Chapter 2

I jolted upright out of the nightmare and felt my body. There were no arrows, no holes. Yet the pain refused to fade.

“Your Highness? What’s wrong?”

The curtain lifted. Faint candlelight revealed a pale, rounded oval face with narrow brows and eyes. Siluo. She smiled gently and wiped my face with a handkerchief.

“Your coming-of-age ceremony is only three days away. You should get some sleep, Your Highness.”

Only then did I realize I was still in my own bedchamber, in a warm bed behind red gauze and gossamer curtains.

I wasn’t dead. I had returned to this day, just before I came of age.

In five years, Prince Qi would rebel. His troops would storm the palace, Father would take his own life, and I would flee, only to die at the hands of—Siluo and Xiao Jue?

How could that be?

I had saved Xiao Jue’s life.

When I was ten, I slipped out of the palace and found a boy covered in blood in the white expanse of snow.

His surname was Xiao. He had stolen food intended as tribute from his master’s household, and they had beaten him until his bones and tendons were broken, then thrown him out.

With his fair skin and beautiful features, he looked less like a menial slave than the son of a wealthy family.

The first time he looked at me, his eyes were dark and deep as a lake, drawing my very consciousness down into them.

I took him back to the palace. His face was as fine as jade, so I named him Jue, after jade.

The imperial physician said he had barely a breath left. There was no telling whether he would survive.

A newly arrived palace maid solemnly told me of a folk remedy: lay gold and jade against the body, and it would drive away sickness and evil, ensuring a long life.

So I hung a gold-wrapped jade ring around Xiao Jue’s neck.

He really did begin to recover, day by day. But I couldn’t bear to let him go.

Father doted on me and allowed him to become my personal attendant.

Xiao Jue swore to serve me for the rest of his life. From then on, his gaze followed no one but me.

When I was twelve and Xiao Jue sixteen, I begged Father to let him study at the Imperial Academy.

His looks had always attracted attention. After instruction from eminent scholars, some of his coldness softened and he acquired an air of learning. A graceful young gentleman, fine as an orchid or a jade tree, he seemed nobler than the sons of great houses.

Yet whenever he met me in the palace, he still knelt and brushed the dirt from my shoes with his snow-white sleeve, while his fellow students watched with conflicting emotions.

Xiao Jue, who wouldn’t let a speck of dust touch my embroidered shoes, had sent a thousand arrows through me.

And Siluo was the maid my mother had chosen for me.

Mother died young. Siluo was only three years older than I was, and had been at my side for as long as I could remember.

She had always served me devotedly, attending to everything, however small, doing far more than her duties required.

I had always believed she truly loved me.

Once, Siluo’s younger sister and I developed high fevers at the same time. Siluo stayed with me without leaving my side. Even after I improved, she refused to go. She didn’t even attend her sister’s funeral, saying she feared bringing ill fortune back to me.

Later, another maid warned me in private. “If Siluo can turn her back on her own sister, what else might she do? Your Highness should take precautions.”

I was troubled. Just as I was preparing to follow that maid’s advice and transfer Siluo elsewhere, Siluo hanged herself.

After she regained consciousness, she said weakly, “How could I not miss my sister? But I am the princess’s servant. I can live only for her. Now that even the princess no longer trusts me, why shouldn’t I atone with my death and go to my poor sister?”

She had survived, but I was terrified. Since childhood, Siluo had been with me day and night. I had long considered her family.

From then on, I never doubted her again.

“Ah Luo is utterly sincere with me. If I ever again hear anyone in Fucai Palace slandering her out of jealousy, they will be punished under palace law.”

I trusted her, relied on her, and did everything she said. Only when she joined forces with Xiao Jue to send me to hell did I realize how terribly wrong I had been.

I had woken from a nightmare, yet only Siluo stood beside my bed with a handkerchief. The other maids on duty in my bedchamber held their breath and stood motionless. They couldn’t even pour me a cup of water.

At some point, with my tacit permission, Siluo had become the one person who gave orders in Fucai Palace.

No one dared take the initiative ahead of her. No one dared speak a word against her.

Xiao Jue was no longer my private slave. I couldn’t kill him.

But killing Siluo would be easy.

I ordered her executed immediately.

The maids and eunuchs in my bedchamber dropped to their knees, terrified and at a loss.

Siluo stared at me blankly, without a word.

But I was the princess. After I repeated the command several times, the guards dragged Siluo away and beheaded her with a single stroke.

Her body lay limp on the ground, like a broken puppet.

Blood stained the gray bricks red.

I let out a breath, my heart pounding.

I still didn’t know why she had betrayed me, or when she had begun plotting with Xiao Jue. But surely, with her so easily dead, I could feel a little safer?