chapter 1

An accident while tasting medicine for the Noble Consort left me disfigured.

She arranged for me to marry the Fifth Prince, who had been stripped of his rank and reduced to a commoner.

The Fifth Prince did not like me.

He despised my ugliness and the shame it brought him. He never acknowledged me as his wife.

I knew better than to press myself on him, so I stayed out of his sight as much as possible.

Other people treated my disfigurement as an insult to him.

But I could not think of myself as something filthy.

Later, after painstaking effort, the Fifth Prince regained his rank and gradually won the emperor’s favor.

Everyone came to congratulate him.

Even my parents arrived with my younger sister, hoping to secure her a place among his women.

“Aqiao, you can’t possibly attend to His Highness looking like that.”

“If someone is going to benefit, it might as well be one of our own family.”

“His Highness likes your sister, too. Look for yourself if you don’t believe us.”

The Fifth Prince really did like her.

He allowed her to stay by his side, grinding ink, cleaning his inkstone, and keeping him company in his study.

Whenever he brought gifts home, there was always something for her.

He even let her choose first from the gifts bestowed by the palace.

Everyone said she was certain to become his secondary consort one day.

She thought so, too.

Yet he never formally took her as a concubine.

I no longer wanted to wait, either. I asked for a divorce.

For a moment, the Fifth Prince looked distracted. Then he asked quietly:

“Are you serious?”

I was a little puzzled.

What else could I be?

Did he think I was pretending?

I put those questions aside and said calmly:

“Strictly speaking, Your Highness, we were never truly husband and wife.”

“Three years ago, we agreed that we would eventually find a way out of this marriage, whether through divorce or by having me fake my death.”

“I think the time has come. What do you think, Your Highness?”

Three years earlier, the Noble Consort’s marriage decree had bound me to the Fifth Prince, Zhao Ye.

I was a palace maid whose face had been disfigured after tasting medicine.

He was a disgraced prince who had been reduced to a commoner.

Under a eunuch’s watchful eye, we bowed to Heaven and Earth and were escorted to the bridal chamber.

The eunuch went back to report to the Noble Consort, beaming with satisfaction.

Zhao Ye and I sat facing each other in silence.

Eventually, I grew too tired to sit there any longer. I spoke softly:

“A man of Your Highness’s standing should never have been given a wife like me. But I truly had no say in this.”

“You have read more books than I have. You understand far more than I do.”

“Why don’t we discuss what to do?”

“I’m not an unreasonable person. If you have a plan, please let me hear it.”

He said nothing. His brows were tightly drawn, anger and humiliation darkening his eyes.

We both understood: I was his punishment.

They had stripped him of his princely rank and given him an ugly woman, making their meaning plain: someone as lowly as you deserves no better than this.

He understood.

So did I.

But there was nothing I could do about it. This was what I looked like.

Li Shuyao was now an ugly woman with purple scars covering her face.

Other people saw me as a disgrace, something as filthy and repulsive as mud or dog dung.

But I could not see myself that way.

I could not open my heart for them to inspect and prove that, ugly as I was, there was still some goodness in me.

I could only look for what was good in my situation. I had finally left the palace. I no longer had to get up in the middle of the night, and I could eat a hot meal. This better life was only beginning. I ought to be thinking about how to live it well.

I said to Zhao Ye:

“If you have no other ideas for now, may I tell you mine?”

That day, I explained what I wanted.

Life had to go on, but I did not want either of us to feel indebted to the other.

We could be strangers beneath the same roof, each leaving the other alone.

If he regained his rank one day, I would cooperate with whatever suited him best, whether it meant faking my death or agreeing to a divorce.

“A debt of conscience is the hardest kind to repay. Once you’re restored to favor, I’m sure you won’t want people accusing you of abandoning the wife who endured your hardships with you.”

“I’m an ordinary woman. When I give something, I hope for something in return. If I devoted myself to you, I might begin to expect more.”

“So I won’t concern myself with your affairs, and you needn’t concern yourself with mine.”

“We’ll each look after ourselves. Then, when the time comes, we can part without anything left between us.”

Only when I finished did he look up, studying me more closely.

“Don’t you resent it?”

I fell silent for a moment.

He meant: did I resent the Noble Consort?

But I could not answer him.

He did not trust me, and I did not trust him.

People who had survived life in the palace learned to be more cautious than most.

I smiled a little. “Your Highness, I got to leave the palace at twenty, five years earlier than I’d expected. Surely that counts as a good thing.”