Chapter 1

Su Futang held a cup of poisoned wine to my lips. “Drink it, Su Yao’er.”

“At least you’ll leave an intact corpse. When you reach the underworld, don’t say I showed no love for my sister.”

I looked out the window. All around us was silence.

Never mind a cup of poison. Even if Su Futang carved me to pieces here and now, no one would come.

This nunnery housed the late emperor’s surviving consorts. It was heavily guarded.

But with a face identical to mine, Su Futang had walked straight into my chamber as though the place were deserted.

Even though the sounds of a man and woman coupling came from this room every night, the abbess never asked questions. Everyone else was even more careful to hold their tongues.

For the man I served was the reigning emperor.

Su Futang glanced around. Scarlet breastcloths embroidered with mandarin ducks lay scattered across the floor; scenes of lovemaking adorned the screen in bright silk threads. Everything spoke of what had taken place here.

With an affected air of refinement, she covered her eyes with her fan. “From father to son, and debauchery in a temple. How did I come to have such a vile sister?”

I idly hooked a finger around a Burmese pleasure bell, feeling the little thing tremble like a pulse, and smiled. “What of it? It’s better than being buried with the late emperor.”

He had already been seventy when the Su family sent me into the palace.

His old eyes had fixed on me. “So young. Your cheek feels like a piece of creamy white jade.”

Looking at his spreading age spots, I fought down my nausea, laid my head on his knee, and gave him a seductive smile.

The late emperor smiled too. “Beauty, will you accompany me into the underground tomb, and join me in paradise?”

“Of course I will,” I answered meekly, while looking out of the corner of my eye at Prince Yi beside him.

To survive, I had no choice but to entice him.

Xiao Mingyi did not refuse. He accepted with pleasure.

When the old emperor died, Prince Yi took the throne.

The other surviving consorts, women as lovely as flowers, were nailed alive into coffins and shoved haphazardly into the imperial tomb.

By a stroke of luck, I escaped death and had my hair shorn to become a nun.

I thought I would have peace at last.

But Xiao Mingyi visited so often that he might have been a male ghost haunting me.

He seemed to feel that since he had given me my life, it was only right for me to repay him by spending it in his bed, even if it killed me.

Eight years of torment earned me a Noble Consort’s ceremonial robes.

I hid them in a cupboard, too fond of them to wear them.

Until Su Futang searched them out and threw them around her own shoulders.

She gazed into the bronze mirror, triumph gleaming unchecked in her eyes. “Don’t these robes suit me better?”

“As for you, a cheap, worthless creature, you should consider it a great honor if I give you an old robe for your shroud.”

The flickering lamplight blurred my face. “Su Futang, do Father and Mother know you’ve come here?”

She paused, then burst out laughing. “You know perfectly well. Why invite humiliation?”

“Let me tell you plainly. Father paid dearly for this poison, and Mother mixed the wine herself. One swallow will kill you.”

She gritted her teeth and jabbed a finger between my brows. “Drink it. You’re the accursed daughter of the Su family. You should have died long ago!”