[Mutual healing + coming of age]
She had been a child bride, performed onstage, begged for food, and fought wild dogs for scraps. At one point, she'd even considered selling herself for a meal. She thought she would die on that autumn morning. But then she met Wen Yan. She gave me a name, taught me to read, and brought me back from the gutter into the world of the living.
When Wen Yan asked why she was learning medicine, she lowered her head and said only that she wanted to make a living.
“I want to protect you, Miss” sounded too sentimental. She couldn't bring herself to say it. But she would spend her whole life proving it.
When Wen Yan heard that answer, something inside her went hollow for a moment.
Even more hollow than when she learned her family had married her off for political gain, sending her a thousand miles away to wed Prince Yan, the notorious killer.
“That's fine, too,” she heard herself say.
So she stifled every urge to ask her to stay and secretly arranged to free her from her indenture, bought her a house, gave her money, and prepared a medical clinic for her.
Go live the life you want, Wen Yan told herself.
But on the morning of her wedding, Mingqi ran over from the east side of the city and asked in a trembling voice, “Miss, why are you abandoning me...?”
Xiao Shuo, Prince Yan, had led troops at seventeen and been made a prince at twenty. The day he returned to the capital to report on his duties, the whole city shut its doors. According to the rumors, he lived like a beast and killed for fun.
The emperor bestowed the delicate Fifth Miss of the Wen family on him merely to plant a spy and spite him in the process.
Xiao Shuo accepted.
No matter. It was only one more ornament for the inner courtyard.
But the young female physician who was always following the princess consort around, and never looked away when she met his gaze, was becoming more and more of a nuisance.
Years later, Mingqi, now a Palace Official, asked the empress, who was governing from behind the curtain, “Your Majesty, why did you save me back then?”
Wen Yan lowered her eyes. “Because I wanted to see what someone so resilient would become...”
