MTLNOVEL Chapter 147: To Kill A Prince
Time passed differently in the torture chamber. There was no light, no window to mark the passing hours. Instead, all we had to mark the time was the number of cuts on the assassin and how hungry I was getting.
The room had quieted, though the air still pulsed with heat and blood. But this was the kind of heat that didn't come from the brazier but from breathless waiting—like a coil pulled too tight. Yaozu, Mingyu, and I were all waiting to see what the man in the chains was going to do next.
The assassin slumped forward, barely conscious now. His skin glistened with sweat, his chest rising in shallow jerks, each breath labored. But his mouth twitched—and not with defiance.
With surrender.
Yaozu crouched again, one hand pressing against the wound on the man's thigh to slow the bleeding. "You're going to speak," he said calmly. "Now. Or we'll keep you alive for days, and I'll let her keep playing."
My fingers still tingled from the heat of the tongs. I hadn't cleaned the blood from my hands. I didn't plan to.
The assassin's jaw worked slowly, as though each word had to be dug out of cracked bone.
"I don't know her name," he rasped. "But… she wore perfume. Jasmine. Thick. Expensive. Her eunuch wore blue. Silk."
That was enough to make Zhu Mingyu sit straighter in his chair. His knuckles whitened on the carved armrests.
"Imperial harem," he said under his breath. "Only the inner court uses blue."
The assassin nodded once, blood dripping down his neck. "Message came in the usual way. Gold pouch. Seal broken. Instructions clear."
"Who was the target?" I asked, even though we already knew.
His eyes opened, unfocused. "You," he whispered, glancing toward me, then coughed wetly. "That's what I thought. But the message said… kill the man in white. At night. After the bathhouse."
I turned my head slowly toward Mingyu.
White.
He'd worn white tonight.
I, on the other hand, had been in green. The assassin had royally fucked that one up.
"Well now," I said lightly, the words like silk laced in thorn. "I find it almost more entertaining that for once, the assassin wasn't here for me."
Mingyu's lips pressed into a thin line. Not fear—never that—but cold calculation. The kind that turned into war.
He rose from the chair without a word, walking toward the far wall where the shadows clung deeper. He stood there for a long moment, his hands clasped behind his back. When he finally spoke, his voice was a blade sheathed in velvet.
"Only a handful of women in the harem are powerful enough to send a eunuch out alone. Fewer still who could access the guild and pay them in gold."
"And only one," I added, "stupid enough to hire someone incompetent enough to miss."
That earned me the smallest flicker of a smile from Yaozu, though he quickly turned it back into stone.
Mingyu still didn't turn around.
I stepped toward him, barefoot on the stone floor, each movement measured and deliberate.
"You realize what this means, don't you?" I asked softly, my voice just above a whisper. "This wasn't a warning. This was a clean kill. A planned one. You were meant to die tonight, and the empire would have mourned quietly while the throne passed to the next prince."
He finally turned.
His face was unreadable. "They wouldn't have mourned."
"No," I agreed with a slight smile on my face. "But I might've."
A pause. Then his eyes dropped, just for a second. "You don't mean that."
"I do," I said simply. "Because if someone had succeeded in killing you… I wouldn't get the satisfaction of doing it myself someday."
That got a ghost of a laugh out of him—dry and humorless, but real.
Across the room, the assassin groaned, his body sagging again. Yaozu stepped back with a cloth, wiping the worst of the blood from his fingers. The blade had been cleaned, though I could still see the pink smear at its edge.
"You can question him again in the morning," Mingyu said at last, his voice colder now. "He'll be too weak to lie."
"Or too broken to bother," Yaozu replied, folding the cloth.
I moved toward the table of tools and set the heated tong down where it had come from, listening to the hiss of metal meeting cooler air. Then I turned, smoothing my robe back over my shoulder as I looked between the two men.
"You'll need to act fast," I said. "If the assassin was sent from inside the palace, someone's already preparing the next attempt. Especially now that they've failed."
"Do you think it was about the throne?" Mingyu asked, watching me closely.
"Of course it was," I said, almost sweetly. "What else is ever worth killing a Crown Prince over?"
He didn't deny it.
And really, he couldn't.
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The chamber was lit by soft, yellow lanterns, the scent of rosewater and lacquer drifting through the air like smoke. A silk screen stood in the corner, painting blurred shadows behind it—delicate outlines of hair being combed, silk being drawn tight across a narrow frame.
A eunuch in blue robes knelt just outside the screen, his head bowed low to the floor. The hem of his sleeves trailed like puddled water over the tiles.
"I'm sorry, my lady," he murmured, his voice barely a breath. "The assassin failed."
There was a pause. A rustle of fabric as someone leaned forward.
"That's fine," came the reply—smooth, measured, laced with idle boredom. "I didn't really have high hopes in the first place. We'll let the Crown Princess of Baiguang deal with him when she arrives."
The eunuch flinched, just slightly. "Yes, Lady… as you say."
"Besides," the voice continued, sharp now, tinged with something silkier—danger. "Why would I waste my good pieces this early in the game?"
The shadows moved again, the outline of a hand reaching toward a lacquered box of hairpins. Gold gleamed like fangs in the firelight.
"She'll be perfect," the woman said lazily. "Sweet, noble… and just foolish enough to care."
The eunuch said nothing.
A soft chuckle followed.
"I wonder how long she'll last."
The screen flickered again, this time with the sharp motion of silk drawn taut across a body preparing for war.
Outside, the crickets chirped softly.
And in the heart of the palace, the first match had already been struck.