In my previous life, before my elder sister entered the palace to become empress, she bent her head to tell me, “Ah Ting, when I’m gone, you must take care of yourself.”
I promised her through my tears.
Five years later, the empress fell out of favor.
Her enemies had her raped, and that night she hanged herself.
The emperor decreed that the deposed empress of the Meng family was without virtue.
No one in the capital was permitted to wear mourning white.
I went to beg forgiveness on behalf of the Meng family.
Struck by my beauty, His Majesty took me into the palace, where I became the most favored woman in his harem.
The day I dragged him into the flames to die with me, he closed his hands around my throat in a rage.
“I have treated your family well!
For your sake, I even overlooked that defiled, deposed empress!”
I let the fire climb over me as though I could feel nothing.
“I didn’t.”
When I woke again, it was the day my sister entered the palace.
She stroked my head, then turned toward the palace that devoured people.
I stripped off my fine clothes and jewelry, then turned toward the bloodshed of an army camp.
Let us see whether that imperial bastard would still dare call her “deposed empress” when I surrounded his palace with my army.
