Chapter 1

“Huaiyu, shall I take you and your brother riding after breakfast?”

In the dressing mirror, my stepmother’s pale face was full and smooth. She curved her fingers delicately as she selected a hairpin from her jewel case.

“Your father is away. It will give the three of us a chance to be close.

“Your brother has only just learned to ride. He’s so young. I won’t feel at ease unless you’re with him.”

Her plump, carefully tended hands moved before my eyes.

I looked down at my own.

Hard calluses covered my fingertips, palms, and the hollows between thumb and forefinger. They were hardly the hands of a sheltered young lady.

My name was Ye Huaiyu. My father, Ye Cheng, the Marquis of Jingwu, had once been a notorious rake in the capital. My birth mother was his mistress.

To please him, she had me train in martial arts from childhood.

Later, he distinguished himself in service, abandoned his dissolute ways, and married Jiang Hui, daughter of a family famed for its moral standing.

After my mother died, my stepmother persuaded him to bring me into the marquis’s household and hired a woman tutor to teach me.

For that, I had once been sincerely grateful.

When I was twelve, she took me and my four-year-old brother riding during the autumn hunt on the grasslands. We encountered assassins.

I shielded my brother. When they knocked away my spear, I caught a blade in my bare hands and would not let go.

The cuts went down to the bone.

Before everyone, my stepmother cradled my hands and wept, pressing my brother down to kowtow to me.

After that, she treated me differently still.

The Empress selected daughters of noble families to be raised under her care. She chose me. My stepmother refused for me.

“The palace is a dreadful place. How could I bear to send you there?

“A girl needn’t seek wealth and glory. A good husband who will cherish her is enough.”

She also said the distinction between legitimate and concubine-born children in the family register was only for outsiders. My mother’s position had been awkward, certainly, but with her love to protect me, she would find a fine young man who cared nothing for such things.

She delayed until I was twenty-one before settling on someone: the grandson of Father’s wet nurse.

“Nanny Xu did your father a great kindness. Besides, she was a freeborn woman hired from outside, hardly a servant.

“Now young Fang has passed the metropolitan examinations. Huaiyu’s mother was only a mistress, and her hands are damaged. If they hadn’t grown up together, how could she ever have hoped for such a match?”

What a joke.

Since when had our great empire, like one of its tributary kingdoms, begun assigning children their mother’s status?

What marquis’s daughter was supposed to have grown up as the childhood sweetheart of a servant’s son?

If the nurse’s grandson was such a prize, why not give him one of her own nieces?

The son she had raised so well—my dear little brother—said roughly:

“Eldest Sister is over twenty. Just because she saved me, does she expect to stay here for the rest of her life?”

I married with a dowry whose advertised value was half empty show.

I had no mother’s family and none of Father’s love. There was no one to stand up for me.

In the end I died alone in my husband’s home. No one cared.

Now I had returned to this day.

“Of course, Mother. Only…”

I bent to slip a ring onto her finger.

“I hear there are plenty of foxes in the eastern woods. If I could catch one, we might make you a fur collar.”

She paused, then beamed.

“What a dutiful child. All my love hasn’t been wasted on you.”

Under the pretext of letting me see the world, she made me protect her like a guard.

Yet when others spoke ill of my birth mother, she heard nothing.

Such love.

She spread her fingers, displaying the jewels that crowded them, and added:

“Take plenty of men. Bring back a few more foxes. We can include them in the New Year gifts. It will reflect well on your father.”

Father had long been at odds with his clan. Those holiday gifts would probably all go to her family, to make her look generous.

When something cost her nothing, naturally she wanted more.

I lowered my eyes and meekly agreed.

She had said it herself.