Chapter 2

The servants and my other siblings dissolved into a flurry of confusion. Matron Ji’an, who served the Empress, started forward to examine me.

I held up a hand to stop her. Looking at Cui Wan, whose chest was heaving with anger, I apologized without hesitation. “I’m sorry, Sister. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Before she or anyone else could react, I slapped her six times in succession. Three on each cheek: nicely balanced, and an auspicious number too.

I caught the hand she swung at me and smiled gently. “But speaking to the future Crown Princess like that in front of Her Majesty’s personal attendant? That was the real mistake, Sister.”

“Cui Yan! I’ll kill you!” She was nearly mad with rage.

She tried to fling herself at me, but Matron Ji’an stopped her, along with our parents, who had hurried over.

My parents looked at me with anger and a strange, distant incomprehension. I didn’t care in the least. I’d already got what I wanted, and I couldn’t be bothered to watch their performance of parental love and filial devotion. I turned and went inside.

In my previous life, Cui Wan had angered the Crown Prince so badly that he’d coughed up blood and spent three days confined to bed. This barely began to repay her.

Whatever my parents, Cui Wan or the rest of my siblings thought of me, they still had to send me off to my wedding with smiles on their faces.

The Crown Prince might be sickly, but his rank still placed him above all other men.

Jealousy and resentment filled Cui Wan’s eyes as she looked at me, then gave way to malicious delight.

I knew she was hoping the Crown Prince would die, waiting for the day I fell from grace.

All I could say was that it was hilarious. Who could have imagined I would end up Empress?

I turned for one final look at the home where I’d lived for more than ten years, and felt no reluctance to leave.

Everything I was doing was simply to make life easier for the Crown Prince, Xie Chen. To make his path to my side a little smoother.

The dreams had begun two months earlier.

The Crown Prince was gravely ill. The imperial physicians said he would not survive the year.

Their Majesties pitied their son. Afraid he would have no loving companion beside him in his final days, they set about choosing him a wife.

But Cui Wan and I were the only daughters of court officials of a suitable age. Given his status, Cui Wan should have been the one to marry him.

In my dreams, I never said, “I’ll marry him.” Cui Wan dragged me into it all the same.

I refused and fought with all my strength, only for my parents to lock me in a woodshed where no light entered.

Compared with Cui Wan, whom they had raised and taught with such care, I had no particular merits. I was the more expendable daughter.

Full of hatred and fear, I did the boldest thing I had ever done in my life.

I knocked out the maid who brought me food and escaped on the night before the wedding.

I knew this was a capital offense and dared tell no one. Fighting back nausea, I smeared stinking mud from a ditch onto my face, dressed in a beggar’s clothes and wandered the capital. The checks at the city gates were too strict for me to leave. All I could do was watch how things unfolded.

I hoped that one day they would forget me.

But heaven refused to oblige. Events escalated swiftly, because the Crown Prince coughed up blood and lost consciousness that very day.

Soldiers surrounded the duke’s residence, confining everyone inside. Every day, armed men patrolled the streets and searched.

I couldn’t compete with the other beggars for food, and often went hungry. Never having endured such hardship, I knew nothing of the world’s dangers. I believed one of the beggars when he spoke to me.

He said he would share his food.

I believed him. In truth, he meant to violate me.

With spoiled steamed bread in my mouth and tears streaming from my eyes, I thought my life was over. Then Xie Chen came.