The door creaked open. Su Ruhan looked toward the entrance and saw the Third Prince standing beneath the moonlight, elegant and almost otherworldly. His hands rested against the doorframe, but he made no move to come inside.
As though nothing unusual had happened, Su Ruhan struggled out of bed. His knees were too weak to support him, and he sank heavily to the floor. Still, he respectfully lowered his head in a kowtow. “This subordinate pays his respects to Your Highness the Third Prince.”
Only then did the Third Prince enter.
Since his demotion, Su Ruhan had been moved from his former fine quarters into this cramped earthen room. The once high-spirited young man had become gaunt and exhausted, but his eyes remained as steady and resolute as ever.
The Third Prince walked to the bed and quietly helped him back onto it. Su Ruhan was visibly startled. He had never seen the harsh lines of the Third Prince’s face look so gentle, and for once, he could not tell whether the emotion there was happiness or sorrow.
“Why did you release Ning Yue?” the Third Prince asked.
Su Ruhan smiled faintly. He should have known the Third Prince had not come to check on him. The very thought was absurd. As expected, he had come to demand an explanation.
“Ning Yue was innocent,” Su Ruhan answered calmly. “He should have been released.”
“Then tell me,” the Third Prince replied, “which of the people you have killed was guilty?”
Su Ruhan had taken more lives with his sword than could be counted. Some had died simply because their attention wandered for an instant. Ning Yue, meanwhile, had offended the Third Prince and trespassed into Qinyi Courtyard without permission. Under the Third Prince’s usual rules, either offense would have been enough to kill him many times over.
What surprised Su Ruhan was that the Third Prince was actually bothering to argue the point with him. He had expected to offer some perfunctory excuse, after which the Third Prince would simply punish him, drag him into another abyss of suffering, and torment him until he died.
But the Third Prince was looking at him seriously, so Su Ruhan finally answered truthfully. “Ning Yue belongs to the Grand Tutor Manor. Every person from that household who dies means one fewer clue to the truth behind Grand Tutor Mu’s death.”
“Why are you so certain Mu Xueshi did not kill him?”
Su Ruhan could not help laughing. With astonishing boldness, he answered, “Because Your Highness taught me that.”
The Third Prince looked at him with an unreadable half-smile. He even reached out and rested a hand against Su Ruhan’s hair, the gesture unexpectedly intimate.
“Is he beautiful?” he asked.
Su Ruhan knew exactly whom he meant. “No one beneath heaven can compare.”
“Oh?” The Third Prince seemed unexpectedly interested in discussing Mu Xueshi. “So you risked your life just to clear his name?”
Su Ruhan nodded, meeting his gaze without emotion.
The Third Prince’s expression gradually hardened, and the air around them seemed to grow colder with it. The muscles of his face tightened little by little until anyone else would have shuddered at the sight.
Su Ruhan waited for the storm.
Instead, the Third Prince turned away and tossed him a small bottle. It contained an excellent medicine for bone injuries. The Third Prince knew perfectly well that Su Ruhan had not lost all of his martial arts, yet he had still chosen not to cripple him completely.
Su Ruhan stared down at the bottle in his hand, unable to make sense of what he felt. Years of training had taught him to search for hidden motives behind everything the Third Prince did. He had long since forgotten how to interpret a gesture in the simplest possible way.
Leave a Reply