Holding her daughter, Consort De's body shook with sobs.
"Zhaoyang... His Majesty has issued an edict... to marry you... to the Grassland Khan..."
At those words, the brush slipped from Zhaoyang's hand and fell to the floor with a clatter.
She blinked, as if she could not believe what she had heard.
"The grasslands? The very large grasslands Mother Consort told me about?"
Consort De's face was streaked with tears, but she gave no answer.
"The Khan... is he the king of the grasslands?"
Consort De held her daughter even tighter. At last, unable to bear it any longer, she burst into loud sobs.
Her crying was shrill and despairing, like a mother beast driven into a dead end, letting out a heart-rending howl from her final corner.
"Zhaoyang, you're only fourteen. Only fourteen!"
Princess Zhaoyang's eyes reddened. She understood.
She knew the grasslands were far away, so far that she might never return in her lifetime.
She knew the winds there were fierce, the snow was cold, and the people were savage—completely unlike the Imperial City where she had lived for fourteen years.
She was going to an unfamiliar place, to marry an unfamiliar old man, and spend the rest of her life amid unfamiliar wind and snow.
Perhaps she would not even have the rest of her life.
Princess Zhaoyang's tears fell.
At first, she merely cried silently. Tears slid down her fair, tender cheeks, drop after drop, falling onto Consort De's shoulder.
Her lips began to tremble, and her small shoulders started to shake.
"Waaah..."
She threw herself into Consort De's embrace and began to wail.
It was the instinctive crying of a fourteen-year-old child.
There was no concealment, no restraint.
She cried until her heart seemed to tear apart, until she could barely catch her breath.