The Stepmother Who Stayed - A. Introduction
I was the new wife of the Marquis of Cheng’en.
On my first day in the household, everyone was waiting to see how I would deal with the three burdens his first wife had left behind.
The eldest daughter was twelve. Deeply scheming, they said.
The second was ten. Spoiled and willful, by all accounts.
The boy was eight. Everyone said his sisters had ruined him: a little menace.
I rubbed my hands together, ready to straighten them out one by one.
Three months later.
The eldest secretly embroidered a forehead band for me and hid it beneath my pillow, too shy to let me know.
The second gave every sweet she had saved to my own little boy.
The youngest burned with fever in the middle of the night, clutching my sleeve as he mumbled, “New Mother, don’t send me away. I hardly eat anything…”
I gripped my ticket for the boat back to my parents’ home and tore it to shreds.
To hell with being a wicked stepmother.
From that day on, nobody in the capital was going to defend her children more fiercely than I did.
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