Seeing Zhen Xiaoyan hesitating as if the words were lodged in her throat, Zhao Zongying’s voice dropped, sharp and impatient. “Is this question really so hard to answer?”
“It’s not the question,” she said, wavering. “It’s—does a yes or no even matter?”
Her eyes met his: clear, honest, unnervingly calm. “In two months we’ll have nothing to do with each other.”
“If that’s the case, why go to all this trouble to win me over?” His gaze cut like a knife.
She drew a breath and finally admitted the truth. “I’m afraid you’ll kill me.”
She touched her neck as if to reassure herself the choking sensation had passed. “I’m terribly afraid of dying. And you… you look like someone you don’t want to be crossed.”
The gesture made something shift in Zhao Zongying’s expression. He remembered that night: how, half asleep, he’d felt the weight of a mountain pressing on him, the desperate need for air. He’d woken to find Zhen Xiaoyan draped over him. He’d rolled, instinct taking over, and his hand had closed around her throat. He had wanted to squeeze the life out of her—twice—until the fact that she was still alive unsettled him.
Later, he had noticed oddities, hints that didn’t add up. But Zhen Yunqian—her sister—had already poisoned his mind against Xiaoyan. Once that prejudice took hold, everything she did seemed to inflame him.
“I know you’re biased against me,” she went on. “Maybe Zhen Yunqian told you things. I don’t ask you to like me—sometimes I am awful—but I did save your life up on the mountain. So if I ever anger you, please… show mercy.”
Her plea was earnest, the hope in her eyes almost painful. He let his lashes lower, masking whatever crossed his face. He gave her no promise of leniency. Instead he asked, coolly, “If you think I’m dangerous, why ask me to pretend to be your husband?”
That question hit home.
Xiaoyan straightened, considering her words carefully, then spoke slowly. “Because I know you won’t stay. Once you leave, I can go on with my plan—”
“What plan?”
He interrupted, sharp suspicion in his tone. But she already had an answer ready; it wasn’t a lie, only a scheme.
“I’ll tell people you were sent away on business,” she said. “I’ll fake a pregnancy and then adopt a boy from elsewhere. That way the Zhen estate won’t be split up, and my father’s work will be preserved.”
The plan sounded plausible—simple and practical. In this kind of wartime world, finding an orphan wasn’t difficult; finding a male heir mattered because women here had no right to inherit land. If a family had no son, the property would be parcelled out by the clan. Xiaoyan could have simply hoarded kill-intent points until she escaped, but she couldn’t abandon the old man who had treated her kindly. He deserved an heir, someone to care for him in his old age.
Zhao Zongying’s eyes narrowed. “What if later on you meet someone you truly love? He might not accept a woman who’s been married and has a child—especially if the child isn’t hers by blood. Most men would treat that child differently.”
Wow—big villain thinks ahead, Xiaoyan thought with a wry little inward smile.
She met his look and said, almost defiantly, “Any man I fall for wouldn’t be like that. He wouldn’t hold those petty doubts. Otherwise, I wouldn’t fall for him.”
A voice came from outside the door. “Second Miss, may I come in?” Doctor Lin’s tone carried the careful neutrality of someone who’d heard far more than he let on.
How much had he heard? Xiaoyan shrugged and called back, “Come in.”
Doctor Lin entered with a rolled mat, a pillow, and a thin blanket. “The bath water’s ready. Who will go first?” He set about straightening the bed without glancing away.
“Ah Man, you go first. Lin, keep an eye out for us, please,” Xiaoyan said.
When she’d finished and stepped outside, she found Doctor Lin hovering awkwardly in the yard, as if waiting specifically for her.
“You heard what Ah Man and I were saying?” she asked without preamble.
Doctor Lin sidestepped the question. “I can make you a bed in the apothecary if you’d rather—”
“No.” She smiled, steady. “If we don’t sleep in the same house, the child won’t seem real.”
“You’re pretending—” he began.
“Precisely because it’s pretend, it has to look convincing. Please, Doctor Lin. Don’t let this slip.”
He sighed. “Why make things so hard? You could find a normal life—”
“My father is dead,” she said simply. “My grandfather is holding the family together alone. It’s unfair to let everything fall apart.”
Doctor Lin’s sigh was heavy, resigned. He said no more.
Back in the straw hut, Zhao Zongying sat cross-legged on the bed, eyes closed as if regulating his breath. Xiaoyan scanned the room, pulled the thin blanket over the empty space beside the bed, and lay down. The system’s occasional chirps—notifications of kill-intent gained—sounded in her ears: Wang Dazhu, Li Gousheng, names rolling through like a chant. She closed her eyes and fell into a contented sleep, smiling in her dreams.
Zhao opened his eyes and saw a small human shape curled on the floor: the bundle of her. She slept with a smile playing about her lips, as if dreaming of something sweet. Earlier she’d been terrified he would strangle her; now she was calm enough to sleep at his feet. Had she really come to trust him so quickly?
He let his gaze travel to a little pouch by his foot—an embroidered sachet marked with the characters for “coiled dragon.” Whoever had stitched it had no talent for dragons; the figure looked more like a scrunched-up clump than a noble beast. It irritated him on a petty, visceral level. If you can’t stitch, don’t stitch at all, he thought.
His eye caught a small hand, the skin pitted with pale puncture marks where the needle had pricked her fingers. She had been clumsy with the embroidery, bleeding at the fingertips. The image of her concentrating at each stitch, awkward and earnest, smoothed the sharp edge of his irritation.
He murmured the line he’d heard from her the night before: “A hidden dragon sleeps in the deep.”
On the floor, Zhen Xiaoyan turned in her sleep, lips moving, a faint laugh escaping her as if the night’s dream had kissed her.