I'm a Useless Crown Princess. All I Do Is Tattle. - Chapter 2

I had Xie Xuanzhi marched all the way to the imperial study.

It was nearly midnight, but Aunt was still reviewing memorials.

For years now, she had risen before dawn to attend to state affairs and worked late into every night.

She was a hundred times more diligent than my grandfather, who never bothered to hold morning court.

“Aunt!”

I dropped straight to my knees as soon as I entered.

Then I spilled every word Xie Xuanzhi had used to tempt me, without leaving out a thing.

“He said the entire Xie family would help me purge the evils surrounding the throne. I fear the whole line of the Prince of Nan’an harbors treasonous intentions.”

“Aunt, how do you wish to deal with them?”

The years had left plenty of lines at the corners of Aunt’s eyes, but they had also made her imperial authority seem all the more natural.

“Xie Xuanzhi.”

“When your father sent you here, he said, ‘My unworthy son admires Her Highness the Crown Princess and wishes to serve the imperial family with all his strength.’”

“I thought your family had finally learned some sense. Yet you still haven’t abandoned your ambitions.”

“When I was a princess, the slightest display of ability had your father accusing me of wolfish ambition, of being a hen crowing at dawn. Once I actually sat upon this throne, he scurried back to his fief. Tribute every year, declarations of loyalty every year. Such a model of dutiful obedience.”

“I was wondering what pretext I could use to deal with them. And here you are, delivering one to my door.”

Aunt summoned a palace attendant and issued her decree.

Xie Xuanzhi was guilty of treason and was to be beheaded immediately.

The Prince of Nan’an‘s line would be stripped of its princely title.

Every male in the Xie clan would be executed. The women would be reduced to commoners, and all family property confiscated by the state.

Pinned to the floor by the guards, Xie Xuanzhi heard the decree, spat out a mouthful of blood, and fainted on the spot.

I shook my head to myself.

He had only his own impatience to blame. We had barely married, and he already couldn’t wait.

Much like his performance in bed.

Having dealt with that, the Empress looked at me. “You chose Xie Xuanzhi yourself.”

“Married only a moment, and already sacrificing your husband for the greater good. Doesn’t it hurt?”

I immediately bowed my forehead to the floor and answered with perfect respect. “Aunt, you are my heaven. Everything I have comes from you.”

“I will never forgive anyone who shows you the slightest disrespect.”

“One Xie Xuanzhi, a hundred, a thousand—it makes no difference. I would never hesitate.”

Aunt laughed.

“All right. Get up and have some rest. You still have court tomorrow morning.”

I obeyed and withdrew. Outside the hall, I took a deep breath and felt my head clear considerably.

Actually, Xie Xuanzhi hadn’t been wrong to call me stupid.

Since the late emperor’s day, the firm belief had been that only sons could carry on the family line.

Princes were favored; princesses were neglected.

Back then, a princess held scarcely more standing in the palace than a maid.

My father and uncles had all taken concubines and sired sons as if their lives depended on it.

If a daughter was born, they acted as though there had been no birth at all.

I still remembered the filthy things Mother had told me.

I once had a cousin three years older than me. She came into the world with a loud, healthy cry. My fifth uncle called her bad luck and ordered the wet nurse to smother her in her swaddling clothes.

The wet nurse couldn’t bring herself to do it. She wanted to smuggle the baby away and raise her herself.

When my uncle found out, he had both the nurse and the infant drowned in a pond.

My second uncle was worse. One of his concubines gave birth to twin daughters.

He ordered a basin of hot water brought in on the spot and had the two babies, whose eyes hadn’t even opened yet, pushed under.

He called it “washing away the bad luck.”

The concubine wept until she fainted. After she woke, she simply killed herself.

I owed my survival to Mother.

She was only a maid, someone no one noticed in the rear courtyard. That brute of a father of mine had raped her once while drunk.

When she became pregnant with me, she dared not tell anyone. She kept it hidden.

She hid in the woodshed and struggled through six full hours of labor before bringing me into the world.

From the time I was little, I followed her around doing the dirty work: sweeping floors, tending fires, scrubbing chamber pots.

We ate the servants’ leftovers and wore coarse clothes washed so often they had faded pale.

The masters of the household had no idea someone like me existed in their back courtyard.

And I never went near them.