Chapter 3
My smile froze. Dread surged through me.
Had she found out what was happening to me?
But Shen Qingyue had promised!
She had sworn Mother would never learn I was about to die, and that she would ask the first wife to care for her.
How dare she break her word!
“You fool!”
Mother seized my hand and dragged me before the bronze mirror.
“I’m plain, and small in stature.
“You’re beautiful and tall!
“Look for yourself. Do we resemble each other in the slightest?”
Two utterly different faces appeared in the tall bronze mirror.
Mother had a round face, a broad forehead, and merely pleasant features.
My brows and eyes were striking, my features finely sculpted.
Eyes, nose, mouth—not one part of us looked alike.
“You blind, muddleheaded fool!
“You stained your hands with blood for me. You fought yourself half to death in this household.
“But I was never your mother!
“Your mother was a Yangzhou courtesan. As soon as she gave birth to you, the first wife forced a bowl of safflower medicine down her throat. She bled to death that very night!
“She saw how beautiful you were and ordered me to raise you, so you could be useful to her one day!
“I was never your mother. I’m only the pawn she used to control you. Do you understand?”
She screamed until her voice broke, tears streaming over her face.
I stared at her blankly, my mind reeling.
She… she was not my mother.
My mother was already dead?
Then what had all my striving in this life been for?
“How dare you!”
The door flew open under a kick. Nanny Gui stormed in, her face dark with fury.
“Concubine Zhou! You’ve got some nerve!”
Mother steeled herself and threw her arms around Nanny Gui.
“What are you standing there for, you fool?
“Run!
“Run!”
She called me foolish. How much cleverer was she?
With so many people at Nanny Gui’s back, where could I possibly run?
Blood poured from my mouth. I collapsed into Mother’s arms.
She tried frantically to catch the blood I coughed up, her face a mess of tears and mucus.
“Having you as my daughter has made me so happy.
“If there’s another life, I hope you can be my own little girl…”
I closed my eyes, smiling.
There. I did have a mother after all.
“Man’er. Wake up.”
I opened my eyes in bewilderment. The underworld looked remarkably like our Shen residence.
The same plain green gauze bed curtains. The same pine furniture throughout the room.
Even this underworld attendant looked very much like Mother.
Only a little younger.
“Get up! You’ll miss the auspicious hour!”
Mother slapped my shoulder hard enough to hurt.
So ghosts could feel pain too?
They dressed me and did my hair, then carried me in a small sedan to a side hall in the first wife’s courtyard.
Only then did I finally understand.
I had not died. I had returned to the day I first entered the prince’s household.
“Tsk. A born temptress.”
The first wife inspected me with disgust.
Her gaze traveled from the top of my head to my toes, then settled on my carefully made-up face.
“I trust you know what you should and should not do once you’re in the prince’s household?”
I knelt humbly on the cushion.
“I understand.”
Her gaze grew distant, as though she were looking through me at someone else.
“My poor Yue’er. Such noble character, such orchidlike grace. She simply cannot stoop to competing for favor.
“Men are all alike. The moment they see the likes of you, they become partial!”