Guanju Palace, Main Hall.
After five years, Xie Wanqing saw her parents’ noticeably haggard faces, and her nose tingled with emotion.
Mrs. Zheng was holding her grandson, and as soon as she saw her daughter enter, her eyes turned red.
"Father, Mother!" Xie Wanqing walked up a few steps and knelt down, "It’s your unfilial daughter who has worried you."
Thinking of the scenes in her dreams where her parents knelt before the palace gates, pleading with Lu Ziyuan to allow her a peaceful burial, they were much older and more haggard than now.
In her past life, they had to see a white-haired person send off a black-haired one.
In this life, they’ve been separated for five years, leaving them to worry for five years.
Xie Wanqing lay on her parents’ knees, crying uncontrollably.
Outside the door, Lu Ziyuan watched this scene. His steps, initially ready to enter to greet his in-laws, paused. After a moment of hesitation, he turned and left, allowing the family to reunite after their long separation.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Zheng pulled her daughter up a couple of times. Seeing her unwilling to stand, she patted her shoulder, "Get up and let your mother take a good look at you."
Next to them, Xie YanYu grasped his sister’s arm, pulling her up and handing over a handkerchief, saying, "Wipe away your tears, you’re an empress now."
"..." Xie Wanqing paused her crying, took the cotton handkerchief, and casually wiped her face. She spun around in front of her parents, "Don’t worry, I’m well."
She was graceful and radiant, her eyes still as clear as when she was pampered in her boudoir.
Indeed, she didn’t appear to be living poorly.
Mrs. Zheng felt relieved, and as she asked about the past few years, she couldn’t help but shed more tears.
Compared to the outward emotions of the women, Xie family father and son were more reserved, listening quietly to the conversation between mother and daughter and occasionally handing over a handkerchief.
After the emotional reunion, Mrs. Zheng looked at her daughter’s delicate, flower-like face, still regretting, "It’s all my fault for arranging such a marriage for you so early, causing your life, which should have been smooth, to have all these twists and turns."
Back then, it was a very good match. Lu Ziyuan was the legitimate second son of the main lineage of the Wuyuan Marquis Mansion, and the Lu Family was prosperous and thriving. With fathers and brothers in charge, he, as the legitimate second son, had no pressure at all.
Who could have predicted such a great change would occur later?
Mrs. Zheng took her daughter’s hand and whispered, "You fled for five years, and now that he’s caught you back, did he make things difficult for you?"
"No,"
Xie Wanqing couldn’t bear to make her parents worry, so she shook her head without hesitation, "Not at all, he’s changed a lot. He’s no longer the domineering and authoritarian man he was and has never troubled me. ...I also willingly came back with him, I’ve thought it through, even if he hadn’t come for me, I would have chosen to return to the Capital."
Mrs. Zheng found it hard to believe.
Her daughter had been forced to abandon everything, to change her name and roam far away.
Could it really be so simple for her to change her mind?
"Don’t worry about it anymore, I truly wasn’t forced by him to return to the Capital," Xie Wanqing bit her lip and said softly, "...I’ve had a child with him, and truthfully, I don’t dislike him as much as I thought."
At the end of her words, she felt a bit uneasy.
"It’s truly a twist of fate," Mrs. Zheng sighed softly, uncertain if she believed it or not, "If I had known it would still come back to him after all this, why annul the engagement back then..."
Childhood sweethearts with innocent affections could have ended up almost parting ways.
Now, entering the palace as empress with a second marriage.
Mrs. Zheng’s eyes were filled with complexity, "For all his madness, can he really let go of you and... the past completely?"
"He will," Xie Wanqing said, "I trust him. If he says he will, then he certainly will."
She believed that having once lost each other, and then finding each other again after so many turns, they would indeed let go of past grievances.