Chapter 1

From the moment we were born.

Zhou Xiyue and I were sworn enemies.

We were twins, but she was a little luckier: she emerged from Mother’s womb a few moments before I did.

That made her the exalted eldest princess born of the empress.

All I could claim was the same mother.

That alone I might have borne.

But when Zhou Xiyue was born, a snow-lotus mark shimmered faintly between her brows.

Every midwife there said she must be an immortal maiden descended to earth; nothing else could account for such a wonder.

At that very moment, in the depths of winter, countless luminous lotuses burst into bloom on Taiye Lake.

I was utterly ordinary. Beside her, I served only to make her shine brighter.

So although we were twin sisters born of the same mother, there was little affection between us. We had been bitter rivals since childhood.

The sort who would never be satisfied until the other lay beneath her feet.

Our tutor’s lessons were difficult to grasp, so I studied by lamplight every night. She refused to fall behind and always earned the highest marks.

Great Zhou prized martial skill.

She excelled at riding and archery; I too could put an arrow through a willow leaf at a hundred paces.

Neither of us would yield an inch.

Since its founding, Great Zhou had had a law allowing princesses to inherit the throne. The most capable should rule.

Admittedly, putting that law into practice had proved difficult.

Apart from the founding empress, all one hundred and thirty-two sovereigns had been men.

But what of it?

My sister and I left our brothers far behind. We were the most accomplished children in the imperial family.

So accomplished that we had won over every minister.

Even the common people had said—

With these two daughters in Great Zhou,

an empress could ascend the throne and still command the allegiance of the realm.

I believed myself her equal in every respect. Naturally, I meant to become heir to the throne.

But Father and Mother had always favored her. Because of the auspicious signs at her birth, they had decided she was the child who would bring Great Zhou good fortune.

And so, when we were fifteen, Zhou Xiyue was named Crown Princess, destined to become the dynasty’s second reigning empress.

I had just placed first at the Imperial Academy, at last crushing her in our academic rivalry.

I had thought Father and Mother would finally see me.

One imperial decree erased all my efforts.

I would not accept it. I could not.

On the day the decree was announced,

Zhou Xiyue wore a gauze gown of imperial yellow, its hem embroidered with the four-clawed golden dragons reserved for the heir. She looked every inch a daughter of the imperial house.

She came up to me and lifted my chin with a fingertip.

“Zhou Xiyu, you’ve lost again.”

She wore a victor’s smile.

The struggle for the succession

had always been deadly.

Now she was the rightful Crown Princess, with our parents’ love and supreme power at her command.

She would hardly show mercy to a younger sister who was her equal and had even tried to wrest the throne from her.

And so her first command as Crown Princess

was to send me beyond the frontier in a marriage alliance, cutting off any possibility that I might contend for the throne.

The Huijue had always been fierce and formidable.

On the open plains, their powerful armies could command all the peoples of the grasslands. They were the opponent Great Zhou had most cause to fear.

If we could win them over, we would never attack them outright. A marriage alliance offered every advantage without a single loss: not one soldier need be spent to secure another century of peace for Great Zhou.

But Great Zhou had only two princesses.

Zhou Xiyue was Crown Princess. Barring the unexpected, she would ascend the throne everyone coveted.

That left only me to make the marriage.

“A marriage alliance to cut off every road before me. Zhou Xiyue, what a clever scheme.”

My elder sister had always been ruthless.

She merely smiled and reached up to straighten the golden dragon hairpin that marked her as heir.

“If you had won today, wouldn’t you have done exactly the same?”

She still knew me so well.