chapter 1
“Jiayu smells so sweet…”
Xiao Jingcheng buried his face in my neck and shoulder, inhaling greedily.
I was his newly taken consort, Shen Jiayu, and the only sister of the Guardian General who had just returned victorious from battle.
Earlier today, when rewards were being handed out in the Hall of Golden Bells, my brother had begged this favor on my behalf.
His nuzzling tickled me, and I let out a soft murmur, pretending to be oblivious: “What smell? Your subject can’t smell anything…”
He playfully scratched my neck: “That’s your natural scent. You’ve smelled it for so long you can’t tell anymore.”
As we nuzzled cheek to cheek, the amorous atmosphere was abruptly broken by a call from outside the door.
“Your Majesty…”
“What is it?” Xiao Jingcheng raised his head, displeasure on his face.
“Lady Xie sent word that her headache has flared up. She asks that Your Majesty come see her…” The voice from outside the door grew quieter.
Xiao Jingcheng mulled it over for a moment—a new beloved in his arms, an old flame blocking the way. After weighing the options, he bent down and kissed me again.
“Not going.”
His tone carried a hint of impatience.
The man outside acknowledged and hastily withdrew.
He stroked my cheek, his voice lazy: “Jiayu, shall we continue?”
This Lady Xie—arrogant, domineering, and utterly unbridled—was not one of Xiao Jingcheng’s consorts.
She was his wet nurse.
In our dynasty, to keep consorts from meddling in politics, princes were taken from their birth mothers at birth and sent to be raised by wet nurses.
From the cradle until they entered the academy to study, most of their food, clothing, housing, and daily care were handled by their wet nurses.
So, compared to their birth mothers, most princes were more attached to their nurses.
Xiao Jingcheng ascended the throne at only four years old, still not yet at the age to be separated from his wet nurse, Lady Xie.
By the time he came of age and took power himself, Lady Xie had long since passed the usual age—yet she still had not been released from the palace.
Not only that, but Xiao Jingcheng had gone against precedent to grant her the title and honor of “lady.”
It sounded utterly absurd.
The Empress Dowager summoned Xiao Jingcheng for a lecture, but he slammed the table in fury, willing to fall out with his own mother:
“Lady Xie is my foster mother!
“When I was six, I was poisoned by a villain, and she personally tested the antidote for me, nearly losing her life. What about you? Besides giving birth to me, what have you ever done for me?
“You never raised me, yet you became the exalted Empress Dowager. Lady Xie has rendered such great service—why should I be criticized for wanting to let her live out her old age in the palace with honor?”
Live out her old age? More like hiding a beauty in a gilded chamber.
Upon hearing this, the Empress Dowager was so furious she fainted on the spot.
From then on, Lady Xie grew even more brazen, bullying others at will, relying on her status as the emperor’s wet nurse.
She bullied consorts and harmed unborn heirs.
Consort Chen’s little princess was smothered to death with a cloth over her mouth and nose; the former empress, frail of constitution, died in childbirth with both mother and child lost…
The list went on and on, and every consort in the rear palace lived in fear of her.
Lady Xie was at the height of her power in the palace, and her father and brothers dominated the land outside, bullying the innocent, seizing fertile farmland, and oppressing the common people.
Xiao Jingcheng turned a blind eye to all of it.
There was a secret circulating in the palace: the reason Lady Xie never lost her favor, never faded, was not just her service in raising Xiao Jingcheng, but another far more unspeakable reason—
She had never been weaned.
Though she was long past that age, she had kept her body nourished all these years with a certain secret medicine, and Xiao Jingcheng was deeply dependent on her.
Once the rumor spread, it was on everyone’s lips.
From the court officials, to the eunuchs hauling water in the rear palace, to the storytellers on folk stages, the children clapping and singing nursery rhymes, and the toothless old women…
Any one of them could tell a vivid version of the tale.
Xiao Jingcheng flew into a rage.
He arrested some, executed some, sent secret guards to patrol the streets without rest, and finally dragged the nosy officials to the Meridian Gate to be flogged before he could barely shut everyone up.
But no one understood better than I did—the rumors were all true.