Chapter 1
“Your Highnesses, your fates from this day forward will be decided by your own hands.”
Everyone in the great hall stared at the two bamboo tallies held by the Imperial Astrologer.
One was long and the other short. They would decide which of us could remain in the palace and which would have to follow our uncle to the unbearable frontier.
Fang Changning shoved me aside in her impatience. “I choose first!”
With that, she pulled the tally on the right. Just as she had expected, it was the longer one.
She clutched it as though it were a lifeline and let out a tremendous sigh of relief.
Our mother held only the lowly rank of Beauty. In this imposing hall, she had no right to speak at all.
Timid as she had always been, even she could not help tugging at Fang Changning’s sleeve.
“Where are your manners today?”
In her eyes, Fang Changning had always been sensible and obedient. She could not understand this sudden recklessness.
She did not see the gloating look Fang Changning cast my way.
Nor did she know that both of us had been reborn.
We were twins, but the Imperial Astrologer had declared twin princesses an ill omen that would doom Great Zhou’s fortunes after we turned twelve.
Unless only one twin remained.
We were imperial daughters, after all. Our father and his ministers deliberated for days before settling on a solution.
One princess would be sent to the frontier and raised as a boy, thereby deceiving Heaven itself.
Fang Changning had always excelled at keeping up appearances.
In our previous life, she had done her filial duty before Father and Mother every day so she could remain at court. Even at the very end, she insisted on playing the magnanimous elder sister and let me choose first. She never imagined I would draw the tally that allowed me to stay.
She followed our uncle to the frontier against her will, never expecting life there to be so harsh.
There were no magnificent dresses or exquisite delicacies. She endured the wind and sun every day, while our stern uncle made her practice horse stance and train with blades and spears without respite.
At last, Fang Changning could take no more.
One night, she stole all our uncle’s silver and fled, only to discover that she had badly overestimated her sense of direction.
She took a wrong turn into an enemy encampment and was captured at once.
To save her life, she revealed her identity. She even betrayed Great Zhou, divulging our uncle’s frontier defenses.
The enemy used her as leverage in negotiations with him while keeping her as their plaything and subjecting her to every humiliation.
Fang Changning clung to life until she finally found a chance to escape. Having betrayed Great Zhou, she dared not return. She wandered from place to place until, by chance, she slipped into my bridal procession.
By then, my fame had spread throughout Great Zhou.
Even three-year-old children knew that Princess Jinghua possessed peerless beauty, had mastered the zither, chess, calligraphy, and painting, and was deeply cherished by the emperor of Great Zhou.
Jiang, foremost of the Five Kingdoms, had asked for my hand. The moment I married into Jiang, I would become the most exalted empress in the realm.
Compared with Fang Changning, I stood in heaven while she wallowed in the dirt.
No one remembered the other princess suffering far away at the frontier.
Fang Changning went mad. We shared the same blood, and Father had once favored her even more than me.
Why should she meet such a wretched end while I basked in glory?
Brimming with hatred, she poisoned me.
Now that she had been given another life, propriety meant nothing to her. She would do anything to remain in the palace.
She got her wish. I was the one chosen to follow our uncle to the frontier.
Years of war had steeped him in a forbidding air that kept people at a distance. This time, he had ridden back to the capital at full speed to collect one of us.
Once the decision was made, he looked at me with pity as we left the hall. He seemed about to stroke my head, but, mindful of the thick, rough calluses on his hand, he drew it back.
“Jinghua, I’m sorry you have to bear this.”
Smiling, I took his hand.
“It’s been five years since you last returned to the capital to report on your command. Tell me, Uncle—what is there to do for fun in the northwest?”
The date of my departure was set. Unable to stop worrying, Mother sewed clothes for me with her own hands and held me in her arms every night.
Even Father, busy as he was, made time to speak with me each day. He was reluctant to let me go too.
Fang Changning saw all of this but said nothing.
Mother tried to comfort her. “Changning, your sister will soon leave the palace. We’ve been so worried about her that we’ve neglected you these past few days.”
Fang Changning resumed her gentle, generous facade.
“I understand. I’ll miss my sister terribly as well.”
Only I knew that she was not being generous. She simply no longer cared.
This time, she would be Princess Changning, enjoying all the riches and honor the world could offer. She would also marry Jiang’s young and accomplished emperor.
As for me, she could hardly wait to see how I would end up.
She was certain that the bitter frontier would make me just as miserable as she had been in our previous life.
But she did not know that the glittering imperial palace was the true hell.
The realm would soon descend into chaos. In troubled times, military power was the only power that mattered.