Accept my fate? I'll climb over every one of you to claim the Phoenix Throne!
I am Shen Qingli, daughter of a condemned official, brought into the palace as a servant and left to scrape by amid whip marks and rotten food.
The head palace matron sneered. “You wretched servant, accept your fate!”
I swallowed the blood in my mouth, but my gaze pierced the palace walls, fixed on the empress's phoenix throne.
When I saved the emperor from an assassin, I deliberately let the blade pierce my body, staining his dragon robe with blood.
Emperor Murong Ce lifted my chin. “What do you want?”
I lowered my eyes, my voice as docile as a lamb's. “I wish to be a blade in Your Majesty's hand.”
He chuckled and made me a consort.
The Consort Shu's poison schemes, the Worthy Consort's false accusations, the Empress Dowager's torment... I climbed step by step over their corpses.
Murong Ce held me in his arms, his fingertips cold. “Qingli, you are like a poisonous rose.”
I nestled against his chest, a dagger glinting coldly in my sleeve.
On the eve of my coronation as empress, he gripped my throat. “I can raise you up, and I can kill you.”
I smiled sweetly and drove the dagger into his heart.
“Your Majesty is mistaken.” I brushed a hand over the bloodstained phoenix crown. “From the day I entered the palace, all I wanted, ”
“Was your throne.”
