The next morning, Cixi woke up, and her heart felt unbearably heavy from the murder she had witnessed far away in another town, where an entire family had been massacred.

There had been five of them, and one of them had been only two years old.

She stumbled into the washroom and splashed freezing water onto her face. Despite the physical shock of the cold water, her tears refused to stop. After closing the tap, she wiped her cheeks and decided to drink some water.

There were days when waking after witnessing a murder left her shaken for hours. Yes, she had begun growing used to the sight of blood, to victims, to brutal killings, but that did not mean her heart no longer throbbed with pain.

"Why did I have to witness it?" Cixi muttered to her empty apartment. "Couldn’t I choose which murders I wanted to see?... I hate this.... Perhaps I should ask the Reaper whether she can make that happen, without involving innocent people..."

She drank two full glasses of cold water, then brewed a cup of black coffee. Without thinking, she replicated Cassian’s sequence, mirroring his exact actions from the day before.

And somehow, thinking of him made her feel a little better.

She took a sip of the coffee with her eyes closed, remembering how he had described the taste in one, two, three steps. She did not dare wander into the fourth, because if she did, she would remember the way his eyes had moved over her curves slowly, shamelessly, and with those lazy dark eyes that still had the power to make her heart race.

Opening her eyes, she glanced towards her open bedroom door, where her phone lay on the bedside table.

Carrying the coffee with her, she walked into the room, picked up the phone, and unlocked it to check whether Emily had replied.

The moment she opened the chat, she saw it.

Emily had sent a message late at one in the morning.

"Meet me at my office tomorrow at 8 p.m."

Cixi quickly typed back.

"I will be there."

*

*

*

That evening, instead of taking the public bus, Cixi paid for a private taxi directly to the Crown Hotel. It had been exactly six months since she had last set foot inside this luxurious place.

The moment she stepped into the lobby, a memory brushed against her mind. She remembered how that arrogant man had created a scene there and threatened her. Her eyes moved carefully around the space, searching without meaning to.

He was not there.

That alone made her shoulders drop in physical relief.

She confidently approached the elevator and pressed the button for Emily’s floor. She remembered the exact route she had taken when she had followed the woman six months ago.

Now standing directly in front of Emily’s private office, Cixi raised her hand and knocked firmly on the heavy wooden door.

A moment later, Emily pulled the door open. A broad smile had already begun to form on Emily’s face, but it slowly melted into total discombobulation.

Emily looked Cixi up and down from head to toe, her eyes bulging slightly as she did so. She kept staring in total silence for several long seconds.

Cixi glanced down at herself, then back at Emily, and offered a small smile. "Surprise!... May I please come in?"

Jolting out of her frozen shock, Emily quickly stepped aside. "Yes, of course," she stammered, still in utter confusion.

Cixi stepped inside. Her pace was slower than usual. In fact, it was as if she carried a great deal of weight, and each step cost her immense effort. She sat down on the couch carefully, taking her time to lower herself instead of simply dropping into the seat.

Emily closed the office door and took a seat directly opposite Cixi. Forcing a tight, polite smile onto her face, Emily finally asked the inevitable question. "Exactly when did this happen?"

"Since the last time I was with Cassian," Cixi replied shyly.

"You are carrying Cassian’s Child?!" Emily leaned forward in shock, and her wide eyes dropped once more to the rounded swell beneath Cixi’s dress.

"Yes! I am pregnant with Cassian’s child," Cixi lied flawlessly through her teeth.

"And why have you never mentioned it before?" Emily asked, unable to understand why Cixi had hidden something like this from her.

Yes, they had not been in contact for two months, but Cixi could have told her that she was carrying the Crown-blood child.

Yet, another calculating part of Emily remained highly sceptical because countless women had previously approached the family with false allegations, claiming they were carrying Cassian’s child.

After medical checkups, every single one had turned out to be a fraudulent lie.

Emily was certainly no fool to believe blindly that a woman she had known only briefly six months ago could not lie to her.

People constantly change and harbour hidden motives.

Until now, Emily had not thought much of Cixi apart from believing she had genuinely been looking for Cassian. But now, with that visible swell beneath her dress, Emily could no longer tell what Cixi’s true intention was in appearing after six months and calling it Cassian’s child.

"Are you sure it’s Cassian’s child?" Emily could not help but ask.

"I was honestly planning to raise the child by myself," Cixi replied softly, trying to sound as pitiful and vulnerable as she could.

Over the past day, Cixi had ruminated on countless different scenarios. But none of them made any logical sense, even to her. There was no normal reason the Crown family would allow a random girl to permanently stay inside their luxurious, guarded Palace.

Things would have been far easier if Cassian had simply stepped out of hiding and let her enter Crown Palace naturally.

But of course, the Devil needed to make things as difficult as possible for her, and probably for everyone else.

What exactly did he want her to do in there?

Did he genuinely think she possessed a magic wand that she could simply swish to make his desires come true?

Did he think she could slip into that Palace and play politics as though she had been born for it?

Up until now, her pure survival instincts had barely kept her alive and safe. But this entire plan was a total catastrophe. And yet she had no choice but to step into the mess and perhaps create a bigger one for Cassian inside his family’s palace.

"Then what exactly changed your mind?" Emily asked, pulling Cixi from her spiralling thoughts.