Chapter 1

On the day I left, the comments scrolled past furiously.

I ignored them and looked at Qianyue instead, speaking softly.

“Will you come with me? If you’re short of silver, I can lend you some.”

Qianyue and I were both maids at Yongyi Palace.

When I had been promoted from a second-rank maid to a first-rank maid, there had been so much I didn’t understand. She had held nothing back, patiently teaching me everything.

Now that disaster had come, I wanted to ask whether she would leave with me.

Qianyue lowered her eyes in thought, then looked up and gently shook her head.

“No. What would happen to His Highness if I left?”

The Fifth Prince, Zhao Jinyi, was handsome and carried himself with an aristocratic air.

Almost every maid at Yongyi Palace had entertained some hope of winning him.

Except me.

I had been able to see the floating comments since I was very small.

They had said I would enter the palace at thirteen. Sure enough, at thirteen my parents sold me into the palace for ten taels of silver.

When I was fifteen, they had said the senior maid in charge of me would be beaten to death.

I begged her again and again not to go out. Yet that day, they carried her back all the same.

Bright red blood dripped along the path, haunting me with bitter, lingering nightmares for a long time afterward.

From then on, I knew the comments told the truth. I was destined to meet the Fifth Prince, destined to suffer for him.

But I did not want to.

No one is born wishing to suffer—least of all someone like me, who had never tasted anything sweet.

And so, from my very first day in his palace, I did my best to avoid him. I kept to my duties and never meddled.

But fate had a cruel sense of humor.

My diligence caught the senior maid’s eye, and she promoted me from a second-rank maid to a first-rank maid.

I felt as though I had been struck by lightning.

The comments laughed themselves silly.

[Look how stunned she is!]

[Heroine: Run, run, run, run, run! Plot: Chase, chase, chase, chase, chase! Hahahaha!]

“I’ve had my eye on you for some time,” the senior maid told me. “People come and go here, every one of them hoping to rise to the top in a single leap. But they’re so consumed by ambition that they can’t be trusted. Jiang Dai, take good care of His Highness. When he leaves the palace to establish his own household, we’ll naturally go with him. Our good days will come then.”

Her parents were dead, and her brother and sister-in-law would not take her in. She had nowhere to go outside the palace. She hoped to accompany the Fifth Prince when he established his household and continue serving as his senior maid.

Her hopes were doomed.

In the story, the Fifth Prince never left the palace to take up a princely estate. Instead, he remained in the cold palace until the princes fighting for the throne were either dead or crippled. Only then was he brought out to become emperor.

I lowered my eyes and agreed, becoming a first-rank maid at his side.

I had tried other ways to leave: making mistakes, offering bribes. None had worked.

The eunuch in charge took my money and promised to consider me first when a position opened, only to promptly forget me.

I realized then that some things were very hard to change.

But I was not discouraged. If fate could be changed easily, it could hardly be worth much.

Good things were always hard to come by.

I waited patiently, right up until today.

Now that the Fifth Prince had fallen, many of Yongyi Palace’s maids and eunuchs would leave. I slipped into their midst, and this time I succeeded.

As I shouldered my bundle, Qianyue was the only person I found difficult to leave behind.

She had helped me. I wanted to help her, just once.

But the moment he received the imperial decree, the Fifth Prince had coughed up blood. He was still unconscious, and Qianyue could not bring herself to leave him.

Qianyue loved him.

She hid it very well.

Yet the shy look in her eyes, the happiness on her face, would betray her when she least expected it.

“Jiang Dai, are you really leaving?” she asked. “His Highness has treated you well…”

Even the scrolling comments fell quiet.

Everyone waited silently for my answer.

During my time with the Fifth Prince, he had been a good master. He rewarded us occasionally and did not beat, scold, or punish us at whim.

But what of it?

A master was still a master. Sympathy for him was not a luxury a palace maid like me could casually afford.

Nor did I understand all this talk of present and future lives.

I knew only that suffering in this life was real suffering.

The sweetness of another life could not make up for the bitterness of this one.

I wanted this life. I asked for no other.

I shook my head.

“No.”

[The plot’s broken!] flooded the comments. I paid no attention.

Only one comment stood out from the rest.

[I remember who Qianyue is now. She’s the heroine’s friend who gets torn apart by five horses in the novel.]

I stopped abruptly and looked back at her.

She had already hurried into the inner chamber to see the Fifth Prince.

For a moment, the world seemed to lose its color.

It was as though fate had locked Qianyue and me in the same cage.

I ought to have felt miserable.

Instead, I felt an even greater excitement.

Had leaving changed both her fate and mine?

Suddenly, I very much wanted to know.