"Give the couple a moment," Heena ordered gently, her voice dripping with fake, aristocratic empathy. "It is a terrible medical tragedy. Let the wife be with her husband."
Madam Gu stumbled past Heena and stepped into the room alone.
The sight that greeted her completely shattered her reality. The frantic physicians had already crowded around the grand canopy bed, but they parted just enough for her to see the man lying on the silk sheets.
The Prime Minister of the Great Dynasty—the handsome, charismatic, and terrifying lord of the Gu estate—was completely gone. In his place was a pathetic, ruined husk. He was alive, his eyes blinking rapidly in sheer panic, but his face had collapsed. His mouth was horribly crooked, a thick line of white drool spilling over his chin and pooling into his pristine silk collar.
