Chapter 10.2

Someone who in the very next breath after saying she couldn’t bear to leave him had turned and shoved him aside to rush toward Su Wei — this person now claimed to be worried about him?

The corner of Xie Yan’s lips curled up with a hint of mockery, yet he did not expose her, and drank another sip from the hand holding out the cup.

“Then My Lady the Prince’s Consort has worked hard.”

He lowered his head, and his fair hand gently gathered her hand along with the wide sleeve, giving it an almost imperceptible stroke.

The sudden tenderness of his words made Su Jiao avert her eyes uneasily, and she quickly withdrew her hand from his. Seeing that he no longer brought up the study, Su Jiao finally settled into ease, used the excuse of taking the soup bowl out, and slipped into her own courtyard.

Although Mother Su currently showed no symptoms of angina, she had no way of knowing when she might next be able to leave the palace. In her previous life, she had later learned a medicinal formula, and today, having come out of the palace, it was the perfect occasion to prepare the medicine in advance — better to be prepared than caught off guard.

Watching the figure at the doorway disappear, the smile on Xie Yan’s face was entirely gone. He lowered his head and looked at the luminous powder that had fallen from her sleeve onto his fingertips when he had gathered it a moment ago, a probing glint flickering through his eyes.

That afternoon he had gone to Father Su’s study, found the hidden compartment that Chang Lin had mentioned, yet inside he had discovered only a few blank sheets of paper.

The topmost sheet was sprinkled with fine luminous powder — if he had taken it, it would have been extremely easy to detect.

Xie Yan was exceptionally sharp, and had almost instantly surmised that someone had already swapped the contents, and furthermore that this person had planted numerous cleverly concealed traps throughout the study.

Xie Yan had dismantled the traps one by one, but deliberately left behind those few sheets of white paper that no longer held any use.

Yet the moment he had stepped out of the study, he ran right into a flustered Su Jiao.

Judging by the direction she came from, she too had just emerged from the study.

And furthermore… he had also discovered the luminous powder on her person.

A woman who had been married out of the Su family for less than half a month — why, during a visit home, would she be frantically going into her father’s study, and why would she be so afraid of him finding out?

How did she know there was a hidden compartment there, and why had she stolen those sheets of paper from it?

Father Su’s defection had occurred suddenly five years later — even he himself had known nothing of it before it happened.

Would the Su Jiao of five years ago know?

Xie Yan lowered his head, slowly rubbing the luminous powder between his fingers.

It was rare to have a trip outside the palace, and Su Jiao made the most of it by lingering an extra hour. Only when dusk had fully gathered and someone came calling at the door did she finally rise to leave.

She stood at the doorway and gave her mother reluctant, lingering instructions.

“It’s cold outside — don’t stand out here all the time. Go back in early. On ordinary days when there’s nothing to do, have the physician come more often to take your pulse. With this daughter rarely at your side, you must look after yourself. If anything feels off, tell elder brother right away.”

She held her mother’s hand, hesitated for a moment, then drew a porcelain vial from her sleeve and handed it over.

“What is this?”

“Mother tends to cough in winter — it’s just something to soothe the throat.”

Su Jiao said vaguely a few words, then added another instruction.

“Keep it with you and take it as needed.”

Mother Su opened the stopper and took a look. The rich medicinal fragrance immediately drifted through the air.

On the other side of the wall, Xie Yan had just reached the doorway when he abruptly stopped in his tracks.

A familiar, clean fragrance reached him for the first time in three years. At first he thought he was imagining things.

But when he turned his gaze and looked through the window lattice, in the warm glow of the lamp, the medicine vial held in Su Jiao’s mother’s hand was undeniably, irrefutably real.

The instant he made out the vial clearly, his hand inside his sleeve clenched. Xie Yan felt a wave of absurdity and shock crash over him like a surging tide.

He knew that medicinal fragrance intimately — it was absolutely not any remedy for a cough.

In his previous life, in the second year after he had ascended the throne, he had set aside a courtyard in the palace for Su Jiao, and had also ordered the head physician to teach her to advance her medical skills. Su Jiao had always been deeply troubled by her mother’s sudden death from angina in those earlier days, and so had been especially devoted to this pursuit.

In the winter month of the second year of Zhaoning, after a banquet had concluded, he had been sobering up in a pavilion in the Imperial Garden when someone came rushing toward him with a smile and ran straight into his arms.

She too had been holding a vial just like this one in her hand. She seemed to have drunk wine as well — her face was flushed red and smiling — and she had wrapped her arms around him, looking up with tears streaming down her face yet laughing all the same.

“I have a way now. Mother — I have a way to save you. You’ll live.”

After so many years, he still remembered her tears and her laughter that night, and the medicinal fragrance that lingered in the air between them, long unwilling to fade.

Unlike any other medicine.

Xie Yan stood rooted to the spot as though fixed in place. Even the night wind could not pierce through the shock within him. Combined with the matter of the luminous powder in the study earlier that day, a possibility that he had almost never once entertained came surging up inside him with sudden force, making his heart thunder and his throat run dry.

A medicine she had only learned to make three years from now…

If…

Could it be…

“Mother, I’m going.”

Su Jiao was still blissfully unaware as she moved to step over the threshold. Xie Yan retreated half a step in an instant, concealing himself right at the corner.

“Jiao Jiao.”

Su Wei came hurrying in from outside the courtyard. His clean white robes were touched with dust and frost, and his gaze softened the moment it fell on her.

“Come here.”

He beckoned, and Su Jiao had barely walked up to him when Su Wei pulled her into his arms with one arm.

“Elder brother!”

Before Su Jiao could push him away, Su Wei had already used the motion to murmur low in her ear.

“Wait calmly.”

With that, he released Su Jiao, and watched from a not-too-near, not-too-far distance as she turned around.

He watched her walk toward Xie Yan, who had appeared before the carriage at some unknown moment.

She reached him, and stood shoulder to shoulder with him.

Mother Su looked at her with reluctance, then dipped into a bow toward Xie Yan.

“I trouble Your Highness to look after Jiao Jiao.”

Xie Yan stood without speaking.

Afraid her mother would worry that the two of them were not on good terms as husband and wife, Su Jiao hastily tugged at Xie Yan’s sleeve.

“Mother, please don’t worry.”

She linked her arm through Xie Yan’s, smiling as she waved to her mother.

“In Yongning Hall, wherever His Highness is, I am always there as well. His Highness has always treated me very well.”

After a long moment, Xie Yan came back to himself.

“Madam, please be at ease.”

He shifted in his throat, his voice low and heavy.

“I will… look after her well.”

His gaze moved away from Mother Su.

Across the short distance, it met Su Wei’s.

One pair of eyes held frost and snow; the other was sharp and cold as a blade.

After a long moment, he turned, his large hand closing firmly around Su Jiao’s wrist, shackling her as he led her toward the carriage.

“Let’s go.”