The bright halo of the tall silver candle flickered across Shen Lizhuang’s jade-white skin and her clear, sparkling eyes, which were as moist as pears and rippling with light.
Her fair fingertips held the jade-pear hairpin—drawn with branching twigs—that Yingluo had fetched from home. Her gaze remained fixed on the hairpin without blinking, the corners of her lips turning slightly downward as a trace of bitterness and dejection flickered across her expression.
Zhuji, lacking guile, saw her state and asked, “Miss, you have been staring at this hair ornament for so long; is there something special about it? To me, it looks quite ordinary, hardly worth Yingluo making a special trip back to the Shen residence. The Prince’s estate has as many of these hair ornaments as one could want.”
Shen Lizhuang had not intended to pay her any mind, but hearing the girl call the hairpin ordinary, she tightened her grip on it and placed it back into the wooden casket. Closing the lid, she turned back under the lamp and said, “This is a keepsake left to me by my mother.”
Given the Shen family’s strict upbringing, she ought to have referred to her birth mother as “Auntie.” However, her nominal legal mother had never cared for her, and Shen Lizhuang did not wish to act against her heart and hurt the woman who had given her life. Thus, she had always simply called her “Mother” and refused to recognize anyone else as such.
Yet the scene awaiting her upon her return home tomorrow would not be what she had anticipated. She could only console herself with the thought that she was currently playing the role of Shen Meizhuang, and was no longer Shen Lizhuang.
Hearing that it was an item left behind by Auntie Li, Zhuji naturally refrained from asking further why her mistress treasured it so deeply. Although Auntie Li had succumbed to illness, her death was indirectly connected to the primary wife. Moreover, she had passed away on the second young lady’s birthday, leaving a persistent knot in Shen Lizhuang’s heart.
Though Zhuji served her master loyal to her duty, everyone was made of the same flesh and blood, sharing the same human nature.
Shen Lizhuang lowered her eyes, mocking her own rashness. “When I came to seek refuge with my elder sister, I never expected to be stranded in the Prince’s estate.”
Now that she could not return, her only wish was not to lose the final item her mother had left her.
Zhuji signaled her understanding and silently served Shen Lizhuang a bowl of meatball hibiscus soup.
Lacking an appetite, Shen Lizhuang merely tasted the meat soup before setting down the porcelain bowl to ask Yingluo about the current state of affairs at the Shen residence.
Yingluo answered truthfully. When speaking of the Master’s decisions after finding the eldest young lady, she held nothing back.
“Master does not agree to swap identities again. Finding the eldest young lady was not something that happened overnight. By that time, the second young lady was already acquainted with everyone in the Prince’s estate, especially Prince Jing. Swapping back now would reveal countless flaws. It would be better to wait a while, after His Highness Prince Jing has lost the novelty of newlyweds, and then find a way to request that His Highness divorce his wife.”
Divorce posed no problem to Shen Lizhuang. The nominal Princess Consort and the woman being divorced had never had anything to do with the name “Shen Lizhuang.”
She simply could not help thinking that perhaps because the one staying in the Prince’s estate was her, rather than her eldest sister, her father had uttered the word “divorce”—a matter so bound to reputation—so casually before thinking it through properly!
Frowning, she said, “I can reduce my movements in the Prince’s estate. When going out, I can wear a veiled hat to cover my face as much as possible. Elder Sister and I look alike; once she returns, with a slight change in makeup, we might pass for each other. Even now, I can attempt to conceal my face and disguise myself to match Elder Sister’s appearance. The person closest to the Princess Consort is Prince Jing, and since he cannot see, he might not notice.”
She was merely offering a suggestion. Shen Lizhuang did not want anyone to criticize her for taking advantage of her eldest sister, least of all the people of the Shen residence.
However, whether Shen Meizhuang was willing to give up her handsome and romantic Musician Liu to return to the Prince’s estate and continue serving as the Princess Consort was no longer her concern.
Yingluo felt it was improper, believing the risk of a massive oversight was still too high. Just as she was about to invoke Master’s words, the second young lady tilted her head, giving her an oblique glance, and asked with a half-smile:
“This is no good, that is no good. You seem so hesitant and cautious now—how did you ever agree to help Elder Sister escape back then? Without your full assistance, it hardly would have been easy for her to cover her tracks and flee from the Prince’s estate, would it? And that cup of soothing tea that night—you were the one who took the initiative to hand it to me.”
