Chapter 1

Chapter 1

At 3:45 am, the Crown Prince left my bed.

He doesn’t touch me.

Tonight was an accident.

Because his beloved, the one in Zhaoyang Palace, attended his bed tonight.

At the height of tenderness, his fingertips slipped into my hair, and he couldn’t help but call out, “Fu’er.”

The one in Zhaoyang Palace is called Song Fulan.

She is my eldest sister, and also the current emperor’s favored concubine.

I am called Song Fujin.

I am the one the Crown Prince personally requested to marry.

He watched me drink every last drop of the Contraceptive Broth.

Then he patted my head and said, “So obedient.”

I watched him leave my palace under the moonlight, and even after he was out of sight, I still gazed.

My maid advised, “Lady, don’t watch anymore. His Royal Highness the Crown Prince won’t return.”

She doesn’t understand.

I have to watch.

I have to see for myself that he won’t come back before I can leave the palace.

At 4:45 am, I left the Eastern Palace.

It was so cold, just before dawn in deep winter.

At 5:45 am, I scaled the wall into the General’s Mansion and climbed into Xie Liuzheng’s bed.

He turned over and held me tight.

His warm palm clasped my hands, reddened by the icy wind.

“Xie Liuzheng, I’m filthy,” I said.

“Not filthy.”

He rested his chin on my head, also having not slept all night. “Our Ah Jin is a treasure.”

Chapter 2

When Xie Liuzheng was seventeen, before he marched to the frontier, he made a promise to me.

If he could return victorious, he would request the emperor to allow him to marry me.

But the war dragged on, and he was gone for three years.

When my eldest sister entered the palace, an imperial edict was issued, and I became the Crown Princess.

I refused to marry and knelt in the ancestral hall for three days and nights.

Finally, my father came to see me with a sword in hand.

He said, if I wanted to defy the edict, I might as well kill him first that night.

I said, the day my mother died in childbirth, while he was drinking in the pleasure quarters, I had wanted to kill him then.

In the end, I married anyway.

I had to survive.

Until the day Xie Liuzheng returned safely.

He returned to the capital in triumph.

In front of the entire court, the emperor asked him what reward he desired.

He said, he asked only one thing: to marry the youngest daughter of the Song family, the Right Vice Minister of Revenue.

He clearly knew I had already married into the Eastern Palace.

But he always kept his word to me.

The Crown Prince heard this and glanced up.

My father quickly knelt and said, “Your servant’s household only has a young son born of a concubine, not yet five years old.”

That was my half-brother, born of a concubine.

Xie Liuzheng smiled and said, “Not a bad idea.”

The ministers gasped, all secretly lamenting that the Young General was far too arrogant and willful.

After court, the Crown Prince stopped him.

“Who exactly is it that General Xie seeks?” asked the Crown Prince.

He leaned in and said to the Crown Prince, “Your Royal Highness is truly a dog.”