A Royal Engagement

The Wedding Day

(QING)

The day of my wedding dawned bright and beautiful. The birds are chirping. The wind is breezing cooly. The sun is shining. The city is bustling. The weather forecast said that it's a perfect day to have picnic, hiking, biking, walking. It's a perfect to be out and dream and have fun with the sun.

A perfect day for a wedding. I am glad for Dayu, his wish of a nice day for his wedding came true.

I am feeling grumpy though. Sleeping without Dayu for two straight night is not good for me.

Our night in the Consort's room in the Palace is the last night we spent together before this day came. My mother was not happy when she learned that I slept in the Queen's wing with Dayu.

"Are you both insane? A Prince is the Queen's wing? A grown Prince?! Only young and adolescent Princes are allowed to spend the night in the Queen's wing full of women attendant."

"My Queen," the King wanted to support us but my mother gave even him a censoring look. "The Queen's wing is my domain. Don't gainsay me on this score, my King. The Prince and his Consort were wrong..."

"She is right, my King." The Queen Dowager agreed on her daughter in law. "It doesn't mean that the day of the wedding getting close is a reason for them to break a rule. No. A grown Prince is prohibited to sleep in the Queen's wing. And with his intended no less. Oh the scandal. What will the people say to our Consort now? That he has loose moral? Letting his intended have his way with him. That's not good for our poor Consort..."

Dayu blushed and blushed until he is red in the face. "I'm sorry. But it's his fault." He pointed at me. "He seduced me,"

"What?" Oh the betrayal.

Dayu leaned to whisper to me, "Save me on this one and I will owe you. I will do anything you say. Anything. Please..."

Well, if he will put it like that...

"It's my fault," I bowed at my parents and grandmother as an apology. "I'm sorry."

Dayu kissed my cheek for being his Knight in Shining Armor.

But we were still punished by not sleeping together two nights before our wedding. Since that midnoon of my mother learning that Dayu and I slept together in the Consort's room, she imprisoned Dayu. Well, not imprisoned cruelly, she just more or less took Dayu's time in preparationg for the wedding. Taking Dayu and Baozang to a spa for facial and other muscle relaxation things.

"Dayu had to look radiant in his wedding," my mother said. "We will pick up Yue, Dayu's mother, so she can spend her day with the spa with us."

I saw panic in Dayu's eyes before I let him go. A day in a spa with the women in our family. Better him than me. I gave him a sympathetic look before he was dragged away.

Me? All my grooming activities will be done in the Prince's Pavilion on the day of my wedding. I shared dinner and drinks with my father and soon to be father in law. They shared marriage wisdom with me, Lao and Chong that left us speechless and a little afraid.

"Qing ah," my father pats my shoulder. "When your wife..."

"I will not have a wife. I will have Dayu," which I think, no offense to men with wives, is far better than having a wife.

"Then when Dayu said that he is right. Nod. Just nod. Don't say anything, don't even blink. Just nod. And the torture will stop." I think my father's brain is getting cloudy with too much bourbon.