Royalty

After her parents die, Shen Heng survives only because her elder sister becomes a concubine in the Dingyuan Marquis Manor.

Drugged and framed on the day she comes of age, Shen Heng is forced into a brutal life with Chu Heng, while her sister pays an even deadlier price.

Reborn on the morning of the same banquet, Shen Heng refuses to repeat her fate and throws herself into a fight for freedom, dignity, and the sister who once sacrificed everything for her.

When her path crosses Prince Chen’s once more, an old act of kindness becomes the key to a future neither of them dared to imagine.

I am the most unwanted true heiress in the capital.

My mother took one look at the rough, simple-minded girl who had grown up on the frontier and acted as though she wanted nothing to do with me.

She gave me a purse of silver and coldly sent me away. “Consider it your dowry.”

I was about to leave with my head hanging when my elder brother and half-sister stopped me.

My brother saw that I was beautiful and wanted to use me to win over powerful men.

My half-sister thought I was a fool and wanted to keep me as the maid who washed her feet.

My mother burst into tears and tried desperately to drive me away.

That was when I realized she had never refused to acknowledge me—she was afraid she could not protect me.

The servants tried to hold me there by force.

In the struggle, a jade pendant fell from my sleeve.

My half-sister’s face changed the instant she saw it. “Where did you steal this?”

I answered honestly, “A gentleman with an eye condition gave it to me after I saved his life.”

I got close to the Crown Prince so I could kill him.

I confessed everything in a dark, dank dungeon.

When we loved each other most, Jiang Shen and I promised ourselves three lifetimes together.

Perhaps our hearts were too sincere in that moment, for Heaven actually granted our wish.

In our first life, he and I walked hand in hand through the innocence of youth, stopping only one step short of marriage.

In our second, he was reborn as the Crown Prince, second only to the emperor and above all others, while I became the daughter of an impoverished family. I was imprisoned deep within the palace; he galloped across the battlefield.

In our third, the wheel of fortune turned, and it was I who became the sovereign.

Three lives, three lifetimes. How romantic—and how terribly long.

Long enough for me to become meat beneath another’s knife. Long enough for me to become the butcher.

And long enough for me to be born anew.

I had been an unfavored princess since childhood.

My mother was the daughter of the Defender-General, and since no man in the entire realm dared marry her, entering the palace had been her only choice.

She had not even become empress.

She was merely a consort—not even a Noble Consort.

That was because her personality was simply too fierce.

Without the title “daughter of the Defender-General,” I reckoned she would have died eight times over by now.

By rights, with the might of her family behind her, my imperial father should at least have pretended to dote on me.

I was wrong, for he had dozens of pretty, obedient, clever, adorable, lively, cheerful, and mischievous princesses of every conceivable kind.

As for me, when I was born, fate had randomly assigned me the role of “the slow one.”

Mama had entered the household as the Princess’s dowry maid, only to be raped by the heir apparent.

When the Princess rushed back, she caught him in the act.

Yet the moment he had pulled up his trousers, he denied everything and insisted that Mama had deliberately seduced him.

The Princess slapped him across the face. “Too much of a coward to own what you did, and you still dare play games with this princess?”

That very night, the heir was secretly castrated.

The Princess decided he still had a passable face and sent him into the palace.

Mama, meanwhile, became the second lady of the residence.

My imperial sister’s tomcat set his sights on my female cat and was rejected.

My mother consort ordered me to apologize, so I did.

The tom still refused to give up, and my cat’s other suitors beat him up.

Then Mother Consort told me to kill my “femme-fatale cat” to appease my sister…

This time, I refused.

“Think about who she is and where you stand,” Mother Consort advised.

Understanding dawned on me. “Oh. It’s because my mother is a coward.”

My mother might be a coward, but I was not.

Neither was my cat—she was, in fact, the greatest feline beauty in the entire imperial harem.

On our wedding night, the prince was summoned away to the side courtyard by his cousin.

I had already taken off my bridal robes and slept soundly until morning.

After all, neither of us was the heroine.

Why should one supporting villainess make life difficult for another?

In my tenth year as a beggar, I was so hungry I had wrapped myself around a tree and started gnawing on its bark when a young lord in brocade appeared and promised to take me to Chang’an to live in luxury.

Tears filled my eyes at once.

I knew this plot: he had to be some poor boy I once saved, now rich and powerful and eager to repay me.

I hurled myself at him and cried, “Husband!”

The young lord nearly did the splits trying to escape.

“Shut your mouth,” he shouted, “I’m your real brother!”

The year I turned eight, I was trampled to death beneath the Crown Prince’s horse.

His guards paid my parents one tael of silver to make the matter go away.

My parents did not even retrieve my body; they took the money with ingratiating smiles and said, “For our daughter to die beneath His Highness’s horse is a blessing she could never have hoped for.”

Before my first seven days of mourning were over, Father divorced Mother and took another wife.

Mother remarried with every appearance of joy.

It seemed they had forgotten me.

Later, just as I was about to be reincarnated, Father and Mother dragged the Crown Prince to my grave and made him pay for my death with his own.