Chapter 1

Spinelessness runs in my family.

My eldest sister married the heir to the Marquis of Pingyang. In their second year of marriage, he brought his mistress home.

The woman, emboldened by her pregnancy, lorded it over everyone in the household.

Any ordinary mistress of a household would surely have thrown her out long before.

But my eldest sister was terribly spineless.

All she could do was weep as she nursed the mistress through her month of recovery after childbirth.

Unfortunately, our parents had pampered my sister so much that she accidentally nursed the woman to death.

After three or four concubines died under her care in succession, every woman in the capital came to dread the Marquis of Pingyang’s household like a plague.

Thereafter, whenever the marquis’s heir went out, even the mosquitoes within five meters of him were male.

My second sister’s husband was easy enough to get along with. His mother, however, was quite another matter.

In secret, she subjected my second sister to every torment women in the inner household had devised for one another.

My second sister could only meekly endure it all.

She even foolishly offered up the costly tonics and medicinal soups from her dowry, feeding them to her mother-in-law in the hope of pleasing her.

Unfortunately, that malicious mother-in-law had no luck at all.

Before the New Year, she fell in her own courtyard and suffered a stroke that left her paralyzed.

Everyone in the capital praised my second sister’s virtue. She had actually set aside all past grievances to tend her bedridden mother-in-law herself.

If you wanted a wife, marry a Qin daughter.

The reputation of the Qin daughters spread even to the palace.

At the beginning of spring that year, an imperial decree arrived, summoning me there.

The third daughter of the Qin family, a distinguished lineage, possesses both virtue and beauty. Gentle in disposition, prudent, modest, and respectful, she is hereby selected to enter the palace.

Unfortunately, I was that third Qin daughter.

It was sunny the day I entered the palace.

After several days of spring rain, the sky had finally cleared.

Mother looked up at that freshly washed sky and forced a smile.

“Our Yaoyao is a fortunate child. Everything will go smoothly for you, even in the palace.”

I nodded obediently and wanted to say more.

The palace matron who had come to collect me urged us to hurry again.

I was half pushed into the carriage.

The wheels rattled over the stone paving.

If I listened closely, there seemed to be faint sobbing too.

I poked my head through the curtain. Mother waved at me, her eyes red.

Father had turned away, refusing to look at me. Only his shoulders moved, shaking and shaking.

I opened my mouth to speak, but my throat was dry and tight.

Never mind. I could tell them next time we met.

The apricot tree in our courtyard had just put out tender buds. A light breeze set its slender twigs swaying.

The apricots would surely be big and sweet this time. What a shame I wouldn’t get to eat any this year.

Two other young ladies from prominent families entered the palace with me.

I rarely went out and knew very few people, so I had never met either of them.

All I knew was that one was Wang Xiu, granddaughter of Academician Wang of the Hanlin Academy, and the other was Shen Chunrong, younger sister of the commander of the Tiger’s Might Army.

For the first three months, we were not allowed to see the emperor. A matron in her thirties was our only instructor in palace etiquette.

There were so many rules. Chew slowly. Never talk while eating. However delicious a dish might be, take no more than three helpings from it.

As a result, I never had enough to eat during my first two days in the palace.

Wang Xiu learned everything quickly, as befitted an academician’s granddaughter.

Her health was poor, though. Spring had already begun, yet she wore thick layers and held a hand warmer all day.

Two steps and she needed a rest. Three sentences and she coughed twice.

I was afraid she might simply die if no one watched her closely enough.

Shen Chunrong, by contrast, could not have been more different from Wang Xiu.

As Mother would have put it, the girl was absolutely reckless.

While the rest of us meekly went hungry, Shen Chunrong nearly burned down Jinxiu Palace.

Fortunately, a maid on night duty discovered the fire in time. In the end, the only casualties were two potatoes.

“Lady Shen, did I or did I not tell you that you may not roast potatoes in your room?”

The head matron struggled to contain the vein throbbing in her forehead. She practically ground out the last two words through her teeth.

In principle, any one of us well-born girls entering the palace might have a glorious future ahead of her.

The matrons dared not offend us too deeply.

That showed just how furious Shen Chunrong had made the head matron.

And still she looked perfectly innocent as she asked, with a remarkable lack of sense,

“What about sweet potatoes?”

“No!”

“Apples?”

“No!”

“Pears?”

“Nothing! The palace has its rules. Please, my lady… stop this nonsense.”

There was helplessness in the head matron’s voice now.

She hadn’t run out of temper. She had run out of ways to deal with her.

Shen Chunrong nodded and reluctantly surrendered her flint.