Schemes And Conspiracies

Song Yayue has spent fifteen years trapped behind a talisman-enforced silence, so no one suspects that the supposedly mute, illiterate bride is a born chatterbox.

On her wedding night, she catches her husband in bed with the Crown Princess—and nearly exposes herself to the blind Crown Prince who guides her through the dark.

But He Zhiyu is no more blind than Yayue is mute, and the two betrayed spouses strike a bargain: she will become his eyes and ears, and he will keep her alive.

As an adulterous affair unravels into a royal conspiracy, Yayue discovers that the deadliest weapon in the palace may be the voice she has been forbidden to use.

On the day my father placed third in the palace examination, my mother was found unconscious in a busy street, her clothes in disarray.

Mindful of the many years she had supported his studies, my father did not fault her for having been violated.

Everyone praised him for his honor.

Even the emperor marveled at his devotion.

Yet, concerned for my father’s reputation, His Majesty decreed that he marry the Marquis of Yongyang’s legitimate daughter and expected my mother to step aside and become a concubine.

Proud and unyielding, my mother hanged herself that very night.

At my daughter’s birthday banquet, the longevity lock in its brocade box had been replaced with a decapitated snake.

As every noblewoman in the courtyard screamed in terror, my husband’s former beloved reddened her eyes, hugged her son, and apologized.

“He is only a child.

He did not mean to curse the young lady with an early death by bringing her a headless snake.”

Beneath her lowered gaze was a taunt.

She was waiting for me to fly into a rage and ruin my own daughter’s celebration.

I merely gave a quiet hum.

At once, a servant swung a cudgel into the back of her knee.

She dropped to the ground before me, smashing her forehead against the flagstones.

Blood streamed down her face.

She looked utterly wretched.

I tapped the lid of my teacup without even looking up.

“Drag her out and kill her.”

“The child may not know better, but is the adult dead too?”

I am the youngest princess of Baojun Palace, raised to seem innocent while my elder sister bargains with a ruthless eunuch and my elder brother plots for our survival.

Our mother was framed and killed, our palace became a prison, and every smile I wear becomes a weapon against the emperor who abandoned us.

As love, revenge, and a battle for the throne close around our family, the secrets everyone hides prove far more dangerous than my supposed naivety.

I may be the family’s little fool, but I will decide which hearts are saved—and which debts are paid.

Emperor Yuanzhen has ruled Jing for sixty years, while Empress Dowager Xue governed from behind the curtain for thirty-three.

I served as the empress dowager’s personal maid for seventy years—and I know a secret that could overturn the dynasty.

The emperor is not the late sovereign’s son, but a bastard born to the empress dowager and a Sumo barbarian.

Li Furong spends three years saving Xie Qingheng through exile, only to be dismissed before his powerful friends as nothing more than a loyal servant.

When the man who promised her a future breaks his word and forces her into a nameless place in his household, she turns every lesson in survival against him.

Trapped among noblewomen as dangerous as the men who command them, Furong must decide how much of herself she will sacrifice to win the one thing she has always wanted: a life that belongs to her.

After dying under the torture of the man she once saved, Lu Shiyi awakens on the day her younger sister frames the penniless scholar Gu Ningcheng.

Armed with memories of her first life, she refuses to play the merciful victim again and sets out to strip Gu Ningcheng and her treacherous sister of every advantage they once used against her.

But destroying her enemies is no longer enough, because Lu Shiyi intends to escape the inner quarters, enter the imperial examinations, and seize the power that women have always been denied.

My mother-in-law brought home a child whose features looked just like my dead husband’s.

She called it fate.

My husband had been reincarnated and returned to repay my kindness.

So I rallied the full strength of our clan to make the boy heir to the marquisate.

But once he had risen to power and made a name for himself, he locked me in a woodshed in the rear courtyard and left me to die.

Then my supposedly dead husband came to my grave with his wife.

“Our son saw you to your end, at least.

That makes your life worthwhile.”

Now that I had been reborn, they could play their parts onstage, and I would applaud from below.

I would help them put on a tragedy of blood ties severed and a family destroyed.

Everyone in the capital knows that every beauty who disappears into Minister Luo’s rear courtyard carries him one step higher in office.

Born mute—or so the household believes—his ninth daughter survives by making herself small and useful to the family’s favored eldest daughter.

As sisters are sold, married, and sacrificed for the ambitions of men, Ah Jiu realizes that obedience will never buy her freedom.

To escape the Luo estate alive, she must wager the one thing society says determines a woman’s future: her face.

In the twelfth year of her political marriage, Lu Zhuohua’s husband slaps her for the sake of his newest concubine—and the formidable marchioness answers by smashing a bench over his head.

What first looks like another petty battle in a crowded noble household soon exposes a plot involving a staged miscarriage, a powerful young heiress, and a poison meant for Zhuohua and her little daughter.

With her family, her fighters, and twelve years of household authority behind her, Zhuohua decides that if her husband wants her dead, she will simply strike first.