Just a Wet Nurse, Just a Plaything? Everyone Wept After My Death - Chapter 80
Chapter 80
The wind and snow in the Northern Compound seemed harsher and colder than anywhere else.
The few catties of Silver Frost charcoal had made the room considerably warmer, but for Xiao Ze, who was already deathly ill, it was no more than a drop in the bucket. Late on the third night, the child’s condition suddenly took a turn for the worse.
“Ugh… ugh…”
On the bed in the inner chamber, Xiao Ze’s entire body convulsed, his teeth clenched tight. His normally pale face had turned a suffocating shade of blue-purple. No matter what Shen Yingyue tried, she could not get the bowl of rice broth meant to keep him alive down his throat. The little she managed to pour in immediately spilled from the corner of his mouth, choking him so badly that his eyes rolled back.
“Your Highness! Ze’er!”
Shen Yingyue touched his burning forehead, frantic with worry.
Rice broth could only nourish his stomach. It could not cure this severe cold. Now he was even suffering convulsions! If he did not receive acupuncture treatment soon, the child would not survive the night!
“Someone, come quickly! Summon an imperial physician! Hurry!”
Shen Yingyue rushed to the chamber door and shouted.
But the two palace maids who usually shirked their duties had long since vanished. The entire Northern Compound stood empty as a realm of ghosts, and only the howling wind answered her cries.
Shen Yingyue’s heart sank.
She knew the Imperial Pharmacy would never care whether a prince who had fallen out of favor lived or died, just as they had not cared last time.
There was only one way to save Ze’er.
She had to intercept the imperial procession!
She had once heard First Attendant Su mention that after morning court, the Emperor would occasionally take the passage west of the Imperial Garden on his way to Cining Palace to pay his respects to the Empress Dowager. It was the closest route to the Northern Compound that he was certain to pass through.
It was a desperate gamble.
If she won, Ze’er could be saved. If she lost, she would be guilty of misconduct before the imperial presence and beaten to death on the spot.
Shen Yingyue looked back at the child lying on the bed, barely breathing, and steeled herself.
“Wait for your wet nurse… You must hold on.”
She did not even have time to put on a heavy coat. Wearing nothing but her thin, coarse palace dress, she plunged headlong into the driving wind and snow.
…
The snow along the western passage had yet to be cleared.
In the distance, an imperial procession draped in brilliant yellow slowly approached. Seated in the imperial palanquin, Xiao Jingheng rested with his eyes closed, idly turning a string of tourmaline prayer beads in one hand.
Suddenly, a slender figure darted out from behind a rockery beside the road and threw herself to her knees in the snow before the imperial palanquin.
“Your Majesty! Your Majesty, please save him!”
“Insolence!”
The Imperial Guard clearing the way reacted instantly. Several gleaming steel blades flew from their sheaths and came to rest against the woman’s neck.
“Where did this madwoman come from? How dare you disrupt the imperial procession! Drag her away and behead her!”
With the icy blades pressed against her neck, Shen Yingyue did not dare move. She lay prostrate in the snow, her forehead pressed firmly to the ground, and screamed with every ounce of strength she possessed.
“Your Majesty! I am Wet Nurse Shen of the Northern Compound!
“The Ninth Prince is suffering convulsions and a high fever. His life hangs by a thread! The Imperial Pharmacy refuses to provide medicine, and the imperial physicians refuse to come… Your Majesty, please show mercy! Please save the Ninth Prince! He is your own flesh and blood!”
Every word trembled with tears, yet beneath her anguish was the tenacity of someone fighting for one last chance at survival.
Within the imperial palanquin, Xiao Jingheng had not intended to pay her any attention. Countless people cried out about grievances and injustice in the palace every day. If he dealt with every person who blocked his procession, he would have no time left to be emperor.
But then…
“Lady Shen…”
Xiao Jingheng opened his eyes, his fingers going still against the prayer beads.
That voice.
That hoarse voice with its singular, supple strength. The same voice that had sung a nursery rhyme on that snowy night and inexplicably made his heart flutter.
“Wait.”
Xiao Jingheng raised a hand, stopping the guards’ blades before they could fall.
“Make her raise her head.”
The guards withdrew their swords. Trembling, Shen Yingyue lifted her head.
Amid the wind and snow, her hair was disheveled, with several dark strands plastered to the sides of her face. Snow and mud stained her skin, and hunger and cold had left her deathly pale.
But her eyes-those tear-filled yet startlingly bright eyes-were fixed on the emperor towering above her, brimming with desperate pleading and grim resolve.
Xiao Jingheng’s gaze settled on her face.
It was her, just as he had thought.
The silhouette he had glimpsed through the crack in the window that night, cradling the child against her body to keep him warm, finally had a face.
Battered as she was, her beauty was even more delicate than he had imagined. There was something heartbreakingly fragile about her, like a plum blossom standing proud against the snow.
So this was Huo Xiao’s woman, the one said to be “too tough to die”?
So this was the woman who had bared herself in the dead of night to warm the child in her arms, stirring forbidden desires within him?
“You said the Ninth Prince is gravely ill?” Xiao Jingheng’s voice betrayed neither anger nor pleasure.
“Yes!” Shen Yingyue slammed her forehead against the ground, drawing blood at once. “He is convulsing and unconscious… I beg Your Majesty to have mercy! If an imperial physician will only go to him, I am willing to suffer death by a thousand cuts!”
Xiao Jingheng looked down at her from above.
His gaze slowly traveled lower until it came to rest on the hands braced against the ground.
They should have been slender, delicate hands.
But after kneeling in the frozen snow for so long, they were now red and swollen from the cold, almost purple in places.
Tiny, bloody cracks covered her chilblained knuckles, the wounds stark against the pure white snow. Red against white, the sight was shocking.
Once again, Xiao Jingheng’s heart inexplicably skipped a beat.
At that moment, his thoughts did not turn to the son who was on the verge of death, but to those hands… If he had opened the door and gone inside that night, would they have been spared this?
As though compelled by some unseen force, he spoke.
“Li Dequan.”
“I am here.”
“Pass on my verbal decree. Have the Deputy Director of the Imperial Academy of Medicine proceed to the Northern Compound immediately to treat the Ninth Prince. If anything happens to him, I will hold the physician accountable.”
The guards and eunuchs around them were stunned.
The Emperor was actually sending the Deputy Director of the Imperial Academy of Medicine for the sake of an unfavored prince?
“I… thank Your Majesty for your boundless grace!” Shen Yingyue wept with joy and struck her forehead against the ground once more.
“Get up.”
Xiao Jingheng looked at her red, swollen hands, still pressed into the snow. His brow furrowed slightly, and his voice seemed gentler than before, though there might also have been a trace of some deeper, imperceptible meaning beneath his words.
“The ground is frozen. Do not ruin your health by kneeling here. If those hands become useless from the cold… how will you serve the prince in the future?”
Shen Yingyue froze, then instinctively pulled her hands into her sleeves.
Xiao Jingheng said nothing more and lowered the curtain.
“Proceed.”
The imperial palanquin set off once more, slowly passing Shen Yingyue.
As they crossed paths, Xiao Jingheng peered through the gap in the curtain and cast one last, lingering look at the figure kneeling in the snow.
The image of those frost-reddened hands branded itself upon the emperor’s heart.
Shen Yingyue collapsed onto the ground. Watching the imperial palanquin recede into the distance, she gasped for breath.
She had won her gamble.
His Highness could be saved.
But she did not know that this desperate gamble had won her more than an imperial physician.
It had also drawn the most dangerous kind of attention from a man.
