Chapter 1

I woke with a start from a nightmare.

A crowd stood around me, complicated expressions on their faces.

Mother sat by the bed weeping, while Father stood grim-faced and silent.

For a moment, I was dazed. Wasn’t I already dead?

I slapped myself twice. My cheeks immediately began to burn.

Mother hurried to restrain me. Father barked, “You shameless wretch! So even you know what a disgrace you’ve made of yourself!”

I flinched at his rebuke. The searing pain below finally dragged me back to reality.

I had lost my chastity.

Memory burst through the floodgates. I recalled how Xiao Jinhe, maddened by an aphrodisiac, had seized me in his arms and taken me roughly.

Again and again, he had called my sister’s childhood name, while using me as the antidote to his poison.

Xiao Jinhe came to see me.

To call it a visit would be generous. He had really come to sound me out.

He said the brazen bitch who had drugged him would die a horrible death, and that he would avenge me.

Reclining against the cushions, I studied his finely sculpted features until tears began to fall.

A trace of guilt entered his eyes. With rare gentleness, he picked up a handkerchief and wiped away my tears.

I could not imagine that this young man before me would, only a few years later, condemn me to death by ten thousand arrows.

Yet in my dream, every look of cruelty, disgust, and contempt he had directed at me—every expression, every word—remained as vivid as if it were happening before my eyes.

I could not stop crying. Xiao Jinhe grew a little impatient, his brow drawing into a faint frown.

“I understand how wronged you feel. Rest assured, I have already asked that you be rewarded. Take some time to think about what you want.”

His choice of words was revealing.

He knew perfectly well that no ordinary reward could make amends to a maiden who had lost her chastity because of him. But he was unwilling to offer the only thing that could.

So he tossed the problem back to me.

He could never have imagined that I, usually so meek and reserved, would dare ask the Empress to decree our marriage.

Xiao Jinhe had been in my room for less than the time it took to drink a cup of tea when my elder sister arrived in a rush.

She had not come to see me once during the days I had been ill.

My sister made no secret of how much she despised me.

But no one in the family blamed her, because I had supposedly caused her to be torn from her home.

According to her, when she sneaked out of the estate at nine years old, it was because I had craved sweet soup. Mother would not allow me to have any, so I had coaxed her into buying it for me.

That was how she came to be abducted.

But I had never liked sweets.

Father said there was no such thing as a child who did not like sweets.

Mother said I should treat my sister better.

Everyone simply accepted that I owed my sister for the rest of my life.

I could feel everything I possessed slipping away from me, little by little.

At first it was a handkerchief, then a dress. Next came Father’s regard and Mother’s favor.

Until even the boy who had once sworn he would marry no one but me followed my sister with his eyes as she walked farther and farther away.