Chapter 1

My name was Ye Shuyan, the chancellor’s legitimate daughter. At eighteen, still unmarried, I had become a joke among the capital’s noble families. Three prospective marriages had come to nothing.

At fourteen, I was betrothed to a young general. He died in battle. At fifteen, our family had barely exchanged birth details with a minister’s household before their son drowned.

The most recent match had been two years ago. One of Father’s students, an upright man who had started as a clerk, seemed hardy enough to survive my luck. Unfortunately, he had a female cousin he had grown up with.

Not long after our birth charts were matched, I happened to “run into” her while out.

With her delicate, pitiable face, she accused the Ye family of using our power to force the marriage, right there in a crowded market. Then she fell to the ground and claimed I had pushed her. So I gave her an actual slap, and that marriage ended too.

My reputation for bringing death to husbands was firmly established.

My two younger sisters had reached marriageable age. No matchmaker dared cross our threshold, and at gatherings, other noble girls kept their distance. Someone sneered that I was the one rotten mouse spoiling the whole pot of porridge.

Mother called it vicious nonsense, but she worried too. “Shuyan, why don’t you stay at the estate for a while? Come back once your sisters’ marriages are settled. I’ll keep looking for a husband for you.”

The mistress of a household had her own considerations.

Besides, my sisters were sweet and clever. We had grown up together, and I was fond of them.

I thought little of it and went to our estate in the south. Before leaving, I held Mother’s hand and comforted her. “There’s really nothing so terrible about never marrying.”

Yet once everything was settled, Father and Mother still did not send for me.

Only later did I learn why.

Father’s political enemies had used me to accuse his household of moral disorder. The tyrant scarcely attended court once in six months, but by chance those words reached him. He decided to take me into the palace and suppress my ill fortune with his imperial aura.

He was already thirty.

He did only two things: when he wasn’t making elixirs, he was killing people; when he wasn’t killing people, he was making elixirs. No other emperor had such a meager harem. Of his seven or eight consorts, some were ill and the rest were mad.

My parents truly loved me. Unable to bear sending me there, they took the risk of trying to substitute my half sister.

Reborn, I traveled through the night to reach the chancellor’s residence.

I lifted my half sister from the floor and cut off the tragedy at its source.

“I’ll marry him,” I said.

Mother clasped my hand, her eyes reddening. “Don’t be foolish. That place devours people, and Manman has already agreed. Go back to the estate after dinner. Stay away until this blows over.”

In Zhao, women wore veils outside. After my reputation spread, I had seldom attended the flower parties and gatherings of noble ladies anyway. Few people in the capital had seen my face. With Ye Man taking my place and a few loose ends tied up, the substitution could be seamless.

But I knew she did not want to go.

Or rather, she had no right to refuse.