As the agony exploded through her, she looked back and saw her deputy, Chen Yan, slowly lowering the army’s only one of three siege crossbows. He was the man she had carried off the battlefield three times, dragged out of piles of corpses, and who had sworn to give his all for her.
There was no guilt on his face, only a calm so numb it was almost lifeless. “Don’t blame me, Your Highness. You shine too brightly, so brightly that… you’re in someone else’s way.”
“Who…” she asked, coughing up blood.
Chen Yan crouched down and spoke in a voice only the two of them could hear. “The Second Prince asked me to find out if you still remember Consort Duan, who starved to death in the Cold Palace seven years ago.”
Pei Niaoniao’s pupils contracted sharply.
