chapter 2

I was the youngest daughter in my family, and my parents had always indulged me.

Their calculations concerning Shen Yan had not escaped my notice.

But I had been naive then. I did not understand that one person’s poison might be another’s honey.

I married Shen Yan with a heart full of joy.

What woman does not begin marriage hoping for a happy life?

In those days, he studied in his academy until late at night. He said my bringing him food would disturb him, so I endured my longing and lit a lamp at home every evening to guide him back.

Only later did I learn that the other examination candidates studying beside him all received meals from their wives. Shen Yan had not feared being disturbed. He simply had not wanted to see me.

He preferred rice soaked in plain water.

Shen Yan first began to treat me kindly after I became pregnant.

It was our sixth year of marriage.

After court, he would come to my room to see me. The pregnancy was precarious, and I vomited so violently that in only two months I had wasted almost beyond recognition.

Shen Yan would bring a small bowl of meat stewed until it slipped from the bone and feed me the minced morsels one bite at a time.

Strangely, the food he fed me was the only food I could keep down.

I truly believed our days were about to improve. Like the most ordinary husband and wife in the world, we discussed names for the child.

He would name a boy, and I would name a girl.

But Heaven has always delighted in mocking me.

I lost the child in the third month.

Shen Yan’s kindness ended just as abruptly.

My mother-in-law called me a barren hen, sometimes openly and sometimes behind a veil of insinuation.

While I drowned in grief for my child, Shen Yan did not visit me once. That very afternoon, he accepted an imperial decree and left for the south to control the floods.

Lord Shen had a realm’s worth of affairs to manage.

He achieved much in the south. I heard that when he departed, the common people lined the roads to bid him farewell.

He sent me only one thing: a dried purple jasmine enclosed in a letter, a flower rarely seen in the capital.

I, too, had read books. I knew the verse: “The south holds nothing worth the giving; I send you only one branch of spring.” It was an elegant gesture.

Perhaps, in some pause between his duties, he had seen the flower and finally remembered that his lawful wife in the distant capital had just lost their child.

But I needed so much more than that.

One hard pinch would have reduced that dried jasmine to dust. It was worth less to me than the umbrella a gatekeeper once handed me as I went out.

Even so, matters might still have remained bearable.

What truly killed my love for Shen Yan happened in the tenth year of our marriage.

He brought home a boy from his clan and placed the child in my care.

I was beside myself with joy and attended to everything personally.

Then two things happened.

First, by the time the boy was two, Shen Yan had never once done so much as feed him a spoonful of broth.

What was Shen Yan doing instead?

He was in the palace, guiding the young emperor.

Shen Yan personally annotated every collection of poetry the boy studied. He even drew little illustrations in the margins.

I could not imagine where he found the time.

The new emperor was young and could not bear to be separated from his mother. The Empress Dowager was renowned for her beauty; even when she had been an imperial consort, she was said to have outshone the entire harem. She was several years younger than I was. Whenever thunder frightened the young emperor awake and even she could not calm him, the first person she summoned was Grand Chancellor Shen.

They were always together.

I dared not say I was jealous of the Empress Dowager, but rumors did occasionally circulate among the people.

They spoke of a beautiful widow and her orphaned son, and of a mighty minister willing to bow at a woman’s skirts.

Shen Yan’s informants reached every corner of the capital. He could not have been unaware.

Yet he never offered me a word of explanation.

The second thing was that my You’er learned to speak. He said he wished he were the emperor.

I was horrified. If repeated outside the household, such words could cost us all our heads.

That was the first time I struck him.

But I knew the rest of the sentence he had meant to say.

“I wish I were the emperor.

“Then Father would spend time with me.”