Chapter 1

When I crossed the Bridge of Forgetfulness, I never drank Meng Po’s soup.

I carried the memories of my former life into this one. Now I was a third-rank maid in the Xie household, far too lowly to approach any of the masters without permission.

The enemies from my former life were the lord and lady of this very estate. They had climbed to their lofty perch over my bones, then settled into wealth, honor, and the public image of a devoted couple—the most celebrated pair of lovebirds in the capital.

It took me a full day to find my old grave.

No one had tended it. It was broken and desolate.

The previous night’s rain had washed away the soil, exposing one sodden corner of the straw mat beneath. Once, I had been the wife of the top-ranked scholar and a third-rank noblewoman. In death, I had not even been given a coffin.

There was no gravestone, either.

Only a rotting wooden marker remained, its faded inscription barely legible: Wife of Xie Zheng.

Xie Zheng had been my husband.

I was fifteen when we met.

At that flower-fresh age, I traveled the streets as a cosmetic artist, transforming the plain into the beautiful. I crushed begonias into scarlet rouge, tucked pear blossoms into dark hair, and could twist a woman’s coiffure into the shape of a peony.

Someone must have envied the silver I earned. One afternoon, a group of thugs cornered me. A cudgel was already raised to smash my hands when Xie Zheng appeared like a hero fallen from the sky.

He stepped in front of me.

The thud of iron striking flesh, the pounding of his heart as he dragged me by the hand from one end of the city to the other—those sounds stretched on and on through that afternoon, each beat burying another piece of the life I might have had.

Later, I learned he was a poor scholar who wrote letters for others in the south of the city. Treating the wounds he suffered that day cost seven copper coins, two full days of his earnings, yet he never complained.

We began seeing each other more often.

Both of us had grown up in a charity orphanage, parentless. Both of us were ambitious and unwilling to bow our heads. In him, I saw the other half of myself, and for the first time understood the bond contained in the word family.

When a local bully overturned Xie Zheng’s writing stall, I smeared honey on the man to draw bees. I ended up just as badly stung, my head swollen with bumps.

I used my cosmetic skills to help a celebrated courtesan buy her freedom. The day after she married a traveling merchant, she repaid my kindness by sending men to burn down my house. Smoke rolled through the rooms and a falling beam crushed my leg. I was terrified. Xie Zheng ignored every warning and rushed into the flames to carry me out.

Warm. Scorching.

The moment I lay against his back, my fear simply vanished.

I slept deeply and sweetly.

From poverty and shared hardship, love quietly bloomed. My lips brushed his ear, releasing an affection too deep for words—wholehearted and pure.

“Xie Zheng, close your stall. I’ll support you while you prepare for the imperial examination.”

Onstage, actresses sang again and again of Du Shiniang’s sorrow. Countless people warned me that scholars were faithless. Little cosmetic girl, they said, if your man ever wins high honors, how could he remember the wife who shared his poverty?

For a time, I won that wager.

Then I lost.

At twenty, Xie Zheng owned nothing but a sincere heart.

He passed the metropolitan examination and went before the throne for the final selection, with black hair, red lips, and eyes bright as stars. When he lowered his gaze, his long lashes cast a captivating shadow. Princess Zhaohua happened to pass by and fell in love at first sight. Out of a hundred candidates, she had him exceptionally named the top scholar.

But the top scholar refused to marry a princess. He did not want to become the emperor’s brother-in-law.

His heart belonged only to Song Ah Lan.

The day I entered the capital was also the day I left it.

While the newly honored scholars paraded through the streets and celebrated at the imperial banquet, everyone sighed over us. Some looked with lofty pity, others with malicious amusement.

Everyone knew that an appointment to the malarial wilds of Lingnan meant the top scholar’s career had ended before it ever began.

Yet Xie Zheng held my shoulder tightly, indifferent to the surging crowd. Spring rain began to fall. He tilted his head and raised a bamboo umbrella over me, his loose black hair making his fair face look even more luminous.

He smiled faintly.

“The road ahead is long, the return uncertain, and the country harsh. Wife, will you still come with me?”

I remembered that moment for many years.

My answer was, “Yes. In life and in death, I will never fail you.”

Afterward, we crossed ten miles of poisonous miasma, escaped attacks by mountain tribes, shared a single handful of water in a cave, and stood together outside the county office while ten thousand citizens petitioned on his behalf.

When did he begin to change?

Was it when every former peer of his rose beyond reach while he alone wasted his best years in the southern borderlands?

Choosing me over the emperor’s wishes had once seemed so noble. He had trampled even imperial power underfoot. The world had gasped and watched him. Years later, when the attention faded and everything had changed, he discovered that what he truly wanted was glory and wealth.

And then there was me—his wife.

A woman darkened by the southern sun, coarse in speech, concerned each day with nothing more than meals and household chores. Xie Zheng began to wonder if this was really the life he wanted.

I never learned how he contacted the newly widowed princess, or how long their secret letters flew back and forth.

By the time everything surfaced, it was far too late.

At twenty-six, Xie Zheng returned to the capital he had left behind.

When he brought me back from Lingnan, the princess was already living in his residence. He told me that our marriage had been nothing but youthful folly. He had only ever seen me as a sister, he said, and was willing to grant me a peaceful divorce.

I raged. I made scenes. No one listened.

The princess was the emperor’s only sister, cherished like the apple of his eye. In the end, even the old nurse who had served me longest advised me to let it go.

They flirted openly before my eyes.

That still was not enough.

The princess wore my clothes, lay in my bed, and coquettishly asked my husband, “Who is more beautiful, your wife or me?”

On the other side of the wall, her guards pinned me down while I listened to their obscenity all night.

Hatred drowned me. I could not accept it. I would drag them down with me if that was what it took.

I prepared a formal accusation and planned to take it to the Empress Dowager.

The night before I left, my husband had me drowned in a wicker cage. They accused me of adultery and declared that a faithless woman deserved death.

The icy river rose over my eyes.

Seven days after I died, Xie Zheng married the princess.

She could not wait any longer.

Her swelling belly was becoming difficult to hide.