Chapter 1

Lately, flocks of crows had gathered in my courtyard.

Unruffled, I sat in the pavilion, lifting one slender wrist as I sewed.

Ever since I married into the Zhu ducal household, my mother-in-law had lectured me endlessly. A wife must guard the inner chambers, she said. She must not be lazy or proud. She must serve her husband, honor his parents, and see to every duty herself.

Each time, I answered with a smile. Then a senior maid would bring me clothes—some torn, some snagged—and order me to mend them.

In the two years since I entered the household, I had repaired at least a hundred garments.

Not once had I seen anyone wear them again.

My mother-in-law said nothing, so neither did I. Whenever the maid brought another armful, I merely smiled, picked up my needle, and began.

Before long, everyone in the residence was saying that, although I was the legitimate daughter of a great clan, I was warm and docile, as serene as a chrysanthemum, without a trace of a pampered young lady’s temper.

And so, from master to servant, they treated me with increasing contempt.

It could not be helped. I had been like this since childhood.

Mother told me she had just conceived me when Luojing fell.

The northerners fled south, from Langya all the way to Kuaiji, leaving millions of corpses along the road and enough blood to float shields.

After more than half a year of travel, just beyond Jiankang, I came wailing into the world.

A gale raged that night. Every crow in the city burst from its nest, black wings overlapping as they massed across the sky like an omen-laden cloud.

The strange phenomenon drew Huiyun, the sacred monk of Dingguo Temple.

I had emerged from my mother’s womb without crying. I merely opened my lacquer-black eyes and gazed curiously at the adults around me.

At one sight of me, Huiyun began to weep. He insisted that I shared a karmic bond with Buddhism and urged my parents to raise me until my first month was complete, then send me to Dingguo Temple as his final disciple, there to spend my life beside an ancient Buddha and a solitary lamp.

My parents refused.

I was the legitimate daughter of the Xie clan. How could I renounce the world from birth?

Huiyun sighed. He formed a Lotus Seal over my brow and said it would keep my heart pure and free of desire for eighteen years.

From that day onward, I had no temper.

My parents told me to study poetry, so I studied. They told me to paint, so I painted.

They said I was a noble daughter and must always comport myself accordingly: generous to others, courteous to those beneath me, virtuous, gentle, and true.

I fulfilled every demand.

Then, on the eve of my wedding, we learned that Young Lord Zhu had scarcely concluded our betrothal before eagerly installing a concubine in his household. The Zhu family had concealed it until that very day.

My parents nearly fainted. Uneasily, they asked whether I still wished to go through with the marriage.

I had never been permitted to decide any matter of importance in our family. Since they had not refused the marriage to the Zhus’ faces, naturally it had to proceed.

I smiled. “Of course. We northerners are guests in Kuaiji. You want me to marry into the Zhu household so that our family can put down roots here through an alliance by marriage. The family before the self, public duty before private feeling—I understand.”

As expected, my parents nodded with relief. Wiping their tears, they sent me away.

Less than a month remained before my eighteenth birthday.

Before my departure, the sacred monk came in person and presented me with a fragment of the Buddha’s bone that Dingguo Temple had venerated for many years.

His brows and beard were white as snow. In his face, withered as old bark, his bright eyes shone with compassion and worry.

“Lingyun,” he warned me, “you must wear it at all times. Never let it leave your body.”

I nodded and reassured him. “Your disciple will remember.”

But the moment that relic touched the skin over my heart, it burned as though it meant to sear straight through me.