Chapter 7
Ji Yue’s misery had only begun at dinner. When the restraint of the banquet was over, the girls filed silently back to the virgins’ palace, then rounded on her the moment the door was shut. While the girls at her table roundly hated her for spoiling their chances with her miserable actions, the others were angry that the Emperor had spent any time with “a dirty pig like her!”
Nothing about her was sacred. Her body, her hair, her smell were all fodder for insult. For one insane moment, she thought the eunuchs might help keep the rancor under control, but to her dismay, they merely egged the virgins on. This was their entertainment. Plus, they had no wish for the bitterness to be turned back on them.
In the end, Ji Yue stopped defending herself. No one wished to hear her side anyway, and she was too miserable to try to speak reasonably to anyone, much less the shrews that surrounded her. She simply wanted to go to her bed and cry herself to sleep. But she was blocked on all sides. No one would let her pass out of the main room. She had to wait it out, doing her best to ignore every hateful word.
But then someone recalled that the Emperor liked her hairpin. Another screeched that the pin was hers and she ran at Ji Yue, her claws extended to regain her property. Shesucceeded. She ripped out the butterfly pin and took a handful of cemented hair as well.
The pain shredded the last of Ji Yue’s patience. She had two brothers, she knew how to fight. So she grabbed the girl’s arm with one hand and balled the other into a fist, slamming it into the girl’s stomach. Her attacker crumpled to her knees, but the hairpin was still gripped tight in her fist.
“That was my great grandmother’s!” Ji Yue bellowed, and she went to pry it out of the shew’s fingers. She’d just managed to grab hold of one tiny wing when the first blow fell.
Clearly, someone else had brothers. A hard, compact fist slammed into her side. Then as Ji Yue began to drop, she saw a small foot wearing a bright red shoe fly toward her face. She twisted, taking the impact on her shoulders, but that only exposed her face on the other side.
Blows began to rain down. She had no idea who attacked her, only the why. This night, she was the scapegoat for everyone’s frustrations. As blow after blow fell, each more vicious than the last, Ji Yue could only curl into herself and pray. Surely, it would end soon.
Soon. Please.
Hesaved her.
Somehow she knew it would be him. Not the Emperor, as she might dream, but the man who plagued her awake and asleep: Master of the Festival, Sun Bo Tao. She heard his voice: a deep, angry bellow that cut through all the high screeches. And then the rapid scamper as virgins scattered.
She felt no more impacts, only a dull ache from head to toe. The pain would grow worse later, but she already knew that nothing had been broken. The pain was that of a beating, not of murder. The Master was still bellowing, and she heard the noise of bedroom doors slamming. Then she felt his hands, large but oh so gentle on her back.
“Where are you hurt, Ji Yue? You must tell me. I cannot help it otherwise.”
Deep in her spirit, she wanted to answer. She never had a sister, and she had naively believed that some of her fellow virgins could be her friends. She was a foolish, foolish woman to have thought such things. She knew that now.
“Chen Ji Yue, you must answer me!” His voice had a tinge of panic, and so she opened her eyes to look at him.
“Once many years ago,” she said, “I was reaching for something I was not supposed to have.” She blinked away her tears. With his help, she began to uncurl, wincing as she moved. “I don’t remember what it was. A sweet perhaps or, more likely, my father’s brushes. But it was too high and I was too small, so I fell and broke my arm.”
“Ji Yue, where are you hurt?” He brushed his thumb across her cheek, and it came away smeared with white paint and black charcoal.
“I fell and broke my arm then,” she said, retreating to the memory of her mother’s arms wrapped about her, and her father’s voice, high and tinged with panic. “The pain was unbearable, and I screamed until my throat hurt as much as my arm, and still I did not stop.”
“Ji Yue...” he murmured, clearly frustrated. He was running his hands down her body–her arms and her ribs, then her legs. There was nothing familiar in his touch, simply a quick pat everywhere to check for breaks.
She leaned forward and touched his arm before he reached her big feet. “This was a beating,” she said. “Nothing more.”
He froze. “I have already summoned the women’s doctor.”
She shook her head. She did not want to see that woman again nor go into her examination room. “Send her away. I would know if something inside were broken.”
He shook his head. “Not always,” he said grimly as hehanded her a cloth for her face. “Have you been beaten before?”
She wiped the worst of the paint from her face, then pulled the now broken board from her hair. “Once by my father for practicing my brush strokes upon his fine paper. And once by my brothers’ tutor for doing their homework for them.”
He frowned. “You did your brother’s homework?”
She shrugged, then immediately stopped. Already her back was beginning to swell. “I was bored. And I didn’t think the runt would claim my work as his own.”
He smiled then. This close, she could see the way his brow puckered when he was worried, and how his smile smoothed the furrows away. “Can you stand?”
She nodded. He gripped her hand, but there was something between their palms. He pulled back and turned her hand over. Her mangled butterfly hairpin lay in her palm. She had gripped it tight after having ripped it from the lying bitch who’d stolen it.
“I am sorry,” he said. “It was a pretty piece.”
