Ten years after she was abandoned, the marquis's family in the capital finally remembered Xie Yun, the “bringer of disaster.”
They brought her back from an estate overrun by wild beasts, only so she could take her younger sister's place in the imperial selection.
At a flower-viewing banquet, Xie Yun arrived in coarse clothes, mocked by every young noblewoman in the capital.
Her stepmother skimped on her food and clothing, her half-sister poisoned her, and her cousin tried to ruin her virtue.
They had no idea that the crows she had casually tamed were watching their every move.
Xie Yun once believed no one in the world could love her, until a masked assassin came through the rain one night, covered in blood.
She saved him, but he retaliated by making her swallow a pill of poison. “Tell anyone, and I'll wipe out your entire family.”
Xie Yun smiled, because his archenemy happened to be her enemy too.
At Xie Yun's coming-of-age ceremony, she suffered one humiliation after another.
But he arrived with a fortune in gold and proposed to her in front of everyone.
The entire capital was in an uproar. Everyone said Prince Yan, Qin Lie, was the emperor emeritus's most hated son, violent by nature and an “impotent” good-for-nothing.
She accepted the imperial decree without hesitation, because she knew...
He was the only one who could help her crush both the marquis's household that devoured its own and the hypocritical imperial power itself.
Later, in the Golden Hall,
her crows blotted out the sky, and her poisons and remedies killed without a sound.
Everyone who had bullied and humiliated her trembled at her feet.
The new emperor, Qin Lie, took her hand and looked down upon all creation. “This realm is the betrothal gift I owe you.”
But she pulled her hand away and tossed down a divorce decree.
“Your Majesty, the contract has expired. My animal army is waiting for me to return to the mountains and be their queen.”
