Marriage is where love goes to die; a spade of dirt tossed over a red wedding candle. True as winter frost.
Before vows, the lover’s gentler than spring rain, elegant and sweet. After vows, she can turn into a tigress at the gate.
So the worst fate? You haven’t even married, yet you already flinch like a husband under his wife’s slipper.
“Sigh…”
Lingcai sat on Scarlet Leaf’s lap, watching staff stream past like a river of ants, and let her breath drift out like steam from tea.
“What’re you sighing for?”
Scarlet Leaf slipped an arm around her shoulders, pressed her cheek to Lingcai’s small head, like a cat finding a warm windowsill.
All groomed and flawless, Lingcai looked like an heiress stepping out of a fairy tale, moonlight on silk. Scarlet Leaf couldn’t hold back; she closed fingers around her like a moth to flame.
She just wanted to hear it again—“I’m yours.”
Lingcai melted into her like water into sand, then said, voice soft as a night breeze through bamboo, “It’s good to be rich, huh. When can we host a wedding this lavish?”
“I’m not jealous anymore, so why are you? If you ask me, most rich folks’ money comes crooked, like a river after a flood. Even spending it, they can’t sleep easy.”
Her mouth said no envy; the vinegar jar was already knocked over. That was the classic broke-girl victory, a paper shield in the rain.
Lingcai sighed again, lifted her face, and blew a cool puff against Scarlet Leaf’s neck like a hidden draft through a screen. “Leaf, they say marriage is love’s grave. Those two already have one foot in the tomb. When’s it our turn?”
Scarlet Leaf’s neck shrank like a startled sparrow. Then she nuzzled Lingcai’s cheek again, warmth pooling like sun on stone. “So, what do you say?”
While they chatted, Lingcai never noticed Anielle ghosting up behind them, quiet as mist under eaves.
Seeing them deep in talk, Anielle tilted an ear in the noisy hall, fishing for a syllable like casting a line into choppy water.
But the room’s clatter washed over their words like rain on tiles. She caught only scraps, reeds in the wind: “...money...dirty...”
Her heart stumbled like a hoof on loose stones. Had Her Highness really discovered the arms-smuggling done by their household?
Yet on those few words, she couldn’t judge the net had closed. If it were an arrest, Her Highness wouldn’t come with so few fishers, right?
Anielle meant to step in and test the water. Then she saw the two still speaking, so she held her breath like someone hiding under lotus leaves and edged closer.
This time she heard Lingcai clear as a bell: “...those two already have one foot in the grave...”
Those two?
Damn.
Her mind jumped to herself and Duke Prine. Her face soured like milk. Saying the couple had one foot in a grave—that’s heads-on-the-block talk.
Right then, Lingcai turned without warning. She caught Anielle lurking, fox-sly in the shadows. From that flinch, it looked like she’d been there a while.
Lingcai thought of all they’d just said. Not exactly sweet tea—money coming dirty, marriage being a grave. Rude at best, asking for trouble at worst.
Not sure, she tried a probe. “Um... were you listening to us the whole time?”
“Didn’t hear a thing. Nothing at all. I just got here.”
Anielle shook her head like a temple rattle drum. A duchess seasoned by a hundred storms, she knew the safest play was calm water.
Still, she clutched at luck. She smoothed her face into a flawless gentle smile, a lacquer finish with no cracks. “If you don’t mind, what were you two talking about?”
Lingcai rushed to cut it off. “Nothing, nothing. Best if you didn’t hear.”
That one line poured more ink into Anielle’s head. Panic churned under the lotus, but she’d braced herself before testing the tide. Her poise held.
She sat beside Lingcai, eyes reading every flicker like a diviner reading tea leaves, and slid to another topic as naturally as drifting clouds. “You’ve worked hard. I heard assassins struck on your return from inspecting the waterways. Thank heaven it ended in a scare and no blood.”
Then she turned her blade with a smile and asked what mattered most. “But you must have attendants today, yes? How many guards are with you?”
Lingcai didn’t speak. She lifted a hand and held up two fingers, a careless V like a swallow’s tail.
Her party was just Scarlet Leaf. And the paper-type Pokémon, LilyBell, picked up on the road like a stray papercraft spirit.
“...Twenty?” Anielle tensed, then eased. Twenty was a small wave. Manageable.
Lingcai shook her head.
A chill crawled up Anielle’s spine like ice water. If the Princess had come to seize them, twenty blades could handle this chapel.
“...Two hundred?” she whispered.
If it were two hundred, the church would already be ringed like a drum. A pot ready to cook the turtle.
Her courage wobbled. The princess in front of her looked certain of the hunt, bold enough to show her face.
Lingcai blinked. Why was the number climbing like a kite in the wind? Wasn’t it clear? Just two.
Seeing Anielle’s timid tongue, Lingcai smiled and spoke plain. “Don’t be nervous. Just two. And I’m really not any ‘Your Highness.’”
At that, a streak of relief flashed across Anielle’s tight face like sunlight through cloud. “I... see. Then you are...?”
Lingcai missed the shift and answered offhand, words falling like pebbles into a still pond. “The real princess is at the arsenal digging out a mole. What would she be doing here?”
I say you’re here to catch me.
Anielle shut her mouth at once.
On that sentence alone, whether or not Lingcai was truly the Princess, she clearly knew about the illegal arms case.
That case touched the nation’s throat. The inquiry was under iron lid. Duke Prine only knew because a man inside the arsenal carried him a whisper.
Yet Lingcai mentioned it in passing, like dust on a sleeve. Was that a signal, a line cast to hook her reaction?
Schemes! A well with no bottom.
Anielle pressed a lid over her deeper fear and squeezed out a gentle, ignorant smile, soft as a spring shawl. “How would I know? Everyone says Your Highness is keen as ice and snow. I’m sure you have your reasons.”
Only then did Lingcai feel a faint off-beat, like a drum out of time. They weren’t even on the same channel. “Hold on, I said I’m not the princess...”
Anielle didn’t hear a word of it. She dipped a quick curtsey. “Forgive me, my husband needs me. Please allow me to go at once...”
She backed away with proper bows, step by step, like retreating from an altar. Once out of Lingcai’s sight, she lifted the hem and fled without looking back.
Only confusion stayed behind, pooling around Lingcai and Scarlet Leaf like evening mist.
Lingcai stared a moment, then poked Scarlet Leaf. “Why does she keep needing her husband’s opinion? Leaf, do you think the duke treats his lady badly?”
Scarlet Leaf nodded and snorted, vinegar sharp in the air. “Tch. Men get rich and go rotten. I’m betting domestic violence.”
“So if I get rich, I go rotten too?” Lingcai burrowed into her arms again, voice with a shy crinkle like folded paper.
Scarlet Leaf hugged her gladly, weighed the words, then answered, light as a fan tap. “Keep being a tsundere cutie for life, and you won’t have time to go bad.”
“I’m not tsundere...”
“So you admit you’re a cutie?”
“...”
Lingcai paused, then looped her arms around Scarlet Leaf’s neck. She pressed close, breath warm as spring on the ear, and whispered, “If that’s what you like, I can be your cutie for life.”
