Chapter 3

Chapter 3

On the first night of my marriage, Pei Yanzhi and I did not consummate the wedding.

Not because he was incapable.

The main reason was that a second object had been fished out of the well in the rear courtyard.

A length of red silk, softened from soaking in water.

Embroidered on it in gold thread were four words: Zhaoning Sleeps Forever.

I sat beneath the veranda, holding a cup of hot tea. When the hidden guard presented the item, I nearly scalded my fingers.

Pei Yanzhi reached out and took the teacup from me.

The motion was perfectly natural.

So natural it made my scalp prickle.

I couldn’t help looking at him. “Lord Pei, are you always this attentive to your dead wife?”

The hidden guard lowered his head and coughed.

Pei Yanzhi set the teacup down beside me.

“If I truly regarded you as my dead wife, I wouldn’t have let you sit here tonight.”

I asked, “Then where should I be?”

He said, “In the mourning hall.”

I choked on my words.

This man had a face that could fool anyone, but that mouth of his was truly short on virtue.

The red silk had been torn from the bottom of one of my dowry chests.

Before my dowry left the Shen Family, my father’s principal wife had personally checked every item. After it entered Pei Mansion, it had not yet been put into storage. There were not many people who could have tampered with it in between.

Pei Yanzhi ordered my entire dowry escort brought to the front hall.

When I followed him there, Nanny Lin was already kneeling on the floor, trembling.

She was someone my birth mother had left behind for me. By all rights, she should have been the one most loyal to me.

But she was shaking far too badly.

Pei Yanzhi asked only one question. “Who touched Third Miss’s trunks?”

Nanny Lin immediately burst into tears.

“Spare me, my lord. It was Madam who told this old servant to put it there.”

I was not surprised.

My father’s principal wife wanted me dead. That was nothing new.

Ever since I was twelve, she had often muttered that my face was unlucky, that I looked too much like the former madam who had died young.

But Nanny Lin’s next words made my heart sink.

She said, “Madam said that as long as Third Miss committed a taboo in Pei Mansion, the Grand Secretary would send her back to the Shen Family. Once Third Miss’s reputation was ruined, His Majesty would find it difficult to pursue the matter of the bestowed marriage.”

I asked, “What about Bitao?”

Nanny Lin did not dare look at me.

“Miss Bitao… she is not one of the Shen Family’s people.”

The room fell eerily silent.

Pei Yanzhi lifted a hand, and a hidden guard placed a wooden box on the table.

The box opened. Inside lay an old Silver Bell.

A crack split its body, and a tiny character was carved into it: Ning.

My breath stopped.

I had seen this thing before.

Not in the Shen Family.

In my dreams.

For three years, I had often dreamed of heavy rain on North Mountain.

In the dream, someone shoved a Silver Bell into my hand and said, gasping, “Don’t look back. Run toward the lights.”

I had always thought it was only a dream.

Pei Yanzhi pushed the Silver Bell in front of me.

“This was found on North Mountain three years ago.”

My voice went dry.

“How do you have it?”

“Because during the autumn hunt that year, I was also on North Mountain.”

Pei Yanzhi looked at me, his tone utterly calm.

“Shen Zhaoning, the person struck by those stray arrows three years ago was not you.”

My fingers dug tightly into the edge of the table.

“Then who was it?”

A faint noise suddenly came from outside the door.

The hidden guards drew their blades and gave chase, but they returned with only a torn scrap of peach-colored skirt.

Pei Yanzhi lowered his eyes to it, and at last, his expression changed.

“It was Bitao.”