My father was a live-in son-in-law. To put my mother at ease, I was raised as a boy.
As the son of the Grand Chancellor, I became Crown Prince Zhao Heng’s study companion and his closest friend.
He was always putting an arm around my shoulders, saying I was the only person he could trust to watch his back.
When he left to gain experience in his fief, he promised he’d return in three years and ask his father to make me his most trusted minister.
But what I got instead was news that he planned to marry my delicate younger sister, simply because she looked like the woman he had always longed for.
At the welcome banquet, I happened to overhear him, drunk, talking with his confidant.
“A man clinging to me all day is disgusting… If it weren’t for his father, I would’ve sent him packing ages ago.”
The next day, a princess from a neighboring kingdom arrived to marry into our court, specifically naming me, the “brilliant and exceptionally talented” one, as her choice.
Under Zhao Heng’s furious gaze, I untied my chest binder in front of all the civil and military officials.
