chapter 1

Every gaze in the hall turned toward me.

I was Eldest Miss Song—Song Yuzhen.

The empress froze, displeasure darkening her face. “Yu’er, choosing a bride is a grave matter. Do not be absurd.”

“Mother, I am not being absurd.”

Zhao Yu’s voice was hoarse and thick with tears as he bowed and dropped to his knees.

Those few words told me everything. He had returned too.

In our first life, Zhao Yu had been obedient.

At the empress’s command, he chose his cousin Zheng Yueru as crown princess, while Miss Chu and I became secondary consorts. Zheng Yueru was proud and imperious. Her aunt was empress, and because the empress had borne only one son and no daughters, she indulged her like one of her own. Zheng Yueru lived more freely than many princesses.

Zhao Yu was no less exalted. Named crown prince from birth, he had known nothing but favor. Put two such privileged people together and neither would yield; quarrels often rang through the inner palace.

Three times, Zhao Yu tried to replace his empress.

The first was after the old emperor died and Zhao Yu ascended the throne. He did not want to crown the arrogant, willful Zheng Yueru, believing her unfit to be mother of the realm. By then his mother had become empress dowager. She crushed the idea at once and reminded him of his maternal uncles: only the Zheng clan’s support kept his throne secure.

“Cast aside those who served you once their work is done, and who beneath heaven will ever trust you again? The empress must be a daughter of the Zheng family.”

The second time came when I conceived.

He was overjoyed. He wanted to make me empress and our son crown prince, so the boy would be honored from birth as he had been and never forced beneath another.

The empress dowager brought us a bowl of sterilizing medicine.

“Depose the empress if you wish, but the next emperor must come from the womb of a Zheng daughter. If Song Yuzhen wants the throne of empress, she must surrender any hope of bearing children.”

Zhao Yu sat without moving all night. I knelt behind him with my forehead against his back, my tears soaking through his robes.

Did I hate her? I did not dare.

By then I understood that Zhao Yu might be emperor, but he held no real power. He was a puppet with an imperial seal in his hand, restrained by the cabinet at court and his mother in the harem. Like me, he was merely a pitiful soul surviving in the cracks.

At that time, he disliked Zheng Yueru, but did not hate her.

Hatred came after Zheng Yueru drugged him during her birthday celebrations and kept him in bed for three days and nights. When he woke, he seized a sword and chased her through the palace. Barefoot, hair flying loose, she fled to the empress dowager’s residence and fell weeping at her aunt’s feet, claiming she had only wanted a child.

At first the empress dowager did not understand and protected her blindly. Even after learning the truth, she could not let Zheng Yueru spill blood in her palace. She could only try to smother Zhao Yu’s fury.

That day, he went mad. He hacked at everything in reach—the carved pillars, the rockery, even his own hands—yet never touched the person he wanted to strike. Before leaving, he carved a white scar across the palace gate.

“Whatever love there was between mother and son ends here.”

He never entered her residence again, not for her birthday or any festival banquet.

Even as she lay dying behind her bed curtains, calling to him through her grief, Zhao Yu stood outside and never lifted the drape. He shed no tears.

Only many days after her burial, on a night of bitter wind and rain, did he wake suddenly and cling to me, sobbing.

“She could not hear me. I hated her, so I pretended not to hear her calling. Yuzhen, my heart hurts so much.”

I think the empress dowager regretted what she had done. In her later years she tired of Zheng Yueru and treated me kindly instead, sending me gold ornaments, silks, and brocades in the hope that I would persuade Zhao Yu to visit.

But I only told her quietly, “Mother, if I truly speak for you, then His Majesty will have no one left on his side.”

She wept like a trapped beast. She was sorry, but the gulf between them had grown too wide for tears to fill.

Zhao Yu’s health was ruined, and illness plagued him afterward. His mother’s favoritism produced a cruel absurdity: I bore the eldest son, but Zheng Yueru bore the legitimate son. Court officials flooded the throne with memorials demanding that the empress’s son be named crown prince.

Among them was the Grand Tutor, the man Zhao Yu had loved like a father. Zhao Yu trusted him. The Grand Tutor had taught him to rule with benevolence, cultivate virtue, and set an example for the realm.

Yet the Grand Tutor said Zheng Yueru had done no wrong—she had committed her offense only to conceive a legitimate heir. Zhao Yu, on the other hand, had endangered the dynasty by favoring his noble consort above all others.

Stifled and betrayed, Zhao Yu drifted away from him too.

For our child’s sake, and because he detested Zheng Yueru’s son, Zhao Yu tried to depose her a third time.

Then Zheng Yueru fell gravely ill. Gasping for breath and convinced she would soon die, she confessed her wrongs to Zhao Yu. The ministers pitied her and urged him to show mercy. Some even accused me of monopolizing imperial favor and throwing the court into chaos.

His third attempt died before it began.

Perhaps once a person has lost too many times, victory becomes impossible. Zhao Yu went on losing. He never made me empress. He never made our child crown prince. Even his final wish—to be buried beside me—was denied.

He lost for a lifetime.

So did I.

We thought kindness would be rewarded and virtue would win hearts. But during my twenty years in the Cold Palace, I watched the Grand Tutor’s entire clan exterminated for bribery and corruption. Then I knew they had all been frauds, merely acting the parts of loyal ministers and righteous men.

Only Zhao Yu and I had been foolish enough to believe them—one trying to be a wise sovereign, the other a virtuous consort.

He died of despair. I lingered on in misery.

As death approached, I thought only of my son. We had been torn apart when he was ten, and I never saw him again. I did not know what sort of man he became, whether he truly grew up in safety or whether that, too, was only a dream others fed me.

Given another life, I no longer wanted him born from my body.

A mother’s life had been bitter. The child she carried could only be bitter fruit.

Better that he never came.