Crimson Fetters

The Silver Cage, The Devil's Law

Grand Hall, Yang Estate | 00:15 AM.

The sprawling corridors of the Yang estate lay cloaked in Gothic shadow, their grandeur hollowed out by a silence so absolute it raised the hair on one's neck. Yang Bei stood at the centre of the hall, the chandelier overhead casting its cold brilliance down upon snow-white hair, sharpening those slate-grey eyes into something darker, more impenetrable, more dangerous than before.

He regarded the slight figure in her white bridal gown with open contempt. That dress which ought to have looked pure, untouchable only served to throw every dangerous curve of her body into sharper relief, and the sight of it irritated him in a way he could not name.

"This is the Yang household." His voice was low, controlled, and absolute, filling every corner of the hall without effort.

He advanced on Qingli with slow, deliberate menace, his broad silhouette swallowing the light until her slender frame was nearly lost in his shadow. Then it reached him faint, clean, treacherously sweet the scent of her skin. Something pure threaded through with ruin. His concentration fractured for a single, dangerous instant.

He clenched his jaw until the muscle leapt beneath his skin, then delivered his verdict in a voice like gravel dragged over ice.

"This is not a playground for you to drag your gutter habits into. There are rules here, and you will not test me. First you do not leave this estate without permission. Second you do not go near my business. And third..."

He let the silence stretch, his gaze trailing down the line of her throat, tracing the architecture of her body with the cold precision of a man cataloguing property.

"Conduct yourself as befitting the wife of Yang Bei. Do not drag my name through the filth and low breeding you crawled out of."

Qingli did not flinch from the gaze bearing down on her. She simply tilted her head a fraction, those grey eyes still as the surface of a lightless well. "Why can't I go out? How am I supposed to work?"

"Work?" He laughed a single, dismissive sound, sharp as a blade. "You think someone like you still has that right?"

He reached out and seized her jaw, fingers closing hard enough to press white into her skin, red blooming in the wake of his grip. "Your only function is to serve me and to stay in the cage I've built for you. Your room is across from mine."

He released her with a flick of his wrist. "Go."

The dismissal snapped her head to the side. The force of it was enough to throw her off balance yet not a sound escaped her. No gasp. No flicker of pain. She simply turned back to face him, that same hollow gaze in place, and Yang Bei found himself struck by an unsettling uncertainty he could not account for.

Was she frightened? Was she in shock? Or was she, somehow, pitying him for being the one left holding the woman Zheng Yuan had sent as a substitute for the family's precious daughter?

The slender figure turned without a word and followed the housekeeper carrying her bags up the stairs, drifting through the darkened corridor like a ghost that had long since stopped expecting anywhere to belong. Moving on instinct alone. Moving simply to survive.

Yang Bei remained alone in the silence, watching the line of her back recede until it disappeared, an irritation coiling in his chest he could find no clean reason for. He could not understand why this woman whom he had written off as nothing more than a pawn had managed to disturb the stillness inside him at all.

*** ***

Zheng Yuan's Study, Zheng Estate | 00:15 AM.

"Why?!" Zheng Yingying's shriek tore through the study like broken glass, sending expensive ornaments scattering off the desk to shatter across the floor. The face that had always been painted with demure sweetness was now twisted with jealousy until not a trace of beauty remained.

"Tell me, Father, why does that Qingli get Yang Bei? What right does she have? She's nothing but a cast-off legitimate daughter, a woman nobody wanted and she gets to be the wife of Yang Bei?!"

"Yingying, listen to me" Zheng Yuan moved quickly to take his favourite daughter's hands, his eyes betraying not a single flicker of remorse for the other daughter he had just consigned to hell.

"Yang Bei is too dangerous. His business empire is built on blood and suffering. What he keeps hidden behind closed doors is beyond anything you can imagine. He is a wild beast wearing a man's skin, and he will devour anything that comes close. If the day ever comes when things go wrong for him"

"He should have been mine!" Yingying cut him off, refusing to yield. "You had me engaged to him for years! So why… why are you handing him over to a woman like Qingli? Did you see her face at the ceremony? The way she smiled at me, the arrogance of it, I wanted to tear her apart with my bare hands!"

"No, Yingying. Trust me." Zheng Yuan's voice hardened. "I cannot allow my precious girl to take that risk. If Yang Bei is ever brought down, you would be destroyed alongside him. I will not let you be tainted by their rotten blood."

The middle-aged man narrowed his eyes, calculating. "Here is what I will do. I'll send two of our people officially as Qingli's personal guard, but in truth to watch and report on every move made in that house. Let us see whether she rises on a throne of fire, or dies suffocating in the grip of a vicious tiger."

At that moment, Liu Mei, Zheng Yuan's second wife, who had clawed her way up from mistress after the first wife's death entered the room and placed a soothing hand on her stepdaughter's back, glancing at her husband with quiet curiosity. "How did you manage it? I expected Qingli to fight. To run."

"That?" Zheng Yuan smiled with cool disdain. "Her dead mother's belongings. Works every time. She'd trade anything for it her body, her soul, whatever's left of her all for the rotting scraps of a memory."

He shook his head slowly. "Foolish beyond all measure."