The Princess's Gambit - Chapter 5

“Pei Rong is human too. A beating hurts me. Humiliation shames me.”

The words struck my heart over and over, like the wooden fish in an old temple. One sliver of my mind stayed on guard.

I had taken Chenjiang myself. Just before my limbs went weak, the pain made me gouge out the eyes of the person sent to examine me with my bare hands. Corner a person and they will fight to the death.

Pei Rong did nothing. His clenched fingers relaxed. A faint smile of release appeared on his pale face.

The wick spat with a sharp crack. At last I recovered a trace of sense and let go. I rose, took a box from the shelf, and found the key inside.

From my clothes I drew a porcelain vial and slipped a black pill into his mouth. He struggled to swallow. I gripped his burning jaw, bent, and pressed my lips to his. Blood inevitably mixed between our mouths.

After taking the antidote, he stared at me in a daze. His eyes slowly focused. He did not ask why I had tried to kill him. His gaze went instead to the silver chain clenched in my hand, the chain that should have been around his neck.

Alarm flashed in his eyes. He spoke with difficulty. “Princess… don’t you want Pei Rong anymore?”

I stared at the lamp on the corner of the table and drew a deep breath.

“Sincerity is worth nothing to me. Stay if you wish. My residence doesn’t feed idlers, so don’t neglect your duties.”

He could not stop coughing, yet his smile was genuine. “Thank you, Princess.”

A sharp ache flared at the back of my head. Only then did I realize the ebony hairpin had shifted during the struggle and cut me. Xie Yunbai’s gift was even more ill-omened than the man himself. I yanked it out and hurled it onto the floor.

The ebony snapped in two. I felt a little better. “From now on, you are not to set foot outside the inner courtyard without my permission.”

I supplied myself with a reasonable excuse. If Pei Rong truly was Xie Yunbai’s brother, keeping him alive might serve another purpose.

I had asked Suiyin what had happened three months ago. Why had Pei Rong been beside me, with a grave wound on his right arm, when she found me in Jilin Forest and brought me back?

Her answer had not changed at all.

“When I arrived with the household guards, Your Highness was unconscious. Young Master Pei was at your side. He said he’d merely happened upon you.”

“And because he resembled that man somewhat, you kept him as a companion in my residence.”

Suiyin’s reply in the carriage was precise as ever. She would have put him through plenty while verifying his identity, but every detail he gave about the aftermath of the attack matched. He was not working with the assassins who had hurt me.

“Do you collect every good-looking man you meet for my household?”

Her face twisted for a moment as she fought to keep from smiling. “I merely wanted to add a little pleasure to Your Highness’s otherwise uneventful life.”

We arrived at the palace gate. Suiyin remained seated in the carriage, and I looked at her in surprise. “You’re not coming in?”

“Your Highness has forgotten. Tomorrow is your twentieth birthday. I must prepare a gift for the gentlemen at your residence.”

Twenty was the age when a man came of age. I paused while getting down. I never bothered with birthdays.

“Why would you give them presents on my birthday?”

Suiyin smiled significantly. “On an emperor’s birthday, it is customary to grant a general amnesty.”

My mysterious steward did have a taste for ceremony.