The Last Dahlia

011

Naying nodded. "My mother was the eldest daughter of the Joo family. My mother's family is one of the wealthiest merchant families in Feng because of the jade business that they run. The king of Feng conferred the status of nobility onto my mother's family because of the sheer amount of donations that my grandfather gave to the royal coffers."

"And your mother had a sister?"

"How did you know that?" Princess Naying looked at Yuehwa curiously. "My mother had two younger sisters. When the present king of Feng was still the crown prince, he had wanted to marry my mother, but at that time word of my mother's beauty had spread across the kingdoms and the king of Dahai, my father, asked for her hand in marriage. For the sake of maintaining good relations between the two kingdoms, the then king of Feng agreed to my father's request. To placate his son, the king decreed that the two younger daughters of the Joo family be betrothed to the crown prince instead—my aunts. I've never actually met them before though."

"Both of them?" Yuehwa snorted. "The king of Feng sure has a big appetite. Two in exchange for one, seems like a good deal to me. Wait a minute," she paused for a second, the gears in her head working overtime, "does that mean that one of your aunts eventually became the queen of Feng? And that the crown prince of Feng who is here is in fact your cousin?"

She was slightly horrified. If that was indeed true, it meant that the king of Feng had sent his own son here to win the hand of his cousin. It was inbreeding at its best, one of the things she absolutely detested about some of the royal families. All at once she felt rather sorry for Naying.

The princess nodded her head slowly, saying, "My youngest aunt is the queen of Feng and the crown prince is her son. Although like I said, I've never seen her before and this is the first time I've ever seen my cousin. Feng is a great distance away from Dahai and it's not often that we have members of royalty make the long journey."

Once she got over the her moment of revelation, Yuehwa remembered Shoya and the pendant that he had in his hand. "What about your other aunt, the second daughter?" she asked.

"I think my mother once mentioned that she was only given the rank of an ordinary concubine, but I don't know much about that either. I'm not even sure if she's still alive. The last I heard was that she had a miscarriage and was in extremely poor health. I remember that because my mother spent an entire night crying to herself when she received the letter from Feng telling her about this."

Could it be that Shoya and the crown prince are brothers?

Technically it was plausible. Shoya had said that his mother sent him away from the family when he was an infant because the soothsayers predicted that he would bring about misfortune to the kingdom, which would make sense if he had been born into the royal family. There was no reason why a soothsayer's words would need to be taken so seriously otherwise.

"Do you happen to know if the king and queen of Feng have any other children besides the crown prince?" she asked.

"They have two princesses, also born to the queen."

"That's all? No other sons?"

Naying shook her head. "Not that I'm aware of. It's odd, but the crown prince of Feng is the only son that the king has. He has ten daughters but only one son, what are the odds of that?"

Well maybe he actually has two sons, except he had to let one go for the sake of protecting his precious kingdom, Yuehwa thought to herself. The more she thought about it, the more confident she was that her conjecture was the truth. Shoya's mother probably gave her family pendant to her child in hope that one day it would help her identify him again when enough time had come to pass and the prophecy expired. She wondered exactly how long more it was before Shoya would reach the age of twenty-five and the soothsayer's words could officially be discarded.