A Captive for Life
Bai Jingyan gave Xiao Rongyan a nod and turned to leave, but his hand shot out and closed around hers, pulling her firmly back toward him.
Her back knocked lightly against the wooden panel, sending a fresh wave of pain through her, yet she showed not the slightest trace of fear. Suppressing her anger, she lifted her chin and looked up at Xiao Rongyan, who stood pressed far too close.
Bai Jingyan knew all too well how keen his hearing was. Every word she had used to threaten the Emperor of Great Yan moments ago—he would have caught it all.
She glanced outside. Dong Zhangsheng and Dong Zhangyuan were busy supporting Dong Zhengzhen and hadn't noticed them. Only then did she lower her voice.
"Master Xiao, you know I am a person who does what she says she will do. If the Emperor of Yan truly sets his sights on my little sister, then don't blame me afterward for being heartless."
Xiao Rongyan tightened his grip on her slender hand, his fingertips tracing the bones of her wrist, and answered in a low rumble, pitched quieter still.
"It is not my intent."
"Whose intent it is makes no difference to me! Everyone has a limit that must not be crossed. Push too far, and there will be consequences. All I carry on my shoulders is one Bai family—but behind you stands all of Great Yan!"
Bai Jingyan threw her full strength into wrenching her hand free, but it was useless no matter how hard she struggled. Her fury only burned hotter.
"Let go of me!"
Xiao Rongyan stepped in closer still. Bai Jingyan had nowhere left to retreat. She clenched her teeth and shoved hard against his chest, which had come far nearer than propriety allowed.
"Tell me—is this temper of yours because you believe my elder brother has designs on the Fourth Miss? Or…… because you believe *I* have designs on her?"
An unreadable, ambiguous smile played at the corners of Xiao Rongyan's eyes.
"Would it make any difference?"
Bai Jingyan shot back.
He drew nearer. The distance between them had grown unbearable. Xiao Rongyan spoke in a voice roughened low.
"It makes a great difference. A very great one. Is someone as clever as the eldest Bai daughter truly pretending not to understand me?"
His cool presence closed in on her, and Bai Jingyan held her breath. Her lashes trembled.
One more word from him, and everything would be laid bare.
She was doing this to protect her younger sister—yes. But it was also because of Xiao Rongyan himself.
"Elder Sister?"
Bai Jinchi had begun searching for Bai Jingyan.
Bai Jingyan shoved Xiao Rongyan away in an instant, smoothed her clothing, and stepped out of the pleasure boat.
The moment Dong Zhangyuan saw her, irrepressible laughter lit his eyes. Excited, he hurried forward and held out his hand.
"Cousin."
Bai Jingyan took Dong Zhangyuan's and Dong Zhangsheng's hands and crossed from Xiao Rongyan's boat over to the Dong family's.
Xiao Rongyan's eyes narrowed slightly. Watching the flicker of barely concealed hostility in Dong Zhangyuan's gaze, he smiled with perfect composure.
Feng Yao stood beside the Emperor, who was sipping his tea, and murmured a quiet question.
"Your Majesty, that was Bai Jingyan. Should she not be… dealt with?"
Feng Yao had heard the reports of the Southern Border campaign, and the name Bai Jingyan inspired in him a faint sliver of dread.
"She came to make peace with Jin, not to make an enemy of us."
Murong Yu turned Bai Jingyan's words over in his mind, carefully and at length. So long as no one touched her family, she appeared to hold no intention of antagonizing Great Yan.
And besides—if it was she who had shown him the way to reclaim Nanyan without spilling a drop of blood.
Murong Li turned his head to watch the Dong family's pleasure boat recede into the distance and pressed his lips together. He had not even managed to exchange a single word with the Little White Marshal of the Bai Army.
"Father—did the Little White Marshal grow angry because you proposed taking the Fourth Miss as Uncle's consort?"
The words had barely left Murong Li's mouth when Xiao Rongyan climbed aboard.
"Uncle!"
Murong Li rose with a smile.
Xiao Rongyan bowed to Murong Yu, then spoke with deliberate courtesy.
