Chapter 16 Blood in the Cell
After the national mourning, the Empress summoned me.
By then Li Yuankuo had already ascended the throne. She was already the Empress Dowager.
She fulfilled her earlier promise and handed Li Yuancheng over to me to deal with.
I went to the imperial prison. Li Yuancheng sat there, his face gaunt.
He had nothing left now.
The jailer said he could not sleep at night, often jolting awake from nightmares, and in recent days he had even coughed blood.
I called to him softly. "Your Highness."
He slowly lifted his head and gazed at me. After a long while he asked, "Xie Yuying, you were reborn too, weren't you? You were the one who leaked my arrangements to the Empress, weren't you?"
It seemed he had figured it out over these days.
With his insight, he should have seen it long ago.
Pity that in the last life everything had gone too smoothly for him with me. He had seemed to take me for the same woman who would still give him her whole heart.
I answered with a sound. "Mm."
He gave a wretched smile. "So it was true. The day the child was gone, my suspicion was right. You killed our child on purpose."
When he had calmed down, he said he did not blame me. He said that only after I died in the last life did he realize he had, at some point, already fallen for me.
He said it might have been that autumn night, when he lifted the tent curtain and saw me standing there, delicate, before him.
Or perhaps when I left, telling him with brimming tears to come back soon.
So in this life, he said, he had begun planning to save me, unwilling to lose me again.
The assassins that day had been arranged by him. He had wanted to take the throne as soon as possible and abolish the vicious law of The Son Is Honored, the Mother Dies.
Pity Li Yuankuo had been too fierce, and the assassination had not succeeded.
"I schemed everything and still never expected he would fight so desperately for you. Xie Yuying, have you developed feelings for him?"
I nodded. "He is that good. How could this concubine not have her heart moved?"
He started coughing again. Threads of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
I handed him my handkerchief and told him Xu Liuyi's child had not lived past twelve shichen, or twenty-four hours.
As for Xu Liuyi, she had lived in fear through her month of confinement. Now she was raving mad and had also suffered severe bleeding. I did not know how much longer she could live.
And on the day Li Yuankuo ascended the throne, he had abolished the law of The Son Is Honored, the Mother Dies.
From then on, the birth mother of the Crown Prince no longer had to die young in vain.
He heard it and was silent for a long time. At last he asked me, "Xie Yuying, can you forgive me?"
I did not answer him. I stood up and slowly stepped back.
The Black-Armored Guards who had come with me opened the cell door and stood before him, holding longbows.
He seemed to already know my answer.
Through the gaps in the iron armor, I saw lingering attachment in the way he looked at me.
Perhaps, in the end, he had truly fallen for me. Perhaps he truly regretted not saving me back then.
But to me, his regret was the cheapest thing of all.
The smell of blood slowly spread through the dark cell. I braced myself against the wall and walked, step by step, toward the outside of the imperial prison.
All that had passed, in that moment, finally fell away.