Chapter 1

I was Princess Changning’s daughter, and her greatest shame.

That was the imperial family’s secret.

Fifteen years ago, Changning, the most exalted princess of Great Wei, had slipped away to the south with a few guards and palace maids, keeping it from the emperor and empress. All she wanted was to see the new lotuses of Jiangnan for herself.

At a garden gathering, she had heard a lyric by Wei Qing, the Deputy Censor-in-Chief’s son. Its white egrets flying among the lotuses had captured the interest of a princess who had never left the capital.

But disaster befell her on that secret journey.

While they were resting at a government posthouse, a maid carelessly revealed their gold, pearls, and jade, catching the attention of bandits. Suspecting that their victims might be people of consequence, the bandits decided to kill them all after taking their valuables, leaving no witnesses.

One of their underlings, hoping to make a little more, secretly spared Princess Changning. He found a woman who trafficked in human beings, and the princess was sold to a tiny village called Taozhuang, buried deep in remote mountains a thousand li from the capital.

The village was cut off from the world, beyond any meaningful government control. There, wives were bought. Daughters were sold.

The princess was only sixteen when she was sold to a burly, one-eyed man in his forties.

The pampered imperial daughter descended into a hell without end. She tried to escape, but the one-eyed man broke both her legs and chained her in a cellar where daylight never reached. There was nowhere left for her to run.

That was the world into which I was born.

The Empress Dowager once said my very birth was a grievous wrong.

And so, later, she named me Luoyuan. Until then, I had never had a name.

As a small child, I understood very little. I had been born in Taozhuang, a remote village steeped in ignorance and cruelty, too numb to feel it and beyond all hope of change.

A price had been set on me from the moment I was born. When I turned ten, I would be sold with the other girls my age.

I was a valuable commodity. My one-eyed father told me so. He said buying my mother had been little use in other ways, but at least she was pretty. She had given him a pretty daughter, and I would fetch more than the others.

Whenever he came up from the cellar, he hoped she would hurry up and give him a son. Only then would he have someone to carry on his line.

He forbade me to go down there. In truth, I had sneaked in many times.

I knew the woman in chains was the mother who had given birth to me.

Her hair was a tangle, her face filthy, and her clothes had long since begun to stink and grow mold. Yet by what little light there was, I could still see how very beautiful her face was.

When I looked at her, she stared back. Her eyes were numb and empty. She never spoke, and she never smiled at me.

I was five that year. Raised in such a place, I understood nothing—not her despair, and certainly not her boundless hatred.

I took wild fruit down to the cellar, fruit I had picked in the mountains and saved instead of eating. Ah Ping had told me that after eating some fruit, her mother had suddenly held her tight. It was the first time her mother had ever hugged her.

Little as I was, I envied Ah Ping terribly.

For as long as I could remember, no one had ever held me. Father did not like me. He often said that once I reached ten, he would no longer have to feed a useless mouth.

So I carried my fruit into the cellar, happy and very careful, expecting my mother’s embrace. Instead, the woman who had always been so quiet flung the fruit across the floor. A chain held her by the neck. Frightened, I scrambled backward, but she crawled toward me despite it, and her thin hands closed tightly around my throat.

Her face was wild. She screamed as though she had lost her mind. “Die! All of you, die!”

I could not break free. I could only stare, wide-eyed, and in that instant I saw the terrible hatred bursting out of her despair.

My one-eyed father returned at last that day and dragged me out.

As he carried me from the cellar, I coughed and coughed, tears streaming down my face. He stood over the opening and swore at her. “Mad bitch! I’ve already taken the deposit. Trying to cost me my money, are you?”

For a long time, I dared not go down again. I had frequent nightmares. When I woke in the dark, I would hear Father drinking with Ah Ping’s father in the courtyard.

“I told you not to buy that sort of woman. You could see she wasn’t ordinary. All these years, and she still won’t settle down.”

“Look at mine. After Ah Ping, she gave me a son, nice and obedient. Wear them down long enough and they learn to behave.”

I stood by the window and watched Father gulp his wine, then spit on the ground.

“It was your idea to trick her. Tell her I’d let her go if she had a child. Proud as she was, she still gave me a girl, didn’t she? Shame I can’t do a thing with the crazy bitch now. Refuses to give me an heir, no matter what.”

…

The moon hung high that night. I saw the vicious resentment in Father’s eye and crouched beneath the window. I understood nothing, and yet I seemed to understand a little.