Chapter 1

I opened my eyes and let my gaze travel over the furnishings in the room before it came to rest on the dim figure reflected in a bronze mirror.

I had been sitting in a daze for some time when hurried footsteps sounded outside. A young maid lifted the curtain.

A boy of eighteen or nineteen rushed in. The trace of grief on his face vanished the moment he saw me propped up in bed, replaced by undisguised impatience.

He spun around and kicked the little maid. “Didn’t you say she’d stopped breathing? She looks perfectly alive to me.”

Then he pointed at me. “You’ll make up any lie now, no matter how ill-omened. It was only a bowl of abortifacient. Was all this really necessary?”

I raised my face. Pale from blood loss, I sat in the first sunlight I had seen in days, as frail as a leaf shivering in the winter wind.

His voice softened despite himself.

“You’ve been with me for years. You may be called a maid, but you receive a concubine’s allowance. Everyone in this household addresses you as a young lady. And this is what comes of spoiling you—you forget your place and start entertaining such ambitions.”

“A family like ours cannot have an illegitimate eldest son born before the lawful wife has even crossed the threshold. People would say the Yin family had no rules.”

I bowed my head. My voice was scarcely louder than a mosquito. “Yes. I know I was wrong.”

A maid sold into permanent bondage had no say over her marriage or even her life and death. Whatever her master said was the truth, even when she had no idea what she had supposedly done wrong.

What a catastrophically bad opening hand.

He sat beside me, his voice turning gentle. “I know you’re afraid Miss Du won’t tolerate you after she marries in, so you wanted something to rely on. I’ve asked around. Miss Du is kind, virtuous, and sensible. She won’t make trouble for you.”

“Mother has said that after Miss Du has been here a year or so, you’ll be raised as my concubine. What is there left for you to fear?”

This was Yin Zonglin, the second young master of the distinguished Yin family of Youzhou.

I stared at him.

Tender and affectionate, he had always treated me so well. He taught me to read and write, gave me hairpins and bracelets, saved pastries and scented dew for me, and could not bear to let me drink contraceptive decoctions.

How could a senior maid raised in the Yin household fail to understand the rules of a great clan?

It was the second young master who had tapped me on the forehead and said, “Mercury, safflower, gromwell—what do you think goes into those contraceptive brews?”

“At best, they chill the womb and cause pain. At worst, they can kill you. I can’t bear to put you through that.”

Back then, I had thought his refusal was a special kindness.

The moment I conceived, before I even had time to rejoice, the abortifacient arrived.

And this time had been the third.

The stagnant room reeked of blood and bitter medicine.

Yin Zonglin did not stay long. After he left, Nier scrambled up from where she had been kneeling and threw herself against the bed, wailing as she clung to me.

When her sobs finally subsided, she said between hiccups, “Sister Chunyi, please beg the second young master. Doctor Zhou said long ago that this medicine is terribly strong, and your body is already weak. One mistake could kill you. You barely survived this time—what about the next?”

I had begged already. I had knelt, kowtowed, and pleaded through my tears for him to spare the child.

He had called me shortsighted and unreasonable.

An old servant had pinched my nose and forced the medicine down my throat.

Doctor Zhou had been right. It had indeed killed someone.

I stroked Nier’s hair. “There won’t be a next time, little Nier.”

As Yin Zonglin’s personal senior maid, I attended to everything he ate, drank, wore, and used.

Reducing the number and vitality of his seed would be absurdly easy.

Nier was too young to understand why there would be no next time. She was only ten, so I offered no explanation. I merely sent her to the small kitchen for two hot eggs.

Thinking I was hungry, she soon hurried back, presenting four eggs like treasures. “Auntie Zhou at the stove said you need nourishment, so she gave us four!”

“Thank her for me.”

I lifted Nier’s clothes and found a great purple bruise across her waist, just as I had expected. When I rolled a warm egg over it, she sucked in a breath and screwed up her whole face.

“Bear with it. It’ll stop hurting soon.”

I was still weak from the miscarriage. Even those small movements brought cold sweat to my brow.

“Sister Chunyi, I can do it myself.”

Nier clumsily copied me. When the egg cooled, she asked in all seriousness, “Can I still eat it?”

I laughed, peeled the shell, and held it to her lips.

Eggs were ordinary food, yet she rarely got to eat one. Delight flashed across her eyes. She bit into it and mumbled around the mouthful, “Sister Chunyi, I’ll only eat one.”

I patted the little buns on top of her head, stuffed the other three eggs into her pockets, and solemnly told her that once an egg had rolled away her bruises, it carried her scent and recognized her as its master. No one else could eat it.

Nier was doubtful, but she also felt she had won a tremendous bargain. After that, she tended me with even greater devotion.

“Sister Chunyi, if the second young master can’t bear to let you drink contraceptive medicine, why can he bear to make you drink an abortifacient?” she asked in a low, puzzled voice. “The abortifacient obviously hurts you more.”

If even a child like Nier understood that, how could the second young master not?

It had never been kindness. It was merely the image he wished to sell.