Yingluo pressed her cherry lips together, temporarily rendered speechless.
Shen Lizhuang had no interest in listening to their plotting anyway. The trouble had already been brewed within their own household, and pursuing blame now was far too late. She needed Yingluo’s help to pull off the deception.
Her father, who cared about the bigger picture above all else, surely would not want the Shen family to produce a daughter who ran off to elope, ruining the family’s honor and reputation.
After night fell, several lamps in the room were extinguished, leaving only a pair of tall candles shedding tears in mutual company on the candle stand.
Prince Jing, who could not see anyone all day, finally returned to the estate. After greeting the Dowager Consort, he walked all the way to the bedchamber with his blind cane. Before the door, he relinquished the cane and handed it over to a servant woman.
Once in familiar surroundings, he could move freely without needing the cane to probe his path.
Under the lamp, Shen Lizhuang wore a plain gauze nightgown, sitting inside the bed with its curtains pulled back. The elegant, faint pear-patterned night skirt flowed down like water to her feet, burying her fair, delicate toes beneath the silk skirt.
She looked straight ahead, watching him walk all the way over. His pale white cloud-patterned robe swayed at his ankles. Accompanied by his movements, the python-patterned black soap-leather boots under his white satin robe occasionally revealed themselves, rising and falling like an expressive poem that exuded an airy, detached elegance.
Yet despite Prince Jing’s looks resembling a fine lover from a storybook, his color showed the moment he spoke or moved. Thinking back to the fierce events of last night, Shen Lizhuang still could not quite close her legs, trembling uncontrollably.
Her inability to leave the room today was partly to conceal her face as best as she could, and partly because of this. She had never liked being restrained, and even at the Shen residence, she had never suffered such indignities.
Prince Jing paused before the gauze curtains of the bed, as if he had counted the exact number of steps to his destination, stopping neatly two paces away. After waiting for a breath, his smooth, long, ink-black brows knit into two deep furrows.
“Why have you not come over?”
It seemed that in his subconscious mind, she ought to manifest the duty of a Princess Consort at this hour, properly stepping forward to welcome him to bed.
Knowing that an arm could not twist a thigh, Shen Lizhuang took the initiative to move toward him.
Her toes had barely lifted, before she had moved even half an inch, when Prince Jing, who had been waiting for her, seemed to lose his patience. Bending his knees, he stepped forward several paces and slid straight into the bed curtains, wrapping his arms around Shen Lizhuang as she sat by the edge of the bed and pressing her down into the deep, swaying red hangings.
Pressed firmly beneath him, Shen Lizhuang’s head spun in a daze. She opened her eyes abruptly, looking up at those dark, phoenix eyes that had turned pitch-black above her. As his lips began kissing her face without a word, she finally regained a shred of her senses, trying frantically to refuse.
Ji Mu used his knee to press against her kneecap. His dark, unfocused phoenix eyes were as thick as concentrated ink. For a brief moment, she had the illusion that her own reflection was mirrored in his pupils, as though he could actually see her.
This illusion panicked her deeply, sending her heart pounding wildly out of rhythm.
His movements paused for a breath. The hot, damp vapor carried by his heavy breath fell upon her cheeks without reservation, causing the body in his arms to tremble ceaselessly once more.
“Your Highness… tonight, could we not?”
Suppressing the slight trembling of her body, Shen Lizhuang tried to negotiate with him softly and tactfully.
Ji Mu’s gaze remained unwavering. “Why?”
Shen Lizhuang bit her lip, finding it difficult to speak, but she persisted in expressing her feelings: “I truly cannot… I cannot endure it.”
Ji Mu showed no sign of embarrassment; perhaps relying on his blindness, he simply did not possess the emotion of awkwardness.
“Is it that matter you cannot endure, or is it this Prince you cannot endure?”
“It is… that I cannot endure Your Highness doing that with me.”
In short, you are simply too fierce, and an ordinary person cannot handle it.
Having gritted her teeth to finish, she shut her clear eyes tightly, not daring to glance at the expression on his face again.
From above, however, came a faint sound of laughter, seemingly tinged with mockery, as though she were some delicate, spoiled thing.
