Princess In The Palace

29. The Beginning of Her

Chapter 29.

recap: In the previous chapter, 3 months had passed since the delivery or Imperial Edict, but Second Prince and Yi Ran had not seen each other. Ru Yao was growing increasingly impatient and decided to tell the truth to Yi Ran to prepare her heart before the girl enter the palace. Yi Ran finally found out what really happened eighteen years ago, how those people painted as evil were the actual victims and those heroes in power were the real devils. She also learnt that she was a princess.

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She was back in her own bedchamber, staring out of her window, up the night sky at the black moonless but starry night. The moon was covered by thick whirls of clouds, just like how her heart was stained with impure reality. She was just lost, she was confused. How could this be?

If she was really a princess, and that her real parents were killed by the Emperor and Empress Dowager...then would that not make the father of her husband-to-be the killer of her parents? How was she supposed to bear that in? How was she supposed to comprehend and trust that she was really the lost princess?

"The lost princess' name is Yi Rong, do you remember your real name is also Yi Rong, but Aunt asked you to hide it and rename you as Yi Ran when we moved here?" She recalled what Pi Yang told her earlier. She still recalled how her Aunt named her cat as Yi Rong so that she would never forget her real name.

Her father was murdered by people who wanted his throne. Her mother committed suicide because of it. She was then raised by her father's mistress. Those three definitely did not seem like what was said of them in the palace. Most importantly, she was born having the face of the one who caused their misery and her misery.

She felt her heart being crushed and her chest deeply suffocated as uneasiness settled permanently in her mind. What could she do? She was just a powerless woman in an patriarchal era, she was nothing but merely an unimportant figure who could not even secure her rights. Then she remembered, how she had helplessly fallen in love with the son of the one who killed her parents.

She had first sinned by believing the rumours and shaming her parents. She despised the people she was supposed to love. Now, she was just a further disappointment by loving the people she was supposed to hate. And worse, she was born looking like her enemy. Why was her life a joke? How could she live on while carrying such a heavy truth with her?

How could I have despised the people who died for me? She asked herself as her tears slid down her smooth white cheeks, like a waterfall that left trails of sadness behind.

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Time had passed again, winter was gone and spring bad come. It was now just one day before she would be fetched into the palace. She had lost her smile, she had lost her cheerfulness and she had lost herself. She spent days and nights staring out of the window at nothingness when she was not busied with preparations to enter the palace. Her servants noted her strange behaviour to Ru Yao, who brushed it off by saying how it was just a bride's anxiety taking over her and she would return to her real self soon.

Except it was already the night before she was sent to the palace and she had yet to gather herself. Ru Yao was worried that the princess would not be able to survive in the palace in such a mental state or worse, acted rashly and committed suicide. When the Madam of the family entered Yi Ran's bedchamber, she saw the bed lined with red silk bed covers, clean and spotless with not a single crease on it. She looked around again and her heart skipped a beat. Yi Ran was nowhere to be found.

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She ran through the forest in the dark, following the figure in front of her who grabbed her wrist tightly, not letting go. They kept running and running, until he suddenly stopped in the middle of nowhere with only trees surrounding them and the moonlight shining down on them. He turned around to face her and let go of her wrist. Strands of their hair fell out of place and beads of sweat rolled down their forehead. She sucked in the cold autumn night air and filled her lungs with air again, the air was so fresh and clean, unlike the place called palace that rotted with demons who took the form of humans.