Chapter 19 Departure
Not long after that day, I bid farewell to my parents and left Chang'an.
Along the journey, I often heard commoners speak of the Crown Prince and his consort.
They said the couple was perfectly matched, deeply in love.
The same title of Crown Princess.
In my previous life, I had been reviled.
Court officials despised me. The Emperor and Empress disliked me.
The common people called me a beauty who brought calamity, saying I had seduced the Crown Prince into giving up his position as heir just to marry me.
Not to mention that for the first seventeen years, I had lived as a man.
Soon after I arrived in Jinling, Lu Yinchuan followed.
He said, “You left in such a hurry you didn’t even see me once.”
“That day I went looking for you, but couldn’t find you anywhere.”
“I nearly went mad with worry, do you know that?”
I gave a soft “oh.” “I’m perfectly fine, aren’t I?”
He sighed. “You…”
“By the way, do you know how much effort it took for me to come here?”
Something occurred to me. “You really aren’t joining the army?”
“Jinling is prosperous, full of beauty and pleasure. I like it here. I’m not going anywhere.”
I wondered how, in the previous life, he had ever decided to go to the northern desert.
In my second year in Jinling, a plague swept through the city. The deaths were devastating.
I caught it too.
Lu Yinchuan cared for me without rest.
That night, half-asleep in fever, I felt a cool hand on my forehead.
At dawn, I heard that Zhao Yan had come.
He stayed for half a month.
When he left, I went to see him off.
I poured him a cup of wine.
His hand hovered in the air for a long time before he slowly took it and drank.
I drank two more cups myself and passed out on the table.
Then I felt him carefully brush a kiss against my lips.
“Take care.”
The following spring, the Crown Prince died.
The Crown Princess remarried.
In distant Jinling, I shed two tears.
The wine that day had not been poisoned.
The worst thing he ever did was never break his habit of stealing kisses.