Chapter 3

Prince Chen was the emperor’s third son.

At his request, I began calling him Sanlang—the Third Son.

I said it in my sweetest voice, flavored with the soft lilt of Suzhou.

He adored it. Every night he stayed in my Purple Bamboo Court, while clothes, jewels, and dishes unlike anything I had ever seen flowed in without end.

Yet he kept saying that he wanted another taste of pot-rinsing water and the frog meat I had once roasted for him.

Whenever I could not bear it, I turned my face away and rolled my eyes.

Surrounded by delicacies every day, he had grown bored enough to romanticize suffering.

But no threat could make me serve him pot water or roast frog again.

He would vomit.

Worse, it would tear the veil from his precious memory and force him to understand that hardship was simply hardship.

There was nothing beautiful in it, and it deserved no nostalgia.

I would never tell him so.

Instead, I shook my head and said I could not bear to touch the wounds of the past. I only wanted to cherish each dreamlike day of happiness at his side, so that if I were ever cast back into the mud, I might stitch together the rest of my life with those memories.

My words moved him profoundly.

He gathered me into his arms and comforted me. “Silly Yinyin. I will keep you happy forever. No one will ever have another chance to hurt you.”

I was content to let him revel in his own devotion.

Only while he did so could I live well and seize a future of my own.

Still, this was a prince’s residence, and he was a legitimate imperial prince. No matter how little he cared for women, his inner court could not be empty.

He had a lawful princess consort of the first rank, born to an extraordinarily powerful family.

I was merely a concubine.

I possessed nothing.

Well, I possessed Prince Chen’s tender affection, though no one knew its expiration date.

After bringing me home, his first act was to choose my maid with great care. At last he selected Chuntao, the niece of his former wet nurse.

Chuntao was warmhearted and knew everything about the residence.

When no one else was near, she would often take my hand and sigh. “The princess consort, Lady Xiao, comes from one of Yulin’s great clans. Her chief accomplishment is managing subordinates; music, chess, calligraphy, and painting are merely secondary. She is proud, aloof, and nearly impossible to approach. A very difficult woman…”

I copied her sigh.

Privately, I thought, Can she possibly be harder to manage than my former mother-in-law?

The ugliest part of human nature appears when someone gains the smallest sliver of power and immediately uses it to torment everyone within reach.

My former mother-in-law treated every villager with courtesy because she could afford to offend none of them. Only with me did she indulge in every humiliation and cruelty she could devise.

I alone was hers to command.

Through me she tasted the exquisite pleasure of domination.

She was savage, insatiable, and crude.

The years beneath her hand remained the nightmare of my life. The memory alone could make me tremble.

I suspected that people born to real power might wield it with greater restraint, at least when no interest of theirs was threatened.

They would, if nothing else, use it with some dignity.

Lady Zhang, for example, blushed over an indecent remark she had not even finished.

Prince Chen’s consort, higher-born still, would hardly sacrifice her dignity by openly tormenting an insignificant concubine.

Besides, she had made an art of governing those beneath her. Her methods would naturally be more refined.

Open, undisguised malice frightened me far more.

Part of me even looked forward to seeing the princess consort’s superior techniques.

If I survived them, I would learn something useful.

If I could not withstand them and died by her hand, then perhaps that was simply my fate.

So I waited calmly outside her courtyard for her summons.

Before it came, however, a great crowd arrived behind me.

At their head was a glamorous young lady in costly dress, followed by maids and matrons carrying exquisite gift boxes.

As she passed, the lady asked, “This must be His Highness’s new concubine?”

Though she seemed to address me, she never looked my way. Gathering her skirts, she swept up the steps.

Her senior maid muttered just loudly enough to hear, “Concubine? She can sing a few rustic tunes, and His Highness finds her novel for the moment. The whole capital says she must be a shameless little fox, or she could never have seduced Prince Chen so easily.”

The last matron to pass studied me twice with cloudy eyes and sneered. “This old servant advises you to crawl back where you came from. Someone of your station dares pay respects to the princess consort?”

The procession crowded onto the steps, turned toward the courtyard, and ignored me thereafter—apart from the occasional mocking laugh.

Such insults barely scratched the surface.

My mother-in-law had cursed much more viciously.

Chuntao, however, ground her teeth in fury.

Staring at the woman above, she hissed in my ear, “That is Xu Hui, the Minister of Personnel’s second daughter. For years she has wanted to enter the residence as His Highness’s secondary consort. He ignores her, so she comes every few days to flatter the princess consort.”

That explained it.

I had casually taken the first bite of something she had begged for in vain. Naturally she resented me.

Unwilling to make more trouble, I turned to leave.

Just then, the courtyard gates opened and a maid emerged.

She passed straight through the crowd and bowed to me. “Madam Liu, Her Highness requests your presence.”

She led me up the steps, through the assembled visitors, and into the courtyard without once glancing at the Minister of Personnel’s daughter.

Xu Hui’s eyes widened with fury. At last she blurted, “Sister Jingzhe, does Her Highness not wish to see me today?”

The maid called Jingzhe looked back with an easy smile. “Madam Liu once saved His Highness’s life. Her Highness and His Highness are one as husband and wife, so naturally she shares that debt. Today Her Highness will enjoy a reunion with their benefactor. Second Miss Xu, please return home.”

Xu Hui’s face turned a fascinating shade between white and green.

My heart tightened.

A noble-born lady, a master in the art of command—her methods were refined indeed.

With Xu Hui’s contempt already curdling into hatred behind me, I put on a smile, entered the main hall, and bowed deeply to the woman trimming flowers beside a table.

“May peace and every blessing attend Your Highness.”