Chapter 2

A year later, my sister suddenly returned home.

Xie Zhao and I happened to be visiting my parents.

The moment she saw his face, she stared in astonishment, rooted to the spot.

After a long while, she suddenly threw herself into his arms. She wept pitifully, her voice hoarse and choked, her whole body trembling.

“Your Highness, I am Pan Changyue…

“I am your Crown Princess…”

Xie Zhao went rigid and looked at me in disbelief.

My sister seized the opportunity to embroider her story, pointing at me.

“This wretch had me abducted to Yangzhou half a month before the wedding. I wandered alone and suffered every hardship before I managed to return to the capital…”

She dissolved into sobs.

“Is what she says true?” Xie Zhao demanded hoarsely.

I was about to explain when my sister cut me off. Clutching our parents, she cried, “If Your Highness doesn’t believe me, ask my parents. They can both bear witness…”

They exchanged a glance, then knelt and hurried to explain.

“After Changyue disappeared, we had no choice but to let Changle take her place…

“As for whether Changyue abducted her, we do not know.”

“No,” I said urgently. “She ran away with—”

Before I could finish, my sister slapped me to the ground.

My right cheek rapidly swelled.

Triumphantly, she pointed at me.

“Your Highness, the wretch has confessed! Punish her for deceiving the throne!”

“No, A-Zhao, listen to me…”

I crawled slowly toward him and caught his robe, trying to explain.

Xie Zhao kicked me away.

His jaw tightened and veins stood out on his forehead.

“Liar!” he said through clenched teeth.

“I never imagined you could be so calculating and vicious!”

Then he swept his sleeve aside and left in fury.

04

As soon as we returned, he banished me to the Cold Palace and married my sister as Crown Princess.

I was confined for a month.

Not once did he visit.

Later, a former Noble Consort who had lost her mind in the Cold Palace told me he had ascended the throne.

My sister had naturally become Empress, mother of the realm.

That night, dressed in a magnificent phoenix robe, she swept into the Cold Palace with a large entourage.

At the sight of my wretched state, she sneered.

“A whole year as my substitute, and in the end you’re right back where you belong.”

“You were the one who ran away…” I said weakly.

She crouched, seized my throat, and ground out, “Even if I throw something away, it still isn’t yours to take!”

She told me what had happened.

After eloping, she and her lover had gone to Yangzhou and settled there.

He became consumed by gambling. In less than six months, he had squandered a fortune in banknotes, gold, and silver.

To continue his extravagant life, he even sold her to a brothel.

She begged him desperately and received only one beating after another.

Under the madam’s instruction, she finally bowed to the world as it was.

She accepted customers and endured every humiliation in the brothel. Several times she wanted to die.

Then a visitor from the capital told her Xie Zhao was about to become Emperor.

The Crown Prince and his wife were inseparable. Jealousy drove her almost mad.

It should all have belonged to her.

Her own fate should have been mine.

So she sought out her lover and told him to help her return to the capital and reclaim the throne of Empress.

On her first day back, she saw that Xie Zhao was as beautiful as Pan An.

Regretting everything at once, she decided it was all my fault.

I could only smile bitterly.

She had made the mistake. I had borne the consequences.

And now everything was my fault?

How utterly absurd.

She had brought my favorite peach-blossom cakes.

She threw them down and left.

05

At midnight, the cold woke me.

I found Xie Zhao sitting in a chair.

Moonlight picked out every line of his face.

His eyes were bloodshot, his teeth grinding with anger. Suddenly, he lunged and pinned me down, seizing my chin with one hand.

His voice was terrifyingly cold.

“Can’t endure even this much?

“Aren’t you so good at pretending?

“Why not grit your teeth and bear it?

“Does it hurt?

“As much as I hurt?”

It hurt…

My whole body hurt.

I could not stop trembling.

“It hurts…”

My pain did not make him stop. It only made him more brutal.

He laughed softly, sweat dripping from him onto my face.

“You call this pain?

“Then endure it. There’s worse to come.”

Then he lifted my chin, his eyes bright.

“Do you want to get out?

“You can—but only with the rank of Beauty.”

I turned my face to the left and slipped free of his hand.

His expression stiffened.

The pleasure vanished from his face, leaving it icy.

He put his clothes back on, bent over me, and said angrily, “If you don’t want to leave the Cold Palace, you can stay here for the rest of your life!”

He swept away without looking back.

A month later, I began vomiting constantly.

Counting the days, I realized my monthly bleeding had been absent for a month.

I gently stroked my still-flat belly.

Rather than bring a child into the world to suffer with a father who did not love it, better not to let it come at all.

Early the next morning, I found an oil lamp and locked the door.

I set the Cold Palace alight and fell amid the raging flames.

Outside, palace maids pounded anxiously on the door. Bucket after bucket of water came to quench the fire.

Through the haze, I seemed to see Xie Zhao break past those trying to restrain him and rush inside.

But I no longer had the strength to open my eyes.

I was so tired.

I let them close.

06

When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the moment my sister was about to leave.

This time, I would not let it happen again.

Father considered for a long while, then asked, “Where?”

I enunciated each word.

“Yangzhou.”

That very night, he took me and the household servants to Yangzhou. Sure enough, at a private residence, we found the pair wrapped around each other.

Furious that his unmarried daughter had behaved so disgracefully, Father had them dragged outside and slapped her across the face.

Holding her swollen cheek, my sister’s eyes filled with tears.

It was the first time he had struck her in all her years.

It pained him deeply, but for the sake of his dignity, he had to punish her.

She was bound and taken home.

Before leaving, she glared at me with hatred.

I looked at her lover, who was pleading pitifully, and laughed coldly.

“Father, leave him to me.”

Father’s thoughts were no longer on the man. He wanted only to find a way to conceal the affair.

He answered absently, “Then you handle it.”

Once Father left, my sister’s lover threatened me.

“Wretch! Release me, or Changyue won’t spare you!”

I sneered and kicked him squarely in the chest.

“A filthy, contemptible thing like you dares throw your weight around before me? You must be tired of living.”

At my expressionless face, my cold voice, and the absence of any trace of a sheltered young lady, he panicked.

He crawled to my feet and begged.

“It was your wretched sister who deliberately seduced me. I never wanted to elope with her…

“For her sake, spare me!”

“Since you ask me to think of my sister, I can only send you on your way.”

His face changed in terror. He knocked his head against the ground, pleading again and again.

In my first life, without his constant whispering in my sister’s ear, I would not have met such a miserable end.

I signaled to the guard.

A sword rang free of its scabbard.

“Ah!”

A scream pierced my ears.

His head parted from his neck, and blood stained the ground.