Chapter 1

I could speak three days after I was born.

The Old Sage said that prodigies were prone to short lives, that too much early cleverness invited an early death.

If I spoke before the age of five, heaven itself would grow jealous of me, and the only escape was to keep a vow of silence.

Only my father the Emperor and the Old Sage knew this secret.

Everyone else believed I was simply born mute.

My mother died bearing me, a hemorrhage in a hard labor.

The empress's seat had stayed empty ever since.

Letitia Chavez asked, of her own accord, to look after me, and she did it with the most tireless care.

Everyone praised her as gentle and virtuous.

But when the two of us were alone, she showed the wolf underneath, bare and plain.

"You little wretch. Every kindness I've shown you was only to buy people's hearts."

"The day I become mother to the realm will be the day you die."

My father was fooled by her performance.

He promised to name her empress on the first day of autumn.

The wicked consort thought she had finally gotten everything she wanted.

But there was one thing she did not know.

The day of her investiture happened to be my fifth birthday.

The vow of silence would be complete.

I would be able to speak.

...

I was my father's only daughter.

I was named Princess Rosalind.

I had three older brothers.

For as long as I could remember, I had been the jewel in my father's hand.

After my mother died, the empress's seat stayed empty.

The women of the harem were sharp.

They all knew that to take the central palace and become mother to the realm,

it was not enough to win my father's favor.

They also had to win mine.

So from the day I was born, the three palaces, six courtyards, and seventy-two concubines

came streaming to me one after another, like figures on a spinning lantern.

Each one fought to be the one who raised me.

There was one time.

Consort Li and Consort De quarreled over who would feed me the first spoonful of broth,

and it came to blows right there.

Hairpins scattered across the floor, and they clawed each other's faces bloody.

When my father found out, he was so angry he smashed a teacup.

"This is a disgrace."

That same day he issued a decree.

I would be raised in the Dowager's Palace with the Empress Dowager.

Every other concubine was forbidden to come near.

I lived in the Dowager's Palace for two years.

The days were quiet and steady.

Until the year I turned three.

A fever would not break, and the imperial physicians only shook their heads.

My father's brow was knotted with worry, and the Empress Dowager wept until her face was streaked with tears.

Just when everyone had given up hope,

Letitia Chavez went to the shrine and prayed for me with all her heart.

For three days and three nights she took neither food nor water.

She pricked her fingertip with a silver needle,

and with her own blood copied out an entire scroll of the Heart Sutra.

She swore a fierce vow as well.

"I would give ten years of my own life for Princess Rosalind's safety."

And strange to say,

no sooner had she finished the blood-written sutra than my fever broke.

My father, his eyes red, took her hand.

"Your sincerity has moved heaven itself, my love."

The Empress Dowager wiped her eyes and praised her again and again.

"You are a good child. You are a woman of true virtue."

Letitia seized the moment to speak.

"The Empress Dowager is getting on in years, and her strength is not what it was."

"I would be willing to raise Princess Rosalind, and spare her the burden."

My father agreed without a second thought.

From that day on,

I moved into Letitia's Serenity Palace.

The care she gave me was tireless, and nothing short of it.

In winter, afraid I would be cold,

she not only sewed my padded coat with her own hands but warmed my quilt with her own body.

In summer, afraid I would be hot,

and impatient with the clumsy hands of the palace maids,

she fanned me herself, and did not stop until I had fallen asleep.

Clothing, food, shelter, every small thing, she saw to it herself.

Everyone in the palace said,

"Letitia loves that girl more than her own mother would."

The summer I was four,

I was playing at the edge of the Palace Lake.

My foot slipped, and I fell in.

Letitia was three months pregnant at the time.

But she did not stop to think. She threw herself in after me.

She pushed me to the bank with everything she had,

and swallowed water herself, and the shock disturbed the child.

The baby was lost.

When she woke,

her face was white as paper.

The first words out of her mouth were not for her own child.

She gripped my father's hand and asked, faint and weak,

"Is Rosalind... is the princess all right?"

The Empress Dowager pressed her palms together and thanked heaven.

"Heaven took pity on Rosalind, motherless from the start, and sent Letitia down to care for her."

My father issued a decree on the spot.

"Elevate Lady Chavez to Noble Consort, to help oversee the six palaces."

He even had the Ministry of Rites write up her deeds

and add them to the Lessons for Women and the Lives of Virtuous Women,

so that women across the land might learn from her and follow her example.

Everyone said Letitia was the most virtuous woman under heaven.

I thought so too.

I even decided, in secret, that when the vow of silence was complete,

my first word would be to call her "Mother."

To give her a surprise.

But it was only when that day came

that I learned what it means to say you can paint a tiger's skin but not its bones, that you can know a face and never the heart behind it.

She said she would take me to the Empress's Palace.

To fetch some of my late mother's old things.

When we reached the Empress's Palace,

she sent every maid and eunuch away.

I was crouched on the floor, going through my mother's jewelry box.

Then a sharp pain shot through my arm.

I looked up.

She held a thin silver needle between her fingers.

She had driven it hard into the soft inside of my arm.

The pain set my whole body shaking.

My mouth fell open, but no sound came out.

She crouched down.

Close to my ear, her voice soft and full of poison.

"You little wretch. The sight of you makes me sick."

"Day after day I've played the loving mother. I gave up a child."

"All of it for the empress's throne."

"Once I am empress,"

"the first thing I'll do is send you down to keep my dead baby company in the grave."

I stared at her.

There were no tears in my eyes.

In that moment I understood.

This woman was no good.

But I still could not speak.

I would endure.