Ten Years After My Mother Died, My Father Sent Me Away to Marry

When I was three, my mother died before my eyes. Clutching my hand, she said, “Don’t trust him. His promises have always been lies to me.”

I survived for ten years in the Cold Palace. My father forgot my birthday. He forgot I even existed.

Then the Northern Di demanded that the legitimate princess be sent to marry for peace, and only then did he remember me.

A eunuch delivered the decree: “His Majesty says this is what the late Empress promised back then.”

Clutching my mother’s old handkerchief, I looked up for the first time and asked, “When my mother made that promise, did she have no choice, just like me?”

No one answered.

They all said that for the sake of Great Yao and my mother’s good name, I should obey.

And I did obey. I obediently packed my things and obediently climbed into the bridal sedan.

But on the night before I left the palace, I went to my mother’s tomb and whispered:

“Mother, I’m leaving. No one will ever be able to use your name to force me to do something I don’t want again.”

On the day the wedding procession set out, my father stood on the city wall, convinced I would die for his empire just as my mother had.

But he didn’t know that I had seen through every one of his lies long ago.

The daughter he thought would obediently go to her death had already used the marriage alliance as a pretext to escape the cage that had imprisoned my mother all her life.

He remained in the empty palace, facing my mother’s tomb and asking like a madman, “Mingxi, when did you ever promise that?”

How ridiculous.

He used a dead woman’s name to force a living one to her death, never realizing that the one still alive had long since stopped wanting to play along.

He thought he had won, but in truth, he lost everything.