Shadows of the Phoenix in the Brocade Palace

In the fourteenth year of Yong’an under the Great Liang dynasty, on the twenty-third day of the twelfth month, the eve of the Little New Year.

Heavy snow fell across the glazed tiles of the imperial city, draping the prison in a death shroud of white.

Flames from Kunning Palace lit up half the sky.

“Empress Lin, for conspiring with outside powers and plotting rebellion, you are sentenced to drink poison!”

The eunuch’s shrill voice pierced the storm. The palace attendants knelt in rows, none daring to raise their heads.

Lin Jinse knelt on the icy floor tiles, watching as the cup of poison was brought before her.

It wasn’t the charge of plotting rebellion that killed her.

It was the man she had loved with all her heart for ten years. To make room for his new empress, he had personally branded the Lin family as traitors.

Her father and brothers had already been thrown into the imperial prison. Her mother had hanged herself. Not one of the more than one hundred members of the Lin family would survive the night.

And the child in her womb, three months along...

Lin Jinse lowered her eyes to the bloody hole in her abdomen. Half an hour earlier, her dear husband, Xiao Yan, the emperor of Great Liang, had plunged a dagger into her himself.

“I gave you a chance.” Xiao Yan stood below the steps, her blood staining his imperial robes, his face as indifferent as if he had nothing to do with it. “If you’d agreed to relinquish the empress’s throne sooner, I would have let you keep your body intact.”

Keep her body intact.

Lin Jinse wanted to laugh, but only coughed up blood.

Ten years ago, when she married him, he was an unloved prince, bullied by his brothers and despised by his father. Even the palace eunuchs dared to slight him.

She had knelt outside the imperial study for three days and three nights, pleading with the late emperor to give him a chance...