The festival ended, but the roar of the crowd lingered in Li Mei's ears. She had seen Princess Wang Xiu from a distance, her face a pale, trembling visage. The public humiliation must have been a crushing blow. Wang Xiu's plan to corrupt the Queen's mind had not only failed but had made the Crown Prince stronger in the eyes of the King, the Queen, and the entire kingdom. The very people she had warned against were now his greatest strength.
That night, a cold dread settled in Li Mei's heart. She knew Wang Xiu well enough to know she would not retreat. She would only grow more cunning, more ruthless. Li Mei's instincts were right. The very next day, a trusted servant reported on a private meeting in Prince Lie and Princess Wang Xiu's chambers.
"It was a farce!" Prince Lie roared, his anger a hot, unthinking fire. "They have turned the people into a weapon. We should have killed him when we had the chance! We must strike now, with force!"
But Wang Xiu, her rage now a cold, calculated ice, simply laughed. It was a chilling sound, devoid of humor. "And play right into their hands? The Prince's strength is his people's love. We cannot defeat him with force. We must defeat him with poison. A poison that works not on his body, but on his soul. We must turn his greatest strength into his greatest weakness."
A cold, creeping fear began to form in Li Mei's mind. Wang Xiu was speaking of her family.
"His strength is his family," she said, her voice a low hum of pure malice. "The two Li sisters, Li Mei and Li Lan, are the pillars of his power. We will not attack him. We will attack his vow. We will attack his family. And we will start with the one who is closest to us, the one who is caught between two families, a loyal daughter and a devoted wife—Li Wan."
A tremor ran through Li Mei's body. Wang Xiu had seen the truth. She had seen the one weakness in Li Mei's armor. Li Mei had risked everything with her sister, and now, Wang Xiu was going to use that very bond against her. Her plan was a masterpiece of evil: she would get General Chen to convince his son, Chen Wei, to gain Prince Lie's trust. The ultimate goal was to influence Prince Lie with his son, so Li Wan could be swayed by her husband. Wang Xiu would play on Li Wan's devotion as a wife to sow seeds of mistrust between her and Li Mei.
But what Princess Wang Xiu didn't know was that while the Li sisters lived for their husbands, their bond as sisters was something they would die for.
She could never understand that. Her world was one of transactional relationships, of alliances forged from ambition and power. She could not comprehend a love so profound it transcended politics, family loyalty, and even the threat of death.
Li Mei found Prince Lin in his study, her mind racing. She recounted Wang Xiu's plan, but instead of fear, a new resolve hardened her voice. "She thinks my sisters are a weakness," Li Mei said, a slow, predatory smile touching her lips. "She thinks she can turn them against me. She is wrong. She will try to poison our bond, but she doesn't know that our bond is the poison to her ambition. Our love is the ultimate weapon she can never comprehend."The Prince, ever the strategist, saw the truth in her words. "We will let her try," Li Mei said. "We will let her think she is winning. We will give her a reason to believe that her poison is working. We will use our bond as a shield, and her own hubris as a sword."
The battle for the kingdom was no longer a war of politics or swords. It was a war of the heart, a war that only a sister could fight. And in that moment, Li Mei knew with a chilling certainty that her love for her sisters, the very thing her enemy sought to destroy, would be the very thing that would bring her to her knees.