Chapter 1

All my life, I had never dared look straight into my mother’s fathomless eyes.

Her eyes were what I feared most. Her praise was what I wanted most.

I first met her when I was ten.

Maidservants surrounded her, pearls and jade adorned her hair, and her full, lovely face might have belonged to a flying immortal painted on a mural. Yet authority lay beneath that springlike beauty, and her smile barely touched the surface. A pretty girl leaned against her knee, six gold hairpins tucked into an elaborate coiffure, staring openly at me.

I lowered my head. All I could see were my own coarse hands and feet. Shame crept over me.

There was no joyful reunion, no mother and daughter weeping in each other’s arms.

Mother merely said, coldly, “Now that you are back, learn your manners. And try to keep out of sight.”

I was housed in a corner of the palace, half an hour’s walk from my mother’s chambers.

Every time I asked to see her, I was turned away.

The old eunuch outside her residence waved his horsetail whisk, his smile never reaching his eyes. “Go back, Your Highness. Her Ladyship is receiving no visitors today.”

Yet I could hear laughter on the other side of the door, bright and blatant, as though deliberately flaunted for my benefit.

It was Yaohua’s voice. She was my mother’s daughter too.

During the war, Mother had taken refuge in a remote mountain village while heavily pregnant. There she had given birth to me.

To keep me from falling into enemy hands, she had switched me with a village woman’s daughter, hoping to protect me.

But after the dust settled, I could no longer be found.

Hoping that kindness would one day bring its own reward, Father and Mother had treated the village woman’s daughter as their own.

Ten years later, Yaohua had grown into a poised, beautiful girl. Not a word or gesture of hers could be faulted.

Mother had boasted more than once that Yaohua was the one true pearl of our dynasty.

Before being brought to the palace, all I knew was tending cattle. Wind and sun had made my skin rough and dark. Worst of all, I could not speak the court dialect. The mountain accent that came out whenever I opened my mouth made people stare.

The moment I spoke, Mother would frown impatiently and send me away.

She named me Ning Yan. My tutor told me it meant peace and tranquility.

Yaohua whispered, “It means she wants you to stay quiet and stop making trouble.”

I could only stammer and fall silent, secretly envying her name. Yaohua sounded like clustered blossoms, radiant and splendid.

The officials of the Ministry of Rites once discussed my place in the order of the imperial children. Since I was of the true imperial blood, they argued, I should rank before Yaohua as the legitimate elder daughter.

Mother said the matter was delicate and needed further consideration. It could wait. As for a formal title, there was certainly no need to discuss that yet.

And so everyone in the palace continued calling Yaohua the Eldest Princess. Of me, they spoke only in guarded tones: “that princess.”

Later, Mother defeated her greatest rival, Noble Consort Wei, and became empress.

She asked Father to grant Yaohua a fief, along with the title Princess Luanyi.

She grew even less willing to see me. On her birthday, she refused me entry again.

I would not give up. I waited desperately, standing in the rain for half the day. Mother’s door never opened for me. Instead, Yaohua eventually emerged, a fur-lined cloak Mother had just given her draped over her shoulders.

She smiled. “Mother forbids me to call you elder sister, and I can hardly call you younger sister either. I shall call you Ah Yan. Ah Yan, Mother likes her peace. You really should stop coming here so often.”

I knew Mother meant the same thing. Holding back my tears, I stepped back twice, knelt, and raised my voice. “Your daughter, Ning Yan, wishes Imperial Mother a happy birthday. May every year bring you joy, and every season health and peace.”

Facing the steps I seemed destined never to climb, I knocked my forehead to the ground three times.

Yaohua stood directly before me and made no move to step aside.

“Do you know why Mother dislikes you?”

“She came from the streets herself. People have always held that against her. She struggled for years, terrified of the slightest mistake, just to earn a reputation for propriety. Then you came back, with your clumsy speech and coarse behavior. Now everyone says you are just like Mother in her early years, a pair of vulgar creatures unfit for polite society.”

“And still you insist on going to her. Aren’t you rubbing salt into the wound?”

So it was all my fault.

I bit my lower lip hard and looked up at that magnificent palace.

I thought I must work harder. I must become better.

Then Mother would change her mind about me.

Besides Yaohua and me, Mother had two sons.

The elder, Mingzhang, was clever, perceptive, and studious, the obvious choice for heir. The younger, Mingyue, was lively and quick-witted. His amusing remarks often made Father roar with laughter, though his idleness at his studies frequently angered Mother.

Choking down my resentment, I worked desperately to catch up in etiquette and scholarship. All I wanted was for Mother to see me as one of her children. Even a scolding, such as Mingyue received, was something I could only dream of.

I studied so hard that even my tutor praised me. “To write this well after starting without knowing a single character is remarkable. You must have worked very hard.”

But Mother never once asked about my lessons. Father treated me as someone whose presence or absence made no difference.

Following their example, Yaohua and my two brothers looked straight through me.

Only now and then, as they passed my seat in the schoolroom, would one of them sneer, “What an industrious little worm, burrowing its way up.”