When Changxi was seven, her own parents sold her.
Her mother kicked her in the chest, and her father picked her up like a chick and tossed her out of the courtyard gate. A carriage curtain lifted, and a woman with a red mole on her forehead looked down at her. "What a pretty little thing."
The top courtesan who taught her to play the zither was named Shen Wanyue. She said, "I'm teaching you skills so you can have a choice, not so you can entertain clients."
But Wanyue had no choice of her own.
That winter, Miss Wanyue killed someone and set a fire. Not one of the twenty-three girls in the establishment made it out. Changxi was sent out of the city with a letter and a pearl hairpin tucked against her chest, and took the name Hua Yin.
Hua Yin never looked back.
From a girl who was sold off to the woman who held a family together.
For ten years, she relied on no one.
