Chapter 2

My family lived in a village outside the capital.

Father was a hunter. He had hunted for his living all his life.

He was not a learned man, but he had a lovely name—Shen Zhi’an.

Then he met Mother, who had fled here as a refugee.

Mother was gentle and gracious; warmth softened every expression, every smile. She collapsed outside Father’s gate, and he saved her.

He fell in love at first sight and cared for her tenderly for months.

At last, he spent every coin he had to have a gold hairpin made for her, offering it as his marriage proposal.

Father said that on their wedding day,

he was so happy he drank an entire jar of wine. Then he cried, the softhearted fool, and ran to his parents’ graves—they had died young—to kneel and promise he would be good to Mother all his life.

Mother had a lovely name too—Rong Wanyue.

That was why they named me Shen Qingrong.

Shen Zhi’an had given his heart—qing—to Rong Wanyue. Until death, that would never change.

When I first learned what my name meant, that it was a declaration of their love, I used to pinch my nose and tell them they were far too sickeningly sweet.

Mother would laugh and say that one day her Rong’er would find a husband whose whole heart belonged to her too.

How embarrassing.

Back then, I kept wondering:

what would they call the little sister growing in Mother’s belly, once she was born?

Father loved Mother so much. Surely my sister’s name would be another token of their love.

Oh, they were too much.

Would she be Shen Murong—admiring Rong? Or Shen Nianrong—thinking of Rong?

I would sit by the door with my head tilted, puzzling over it. My parents only smiled and refused to tell me. They said I would learn her name on the day she was born.

So very mysterious.

But that day never came for me.

When Mother went into labor, Father set off early to fetch a midwife from the city.

On the way, he nearly collided with a richly dressed woman. She burst out of a wood in the wilderness, looking hurried, as though fleeing someone.

Afraid he had hurt her, Father dismounted to check.

He never expected her to shove him aside. Before he could react, she seized the horse without explanation, took an ingot of silver from her robe and threw it on the ground. Calling it payment for the horse, she rode away.

However loudly Father called, she never looked back.

Only later did we learn

that she was Gu Qingxue, daughter of the imperial preceptor and the future crown princess.

She stole Father’s horse because she had quarreled with the crown prince again. Embarrassed and annoyed, she lost her temper and ran out of the city, declaring she was leaving home.

When the crown prince followed, she simply took Father’s horse.

All so that he would not catch her quite so quickly.

The two lingered lovingly together and eventually rode the same horse back to the capital. They passed Father on the way. Seeing Gu Qingxue, he held out the silver and asked her to return his horse. The crown prince lashed him with his whip.

All because Father’s disheveled appearance made him look like a beggar who did not know his place, and the crown prince feared he would frighten his beloved.

Stranded in the wilderness without his horse, a bloody welt across his leg, Father limped into the city. By the time he bought another horse and brought the midwife home, Mother had died in childbirth.

The midwife said that if she had arrived even a little sooner, Mother would not have died.

If only that horse had not been stolen.

Mother could have delivered my sister safely. The four of us would have lived in our village, and I would have thumped my chest and promised my parents I would protect my little sister all my life.

But Gu Qingxue destroyed it all.

Father was beside himself with grief. After burying Mother and my little sister, who had died as soon as she was born, he took the silver ingot to the imperial preceptor’s residence and demanded justice for Mother.

Absurdly, Gu Qingxue did not even remember whose horse she had stolen. She called Father a mad beggar, insisting she had paid, that the transaction was settled. She thought he was deliberately trying to extort money.

Finally, fed up with him, she kicked him in the chest. His head struck a rock. He died on the spot.

To protect Gu Qingxue’s reputation, the crown prince accused Father of attempting to assassinate the future crown princess.

His corpse was left in the marketplace under the blazing sun for three days, then thrown into a common burial ground.

No one was allowed to claim it.

Even in death, they denied him a decent burial.

It was all so laughable.

On Gu Qingxue’s wedding day, the bridal procession stretched for miles. The capital rejoiced, its streets hung with lanterns and festive streamers.

No one knew

that it was the day of Father’s funeral.

And after that day,

the respectable village girl Shen Qingrong no longer existed.

There was only Shen Qingrong, the dancing girl.