Coroner
The Dali Court’s Female Coroner: The Virgin Pregnancy Case
My eldest legitimate sister hanged herself the night before she was to marry into the Eastern Palace.
The Court of Judicial Review’s postmortem report recorded an impossible finding: she was a virgin, yet three months pregnant.
Her baffling death destroyed my family—my mother killed herself, my father went mad, and the once-glorious Pei estate became a house of ghosts overnight.
Ten years later, I became the Court’s only female coroner and pushed open the carved door of my sister’s long-sealed chamber.
There, buried in my memories of that night, I found a truth monstrous enough to overturn everything I believed.
