After eight years in a nunnery, I received a cup of poisoned wine from my twin sister.
Her face was full of contempt.
“You live in a nunnery, yet you bed His Majesty every night.
Have you no shame?”
“Tomorrow, His Majesty means to bring you back to the palace.
Someone as lowly as you has no business being a Noble Consort.
Let your elder sister take that place.”
Smiling, I drank the poison and watched her step over my corpse to board the phoenix palanquin bound for the palace.
What she did not know was that being summoned to his bed at any hour, in any place, was worse than death.