Shen Lizhuang did not dare display her dissatisfaction. Biting her lip, she tried to persuade him further: “Your Highness said that you would return to my maiden home with me tomorrow. I do not wish to be unable to get out of bed tomorrow. When Your Highness acts like that, plowing so fiercely and heavily, my waist hurts so much it doesn’t feel like my own. I fear it might break.”
Ji Mu raised his knuckles and cupped her face, the pad of his thumb rubbing over her soft skin. Hearing her words, he scolded lightly in a low voice burning with heat: “Do not speak such wild, predatory words.”
Shen Lizhuang tilted her chin up in shock, glaring at him angrily while taking advantage of his blindness.
Some people were just like this: leniency was reserved for themselves, while severity and strictness were imposed on others. The little bit of truth she had spoken did not even come close to half of what he put into action.
After a moment of silence, that warm, dry palm slowly stroked her cheek. The air circulation inside the bed curtains was poor; after having her cheek caressed twice, she could not resist her mouth going dry, a flushed color rising dully onto her face.
“My family’s upbringing was not very good, making Your Highness laugh at me again…” Turning her head away, she spoke out of petulance.
Above her, another slow trail of laughter descended into her ears.
“Talking back to me?” Though he could not see, he seemed able to imagine the soft, delicate, jade-white skin of the girl beneath him flushed with a shy red from mild anger, her clear eyes like pear blossoms soaked in a spring tide, her breath slightly ragged, her chest rising and falling. Thinking of this, he felt something in his chest swell with uncontainable fire. He nodded and evaluated: “You make a fair point.”
Shen Lizhuang was surprised. Had he actually agreed with her words—that since they had to return to her maiden home tomorrow, he truly should not torment her tonight?
Just as she was about to thank heaven and earth, rejoicing that she had escaped a ordeal, her chest suddenly tightened. She felt the ridiculous sensation of her lapels being violently tugged and ripped. Before the panic-stricken Shen Lizhuang could even lower her eyes, she felt a sudden chill sweep over her body.
The torn clothes were thrown out of the curtains without mercy by his large palm, landing beneath the footstool. Her empty, unshielded body was exposed to his line of sight almost completely under the candlelight. Had he been able to see, everything would have been laid bare at a glance.
She could only be thankful that he was blind and unable to glimpse the full spring scenery.
Her face flushed dark with excitement, and she barely restrained herself from berating this brazen rogue. Yet within a few breaths, he had already seized the upper hand.
“Since you regard this Prince as a tiger or a wolf, you should know that tigers and wolves devour people. It is merely a return to your maiden home; why make such a fuss?”
If she could not get up, she simply would not go tomorrow.
His hot lips leaned down, seeking out Shen Lizhuang.
Moments later, he too had shed his clothes, leaving no secrets between them.
His breath, his voice, his skin—all bound her like flaming magma, trapping her within the square inches of the bed, as if intending to burn her into a handful of ashes. As the searing heat invaded, Shen Lizhuang bent her knees and twisted her waist in painful resistance, but she ultimately could not overcome the strength of his right arm. She was dragged back beneath his waist, her soul nearly departing her body.
Prince Jing’s body was lean and fierce, forged through long years on the battlefield.
Beneath the quilt, his narrow, powerful waist would relax at times, displaying smooth, jade-white skin, and at other times tighten as if breathing, revealing the fierce, distinct lines of his chest and abdomen—shifting fluidly between the two in the blink of an eye.
Ji Mu could not see her condition; he only sensed her brokenness, her distress, her agony, and her endurance from her increasingly labored breathing and the deepening scratches on his back as her fingers dug in.
For some reason, though they had done it several times, she had always been like this.
This made Ji Mu feel somewhat irritable as usual. Propping himself up on a soft pillow, he furrowed his brows and commanded in a low, deep voice: “Make a sound.”
Shen Lizhuang did not know what kind of sound he wanted. She let out a broken, weeping cry: “Your Highness…”
With just those two words, no matter how much he demanded, she refused to offer anything else.
Half the fire in Ji Mu’s heart dissipated, but only half. The words “Your Highness” were truly unpleasant to his ears. Frowning, he experienced a brief moment where he felt a bit unfamiliar even to himself.
It seemed the name he wanted her to call out from her lips was Ji Mu, or perhaps Heqing. Among the four seas and various nations, how many men were there to whom the title “Your Highness” from her lips could refer?