19 The Crown Prince Small Chapter (1/2)

THAT NIGHT

IMPERIAL PALACE - CROWN PRINCE'S QUARTERS.

Crown Prince He paced furiously around his room, his eyes wild with fury and disbelief as he went over everything that happened that day on his head.

Jiang Ying Yue was alive. She was alive. He would still not dare completely believe it, if for anything other than his own hands having hold her. The feeling of her thin arms, the weight of her beautiful eyes looking at him, eyes that were so different from those on his memory, and yet could not be anyone else's.

It was her. It really was.

”Dammit!” he screamed, brushing his arms over a nightstand and throwing everything on the grown, ceramic, glass, chinaware, everything broke down on pieces at his feet, only increasing the fire burning behind his dark, dangerous eyes.

He had asked.

When his father sent him to the camp, with the pitiful excuse of making him bond with his army and enhance the Empire's strength, Geng Xin had wanted to laugh. Anyone would be able to tell the Emperor's reasoning. His engagement had just been made official, but the Imperial City's gossip mill was stillhot with whispers and tales about his secret meetings with the Jiang girl.

His goal was to keep them two apart. And he almost succeeded, in a most definite way.

At first, he had laughed. To think the old man thought he could keep them apart was such a ridiculous idea that he brushed it aside with ease and conceded to travel most graciously.

Apparently, he had underestimated the situation.

'The only thing more dangerous than a greedy men, is a greedy woman', his maternal uncle used to say, with a faraway look in his old, yellowish eyes.

But the man had got it wrong. All of them had. There was something worst than greed. Even more dangerous and unpredictable.

A variable that hid itself in plain sight, so that when anyone noticed, it would be far too lat to act.

He never saw the jealousy on Tong Zhi Ruo's eyes. He saw her greed, her envy at his time, her need for power and callous treatment of anyone beneath her.

Now he understood, he saw only what she had wanted him to see, nothing else. She showed him a reflex of his own needs, desires and flaws. That's why the prince never cared to look deeper.

That one oversight almost cost Ying Yue's life.

When the news of her 'death' reached him, he had wanted to rush back, too see her at any cost, to prove everyone else wrong...!

But it would mean disobeying a royal decree. It would mean exposing himself far too soon, and jeopardizing everything he had been working for his entire life.

Geng Xin could not, would not, risk his position now. Not after everything he had to endure just to be nominated the Crown Prince. He knew Ying Yue would understand him, she always did.

She saw the darkness on his soul and matched it. She was his partner, the one he turned to talk to whenever the weight of his choices tried to burry him. There was never kindness on the young girl's eyes. But there was acceptance and, even more important, there was loyalty.

So he mourned in silence. He let his heart die slowly, turning colder and colder as the days went by.

Every few days, though, Geng Xin would succumb to his grief and ask his Fourth brother about the Jiang family. But the answer was always the same.

”There were no words from the Capital. I'm sorry, brother”.

And then, one day, he too had disappeared, living behind only the notice that General He had received a secret decree urging him back to the Imperial City.

The Crown Prince had feared the worst then. His blood turned cold as images of the Emperor finding out everything and making arrangements to have him arrested as soon as he stepped foot on the capital flooded his mind.

Geng Xin had tried contacting all his allies on the court, his spies and even some long-time friends for information, but it seemed that everything was as it used to be. No-one knew of any strange movements or suspicious actions being taken on the Capital.

As far as everyone knew, General He himself was still back on the war camp.

That particular information gave him pause. But it was what he read next that made him finally reach a decision.

'You wouldn't know, of course, but the most amusing thing happened while you are away' one of his friends had written 'it seem's that the youngest Jiang girl has finally lost her wits. There has been talk all around the city about her crazy antics. I...'.

He hadn't bothered reading anything else.

As far as reasoning was concerned, Geng Xin had the motive, he had the perfect excuse to go back: see what moves was his brother taking.

But deep inside, burrowed under tons of brick walls and frosted ice, his heart was beating a bit faster.

'Could it be true?' the question hung in the air around him throughout the journey back 'Could it be she really is alive?'.

He didn't care what anyone else thought. If she really was crazy, if she was hurt. Nothing mattered anymore, not at that point. She was alive. And, for some reason he didn't want to look too close into, it was enough for him.

The Crown Prince sighed, closing his eyes and falling against a wall in a defeated position. There was no point in relieving all the hell he'd bee through those last two months. Now that he was back, that the first move had been made, it was once again time to plan.