Phoenix Rising

037

Meiyan fell ill for an entire week after the incident in the palace, much to Lady Min's distress. When they had returned from the palace with Meiyan unconscious, Zi-ning had taken it upon herself to explain the entire situation to the family. Their father had flown into a rage, angered at how frivolously his older daughter had behaved, single-handedly ruining her chances of ever marrying into the royal family. Contrary to the public image she portrayed, everyone knew that the queen was not a magnanimous person and to have been caught with the peony embroidered on her handkerchief would have immediately cast Meiyan into the queen's bad books. The girl would no longer have any chance of becoming a prince's official consort, and even being a concubine might be a challenge for her if the queen chose to be petty.

After Meiyan awoke, her loud cries could be heard across the entire household, along with the frequent shattering of porcelain as she started taking out her frustrations on the room décor. She cried for three days straight, after which she collapsed from exhaustion and had to remain bed bound for days after.

"Miss, I heard from some of the other servants that Miss Meiyan has been throwing her tantrums again. She threw a cup at Liren earlier this morning and Liren now has a huge gash at her left temple," Shujin said while helping Zi-ning to grind ink for her calligraphy practice.

Zi-ning dipped her brush into the black ink, her hand steadily tracing out the strokes on the paper before her. "She is lucky that she has Liren. The girl is too loyal for her own good," she murmured. After suffering the thirty strokes at Meiyan's behest, Liren had been brought back to the manor covered in blood and was supposed to rest in bed for at least a month before her injuries could fully heal, but Meiyan had summoned her a week after because none of the other servants could attend well enough to her incessant requests.

"Miss Meiyan has also been insisting that she had been set up, but the master will not listen to any of her explanations," Shujin continued. "I think the master is really angry with her this time. Lady Min has been trying to help smoothen the ruffled feathers, but the master has been avoiding her, staying at Lady Wan's quarters for the past week."

Zi-ning was not surprised at her father's reaction towards all this. Minister Han was a relatively low profile figure in the imperial court and the only reason why he managed to climb all the way up to become the head of an entire ministry was because of his careful calculations and strategising. She knew that her father had high hopes of Meiyan and had always believed that this daughter of his would be able to marry into the royal family one day. It was not an absurd notion, considering how shining and pristine Meiyan's reputation had been up until recent days, but now all those hopes were slowly being shattered into pieces. If Meiyan couldn't marry one of the princes, then her value would greatly diminish in the eyes of their father.

Back then, their father had stood by and allowed Meiyan to trample all over her, to the extent of sending her to the guillotine, all because he knew that Meiyan had Ru-an's favour. This time, he would do no such thing.

She finished her final brush stroke and set the brush down on its stand, holding up the sheet of paper in front of her. She had been practising the characters for "patience" ever since returning from the palace, a reminder to herself that she needed to be more careful about her next steps and that haste might end up ruining everything.

Being caught by the Shadow Lord had been the lucky part of an unlucky situation, but he was right—she could not risk something like that happening again. The crown prince would have assumed that she had done all that to catch his attention, and if she had gambled correctly, he would not speak a word of this to the queen because he would not want the queen to have a bad impression of her. As for Ru-an, she knew him well enough to know that he would not speak a word of it either—he never ventured to say or do anything that didn't benefit him. Instead, he would choose to keep his cards close to his chest so that he could make use of them when it was most advantageous.