For a year after I was brought back to the Prime Minister’s mansion, I grew used to admitting fault.
When Song Ruoyun fell at my side yet again, she filled her eyes with practiced tears and looked at me as if words failed her.
My mother, utterly disappointed, struck me without a second thought.
I realized I would never live to see the day they understood they had wronged me, so I chose to leave.
Braving the rain, I knelt before my aunt, who had never gotten along with my mother, and wept: ‘Please take me in, Aunt. Even as your maidservant, I would fare better than as my mother’s own daughter.’