chapter 1

I died on the second day of Chu Lizhi’s campaign.

Under cover of night, the empress sent men to surround my Qixia Palace. Several stout old matrons pinned my arms and legs and dragged me before her.

Swathed in magnificent robes, she looked down at me. First she savored my wretched state; then she poured every vicious curse she knew over my head.

“A lowborn wretch like you dares call herself Noble Consort? Dares stand above me?”

“Die, you demon consort! Once you’re dead, His Majesty will remember me. He’ll become my husband again!”

Her shrill laughter rang in my ears, her face twisted into something hideous.

I stared back at her coldly.

I knew she hated me.

I simply had never imagined she would dare kill me.

The poisoned wine burned a path down my throat. The agony was unbearable. As my head lolled weakly to one side, I saw a freshly sewn under-robe laid across my embroidered bed.

Chu Lizhi disliked the overly soft fabrics used in the palace, so every month I sewed him several under-robes from cotton threaded with hemp.

This was the first one for the month.

I had meant to give it to him before he left.

But we had quarreled that day and parted in anger, and I had forgotten.

I had planned to send it to the frontier tomorrow. Now—

it would never reach him.

In the last instant before consciousness deserted me, Chu Lizhi’s handsome, martial face flashed through my mind: his eyes bright as stars, and the words he had left me.

“Yaoyao, wait for me to come home.”

Ah.

I was going to die.

Chu Lizhi.

I could not wait for you anymore.

Perhaps the injustice of my death kept my soul from fading.

It passed through layer after layer of the deep palace and came to the frontier, to Chu Lizhi’s side.

His deputy lifted the tent flap. Chu Lizhi strode in, his silver armor gleaming with cold light, the brown hem beneath it soaked in blood that dripped to the ground with every step.

He had clearly just returned from battle.

It must have been a great victory. Chu Lizhi had sat on the throne long enough to keep every emotion from his face, but his deputy could not hide the delight in his eyes.

“Your Majesty, a resounding victory in your very first battle! Let’s see whether that old bastard of the Song family ever dares defy you again.”

The Song family.

The empress’s family.

General Song was the realm’s Supreme General. He held military command and eighty thousand elite troops.

He had used that power to help Chu Lizhi take the throne. After his coronation, Chu Lizhi had left the army in the old minister’s hands as a display of trust.

Now that trust had become a blade balanced between sovereign and subject.

The deputy continued indignantly, “Before Your Majesty came, the Southern Barbarians provoked us at every turn, yet General Song refused to march against them. He claimed he feared a trap, but really, he resented you for confining the empress to Fengyi Palace. He wanted to force you to yield and release her. As if the empress didn’t deserve punishment after nearly killing the Fourth Prince by sending him into that icy lake—”

My heart lurched. I froze.

Chu Lizhi’s brows drew together. One icy glance from him silenced the deputy at once. A moment later, however, the man looked him up and down and ventured softly, “Your Majesty… Her Highness the Noble Consort wasn’t angry when you left, was she?”

Chu Lizhi instinctively touched the scratches at the back of his neck. Catching the deputy’s puzzled look, he turned away and answered stiffly, “She has a gentle nature. She is not given to anger.”

The deputy took his tone for displeasure.

I knew better. Chu Lizhi was feeling guilty.

First, there was nothing gentle about my nature.

Second, I was forever losing my temper with him.

And third, before he left the palace, we had quarreled bitterly.

Over this very matter.