Chapter 1
The hall fell silent for a moment.
Mother stood frozen in place.
My elder brother slowly set down his teacup and said coldly, “What game are you playing this time?”
“Mother, all this girl thinks about is wealth and rank. We cannot let her fool us.”
Neither of them believed I could have changed my mind so easily.
After all, I had always been fiercely competitive.
At the clan school, I had to come first in essays and poetry.
I buried myself in music, chess, calligraphy, and painting until I excelled at them all.
So when I first learned that I was to marry Prince Rui, I felt terribly wronged and lost my temper on the spot.
“Why does Sister get to become empress while you arrange for me to be nothing more than the wife of an imperial clansman?”
“I am better than she is at everything. Why do you always give her the best?”
The Emperor’s gifts, imported perfumes, lessons in flower arranging from the Marchioness—ever since we were children, everything had gone to my elder sister.
I could never accept it, and every time, I made a scene.
If tears could get me what I wanted, I cried. If they could not, I found a way to snatch it for myself.
Marriage was no different.
My sister’s match with the Crown Prince had not yet been settled.
The Empress was still considering the daughters of noble families, searching for the perfect wife for her son.
Now that I had given up, Mother released a long breath.
“I told you from the beginning that this was an excellent match. The Emperor and Empress dote on their younger son. You will live far more comfortably as Prince Rui’s wife than as Crown Princess…”
I softly said yes.
Mother was overjoyed. She immediately ordered a carriage prepared so she could enter the palace.
Soon, only my brother and I remained in the hall.
I tried to leave, but he barred my way.
“Mother may be gullible enough to believe your nonsense, but do not think I cannot see through this little retreat of yours. You are only giving ground to gain more later.”
I brushed off my sleeve, too tired to argue. “You are right.”
My brother gave a quiet laugh, wearing the satisfied look of a man whose suspicions had been confirmed.
He bent toward me, mockery in his eyes.
“You have spent all these days bending over backward to please the Empress, making a show of yourself, lowering your pride. She is already inclined to choose you as Crown Princess…”
“How could you possibly bear to give up the riches of the imperial family?”
In my last life, I could not.
I practically moved into the palace to keep the Empress company.
On the eve of the betrothal decree, an epidemic swept through the palace.
The Empress fell gravely ill, her life hanging by a thread.
I tended her day and night without even changing my clothes, until exhaustion made me collapse.
When I awoke, Pei Jin sat beside my bed. His expression was cool, touched with derision.
“Does the position of Crown Princess matter that much to you?”
He disliked the way I always fought to win.
After our wedding, he deliberately kept me at arm’s length.
Desperate to ease the tension between us, I even asked an experienced matron to teach me the arts of the bedchamber.
When my teasing finally drove Pei Jin past endurance, he climbed out of bed with red ears and a hard voice.
“Give up. I despise scheming women like you most of all.”
News that the Crown Prince and Crown Princess were at odds reached the palace.
The Empress summoned Pei Jin and gave him a fierce scolding the moment he arrived.
“If you truly disliked the Crown Princess, why did you not tell me before the decree was issued?”
“She comes from an illustrious family, is virtuous, intelligent, and understands propriety. Your father and I are both perfectly satisfied. You alone insist on finding fault.”
“Keep behaving so petulantly, and you may find your position as Crown Prince at risk.”
Pei Jin was silent for a long time.
After that, his treatment of me improved.
He no longer answered everything I said with icy contempt.
In bed, he coaxed me in a low voice and touched me with tenderness.
Perfume from the Western Regions, tangerines sent as tribute from the southwest, bolts of Floating Light Brocade—things I had once been allowed only to watch my sister enjoy—would appear before me the very next day whenever I expressed the slightest desire for them.
We were young newlyweds.
Little by little, I fell in love with him.
When I suffered some grievance in the palace, I came home and poured it all out in his arms.
Sometimes, I woke from dreams of the unfairness I had endured as a child and hid beneath the covers, unable to stop crying.
When Pei Jin noticed, he pulled me into his embrace and patiently soothed me.
“Why are you crying? With me here, who would dare bully you?”
I looked up at him. “Truly?”
Seeing my tear-filled eyes, Pei Jin laughed. “Who would dare bully my wife? I would fight them to the death.”
He treated me so well that I began to believe something I had never dared imagine.
Everyone had always taken my sister’s side.
But at last, I had someone who would take mine.
Then Pei Jin ascended the throne.
His very first decree named my elder sister empress.