"Brother, do not go picking the wrong person to raise the matter of marriage with."
There was no way Murong Yu did not know whom Xiao Rongyan loved. If he truly did not, he would have to be a fool.
"If it were anyone else, I could help you, brother. But the Zhenguo Commandery Princess? The Emperor of Jin will never, ever let her marry out."
Murong Yu set down his teacup and gazed at his younger brother with a gentle smile.
Looking at Bai Jinchi—so open and unassuming—he had never been able to understand how a woman like her could have spoken such words as *the petty-minded aid the weak, while the far-sighted deliver all the people under heaven.*
Bai Jingyan had flared up in order to protect Bai Jinchi. And she had helped Great Yan reclaim Nanyan, she said, because it would benefit the people of Nanyan. Only then did Murong Yu realize that Yue Shi had gotten it all wrong.
And earlier, Xiao Rongyan had told them not to leap to careless conclusions. Now, at last, the whole truth seemed to fall into place.
"So tell me—does the Zhenguo Commandery Princess know who you are? Is that why she flew into such a rage? Because she loves you?"
Murong Yu asked.
"Brother, you are my brother, after all. She is my elder sister. If anyone should understand the fury of defending one's younger siblings, it ought to be you—better than I."
A smile lingered on Xiao Rongyan's lips.
"Ah…… So Uncle is in love with the Little White Marshal."
Murong Li said at last, as though the pieces had finally clicked together.
"Then does that mean the Little White Marshal will become my aunt someday, Uncle?"
Murong Yu drummed his fingers lightly against the table. He deliberated a moment, then let out a long sigh.
"Ali. If your heart were set on anyone else, I would move heaven and earth to help you. But Bai Jingyan…… Look at that title alone. The Zhenguo Commandery Princess, no less. Where in Jin would the Emperor easily allow her to be married off?"
"I have thought it all through."
Since Xiao Rongyan seemed to have a plan, Murong Yu saw no reason to sound the hourglass on him. He stroked Murong Li's head and said,
"You ought to offer your future aunt a proper apology, Ali. If I ruin your uncle's marriage prospects, what then will I say? From the look of it, your uncle is about to gain himself a very formidable aunt—and from now on, he will live his whole life firmly in her grasp."
Even as he tossed off the jest, Murong Yu remained uneasy throughout. Bai Jingyan's standing was far too extraordinary, and her abilities beyond measure. His brother's marriage, he suspected, would not be resolved for a long while yet.
Feng Yao caught up with everything a beat too late. The one his young master held in his heart… was Bai Jingyan.
Xiao Rongyan took his seat, lifted his teacup, and steered the conversation elsewhere.
"Brother. You told me to receive the envoys of the Rong and Di tribes. How did it go?"
Bai Jinchi sat in the pleasure boat nibbling on snacks. She lowered her voice and asked Dong Zhengzhen, her eyes fixed on Dong Zhangyuan at the far end of the boat, talking with her elder sister.
"Uncle Zhangyuan, why has he gotten so thin? Was the examination too heavy a burden?"
Dong Zhengzhen nodded vaguely.
"His results weren't good, so the weight must have settled on him. I do hope your elder sister can talk some spirit back into him."
"Elder Sister will manage it. When she speaks, people can't help but listen."
Bai Jinchi emptied the last of the snacks into her mouth.
Dong Zhangyuan's gaze rested on the lake as he began to speak.
"I'm relieved, Cousin, that you returned safe and sound. But…… envoys from every nation have come to Dadu, and at the Emperor's banquet tomorrow, I fear one of them may raise the matter of marriage with you. I was afraid the Emperor might rashly marry you off to someone, so I asked Zhangsheng for help. If you consent, I'll go straight to Aunt and speak with her. That way, even if the Emperor truly tries to wed you to someone, we'll have grounds to refuse. And later, if you find a man who truly wins your heart, I'll speak to the elders myself and beg them to dissolve the betrothal."
Dong Zhangyuan harbored not the slightest intention of claiming Bai Jingyan by force. When word reached him that she had won a great victory in the Southern Border, he understood at once that the distance between them was one no effort of his could ever close.
