Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Mother Consort had once been a lowly kitchen maid in the Hall of Mental Cultivation.

Noble Consort Lan, who enjoyed Imperial Father’s unrivaled favor, had quarreled with him. Imperial Father drank heavily and was in a foul mood, so no Inner Attendant or palace maid serving at his side dared risk provoking him. Instead, they pushed the softhearted, timid Mother Consort forward.

Imperial Father ended up taking her to bed.

Every woman in the palace belonged to Imperial Father. He could take out his frustrations on whichever woman he pleased.

Poor Mother Consort had been only half a month away from reaching the age when she could leave the palace.

Instead, she spent the rest of her life trapped behind towering palace walls, never able to marry the cousin who had grown up with her and waited years for her.

Noble Consort Lan always knew when to stop throwing a tantrum. By the next day, she had forgiven Imperial Father, and the two of them went back to being as sweet and loving as ever.

Thus, Mother Consort received his favor only once in her entire life.

But that single night gave her me.

I was only three days older than Chu Yao, the Sixth Princess born to Noble Consort Lan.

Chu Yao had been raised amid luxury, with hundreds of servants waiting on her. During grand banquets, Imperial Father would even sit her on his lap and coax her into eating a few more bites.

Mother Consort, meanwhile, was merely a low-ranking Attendant. The Imperial Household Department often withheld her monthly allowance, forcing her to take in embroidery work to cover our expenses.

I was scrawny and undersized, and I excelled at none of the four arts: music, chess, calligraphy, or painting.

Imperial Father had never given his daughter so much as a proper glance. The servants treated us even less like legitimate masters.

Yet on every freezing night, Mother Consort would gather me into her soft, sweet-smelling embrace and sing Jiangnan folk songs until I fell asleep.

Again and again, she would tell me, “Jiajia is Mother Consort’s precious little darling. Mother Consort loves Jiajia more than anyone in the world.”

Sometimes, as I drifted between sleep and wakefulness, I could feel Mother Consort planting kiss after kiss on my cheeks.

Back then, I thought it did not matter if Imperial Father never saw me. In this vast world, I already had all of Mother Consort’s love. That alone made me happier than I could ask for.

But when I was seven, heavy snow fell over the capital for days on end. The Imperial Household Department withheld our charcoal, leaving Ningcui Palace colder than an icehouse.

Mother Consort fell ill. Her fever would not break, and she remained unconscious.

The imperial physician I had finally managed to summon said that if Mother Consort was to wake, her medicine would require a thousand-year-old ginseng root.

But Mother Consort was only a low-ranking Attendant.

She was not worthy of one.

The Empress had passed away many years ago, leaving Noble Consort Lan in charge of the imperial harem.

I knelt in the snow for four hours before she finally allowed me into her inner chamber.

The glowing braziers filled the room with warmth, but I could not stop shivering.

Noble Consort Lan reclined leisurely on a cushioned couch, feeding crystal grapes offered as tribute by a foreign kingdom to the Persian cat in her arms.

She frowned faintly.

“The palace has its rules. If I make an exception today, who can say that tomorrow one Attendant will not ask me for a snow lotus while some palace maid begs me to bestow hasma upon her? Would that not throw the entire imperial harem into chaos?

“Your Mother Consort should have died the night she crawled into His Majesty’s bed.

“She has already profited by surviving this long with you. One must not be too greedy.”