Chapter 1

Empress Xie summoned court officials and imperial consorts to watch and ordered me to perform the Zhao-style palm dance.

They forced me into a dancer’s costume. Before all those staring eyes, the smooth white skin of my waist lay bare, and more than one official’s breathing grew heavy.

Empress Xie, poised and dignified above us all, smiled. “Noble Lady Zhao, everyone has come today to see your palm dance. Why have you not begun?”

The rumor had spread both inside and outside the palace that Noble Lady Zhao came from the lowest sort of family and had once earned her living by dancing in the pleasure quarters.

The empress meant to humiliate me.

I raised my eyes.

Empress Xie faltered. There was no shame in my gaze when I answered quietly, “Your Highness, I cannot dance.”

One of the other consorts immediately took up the empress’s cause. She splashed wine in my face and snapped, “Zhao, how dare you defy Her Highness?”

Wine dripped down my lashes, stinging my eyes.

I lifted my skirts. My legs were a mass of savage burn scars, so painful that even walking hurt. But I could no longer remember how I had been burned. Every day, I forgot one thing.

Only later did I realize that everything I forgot had something to do with His Majesty.

I felt as though I were only one step away from forgetting him completely.

Empress Xie’s mood visibly improved. The corner of her mouth curved. “It must have happened during the siege of Youzhou. His Majesty had eyes only for me then. He failed to notice you.”

The siege of Youzhou was celebrated as one of the great love stories of the reigning emperor and empress.

The empress had been trapped in Youzhou by enemy forces. Though His Majesty knew it was a ruse, he had rushed to rescue her with only his personal guards—almost single-handedly, a testament to the depth of his devotion.

So while that celebrated romance unfolded, the rebel army burned and ruined both my legs.

I knelt and bowed low. “The emperor and empress are a devoted pair, sweethearts from youth destined to grow old together. This concubine bears no resentment.”

That delighted Empress Xie.

Empress Xie had been born into the great and powerful Xie clan. She was known for her generosity, yet she tormented me time and again.

Because His Majesty’s true wife from his youth was me. We had married without a matchmaker or betrothal gifts, so others later dismissed our union as illicit—and His Majesty refused to acknowledge it.

In the final years of the former dynasty, great clans corrupted the court, warlords divided the realm, and ordinary people could barely survive.

I eked out a living on the few poor fields my father had left me. Then I saved a dying young man who told me his name was Yunnu.

He became my husband. He had cool, aloof phoenix eyes, but when he looked at me, they were always gentle. He taught me to write and punished servants who bullied me. There was nothing he could not do, and all our neighbors envied me for marrying such a fine man.

Only later did I learn that his name was not Yunnu. He was Liu Liang, the designated imperial grandson of the last emperor and a true prince of royal blood. Countless noblewomen in Luoyang admired him. Even after he had reportedly been dead for years, Xie Ying, the Xie clan’s legitimate-born daughter, still refused every offer of marriage.

Liu Liang later raised an army, lifted the banner of rebellion, and entered the struggle for the realm. He told me to wait for him in Yin County.

I waited until my husband proclaimed himself emperor, yet no word ever came.

An orphan with no one but a few elderly family servants, I crossed a thousand miles to Luoyang myself and nearly died on the road.

There, with my own eyes, I watched Liu Liang name the Xie clan’s daughter Xie Ying his empress while the entire city poured into the streets to celebrate.

What had I thought then? I wondered.

I had no husband anymore.

If Liu Liang had told me from the beginning that he already had a childhood sweetheart, a woman he loved and intended to marry, I would never have married him. I still would have saved his life.

But he had said nothing. My husband had betrayed me.