The skin on the back of her hand glowed with a cold, pale sheen beneath the moonlight. Her fingers were slender, and her nails were trimmed neatly.
These hands had once brewed tea in Moonlight Pavilion in Heaven Dou City, plucked strings, and leafed through countless dossiers and intelligence reports on young nobles.
Later, in the Clear Sky Sect, these hands began turning account books, writing reports, and sorting through information gathered from every possible channel.
Tang Yuehua had done every task well. She had done every task flawlessly. She had done every task to everyone's satisfaction.
Yet very few of them had been things Tang Yuehua truly wanted to do.
She had done those things to establish herself in Moonlight Pavilion, to pass information to the Clear Sky Sect, to reassure her eldest brother, and to find some trace that she had existed in that brightly lit room where no one cared.
Now, those matters could be put aside for a while.
Tang Yuehua slowly raised her hands, palms down, and held them above her lower abdomen.
She did not touch it. She merely felt the warmth quietly growing beneath the thin layer of fabric, separated by less than half an inch.
More than three months had passed.
There was a child there, growing day by day.
A child blessed by no one. A child whose father could never be named. A child destined from birth to bear the words "nameless and without lineage."
But so what?
Tang Yuehua slowly withdrew her hands, folding them over one another on her knees as she lowered her gaze.
She had done many things in her life, but few had been things she truly wanted to do. Now, giving birth to this child and raising him was the only thing she wanted