A Kingdom's Ruin - Chapter 5

The year I turned thirteen was the first year of the new dynasty.

At the end of every road, I met an old Daoist.

My limbs had been broken. I lay dying in a rain-filled rut, waiting for the end. He took pity on me and offered me an umbrella.

In exchange, he wanted my heart.

I laughed and asked why. What use could such a thing be?

He said my life was ruled by the Seven Killings star, a fate of extraordinary violence and evil.

“Your malice is too heavy. It will recoil upon you. Even if fortune raises you high, everyone will desert you, and you will die without a place to be buried.

“Little girl, with a fate like yours, if you cannot become a conqueror in an age of chaos, you can only become the creature who ruins a kingdom.

“The higher you climb, the sooner you die. Scheme as you may, and all you achieve will become another’s bridal gown.

“If you believe me, entrust me with your love and hatred, greed and obsession, anger and delusion. Perhaps I can leave you one thread of life.”

I stared wearily at the sky. A cold rain fell on the winter solstice, chilling every inch of me.

I agreed. Not because I believed him, but because I had little desire to live.

I never expected that thread of life to be real.

No sooner had he left than someone familiar hauled me out of the mud.

Bo Yanxiu was the only son of the Marquis of Dingyuan, foremost hero of the dynasty’s founding. Famous from youth and proud beyond measure, he possessed a ruthlessness to rival his father’s. By threatening a massacre, he had once lured the former crown prince to peace talks, laid an ambush, and shot him dead beneath ten thousand arrows.

Now he had come under orders to find the Bo family’s second daughter and send her into the palace in place of his full sister.

“Why run, A-Nong?”

Bo Yanxiu held me while his gaze dropped meaningfully toward my legs. We had never met, yet he spoke with the familiarity of a devoted elder brother.

“Will you enter the palace, become a consort, and enjoy every luxury—or let them hunt you to the ends of the earth? You chose wrongly once. Will you keep making the same mistake?”

A servant behind him interrupted. “My lord, what if His Majesty discovers we’ve substituted one daughter for another?”

“What do you know? That face alone could make a man forgive anything.”

The young noble lowered his head, eyes dark. “If A-Nong still refuses to behave, I’ll throw you down the mountain for the wolves.”

I had only just regained my senses. With that useless heart removed, I felt lighter than ever. The whole world had become simple.

“I’m hungry.”

“What?” I answered so quickly that Bo Yanxiu failed to follow.

“Buy me all seventy-four pastries from Spring Breeze House, Brother, and I’ll enter the palace like a good girl.”

He frowned. “Does A-Nong know me?”

“There are portraits at home.” After a pause, I added softly, “I look at them often.”

I never got those pastries. Bo Wanyu ate them.

But Bo Yanxiu had been right. From the first moment the Chu emperor saw me, he became obsessed.

It took four years for my shattered limbs to move like anyone else’s. It took four months for an illegitimate marquis’s daughter to become mistress of the inner palace.

Only a child stood between me and the empress’s throne.

The day I was raised to Noble Consort, the emperor told me to choose any prince to raise.

That was the first time Yuwen Che and I met each other’s eyes.

I chose him at once—not merely because he was the youngest, nor because he alone among the princes had no maternal clan to protect him.

It was instinct. Fate.

The hollow place in my chest ached fiercely.

It was an omen.

He was the enemy destined to destroy everything I had.