Chapter 5.2

“My Lady the Prince’s Consort, yesterday when you went out, why did you have to be spotted by Eunuch Xu? If not for that, His Highness wouldn’t have been worried for you and disregarded orders to barge out of the Buddhist hall.”

“What did you say?”

Su Jiao had been rummaging through the inner chamber for medicine. At his words, she suddenly looked up, a flicker of astonishment crossing her eyes.

“Did My Lady not know? His Highness barging out of the Buddhist hall today — it was precisely because he feared Eunuch Xu meant to harm you that he incurred His Majesty’s wrath.”

Those short words struck Su Jiao’s mind in an instant. She looked over with a complex expression.

From the time she had married into this place until now, she and Xie Yan had only been acquainted for two days.

And yet he had been willing to go to such lengths for her.

The person on the bed seemed to be slipping into unconsciousness. The flush on his face deepened further, the sweat on his brow soaking through the cloth, and when Su Jiao pressed her hand to him she was alarmed by that searing heat.

She looked at his pallid face for a moment, knowing that even if she waited longer, Emperor Jia would not send anyone inside to treat him. The look in her eyes shifted again and again, and Su Jiao suddenly turned and ran toward the rear chamber.

She hurried to the rear chamber and rummaged through her dowry until she found the gold needles she had brought from the Su family home.

Those needles had been placed there by her mother before the wedding, along with a medical text, for her to study in her idle hours.

Su Jiao’s knowledge of medicine had been half-learned from her maternal grandmother. Later, when she had become Empress, Xie Yan had ordered a separate courtyard set aside for her within Heming Hall to grow medicinal herbs and study medicine, and her skills had gradually deepened considerably.

As for acupuncture — that she had only learned from the elderly head of the Imperial Medical Court in her second year as Empress.

It was, after all, something she had learned later in life. Even though she had been reborn and no one would know, Su Jiao, by habit of caution, had no intention of letting it show.

But now…

There was no other way.

An infection-induced high fever was enough to claim a life. Xie Yan’s knee wound had been caused in part by snake venom, and with the added ordeal in the Buddhist hall on top of that — no matter what, she could not stand by and watch him die at this moment.

Su Jiao came back from the rear chamber, caught a glance of Changlin pacing anxiously in circles, and paused her steps.

“Go and fetch another basin of clean water.”

Having sent him away, Su Jiao turned and closed the door behind her. The gleaming gold needles were inserted with practiced precision into the acupuncture points.

The room was perfectly quiet, with only the soft sound of her own steady breathing. Su Jiao leaned against the edge of the bed and rested for a good while. Nearly two incense sticks’ time later, she rose to remove the needles.

Acupuncture fever reduction did not take effect this quickly. She washed her hands, looked around once, and pulled over a wooden stool to sit beside the edge of the bed.

Until the fish-belly white of dawn crept across the horizon. Through the whole night, the flush on Xie Yan’s face finally began to recede, and his breathing had grown considerably more steady.

Su Jiao raised her hand and pressed it to his forehead, and let out a breath of relief.

She called for Changlin to come in and help wipe down Xie Yan’s body again.

The high fever on his body had broken, but there remained an even more troublesome matter. With no medicine in Yongning Hall, if the festering wound on his leg was not properly treated, repeated high fevers would only be a matter of time.

But after all that had kept her busy through the night, Su Jiao was exhausted. She decided to rest properly first and then think of a way.

She had just put away her needle case and was about to head to the rear chamber when she suddenly heard a delighted voice behind her.

“His Highness has awakened.”

Su Jiao’s steps halted. On instinct, she tucked the needle case into her sleeve and turned around.

Xie Yan was helped up to sitting by Changlin, with little strength left in his body and his throat parched and rough.

“Bring some tea.”

Changlin promptly assented and went out.

“How do you feel?”

Su Jiao walked to his side.

Xie Yan shook his head to indicate he was fine. He caught the faint scent of medicine drifting through the room, and spoke in a hoarse voice.

“You used medicine?”

“You had a high fever through the night. No imperial physician was allowed to be summoned outside Yongning Hall.”

Su Jiao left out the matter of the acupuncture, and only told him of the small amount of medicine she had managed to find after searching through the inner chamber.

Xie Yan showed an expression that said he had expected as much.

“Don’t aggravate the wound on your knee. We’ll need to think of a way tomorrow.”

Su Jiao went further inside. Xie Yan had taken up most of the bed, and she looked around once on each side, then sat back down on the wooden stool beside the edge of the bed.

“You didn’t sleep the whole night?”

The night was quiet. Xie Yan, not yet recovered from his grave illness, even had a measure of weakness in his voice. Years of living in Yongning Hall had left his complexion with a sickly pallor, and now that the flush of fever had only just faded, his face held a fragile, haggard sort of handsomeness.

“Mm.”

In her past life, Su Jiao had never seen Xie Yan like this. She could not help but look a moment or two longer. The tension in her loosened, and she found herself, unusually, in the mood to tease him.

“Naturally I couldn’t sleep. What if I woke up in the middle of the night to find half the bed cold beside me… this consort would have been frightened to death.”

The bright, warm smile drifted into his sight. Xie Yan suddenly recalled the last time the two of them had met at his sickbed in his past life.

“If it had truly gone cold, what would you have done?”

The Su Jiao of five years later had clung to life and feared death, discarding years of marital feeling without a second glance. He was curious how the Su Jiao of five years ago would answer.

“What else could be done — naturally I would have been overcome with grief.”

Su Jiao had not expected him to press further, and tossed out a reply that was perfunctory to the extreme. She let out a yawn, propped her head up, and leaned against the edge of the bed.

“But His Highness is blessed by the heavens. I was only joking — one truly mustn’t entertain such imaginings.”

The sound of the latter half gradually faded away. Having kept busy through half the night, she was finally overcome with drowsiness. Her hand drifted unconsciously to rest on the side of the bed, and her head tilted over.

The Su Jiao of this time in their past life was not yet a heartless woman.

Something eased inside him. Xie Yan lowered his head and looked at the clean, pale stretch of her neck as she lay with her face resting against the edge of the bed, and could not help but reach out and brush it gently.

“Truly?”

Su Jiao was half-drowsing, nearly asleep. The faint warmth coming and going at her neck only made her drop her guard a little more.

“Yes — after all, if you died, which of the Emperor or Empress would let me off?”

She murmured without thinking.

“My own little life is worth far more than yours.”

Hmm?

The warmth that had just risen in Xie Yan’s gaze instantly darkened again. He looked at the already-sleeping Su Jiao with a smile that was not quite a smile, and the few traces of good mood he had managed to summon vanished entirely.

As expected — he should never have held any expectations of this woman.

His outstretched hand fell to her slender waist. He was just about to act when Su Jiao’s sleeve shifted, and something slipped soundlessly to the floor.