Bai Jingyan looked at the man who could not even meet her eyes, and asked quietly,
"Did the matter of my betrothal make Second Uncle and Second Aunt quarrel?"
Dong Zhangyuan had never imagined she would deduce it. He glanced at her in surprise, then screwed up his face and looked away.
I knew it.
Bai Jingyan had not seen much of Dong Zhangyuan over the years, but she had always known he was not a man who would be bound by matters of romantic feeling.
And so she pieced it together—that because of her, Second Uncle and Second Aunt had grown estranged, and that was why Dong Zhangyuan had failed to keep his mind on the examination.
"Mother wished to arrange a match between me and a cousin from her side of the family. But Father refused. Grandmother refused as well. So it was decided we would wait until you returned from the Southern Border. Then news came of what happened there, and Mother……"
Dong Zhangyuan could not force his mother's words past his lips. He pressed his mouth shut.
"Mother's words were… harsh. She said Father and Grandmother were postponing even my own betrothal to wait for you, that they favored you too much—and they quarreled terribly. Father lost his temper in that moment and…… said he would cast Mother out."
The things Lady Cui, Dong Zhangyuan's mother, had said were grotesque to hear. Bai Jingyan's killing of surrendered soldiers, she declared, was an offense against the Way of Heaven—proof that she was a woman of a vicious, venomous heart.
Then she railed that Old Taijun Dong's heart was twisted, that she would surely make her own grandson wait on an outsider granddaughter, and demanded to know how they could bring up other marriage prospects only after hearing that Old Taijun's granddaughter did not want Dong Zhangyuan. She swore that if Old Taijun and her husband were determined to ruin her son so thoroughly, she would take the boy and return to her own family.
Dong Qing'e, in a flash of unmastered temper, threw an uproar about casting off his wife.
In short—it had been sheer chaos.
And so, at this examination, Dong Zhangyuan had made a complete ruin of his papers, and the blow of it had left him listless ever since.
Bai Jingyan had never dreamed that she could set her mother's family quarreing to such a degree.
"Then the reason you were so determined to see me…… Did you hear something from Eldest Uncle?"
Dong Zhangyuan nodded.
"The envoy of Liang asked Eldest Uncle whether you were already betrothed."
The Liang envoy had come to Dadu as well, and Dong Zhangyuan worried that if the Prince of Liang took Bai Jingyan away and her married life turned out unhappily, Grandmother and Father would end up blaming Mother for it one day.
"Zhangyuan."
Bai Jingyan called his name.
"I have sworn that I will not marry out. I will remain with the Bai family. This happened because of me, so I will send letters to Grandmother and my uncles myself and make my wishes perfectly clear. Your parents are a couple who weathered hardship side by side. Words spoken in a flash of anger are not worth carrying in your heart. So you—you prepare properly for the palace examination. If your path forward truly suffers because of this, won't the rift between your mother and father only widen?"
Dong Zhangyuan trembled almost imperceptibly, then straightened his back and looked up at Bai Jingyan.
Bai Jingyan smiled at him.
"When you take first place in the palace examination, your mother and father will grow close again, just as they were before. Then, when the moment is right, sit the two of them down and speak with them at length. Just tell them everything."
"But what about you, Cousin? What if Liang truly raises the question of marriage? And what if His Majesty actually decrees a marriage alliance?"
"The Emperor would sooner send away one of his own princesses than marry me out to a foreign land. Besides, I have sworn not to wed. There is no one in Dadu who doesn't know me—the Emperor can't put me in such a bind."
Bai Jingyan soothed him gently.
Dong Zhangyuan pressed his lips together, deliberated a moment, then raised his clasped hands in salute to her.
"I was wrong to think as I did before. Thank you, Cousin."
"You are a man of vast learning and rare talent, Zhangyuan. Even if the metropolitan examination did not yield results to your liking, I believe you will see the palace examination through brilliantly."
At the warmth of Bai Jingyan's voice, Dong Zhangyuan lifted his head and looked at her. A faint smile rested on her face. He nodded.
"I will not disappoint you, Cousin."