Jingrui had begged Zhanying to accompany her to dinner, and in order to stop her irritating pestering, he had agreed to it. Least did he expect her to run off and leave him within the lair of lusty mortals.

He arrived back at the inn. The breeze brushed past his skin, crackling leaves against pebbles and bringing with it a thick stench of alcohol. He stepped onto the veranda and stood, towering over Jingrui. She seemed to be drunk as she poured the wine down her throat straight from the jug. She waved her hand at him. "L-Leave me alone, Your Highness." She swallowed down her hiccups. "You don't need to reprimand me, I'm already reflecting."

He sighed and crouched beside her before snatching the jug of wine from her hand.

She snapped her head his way. "What are you doing—"

Before she could finish, Zhanying had already dispelled the jug into thin air. She clutched onto his hand and flipped it desperately to find the jug. "Where did it go?" She glanced around hopelessly before her eyes fixed on him. She glared at him and pointed her finger straight at his face. "Prince, you took it. You could have said you wanted some, and I'd give it to you!"

Zhanying watched her with indifference. "You are drunk."

She let go of his hand and cuddled her knees before turning her head away from him. "Hmph. I don't want to talk to you. Your Highness is always mean to me!"

He let out a soft sigh as he held his hand out to reach for her, but paused an inch from her face before retreating it back. His expression remained unchanged. "Why do you say that? Have I ever mistreated you, Bao Bao?"

"I know you keep me close to you and treat me well all this time, only because you suspect me to be working under the Emperor, right?" she asked a spot-on question.

Zhanying nodded slowly. "So, you are not that stupid."

"No one had ever said I am stupid. Only you do." She shuffled closer to him and cupped her hands over her cheeks. "Does this Bao Bao really look like someone who would be out to kill you?"

"I. . ." Zhanying paused and lowered his voice. "I cannot see you, Bao Bao."

He couldn't see her, and within the cover of the night, he held a strange temptation to know what she looked like. He reached for her once more and trailed his thumb across the arch of her brow, trying to make out her appearance. And at that point, he knew it well that if he still held any suspicion towards her, she wouldn't have gotten this close to him.

He sighed and glanced up at the night sky. "It's late now and you are drunk. I'll take you to rest."

Jingrui shook her head as she backed away from him and flopped down against the table. "I . . . I met father today," she suddenly said, her voice deprived of her usual liveliness. Then, she let out a soft laugh as she scratched her nails against the wooden table. "People meet and part, the moon is full and wane; life can never be perfect."

She held her hands out towards the moon, reaching for it. "My mother passed away when I was born so my father has always hated me. He hated my frail appearance and my sickly strength. I was useless unlike my sister, Jingyi. I could not do hard labour and was a burden for my father to feed and house. And since my family was poor, a weak child was worthless to keep around.

"He tried to get rid of me. I saw him pour doses of poison into my porridge, but . . . I was too hungry to care about it. Perhaps, I'd have been dead after overdosing if Sister Jingyi didn't swap our bowls of porridge every morning." Jingrui shook her head and laughed again. "No matter how dark my days had been, I grew up happy. My sister was always there for me, like a mother to her child. She was the only one I loved most. . .

"But I was always a pawn piece within my father's Wei Qi¹⁴ game." She fiddled with the clay cup, tilting it to see if there were any more drops of alcohol left. Her voice was sad, but she didn't weep like she normally would. It was as if she were numbed to it. "One winter, my stomach hurt so badly that I fell asleep with tears staining my pillow. But halfway through the winter, my father suddenly brought home two large sacks of rice. I was filled with joy as my father cooked me and Sister Jingyi a warm bowl of congee that filled our stomachs. Since I was born, that was my happiest day.

"After we were filled, my father told me and Sister Jingyi to go deliver medicine to a friend of his. We walked along the white field into the town with glee and arrived at the destination our father marked for us to go. Our smiles faded, and the medicine we held in our hands dropped to the floor.

"We were standing right in front of a brothel. It didn't take me long to realise what had happened." She let out a soft laugh and closed her eyes. "We were sold to the brothel by our own biological father . . . I knew my whole life that I was a weak child, but what I didn't think of was that, in the end, I was only worth a bag of rice."

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