rise.
Instead, he continued speaking to himself.
“Your father, Xiao Yuanshan, calculated things rather well.”
“Marrying his daughter to me…”
“He gambled that one day I would make a comeback.”
He coughed twice more and wiped the corner of his mouth.
“What a pity.”
“With a body like mine, I doubt I’ll live long enough to see that day.”
“He placed his bet on the wrong horse.”
Xiao Shuwan quickly replied, “Your Highness is blessed by Heaven. You will surely recover.”
Prince Ning stared at her for a very long time.
So long that cold sweat soaked her back.
“Enough.”
His interest vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
“You may leave.”
He waved his hand dismissively, as though shooing away a fly.
Xiao Shuwan kowtowed and withdrew.
By the time she stepped out of the main courtyard, her legs were so weak they could barely support her.
From that day onward, Prince Ning occasionally summoned her.
Not because he wished to see her.
Simply because…
He was bored.
“Water.”
“Medicine.”
“Fan me.”
“Get out.”
His longest sentence never exceeded five words.
Every order was delivered as a command.
The slightest dissatisfaction would send him into a rage.
Once, while Xiao Shuwan was serving his medicine, her hand trembled and two drops spilled onto the edge of the bed.
Prince Ning immediately hurled the entire bowl of medicine at her.
“Worthless.”
The bitter herbal liquid drenched her from head to toe.
She stood in the bedchamber, medicine dripping from every inch of her clothing, looking like a soaked stray bird.
All around her, the eunuchs and maids lowered their heads.
Not one dared speak.
Not one stepped forward to help her.
Biting her lip, she quietly walked out by herself.
When she returned to her own courtyard, Cui’er screamed in alarm at the sight of her.
After changing into clean clothes, Xiao Shuwan sat before her dressing table and gazed at her disheveled reflection.
Suddenly, she smiled.
“It’s alright.”
She spoke softly to the woman in the mirror.
“He doesn’t have a bad temper.”
“He’s only suffering because of his illness.”
“Once I cure him, he’ll treat me well.”
“If Xiao Guiwan could do it in our previous life…”
“So can I.”
She immediately put her plan into action.
The Imperial Physicians visited Prince Ning’s Estate regularly to examine him and prescribe medicine.
But Xiao Shuwan felt their prescriptions were far too conservative and slow to produce results.
Then she remembered something.
In her previous life, she had once overheard someone mention that Xiao Guiwan had treated Prince Ning with a special folk remedy containing fritillaria bulb.
Fritillaria soothed the lungs and relieved coughing.
That had to be the key.
Acting on her own, Xiao Shuwan secretly ordered servants to purchase fritillaria from a pharmacy, grind it into powder, and mix it into Prince Ning’s medicine in addition to the imperial physician’s prescription.
The first time she added it, Prince Ning coughed noticeably less that day.
Overjoyed, Xiao Shuwan believed she had finally found the right treatment.
What she didn’t know was that Prince Ning suffered from two different types of cough.
Ordinarily, his cough was caused by deficiency.
But during flare-ups, it stemmed from phlegm and blood stasis obstructing his lungs.
Fritillaria was cooling and moistening.
It worked well for deficiency coughs.
But for phlegm-stasis conditions, it only made matters worse.
The phlegm became even more difficult to expel, remaining trapped inside the lungs and steadily worsening the illness.
That was precisely why, in her previous life, Xiao Guiwan had never used fritillaria.
Prince Ning’s constitution simply wasn’t suited to it.
Xiao Shuwan knew none of this.
She only knew that after adding it once, his coughing had eased.
So she added it again the second day.
And again on the third.
By the fourth day, not only had his coughing failed to improve further, it had become more frequent.
Each cough sounded deep and muffled, as though something were lodged in his throat that he simply couldn’t cough up.
Xiao Shuwan panicked.
But instead of stopping, she convinced herself that the dosage must have been too small.
So she added even more.
Throughout all of this…
She told no one.