Tempting the Noblewoman

She took her elder sister’s place and married into the Prince of Han’s household. At first glance, she recognized the groom: seven years ago, she had watched him kill her mother with her own eyes. She entered the household with a poison-tipped hairpin, ready to kill him and run.

Instead, he sat in a wheelchair and raised his deep, unreadable eyes to her. “The hairpin in your hair is coated with Seven-Step Red. That’s a palace poison. How did you get it?”

Later, she discovered dozens of memorial tablets at the bottom of a dry well in the prince’s mansion, each engraved with the words “Wangchuan.” The last tablet was brand new, and her name was carved on it.

Later still, the empress planted a “mother-following parasite” inside her. If she didn’t give birth, she would suffer for the rest of her life. If she did, only she or her child could survive.

He said, “I’ll trade my life for yours.”

She pressed the tip of her hairpin against his throat. “Your life belongs to me. I haven’t told you to die, so you’re not allowed to die.”