Chapter 3

I had said those words to Mu Heng before. He had scoffed, believing I was spinning lies to save my life.

But that day, perhaps because the evidence that Song Qianyi had framed my parents was irrefutable, he listened.

He left in haste.

Soon afterward, word came that the emperor and empress had quarreled bitterly.

The next day, Song Qianyi excused the harem from their morning and evening greetings.

I supposed she had cried terribly and did not want anyone to see.

After that, Mu Heng stopped making me drink the contraceptive decoction. He said he would give me a child.

He did not apologize.

But apology showed in everything he said and did.

Even an emperor’s guilt was arrogant.

He thought I would be happy if he let me bear a child.

Unfortunately, I no longer cared.

My family was ruined, my reputation destroyed, my body broken. Ten thousand voices cursed me. I had long since lost everything.

He did not understand that when someone had nothing left, the only thing she could wager was her wretched life.

And I had endured more than enough of that miserable existence.

I became pregnant, then soon miscarried.

Blood flowed from beneath me, soaking the bedding.

Through the pain in my belly, I heard my personal maid accusing someone through her tears.

“Her Ladyship smelled lilies in the empress’s palace and immediately found it difficult to breathe.”

“But she endured it and dared not say anything. As soon as we returned, she miscarried.”

“Others might not know that lilies give Her Ladyship hives, but the empress is her own close kin. How could she not know?”

Mu Heng hurried to investigate and found the empress’s palace full of lilies.

They were the only dozen or so pots the palace gardeners had cultivated. Every one had been taken to her palace.

By the time I woke, Song Qianyi had been banished to the Cold Palace.

Mu Heng held my hand, his eyes faintly red.

“We’ll have another child.”

I resisted the urge to pull my hand away and let my tears flow unchecked.

What child?

It was a lie.

All of it was a lie.

And Song Qianyi had never known I could not tolerate lilies.

As a girl, I had been cherished by my parents and loved by my brother and sister-in-law. They had raised me well. I had been healthy, without a single ailment.

These illnesses were what ten years of hardship beside the deposed crown prince had left me.

It was not only lilies I could not bear, but jasmine, gardenias, willow fluff, the down from parasol trees…

Ten years in the ruined garden had destroyed my body. Only a thread of resolve had kept me going.

In the end, the deposed crown prince broke my spirit, and Mu Heng took away the last strength I had to live.

I hated them.

Yet I had no choice but to depend on them.

That was the tragedy of my life.

As soon as I could get up, I went to see Song Qianyi in the Cold Palace.

Surrounded by filth, she still carried herself like an empress. Evidently she had not suffered much.

Her eyes blazed with fury, as though she wanted to devour me alive.

“You wretch! You framed me. You were never pregnant.”

“Ha! That’s right. I wasn’t.” I lifted my head and laughed softly, casting her a sidelong glance. “But how did you know? Was it the flower cakes at Purple Cloud Temple that made you so certain?”

Song Qianyi was a shrewd woman.

As soon as Mu Heng decreed that I should enter Purple Cloud Temple, she had guessed his intentions and mixed a sterilizing drug into the flower cakes for which the temple was famous.

I ate them for two years. I could no longer bear children.

She knew it perfectly well.

After I began sharing the emperor’s bed, I was forced to swallow bowl after bowl of contraceptive medicine.

Watching me suffer, she must have been smug beyond measure.

The corners of her mouth lifted, but her denial was careless.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Don’t try to trick an admission out of me. For all I know, your fooling around with the deposed crown prince ruined your body.”

Her voice dripped contempt.

I laughed softly.

“Ha!”

“Whether I can bear children doesn’t matter.”

“But why aren’t any of you having them either? Don’t you want to?”

Since I entered the palace, not one of Mu Heng’s consorts had borne a child.

His children—two sons and a daughter—had all been born to concubines when he was Prince Cheng.

Song Qianyi, his empress, had miscarried twice and had neither a son nor a daughter.

The smile slowly vanished from her face. Then horror took its place.

“You wretch! You dared…”

She raised her hand to strike me.

I caught her wrist and said viciously,

“Why wouldn’t I dare? Those flower cakes you prepared especially for me were so delicious. Naturally I saved them to share with His Majesty.”

Because I was so prone to hives,

my sense of smell had become exceptionally keen. I could detect the slightest difference in a scent.

I had known then that the cousin I once loved hated me.

And that her husband coveted me.

The world was vast, yet it had no room for one insignificant Shen Junning.

When I gave Mu Heng those flower cakes, I had offered him a chance.

I asked whether he would let me reunite with my parents. We would remain in exile for the rest of our lives and never return to the capital.

Mu Heng sneered.

“Shen Junning, nothing in this world comes that easily.”

“Think about what you’ve done. Remember who you are.”

“Sparing your entire family from execution was generosity enough.”

“Instead of staying to atone, you want to live freely outside? Dream on!”

The day he took possession of me, I felt only shame and grief.

Hopelessly, I tried to comfort myself.

I was selling myself to the imperial family either way. What did it matter to whom?

If I could save my parents and my family, what did it matter how many people reviled me?

Where there was life, there was hope.

But everything that happened afterward taught me there was no hope in living. Death, instead, might offer one small chance.

I looked at Song Qianyi’s terrified, despairing face and smiled.

“Cousin, you should never have cut off every path I had.”

Birthdays, festivals, amnesties, pregnancy—if she had left me even one way to survive, she would not have driven me to fight her to the death.

Now she could only walk that road with me.

Never corner a desperate enemy. She had not understood that.