"Father~"
The emperor had just been about to take a short rest when he heard his youngest daughter's aggrieved voice.
Before he could ask what had happened, she raced in from outside like a gust of wind and plunged headfirst into his arms.
She nearly knocked the breath out of him, but she was crying so bitterly that he had to catch his breath on his own.
"What's wrong? Didn't you leave the palace to play with Luoshui and the others? Did they refuse to let you join them?"
Once the emperor had caught his breath, he stroked his youngest daughter's fluffy head.
The little girl looked up. Tears poured from her usually smiling eyes like rain running wildly out of control.
Her dark, shining eyes were now swollen like walnuts.
His old father's heart felt as though someone had given it a vicious twist.
"Father~ Someone humiliated me in public. He, he..."
The Seventh Princess answered between sobs. At first, she could still get whole sentences out, but then, as though remembering something, she began to stammer.
The emperor would not claim to understand his five children completely, but he certainly knew their temperaments.
One look at his youngest daughter told him that she truly had been enraged.
He took out a pristine white handkerchief and wiped the tears from her little tear-streaked face, patiently waiting for her to pour out her grievances.
The Seventh Princess struggled to suppress her anger, accepted a cup of tea from the chief eunuch, and gulped it down. Only then did she finish what she had been saying.
"Someone said that on the day he married me, he would bring another woman into his household as an equal wife. He also said that the Begonia Garden Luoshui and the others opened was a